Talk:Beatrix Campbell

Untitled

This is not a stub, surely? Nor can I see where there are unsourced statements. Re-categorise? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Heartfield01 (talk • contribs) 09:45, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Guardian article

I see almost no point at all in the reference to the Scott Trust (they run the newspaper) in the sentence below and I've a mind to remove it. It was Campbell who wrote the article, it wasn't a Guardian editorial. It's clearly a ridiculous attempt to do-down the newspaper, made even sillier by the fact that, even if it was an editorial, it would be almost entirely irrelevant, not least because the publication is editorially independent from the Trust.

"In July 2009, writing for the Guardian, a newspaper run by a foundation claiming dedication to protecting freedom of speech, she wrote strongly in support of surveillance of the public and vetting of authors before allowing them to present to children in schools." Phelim123 (talk) 19:12, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Personal Life

Couple of weird things in this section:

• I thought that her marriage was to "Secret Society" journalist Duncan Campbell. However, I can't find any references for that. Then again, I can't find any that corroborate her marriage to Bobby Campbell either.
• I met her a couple of times about fifteen years ago and at that time Judith Jones was her partner, not merely her co-author. However, again, I can find no reliable refs for that either. Frustrating. Wikipedia requires information! ;) -- Hux (talk) 06:26, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Certainly some indication of the reason for her being included in the top 100 LGBT figures list in whatever year would be useful given that, with the only indication on the subject being the statement that she was formerly married to a man, it is left to the reader to infer/ assume the LGBT mention is erroneous, which is hardly encyclopaedic... is there no interview, no writing of her own, that would explain her inclusion on this LGBT figures list? It sounds like she's been prominent- and vocal- for many years, so this seems unlikely. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.109.200.16 (talk) 01:48, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

Name

A minor point, but I have never heard or seen her referred to other than as "Bea Campbell". I had to double check when she came up here as "Beatrix". Shouldn't the shorter form of her name at least get a mention in the article? Edwin Greenwood (talk) 08:11, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Satanic abuse scandal

The article hints at this but doesn't go into detail. Her partner, Judith Jones, was a lead social worker involved in this early 1990s child abuse scandal and Campbell wrote a number of articles about it and appeared on television (i.e. the After Dark programme mentioned) in support of Jones' work. This should really be discussed more fully as it was a major event in her life. --Hux (talk) 06:10, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

It was covered until this edit on 2 December last year. The edit summary by Cynthia Cockburn (in the only edit ever made by that editor) is somewhat disingenuous, given the wholesale removal of the "Child abuse controversies" section in that edit, as well as substantial undicussed changes to other sections. Unfortunately, it seems that nobody spotted this somewhat contentious edit at the time, so it may be difficult to reinstate the lost material. Nick Cooper (talk) 09:49, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

In case it's of use to other editors the After Dark discussion referred to has been uploaded (not by me) to YouTube and can currently be accessed here. The programme itself is briefly discussed on Wikipedia here

AnOpenMedium (talk) 16:29, 7 May 2014 (UTC)AnOpenMedium (talk) 08:00, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

I have added near all of the text about this issue that was removed by Cynthia Cockburn (see above). I have deleted a comment about Judith Jones and her involvement in a Nottingham case as I can't see an immediate source for that (and there will be many Judith Jones) but I have made brief mention of both the Cleveland and Nottingham child sex abuse cases, both now discredited, and which Campbell (at least) wrote about. Clive Power (talk) 04:48, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps The Daily Mail can help: there is an article, dated August 3, 2002, and written by Geoffrey Levy, currently available online here.Testbed (talk) 12:09, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

The 'Daily Mail story' linked to above does indeed make such claims but my hesitation is that the link is not to the Daily Mail site but to another site which says it is reproducing a Mail article. I don't think that is authoritative enough...but if someone else has an interest in digging, maybe they will find a better source. Clive Power (talk) 14:22, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Apologies for the misunderstanding. I have come to realise that there can sometimes be a Wikidefault not to trust any reference except that which is immediately available online, hence giving that link, so as (I thought) to be helpful. Sorry if this has created confusion.

