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You are asked to read Lord of the Flies or watch the film.  You are also invited to have a look at the Madness & Literature Network (click here), you can see a couple of you tube videos about the network that I've done: Madness & literature  Showalter & Crawford.  Professor Paul Crawford heads up the Madness & Literature Network and will be joining us for the Trial (see Feb 22).  Professor's Crawford primer for the Trial:  here     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4aK0fE3z z8 

Students are divided into 4 groups: 3 defence teams (Ralph, Piggy and Jack) and 1 Jury.

LEGAL BACKGROUND ABOUT AGE OF CRIMINAL RESPONSIBILITY

ENGLAND: Home Affairs Section; Broadbridge, S (2009) The age of criminal responsibility in England & Wales.  Standard Note: SN/HA/3001 (House of Commons Library).    This note explains that the age of criminal responsibility is now ten and refers to some criticisms which have been levelled about the current legal positions.   

SCOTLAND: full or adult system of prosecution and punishment. The 1995 Act also contains various rules which use this second notion of age of criminal responsibility, most notably that in section 42(1) which provides (in part) that "no child under the age of 16 years shall be prosecuted for any offence except on the instructions of the Lord Advocate, or at his instance."  However, under the instructions of the Lord Advocate children aged 8 may be held criminally responsible.  Section 41 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 that it shall be conclusively presumed that no child under the age of 8 can be guilty of any offence. 

EUROPE: The European court considered two applications T v UK; V v UK who at the age of 10 abducted and murdered a 2 year old boy and were convicted after a trial at a Crown Court when they were 1 years old.   Part of the applicants submissions was that in view of their age a public trial in adult court had violated their rights under articles 3 and 6.  In considering this submission the European Court of Human Rights made a number of observations about the age of criminal responsibility.  The relevant rule of English law was that there was conclusive presumption that a child under 10 could not be guilty of an offence.  The court concluded that attribution of criminal responsibility to a child aged 10 did not involve a breah of article 3; and further that subjecting a child as young as 11 to a criminal trial did not by itself involves a breach of article 6 (1).   The court also noted that there is no common standard among the member States of the Council of Europe as to the minimum age of criminal responsibility.  

EU CONVENTION 2003: In Part 3 we recommend that section 42(1) of the 1995 Act should be retained subject to an amendment that children under 12 cannot be subject to any criminal prosecution. The effect of our recommendations is that children under the age of 12 are granted an absolute immunity from prosecution, whereas for children aged over 12 and under 16 the immunity is in effect (though not in strict terms) presumptive. We believe that both in terms of the substance and form, the law on age of criminal responsibility which would result from our recommendations would not breach the requirements of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.


ROLE ALLOCATION

Defence teams amass evidence to defend their client.  Defence teams will also be able to cross examine the other defence teams. 

Ralph: Lizzy, Sibell, Zara

Jack: Vai, Ben, Jo  

Piggy: Nikoletta, Athina, Rebecca

Jury: Elena, Maya, Eleni, Anneleen, Younghye, Michelle, Tenji, Martine, Vicky. 

Running order for trial

1.30:  Defence teams: final preparation.  Meanwhile the jury group: will meet to together to write a collage Sonnet called the Death of Simon.  The jury are encouraged to reflect on the death of Simon.  Using cut & paste technique, the collage poem should draw on the reactions of the jury to the death of Simon with a focus on the voice that speaks of; i) the death of our son (Simon's parents), ii) the loss of a sibling; iii) the death of a friend.  Each jury member is asked to write responses to i, ii & iii.  The group will then cut and paste some of the lines into the final Sonnet (14 lines).  At least one line from each member should be included in the final poem.  Please bring this poem back for the start of the trial.                       

2.15 pm: Instructions to the jury - GW 

2.20pm: Piggy's defence team statement

2.25pm: Cross examination

2.30pm: Ralph's defence team statement

2.35pm: Cross examination

2.40pm: Jack's defence team statement

2.45pm: cross examination

2.50pm: Final statements (5 minutes preparation)

3.05pm: Final statements (each team will have up to 5 minutes)

3.10pm: Summing up and final instructions to the jury for their deliberations

3.15pm: Jury deliberation

3.45 pm: Jury verdict 

4.00pm: reveal.  End of session


SOME NOTES ON LORD OF THE FLIES:

Crawford (2002) draws attention to Golding's position is relation to a wider movement of writers who have explored the nature of atrocity.  Lord of the Flies remains one of the most enduring and memorable accounts exploring human nature and especially the propensity for barbarity and inhumanity.  Lord of the Flies is often situated as an exemplar of the question as to how young people might fare in the absence of adults.  At least this is how The Lord of the Flies is usually rendered.  But Crawford brings something else to the debate by drawing attention to Golding's politics situating Lord of the Flies as an incisive account about the nature of fascism.  Though the fascism under scrutiny is not only the rise of the German Fascism in the 1930s that led to the atrocity of the holocaust, but rather it is the commonality of fascistic impulse observable in the very Englishness of a group of school boys.

The terrible art in Golding's novel is that that the meta-politics of social atrocity are compellingly rendered in the micro-system of a boy's adventure where games, gangs and bullying end in tragedy.  It is the mark of a great novel where universal phenomena are rendered in the intimacy of a narrative that explores a network of relationships from lower down in the system.   Golding deploys micro-politics much in the same way that we see Aeschylus critiquing the overarching regime of social democracy in ancient Greece, through the focal lens of the House of Agamemnon.  The comparison of Aeschylus and Golding is notable if we see both Aeschylus (in the Oresteia) and Golding (in Lord of the Flies) taking a shot at the inadequacy of democracy.  In The Lord of the Flies, democracy is embodied in the role of the conch which Piggy decrees is the device which must be held before anyone can address the whole community.  Golding problematises democracy, in a sense the linear dialogue of speaking-one-at-time is shown to be inadequate.  The conch is eventually smashed and the community falls apart.   Aeschylus also concludes that democracy does not stand up the pressure.  In the final scenes of the Oresteia, Aeschylus has the jury wavering and indecisive; they are split six and six, they cannot decide whether Orestes in innocent or guilty.

So what bearing does this have on the experience of learning to work with children and young people?  Of course, it not necessarily for me to say.  But we can say that The Oresteia and The Lord of the Flies opens up questions of about the horizontal relationships.  It draws our attention to gangs; good gangs and pathological gangs.  


REFERENCE 

Crawford, P  (2002) Politics & History in William Golding - The World Turned Upside Down.  Columbia & London.  University of Missouri Press.