Charlotte Raven

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Charlotte Raven (born 1969) is a British author and journalist.

She was a contributor, and eventually editor, of the Modern Review. There she met Julie Burchill with whom she had an affair in 1995: the two are pictured in the National Portrait Gallery. Her columns have appeared frequently in The Guardian and New Statesman.

She studied English at Manchester. As a Labour club activist there in the late 1980s and early 1990s, she was part of a successful campaign to oust then student union communications officer Derek Draper.[1] She was Manchester University Students' Union Women's Officer in 1990-91 and presided over an election in which Liam Byrne MP failed to be elected as the Union's Welfare Officer. She later studied at Sussex.

She and her partner Tom have a daughter, Anna, born in 2004.[2]

[edit] Bulger controversy

Raven caused considerable controversy in June 2001 with a Guardian column on the subject of the imminent release from prison of Jamie Bulger's killers. In her piece, Raven personally attacked Bulger's mother Denise Fergus, accusing her of possessing "purse-lipped pride" and of "revelling" in her "role" as the mother of a murdered toddler. Raven opined that Fergus "knows she is untouchable" and, in reference to Fergus and her fellow campaigners, suggested that they should be "condemned to rot in Kirby [sic] until such time as society was satisfied that they no longer presented a threat", in an apparent semi-humorous comparison with her sons' killers. Raven further suggested that Fergus's grief should not be taken into account when judging her views and behaviour, and that her behaviour is better explained by her upbringing in Liverpool: "If Denise had been born in Manchester, she wouldn't have spent 10 minutes, never mind eight years in this soul-sapping limbo [...] Scousers' propensity to linger over every misfortune until another comes to replace it makes them uniquely suited to the demands of the Bulger mourning marathon [...] being the perennial victims of a pair of notorious murderers is a much easier route to the moral superiority that every Scouser sees as their birthright than the more irksome alternative - actually doing something good." Raven suggested that threats to harm Bulger's killers from some Kirkby residents were examples of unique "Scouse justice" and, expressing sympathy for the killers, she went on "Thompson and Venables happened to live in Liverpool...I'm sure both will be happy to leave it to get on with defending its misery against time's healing ministrations". [1] In fact, less than a week after the article was published, a murderer released early from prison was attacked by a lynch mob in, ironically, Manchester. The article caused a storm of protest, much of which came from commentators who agreed with the early release of Thompson and Venables. Aside from her personal attack on Fergus and her perceived generalisations about Liverpool, Raven was criticised for suggesting that Fergus's grief should not be considered a factor in her feelings towards her sons murderers and her statement that Fergus had "behaved in way that is virtually unprecedented for the parent of a child lost in violent circumstances", when in fact threats are quite frequently made to harm murderers who receive early release from prison. The editor of The Guardian apologised and stated that "the article should never have been published". Raven did not comment on the furore publicly. [3]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Derek Draper, Charlotte Raven & Joanne Mallabar "How we met", The Independent, 4 October 1998. Retrieved on 23 June 2007.
  2. ^ Charlotte Raven "How my generation lost the plot",The Guardian, 15 July 2006. Retrieved on 23 June 2007.
  3. ^ Private Eye magazine, No. 1118, 29 October 2004

[edit] External links