Here is the full text of the Daily Mail article (from LexisNexis, a database which - unlike the public site for the Daily Mail - makes it possible to retrieve Mail articles from 2002). I think the text is the same as that of the link but you might like to check it through yourself:-

DAILY MAIL (London)

August 3, 2002

The Witchfinder

She believes satanic abuse is common. So does her feminist Marxist lover. Was she really, then, the right person to sit in judgment on two nursery nurses falsely accused of paedophilia?

BYLINE: Geoffrey Levy

SECTION: Pg. 20

LENGTH: 1862 words

BIZARRE is a word that hardly begins to describe the horrendous story which unfolded this week in the High Court. Two nursery nurses - Christopher Lillie, 37, and Dawn Reed, 31 - had had their lives ruined by wrongly being branded paedophiles, in a report commissioned by their local council.

On Tuesday they left the court without a stain on their character, having been awarded the maximum possible libel damages of GBP 200,000 each in compensation.

The judge suggested that if he'd had the power to give them more, he would have done so.

The story that emerged was thoroughly shocking. For nine years they had fought to eradicate a smear that they were sexual perverts abusing children in their care at the council-run Shieldfield nursery.

The nightmare began in 1993 when the mother of a two-year-old boy who attended the nursery went to the police with her suspicions.

The following year they were cleared at Newcastle Crown Court of sex crimes

against children in their care- but instead of this being the end of their nightmare, it was only the beginning.

First they were sacked for gross misconduct, and then, in 1995, a fourmember team was set up by Newcastle upon Tyne City Council to investigate complaints about the nursery.

Their report, published in 1998, could hardly have been more explosive - or more shattering for the two nurses. It said that Mr Lillie 'took every opportunity to abuse the children' and that his female colleague was party to that abuse, including filming them.

'We find that . . . Christopher Lillie and Dawn Reed were procuring children at the nursery for pornographic purposes as well as their own motivation.' Incredibly, none of this was true.

Indeed, according to the judge, Mr Justice Eady, summing up at the end of the GBP 6 million action, the council report was malicious in a way which 'cannot be explained on the basis of incompetence or mere carelessness'.

What the court was not told, however, was that one figure central to the report had already been totally discredited through her involvement in a child abuse report - and had made a crusade of supposed 'satanic abuse' which verges on the obsessional.

They would not have known that Judith Jones, one of the inquiry team of four in Newcastle, led a similar inquiry some 13 years ago in Nottingham under her married name, Judith Dawson.

That report was later condemned-after a detailed investigation involving senior social workers and police-as inflammatory rubbish, as we shall see.

So how did Judith Jones, who markets herself as a child abuse counsellor, come to be engaged by leftwing Newcastle Council as one of the four members on the panel of this sensitive and volatile inquiry?

MS JONES, 51, is a woman with a chequered and controversial history. A mother of two sons from her marriage at 21 to a computer programmer, she has lived for some years with the feminist Marxist author Bea Campbell in a two-bedroom terrace in the Byker area of Newcastle.

The two women share a passionate - some would say obsessive - belief that there is widespread satanic, or ritual, child abuse in this country.

They have continued to proclaim this belief over many years, despite a curious lack of evidence.

Ms Campbell, indeed, was said during a debate in the House of Commons to 'subscribe to the view that one in four of the population are abused as children'.

Everyone, of course, is entitled to their beliefs, and no one would doubt the two women's genuine desire to save children from abuse. But in the case of Judith Jones, there is strong evidence to suggest that her personal approach to what is believable and what is not is somewhat eccentric.

And one is entitled to think that in the case of two nurses alleged to be paedophiles feeding their lust and offering children to others, you would not want eccentricity but caution and sensible judgment.

When the then Judith Dawson led her team of social workers investigating child abuse in Nottingham, where she was then working, there had indeed been a revolting case of incest.

But her team claimed to have unearthed a satanic frenzy that involved ritualistic murder. An inquiry into their report found the satanic claims to be utter nonsense, and Judith Dawson's reputation should have been in tatters.

John Gwatkin was joint chairman of the Nottingham inquiry carried out together with police, and yesterday he explained just why he was 'totally appalled' when he learned that Judith Jones was sitting on the Newcastle panel.

