Calls for benefit reform in the wake of Philpott's conviction for manslaughter are predictable but troubling. Can one man's sick psyche really be a political issue?
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Deborah Orr
The Guardian, Friday 5 April 2013 15.58 BST
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The six children of Mick Philpott who died in the Derby house fire. The Times has suggested that benefits should not be paid for more than two children. Photograph: Enterprise News and Pictures
It's fairly predictable that Mick Philpott's extreme perversity and amoralism should be taken up in some quarters as somehow typical and universal, a jolly good example of what happens when a country has a welfare state. Can this really be a political issue?
There can be no doubt that Philpott's personal safety net was rather too comfy. Totted up, the various benefits he received, plus the money Lisa Willis and Mairead Philpott earned and handed over to him, have been estimated as equivalent to a gross salary of £100,000 before Willis moved out – although both women lived off this total as well as their children. The Times has suggested in a leader inspired by Philpott's crime that benefits should not be paid for more than two children.
But why stop with reforming child benefit in response to a situation that even the Times's leader admitted was entirely the responsibility of "the reckless, stupid, brutal Philpott and his suggestible wife"? Philpott's case can just as easily be used as an argument against all other things considered progressive, liberal or libertarian.
1 The sexual revolution
Philpott's multiple partners and liking for threesomes, dogging and sharing his sexual partners with his friends can easily be read as the inevitable consequence of 1960s promiscuity and permissiveness. They told us this would happen. If only everyone would agree that it's much better to remain a virgin until you marry – if you're a woman; live in shame if you conceive a child out of wedlock – if you're a woman; stay married for life, no matter how abusive or controlling your spouse turns out to be – if you're male or female.
Obviously, it "helps" if one partner loses all independent rights after marriage. For the sake of continuity – and Mick Philpott would have no difficulty in endorsing this – it's prudent to ensure that the one thus enslaved should be the woman.
Also obviously, Philpott would have little trouble with the idea that a woman should never leave her partner either. If only women refrained from doing so, then Philpott wouldn't have ended up serving a prison sentence for the attempted murder of Kim Hill in 1978, or indeed the life sentence he has now been given for attempting to frame for arson the mother of five of his children, Lisa Willis. So, I suppose you could say that, in some respects, the sexual revolution has actually been bad for people who wish to enslave their partners. Awkward.
2 Feminism
New research from the Institute for Public Policy Research this week confirmed what even those of us who are grateful for feminism (see above) have always suspected. The focus on gender equality in high-profile roles has done few favours to unskilled women. Lisa Willis may not even have known that Mick Philpott was claiming benefits supposedly to be spent on her children. That was an area of ignorance that bound her to him. Mairead Philpott, likewise, was the classic abused wife, under the control of her husband in a manner that feminism has attempted to teach women to guard against. Unfortunately, on brief examination, the major argument appears to be in favour of more accessible, less academic feminism, not less feminism per se.
3 Family planning
I mean what's the point of contraception if certain people simply refuse to take advantage of it? Ditto free and universal education. Much good it did this shower of nasty, venal fools. Ditto the army. OK, the army isn't usually regarded as progressive. Still, its training and discipline appears not to have done a great deal to build Philpott's character. Maybe that's a warning against using examples of individual criminality to taint entire institutions. One hopes not, eh?
4 Popular culture
Clearly, I'm no expert on Philpott's psychopathology, for the twin reasons that I've never met the man and have no expertise in psychopathology. But it seems to me that turning Philpott's ghastly lifestyle into entertainment wasn't a positive intervention. He was a regular in the newspapers, appeared on the Jeremy Kyle Show and did a documentary with Ann Widdecombe. He revelled in his nickname of "Shameless Mick", which made reference to the long-running comedy-drama created by Paul Abbott. Philpott didn't mind that he was notorious, because notoriety is a kind of fame, and all fame is good, right? I'm pretty sure that Philpott imagined that his "celebrity", his status as "special", would magically protect him from discovery. The attention he received may have been negative, but it fed the man's warped ego all the same. I don't even think I can muster any sarcasm on this one. Some aspects of popular culture are highly irresponsible. I suppose we can only be thankful that Mairead Philpott never made Celebrity Mum of the Year.
5 Rehabilitative justice
It does seem rum that a man who was jailed for a brutal attempted murder, and also for an attack at the same time on his former girlfriend's mother, should have been free again in just three years, at the age of 24. However, this was in 1978 when, contrary to popular legend, prison sentences tended to be shorter than they are now. Philpott has now been given a life sentence. Even if he is released one day, he will return to prison if he breaks the conditions of his parole. It's a shame that isn't what happened when he was 21 years old.
6 Individual freedom
This is where it gets complicated. Elements of the left and the right agree that individual freedom should be sacrosanct, and that people should be allowed to make their own choices in life. The trouble, as we saw with neoliberalism in banking, is that in order for this to "work", people – and banks – must be prepared to suffer the consequences of their own bad choices. The ghastly truth is that libertarianism, or even liberalism, can only work if one of two impossible conditions are in place.
For the right, the condition is a state so shrunken that everyone has to fend for themselves in all matters in which choice has been a factor. You chose to get fat? No healthcare for you. You chose to remain unskilled? No unemployment benefit for you. In a shrunken state, it's difficult to work out who should decide who is suffering by choice and who is suffering innocently. Perhaps that's why attempts by the right to shrink the state tend to have the pesky unintended consequence of making it bigger.
For the left, the condition is a state so efficient that it equips everyone with the capability to make sane and educated choices of which the government approves, or, in the event that they are still not capable of doing so, are warned, advised and marshalled so greatly that making the "wrong" choice will have become virtually impossible. Like - oh, let's see – North Korea.
The truth is that there are all sorts of factors that led to the terrible decision by Philpott to set fire to his own home, killing six of his own children. The most important is likely to have been his own sick psyche, which some of the above no doubt exacerbated, or even rewarded.
If there is one issue that should be being furiously debated in the wake of this crime, but isn't, it's why our culture seems to pay such comparatively small account to matters of psychological and neurological inadequacy. Nothing in the universe is more irrefutably, desirably progressive than science. The trouble with politics is that it's an art, and sometimes a dark one. This guy was a psychopath, hidden in plain sight. We really need to get better at spotting them.
