Richard Webster (British author)

In A Brief History of Blasphemy: Liberalism, Censorship and the Satanic Verses (1990), Webster discusses the controversy over Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses (1988). Webster critiques the freedom to blaspheme, argues in favour of extending UK blasphemy laws, and argues against The Crime of Blasphemy (1989),[16] a pamphlet issued by The International Committee for the Defence of Salman Rushdie and his Publishers which advocated the abolition of Britain's blasphemy laws "without replacement".

The work was praised by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury.[17]

Not all assessments were so positive.

Kenan Malik notes how "The Rushdie affair gave early notice of the abandonment by many sections of the left of their traditional attachment to ideas of Enlightenment rationalism and secular universalism and their growing espousal of multiculturalism, identity politics and notions of cultural authenticity."[18] In an extract from his novel, From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and Its Legacy (2009),[19] on the subject, Malik specifically cites A Brief History of Blasphemy as an example of opposition to Rushdie and his liberal supporters.[20] Webster subsequently accused Malik of advocating "free speech fundamentalism".[21]

Malik argued that Webster's call for extending UK blasphemy laws placed it at odds with contemporary liberal thought.[22]

Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis (1995), the book for which Webster may be best remembered, is a critique of Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis.[1] In it, Webster argues that Freud became a kind of Messiah and that psychoanalysis is a disguised continuation of the Judaeo-Christian tradition.[23] The work received acclaim.[6] It was called "brilliant" by Anthony Storr[23] and Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy.[24] It was identified as "an indispensable modern critique of psychoanalysis" by Storr[23] and "the most comprehensive negative critique" of Freud by professor of German language and literature Ritchie Robertson (who notes that it incorporates earlier critiques).[25] Webster has been credited with exposing the weakness of Freud's science and exposing his disguised continuation of the Judaeo-Christian tradition more comprehensively than any previous author.[26]

In The Great Children's Home Panic (1998), Webster discusses police investigation of child sexual abuse in care homes in Britain, subsequent convictions, and allegations they had been infiltrated by paedophile rings and claims it was a moral panic and witch hunting.

Christian Wolmar, British journalist, politician, and author of Forgotten Children: The Secret Abuse Scandal in Children's Homes (2013),[27] states:

Author Richard Webster, who wrote a book called The Great Children's Home Panic, believes there is a grave risk of injustice against care workers because there are financial incentives for people to make false claims. He says that the police have encouraged alleged victims to come forward by suggesting that they may obtain damages. But while initially the police did refer people to lawyers, they are now extremely wary of doing so because defence lawyers have attacked witnesses in court as gold diggers.

Webster cites claims to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (Cica) as being vulnerable to falsehood because its standards of proof are lower than those required to bring about a successful prosecution. However, lawyers acting for victims point out that many of their clients find even a claim to Cica is too painful. Moreover, many of those bringing successful claims through Cica lose a lot of the award because of criminal behaviour subsequent to them being abused. The lawyers argue this is unfair since the abuse is often the very cause of their delinquency. [Bilhar Singh] Uppal recognises that Webster is right to open up a debate about this issue, but says it is wrong to suggest there is wholesale fabrication of evidence. "These victims are traced by the police from all parts of the country, yet they make allegations that corrobate each other, with similar MOs [modus operandi] against the same people," he points out. Another weakness in Webster's argument, he says, is that many defendants are pleading guilty.

Uppal is concerned that the attention being given to Webster's views may weaken public resolve to always investigate child abuse: it has taken a decade or more for kids to open society's eyes to what happened and, with local authorities making very positive moves towards listening to children, it is a retrograde step to question the motive of every allegation.[28]

Damian Thompson writes that in Webster's view "investigations into child abuse in care homes in the early 1990s were disfigured by the zealotry associated with the Ritual Satanic Abuse affair".[29]

Chris Beckett writes that while Webster accepts that abuse occurs, he considers many convictions against former residential workers were miscarriages of justice and sees them as similar to witch-hunts. Beckett sees Webster's case against the widespread belief that the residential care system was infiltrated by paedophile rings as well-argued. According to Beckett, Webster argues that police procedures in North Wales dangerously reverse normal police methods, by starting with suspects and then interviewing large numbers of people to find out whether a crime was committed; this process is flawed since former residents of residential homes may have motives to make false accusations.[30]

Barbara Kahan, British social worker and Chair of the National Children's Bureau, comments in a book review:

Some reviews have dismissed this publication in words such as 'puny in length and … argument'. [Richard Webster] has fallen into the trap of dealing superficially with a very complex human, moral and legal problem. It is clear from a journalistic statement in the preliminary 'Note to the Reader' that he has not researched some of his assumptions and in consequence is plain wrong. It is also clear throughout that he has not put The Great Children's Home Panic in the context of abuse of under fives in day nurseries, the nightmare of children exported thousands of miles to be abused in religious and other establishments under the guise of offering New World opportunities, or the abusive situations which can and do arise in foster homes or anywhere else where predatory adults gain access to children and young people.

… If there are abusers who, as a study by the police of the Internet has demonstrated, prey on small infants as well as very young children and adolescents, there are plenty more who find their way into voluntary organisations, residential settings, children's own homes and foster homes. The great sadness is that the very large numbers of committed residential staff, foster carers, teachers, nurses and volunteers who want to give to children are tarnished by the deeds of those whose only motive is to take from and damage them.