HE SAYS: 'In my opinion, she is totally unsuited to do this kind of work.

As soon as we started our inquiry, we began to feel that she was totally ignoring any evidence that contradicted her preconceived ideas.

'For example, she believed a tenyear-old girl who said her stomach had been cut open in the front room of a council house. We learned that the girl had previously been in hospital for an appendix operation, and her surgeon was contacted. He identified his scar and told us the girl was otherwise untouched.

'When we informed Judith Dawson of this, she replied that satanists were clever people and would cut along the same scar so that it wouldn't be noticed.

'We put this to the surgeon, who said it was medically impossible as scar tissue heals poorly. But when we told her what he had said, she was dismissive.

She didn't want to know and refused to accept it. It was quite astonishing.' Even more astonishing, he says, was some months later when he read an article about satanism by her in the New Statesman. She wrote about a girl who had described 'how she was laid on a table and had her stomach ritually cut open'.

'It was as though the evidence we had presented to her never existed,' says Mr Gwatkin, who was director of social services at Newark, Notts, but has since retired to Lincolnshire.

'It beggars belief that someone with such a closed mind should be appointed to sit on a panel investigating alleged child abuse at a nursery school in Newcastle.' Retired Detective Superintendent Peter Coles, who was involved in ritual abuse investigations in Nottingham, also remembers Judith Dawson and her team - and a particular incident involving a child who had allegedly been microwaved.

'I was slightly mischievous, and said to one of Judith's team that I had checked this out and it couldn't be right - because experts had told me if you did that, the baby's eyes would explode and the door of the microwave would come off.

'I was just kidding, but before long one of the team came back and said disclosures had now been made about babies' eyes being taken out before they were microwaved. These claims were pure invention.' One is surely entitled to recall these bizarre incidents in relation to the libel judge's comments about claims of the Newcastle panel that they

'must have known to be untrue'.

And yet, as we know, Judith Dawson's career did not plummet.

On the contrary, she lectures widely and is on the Law Society's list of expert witnesses for 'family child issues', including child abuse and lesbian or gay families.

John Gwatkin believes her career was saved because his inquiry report was never published by Nottingham council.

Judith Dawson is understood to have complained that it was sexist, because her team of four were all women.

Two years ago, when it suddenly appeared on the internet, she was no longer using her married name but her maiden name of Jones - and, he says, 'many people didn't realise it was the same person'.

Old colleagues in Nottinghamshire remember Judith Dawson as, one says, 'a rather sloppy person dashing about with files under one arm and a shopping bag in the other'. At that time Judith seemed to be a typically busy, ordinary working woman with children, 'with too much on her mind to be very jolly'.

THEN, suddenly, ritual or satanic abuse became a talking point; and, says one former social worker colleague, 'it seemed to take her over and she became quite obsessive about it. She became a very different person'.

More different, perhaps, than colleagues realised. For at about that time journalist Bea Campbell, who had been writing about the alleged satanic abuse in the Orkneys where social workers arriving at dawn had taken children away from innocent parents - arrived to write about what was happening in Nottingham.

Judith was able to tell her.

Precisely at what point Judith Dawson left her husband Brendan, whom she married in 1972, is not clear. But before very long the two women were not only fuelling each other's fixation with ritual abuse and collaborating to produce articles discussing its presence in Nottingham as proven fact - but were being talked of as an 'item'.

In 1992, Judith moved to work in Sunderland - Bea, who has described herself as a 'horrible, queer Marxist', lived in nearby Newcastle - and in 1997 they decided to cement their relationship by deciding to live together after discovering line-dancing.

Bea, 57, a visiting professor in women's studies at Newcastle University, 'dragged my lover along', as she was to write, for linedancing at a local church hall, and at least once to the Powerhouse Club, Newcastle's only gay club.

By this time, Judith Jones and her appointed colleagues at Newcastle were well into their three-year investigation (at around GBP 25,000a-year each) into the alleged serial child abuse by Christopher Lillie and Dawn Reed.

Those two people's lives were about to be torn apart, as the libel judge said, in a manner that was more than 'incompetence or mere carelessness'.

