25 January

“By making accusation – long after the event – equal guilt, and making inevitable mistakes by doing so, a groundswell of belated anger such as the present one must inevitably produce a result opposite to the one intended. Instead of righting past wrongs, it inadvertently commits new injustices and creates new victims among the very people it seeks to bring to justice. Due process, in which the accused is given a chance to answer the accusers, may be slow and can make mistakes. For would-be revolutionaries, it is no doubt deeply unexciting. It does, however, work more often than not. Its justice lasts longer, and has a better record, than that of the lynch mob.”