The Tory Centre for Policy Studies Daily Blog on the 13th November was quite extraordinary, even by their standards.

In it, Kathy Gyngell comments at length on the murder of Baby P in Haringey. This murder, she says, happened because of reliance on systems and structures, which she lays directly at the door of government - "because government apparatchiks have been indoctrinated by the higher demand of process at the price of humanity". In this the blog differs very little from what's been written about this tragedy in most of the national papers and on any number of other blogs.

But then the blog goes on to do something extraordinary. For two paragraphs the emphasis shifts from the tragedy in Haringey, to the matter of drug dependant parents and specifically what Gyngell calls "the state sponsored drugging of some 200,000 adults with the prescribed opiate substitute, methadone". What relationship this bears on the awful death of Baby P the blog doesn't explain. As far as we know neither of the parents was prescribed methadone or in touch with any drug treatment service. What this is in fact is one of the oldest spin-tricks in the book. She seems to be seeking to create, by proximity in this piece, a connection between methadone prescribing and the death of this child. I think its shabby and its unpleasant and its misleading.

It seems Kathy Gyngell is no stranger to this sort of lobbying. In the early 90s along with a group of other women, she set up a campaigning organisation called "Full Time Mothers" which aimed to promote stay at home mothers and lobby for among other things a reduction in spend on childcare and increased spending on tax breaks for traditional families. Jessica Asato on The Progressive blog comments: Their website asks visitors insightful questions such as “Are you tired of seeing your family's taxes diverted towards encouraging more childcare and absentee parenting?” According to a document put together by Hazel Blears, Kathy Gyngell has said that "When a child's mother dies, that is a terrible tragedy. But we impose that tragedy on every child when we leave them to go to work".

In 1993 Jamie Bulger was killed by two children. Just a month later in the media storm that followed, the Mail on Sunday published an article by Kathy Gyngell entitled "The Price of Feminism". In it she implicitly drew a link between the recent tragedy and the feminist movement. In their essay in the 1999 book "Changing Family Values" Kirk Mann and Sasha Roseneil picked up on this - A photograph of a 1970s march showing women carrying placards reading 'women demand equality' was placed next to a photograph of a young boy, wearing a balaclava helmet, pointing threateningly at the camera in 1993. The headline above them read 'Did this…lead to this?' In the article Kathy Gyngell argues that feminism, by encouraging women to take paid employment, is responsible for juvenile crime and moral and social decline. Echoing theories of maternal deprivation from the 1950s, she claims that children are being neglected by their absent mothers, and draws upon essentialist notions of maternal instinct: 'Feminists may complain that it is unfair that mothers are primarily responsible for the upbringing of their children. But it is an unavoidable fact of life. Nature provides women not only with the body to bear children, but the instinct to foster their emerging sense of morality.' (The Mail on Sunday 7 March 1993) Social policies to encourage women to stay at home with their children was the solution suggested by Gyngell.

So what is this about? Why would a fairly respectable blog site stoop to such low tactics to make its points? I guess the answer must lie in their fervent belief in the justice of the cause - that of shifting policy away from harm reduction towards a drugs policy that focuses primarily on encouraging abstinence and prioritising prevention. Kathy Gyngell's commitment to ending harm reduction is obviously such that spinning news stories - even ones as upsetting and important as this - must seem in some way a valid approach. Its quite saddening really, but in many ways typical of those on both sides of this manufactured debate. Like I said its turf wars - and no one is the winner here. No one.

Please note this blog was not carried by the Daily Dose so please forward to any friends or colleagues who would otherwise miss it.



Photograph: Copyright Jim Young