The report that the libel judge has just demolished was published in 1998, and the following year Jones and Campbell co-wrote a book, Stolen Voices, which excoriated people who doubted the extent of satanic child abuse.

One reviewer called it 'a sad case of false ideology syndrome', and Jean La Fontaine, the emeritus professor of social anthropology at the LSE, found 'facts which are not true'. The book, she said, was 'long on rhetoric, short on fact'.

The book, however, never arrived in the shops. Many threatened legal action, and one engaged the late George Carman to write to the publishers, The Women's Press. 'We never distributed the book because of a legal warning,' it recalls. 'They could still be sitting in a warehouse somewhere.'

So why was Judith Jones on the report team? Newcastle Council advertised for independent experts and drew up a shortlist.

Ms Jones stood out as someone 'who had been working in Newcastle for many years and had strong links with the region', and she was appointed 'because of her expertise and experience in child protection and family work'.

So much for what happened in Nottingham.

This week, as the two nursery nurses stepped outside the shadow that has dimmed their lives for nine years, Judith Jones and Bea Campbell were away on holiday, apparently soaking up the sun.

Unbelievably, with the judge's condemnation still ringing in her ears, Judith is said to be considering writing another book with Bea - about the Newcastle fiasco.

Testbed (talk) 15:14, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for all this - it is I who am the amateur here and I may have been wrong. Anyway what was in the original comment that was deleted by Cynthia Cockburn has now all been reinstated (and slightly rewritten) Clive Power (talk) 16:11, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Good work. I have used the article to add the married name of Judith Jones, about whom more could be said but I'll leave that to other editors. Just realised that the headline of the Daily Mail article should properly be included in the refs so will do that now. Testbed (talk) 08:00, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

After Dark?

A couple of times a (I believe well sourced and useful) sentence has been taken out of the article, most recently in order (so the editor says) "to correct the record and remove defamatory insertions". So before reverting I am copying the missing text here to check with other editors if this should indeed go back:-

On 9 February 1991 Campbell appeared on television discussion programme After Dark<TV company website, accessed 4 May 2009 together with the then deputy director of Nottinghamshire social services Andy Croall (who was suspended for remarks he made on the programme).

AnOpenMedium (talk) 17:07, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

It seems to me that the suspension of Andy Croall isn't covered in the After Dark reference, otherwise the appearance of Bea on the show cannot be disputed. -Roxy the dog™ (resonate) 01:15, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

If you think Croall is the problem, then maybe the link ("remarks", above) isn't working: it is all detailed here. Does this help explain? AnOpenMedium (talk) 08:16, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

I don't see the point of the "suspension of Andy Croall" content - this article is not about that person, and there is no suggestion that Campbell agreed with the comment that initiated the suspension. Better to concentrate on what views she actually expressed or supported. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 21:29, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

The After Dark reviews cited mention that "Beatrix Campbell nor the feminist or Christian social work directors had an answer". Who was the "feminist social work director" - Deborah Cameron, Wendy Lindsay? Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 21:47, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

BLP

Just discovered that there is an interesting ongoing discussion at WP:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard#Beatrix_Campbell

Testbed (talk) 09:17, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

I am troubled by, and at a loss to explain, some recent edits by Drmies. For example, this edit [1] appears to excludes an important part of her career. The edit explanation "no secondary sourcing that suggests that what she did or thought in this case is of wider interest" seems bizarre. The source is Campbell's own book. Are we to have no mention of this book or its contents or the circumstances behind its writing? And another edit removed all mention of her employment as a writer in residence (surely that is worth mentioning for a person whose whole career involves writing?) and the background to the writing of another book, and the start of her connection to the content being considered in the BLP discussion. [2] That subject connection is also the reason she appeared in a notable national TV discussion program (mention of which has already been deleted without adequate explanation). I worry that this is a preemptive attempt to exclude the content under discussion in that BLP discussion, regardless of its outcome, by excluding masses of material that would be required to be in the article in order to properly set the context of that content. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 15:17, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

