Learning from the past
We live inside stories. Some are comforting: that Britain is naturally fair; that institutions correct themselves; that injustice is a historical error we have outgrown.
Mark Daniels
2/28/2025
For centuries, the state used punishment as theatre. In too many cases the evidence was thin, the prejudice thick, the defendant disposable. When people were hanged and later vindicated, the correction arrived as a footnote. The body was already buried. The family already marked. The community already taught the lesson: authority is final.
That is the real warning from the last 150 years. Not that we once made errors - but that we made them confidently. The system did not stumble into injustice; it marched into it, backed by paperwork, reputation, and the moral certainty of “the right sort of people”.
Learning from the past means refusing to treat “procedure” as proof. It means remembering that the law can be lawful and still be wrong. It means understanding that a society can look polite on the surface while cruelty is carried out neatly, in forms and files, behind closed doors. Do you think similar mistakes could not happen again.....