The Thin Ice

Last week Charlie Gilmour, son of writer and photographer Polly Samson and stepson of Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, was jailed for sixteen months for violent disorder. He was strung out on booze, drugs and lack of sleep and misbehaved significantly on the student protest against spending cuts in central London last December. Nobody, himself  included, denied that he had been a Very Naughty (and Silly) Boy. There was a financial value to the damage he did, although the extent of that damage remains open to debate. He was seen to kick, but not break, a window and deemed to have thrown a bin at the car carrying Charlie Windsor and his missus. He had earlier swung himself on the Cenotaph flag. All in all, not a good day. I'm sure he wasn't too surprised to find himself in court. He issued an apology pretty much as soon as he'd had a chance to sober up, but having had his collar felt, must have expected that matters would be taken further as indeed they were.

I am not a lawyer, although I did have the dubious honour of being married to one for a while. I still know a few, though not in a professional capacity. They are rather given to pushing a point as far as it will go, and this seems to be what happened to Charlie Gilmour. He is an undergraduate at Cambridge University which means he is clever (don't believe that you can buy your way in - the money comes in getting you the schooling needed to be able to prove that you are clever). He has grown up in very comfortable circumstances, but that is not a crime (or if you are far enough to the left to think it is, you must accept that the crime is not his). Obviously, I have never met his parents, but his step-father's charitable donations and manner suggest that his heart is not only chunky but in the right place. His mum's work and twitter feed suggest that she is very charming. Well, I like her sense of humour, which is good enough for me! Charlie, however, is old enough to make his own mistakes, and has duly done so.

Immediately after the protests and the heart-tugging snaps of Camilla looking scared in the back of her limo, the media were pretty much united in their condemnation of the violence and vandalism that occurred. Nobody is going to endorse that, not least because it did nothing for the cause the marchers were supposed to be supporting. Since Charlie's sentencing, however, some cracks have appeared. Sixteen months, some feel, is an awfully long time (even allowing for the fact that nobody seems to serve their sentence in full). The sentence is too long.

I would go further. The sentence is wholly inappropriate. A custodial sentence for an individual in these circumstances is a punishment for sure and, it is argued, a deterrent to anyone thinking of behaving in a similar way. Well, so would a substantial fine and community service order. The cuts which provoked the protest result from the Government being skint. What better way to dig ourselves out of deficit than to spend thousands on keeping an offender of this kind in jail for months? D'oh!

I would not defend Gilmour Jr.'s behaviour for one moment, but NEITHER WOULD HE ! He does not need to be shown the error of his ways. He should be punished for misbehaving and deterred from doing it again. So make him pick up litter and dog poo for a couple of months, maybe more. Empty his piggy bank if you like, but bear in mind that he knows people who can replenish it quite readily. That way we get to save money, he's duly punished/deterred/humiliated and everyone's a winner.

So why didn't that happen? Maybe a custodial sentence was the only option open. I doubt it, but if it was, it should not have been and in any case it didn't need to be so long. Why sixteen months? Well, given that similar and worse crimes routinely attract shorter, even suspended, sentences, it is hard not to reach the conclusion that Charlie is being made an example of or even that he is somehow being used as a proxy punishment for the wishy-washy liberalism and /or wealth of those close to him. David Gilmour has been a staunch supporter of  Gary McKinnon, the autistic computer hacker whose extradition Uncle Sam has sought for several years, and has been ready to criticise the establishment over the years, directly or by implication. And of course, he is loaded.

Now, "making an example" of someone, to me, is the stuff of wartime prison camps. Not civil courts in peacetime. You cannot reasonably over-punish a high-visibility convict to deter those who might follow. Not fair. Nor, of course, could punishment by proxy be justified, supposing it were provable. Fact is, though, that a young man who clearly has some problems is being locked in with people who are more likely to supplement his trauma than to show him the way to enlightenment. And we are paying for it. I would say that the law is an ass. But I don't want to be in contempt of court, do I?

Illustrations from Pink Floyd: The Wall by Gerald Scarfe