This edit [3] changed "From the early 1970s Campbell's engagement with the Communist Party was increasingly as that of a feminist: from this perspective she challenged..." into "In the early 1970s Campbell's feminism made her challenge the tenets of the Communist Party". Yes, it is more concise, but it has, I think, made a fundamental change in content. The former wording suggest "feminist" as a core identity, the latter - as "feminism" - as merely one opinion amongst many. It is clear to me, after reading the rest of the article, that the former is a more accurate reflection of Campbell's outlook - so I am restoring the old version (though I admit its wording might not be the best possible). However, neither version seems to have a source (unless it is the Andrews book), so I am also going to fact tag it. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 15:40, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

• The wording is atrocious. Let's please write English. Drmies (talk) 15:58, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Better not write it if it means pov English. The wording you used has a different meaning from the wording that had existed before. I'm not saying that one or the other is def right (given that neither are sourced) - but the former seems more correct and in line with the existing content. As well as it altering the stance of Campbell, your wording suggests there were fundamentally anti-feminist tenets within the Communist party that she opposed. The original wording suggests that she considered Feminism should and could alter the existing tenets. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 17:42, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Better yes if it's grammatically correcter. You could start by removing that "as". Drmies (talk) 18:25, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Actually, I think the "as" makes the meaning more precise. But I think the article was written from a very ideological viewpoint, and from the position that that ideology is utterly correct. Your edits removed and softened some of that, and I was attempting the same with my edits, but it still pervades a lot of the content. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 17:40, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

"As was the case in America, versions of this fantasy were taken up by powerful advocates in the media. One of the most significant voices was that of the journalist Bea Campbell. Campbell was closely associated with Judith Dawson, one of the social workers involved in the Nottingham case. With Dawson she now became one of the leading apologists for the satanic panic which had been unleashed." - part of a book review by Richard Webster in The New Statesman 27 Feb 1998. [4]. Is this a sufficient non-tabloid source indicating a connection between Beatrix Campbell and Judith Jones (Dawson)? There is also this here: "One of the social work experts appointed to the team was Judith Jones. Ms Jones, together with her partner, journalist Beatrix Campbell, has been a longstanding opponent of the BFMS. As part of a campaign to uphold 'recovered memory' theory, both Campbell and Jones have sought to blacken the name of the BFMS over many years. The most flagrant example of this was in their 1999 co-written book Stolen Voices which sought to portray, through misinformation and misrepresentation, the BFMS and other critics, as part of a 'paedophile's lobby' .... Ms Jones was also, under her married name Judith Dawson, an instigator of the 'satanic abuse' scare in Nottingham in 1989. Her pivotal role in disseminating false information fuelled the Rochdale and Orkneys abuse fiascos". [5] Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 21:28, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Newcastle (& Cleveland)

I have reinstated text that was removed by sturdytree on 4 September 2014. Sturdytree makes claims of 'defamation' and inaccuracy although the text has citations. If you intend making further amendments, please cite your sources or expect the matter to continue to be contested.

Clive Power (talk) 13:19, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

{Comment moved here byTestbed (talk) 11:45, 25 September 2014 (UTC)}

Sturdytree has again removed text without giving any explanation and inserted a large body of text giving a different account but without giving any reasons. Someone else has reverted it to what looks like the status quo before sturdytree's changes. I am writing to sturdytree to ask they raise issues here first before making such edits in future. Clive Power (talk) 21:57, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Sturdytree had posted a statement on my Talk page which s/he says is from Beatrix Campbell. It addresses these issues about which she wishes to make amendments. If you look at that page, you will see my advice to her/him. Sturdytree - here would be a good place to post comments. Clive Power (talk) 20:52, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Beatrix Campbell/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

whatever the truth and accuracy of the material on this page, its tone lacks dispassionJohnnyMercer (talk) 19:38, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Last edited at 19:38, 16 July 2009 (UTC). Substituted at 09:18, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

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Image

A pic of the subject from a TV programme from thirty years ago has just been posted and it is awful. We should not allow it to remain, because it is nasty. I don't know if "nasty" counts as policy based, but nevertheless. -Roxy the dog. bark 12:01, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

It's not that bad - her model look I suppose. She does tend to look like that when listening to other talking heads. Johnbod (talk) 17:19, 28 September 2017 (UTC)