The Long View - 24/02/2009

Jonathan Freedland presents the series that looks for the past behind the present. He examines the parallels between the murder of Liverpool youngster Rhys Jones in 2007 and another murder of a child by another child in Liverpool in 1883. Michael Burns was an innocent bystander, set upon by a gang of youths and left for dead in one of the city's 'no-go areas' for police. This 'shocking brutality among boys' created a new moral panic in 19th-Century England.