One of the most fascinating cases of institutional self-harm in modern Britain is policing. Not just the oft-criticised Met (though it is spectacularly adept at inflicting needless wounds on itself) but police forces up and down the country. The two-tier policing of crimes against ethnic minorities is a particularly pungent example, but there is also the plainly divergent approaches to managing large-scale protests which might feasibly pose threats to public order.

Then there’s the treatment of Susan Smith, the Scottish feminist. She is one of the For Women Scotland campaigners who got the Supreme Court to say in black and white that, for the purposes of the Equality Act, a woman is a biological female. (In the famous victory picture outside the court, she’s the one in the emerald

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