[It is a] hasty, ill-considered and flawed piece of work. If there is genuine concern for justice for abusers it should not be achieved by denying justice to the victims of abuse whose experience may, and often does, damage their life for many years beyond childhood.[31]

Freud (2003) is a short critical discussion of Freud written for The Great Philosophers series edited by Ray Monk and Frederic Raphael. Steven Poole calls Freud "an entertaining demolition job", noting that it discusses Anna O.'s hysteria, Freud's seduction theory, reconstructed memories, the Oedipus complex, and the influence of Wilhelm Fliess.[32]

In The Secret of Bryn Estyn: The Making of a Modern Witch Hunt (2005), Webster discusses the case of Bryn Estyn, a care home for adolescent boys which, in the 1990s, became the focus of press revelations and a police investigation for child abuse that spread across a number of residential homes in North Wales. It resulted in the trial and conviction of several individuals. During evidence in Court against another offender, it also emerged that Jimmy Savile had been a frequent visitor.[33]

The work, in which Webster argued that abuse scandals could be phenomena created by public hysteria,[1] received praise from some British journalists.

Peter Wilby, British journalist and convicted sex offender, calls The Secret of Bryn Estyn "exhaustively researched", noting that while it was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize, it went largely unnoticed by the British press. Wilby writes that Webster compares modern scandals of mass abuse to the witch-hunts of the Middle Ages.[34]

Since then, Peter Wilby has been exposed as a pedophile and convicted as a sex offender. He was arrested by the National Crime Agency at his home in Essex in October 2022. Wilby admitted to officers he had a sexual interest in children and had been viewing indecent images since the 1990s, while employed by national newspapers as Education Correspondent and also in senior Editorial positions. Dean Nelson, a journalist who worked for newspapers employing Wilby, asserts that Wilby used his journalism to denigrate child sexual abuse victims, and his senior editorial positions to suppress proposed articles on child sexual abuse.[35]

Peter Wilby hired Webster to write articles for the New Statesman that were used to undermined allegations of child sexual abuse and was then successfully sued for libel:

Four years later, when the BBC ran a documentary on Bryn Estyn featuring interviews with several victims alleging abuse, Wilby had commissioned sceptic Richard Webster to write a "special report" for the New Statesman rubbishing both the programme and the men who appeared on it. Webster even used his piece to cast doubt on the 1994 conviction of the home's former deputy head Peter Howarth for several sexual assaults on boys. "The BBC did not mention that Howarth, now dead, always protested his innocence, or that some of his former colleagues still believe he was wrongly convicted," Webster said. A year later when a public inquiry headed by retired high court judge Sir Ronald Waterhouse concluded that staff at Bryn Estyn had "habitually engaged in major sexual abuse of many of the young residents without detection", Wilby commissioned a piece by Webster rubbishing one of the key witnesses in the New Statesman. The woman in question, social worker Alison Taylor, sued successfully for libel.[36]

Catherine Bennett, a British journalist, claims Webster "exposed the hysteria and false accusations generated by the Bryn Estyn children's home investigations ..., thinks the uncritical reporting demonstrates, rather, 'the insatiable human appetite for narratives of evil'. ", and writes that in his view the uncritical reporting about the issue demonstrates "the insatiable human appetite for narratives of evil".[37]

Tony Garnett, a British film and television producer, bought the rights to the book. Garnett planned a three-hour drama based on The Secret of Bryn Estyn for Britain's Channel 4, but the project was cancelled due to budget cuts.[1]

In contrast, the work did not receive praise from others.

Anthony Douglas, Chief Executive of the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, comments in a book review:

His book is really a character assassination of those who made the original allegations, the police officers who followed them up, and the journalists who “exposed” the story on behalf of the whistleblowers. The vehemence of Webster’s tone and the one-sided nature of his argument, made me feel he was falling into the same trap as those he accuses; namely of using all the available facts to fit what he wants to say, and spending less time on “facts” and testimony which might lead to a different conclusion. More critical analysis would have helped.[38]

Writer Beatrix Campbell notes that:

The deaths of Jimmy Savile and Cyril Smith released many muted voices. In 2012 allegations of historic abuse in North Wales were revisited and in 2013 Gordon Anglesea was arrested. Webster didn’t live to see Anglesea back in court. Some of his victims didn’t live to see it either. But there were others, and they did.

In 2016 Anglesea was convicted and jailed for 12 years for sexual offences against boys between 1982-87. He died in prison.

Webster didn’t live to witness the demise of Anglesea and fresh investigations in North Wales. His reputation lived on, however: he had become a doyen of British scepticism about sexual abuse, consulted and cited by scholars and journalists, wrapping what the Australian criminologist Michael Salter describes as the excitable ‘pleasures of disbelief’, in a seemingly erudite account of the TRUTH. Not as he saw it, not as you might see it, but simply the truth.

Webster exemplifies scepticism as a form of negative faith. He mounted one conspiracy theory to vanquish another: professionals talking to each other, researching, going to conferences! A kind of cruel piety gripped his life, he spent years being a champion of convicted serial sex offenders, shunning the suffering of their victims, and learning nothing about what people do with their troubles, or wherein trouble resides.[39]

Webster published articles in Critical Quarterly, Quarto, The Literary Review, The Observer, The Bookseller, The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, the New Statesman, and The Tablet.