Mrs. Whitehouse was a middle-aged housewife who made a name for herself by championing media censorship. James Bulger was a child who was murdered by two young boys, still clearly children compared to most of the population, and certainly too young to be tried as adults. Such an event was a natural focus for a tabloid fueled public outcry, and trying to question the demonisation of these children, or challenge the hypocrisy of the lynch mob so ready to apportion blame, was a little bit like walking a delicate tightrope across a valley full of people holding pitchforks and blazing torches. 

So Mrs Whitehouse has decided to retire, and with her going, the pornography and censorship debate comes to the end of an era. Her high profile may well have given much publicity to her cause over the past few decades, but it's hard to see that she did much to hold back the sexually permissive tide. It remains extremely questionable whether you can legislate away what people are prepared to pay for in large numbers.

Of course, we all know censorship involves "sex and violence", and as the judge in the James Bulger murder case suggested that violent videos contributed to the event, moves are already afoot to bring in greater restrictions in that area, and as at least one of the boys involved liked computer games, that will probably also fuel the combat gaming debate.

But discussion of the effects of exposure to violence didn't start with computers and videos. Even Hollywood can only manufacture a pale shadow of the events of the Roman arena, or even more recent popular local entertainment such as hanging, drawing and quartering. And for violence, TV drama certainly can't match Bosnia or Angola on the news. Societies decide what they will tolerate. Pornography earns much more than Hollywood, the topless tabloids outsell the Times, and the highest paid sportsmen are those prepared to beat each other into bloody pulp in front of a TV audience of millions.

These things must be remembered when we try to make sense of two children turning to murder, and discuss the nature of evil, individual guilt, and the moral values of our society. A recent study found that the measure most predictive of criminality before the age of 20 is having been smacked or beaten once a week or more at age 11, and a national campaign begins in Scotland this week, to make hitting a child illegal in any context. If we want our children to be repelled by violence, we must first reject it ourselves. In the 62 years of his life, Prophet Muhammad was never known to hit either a woman or a child. It's an example we are still finding hard to match up to, even in Scotland today.