ANOTHER VOICE
Time for a Secret Society against all special interest groups
AUBERON WAU GH
One must admit that homosexual activ- ists do seem to invite misrepresentation of this sort. A schoolbook produced for the Inner London Education Authority by the Gay Men's Press — and already in use in Islington — is called Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin and contains pictures of five- year-old Jenny on a bed with two homosex- ual lovers, one of them her father. The Haringey Lesbians' Charter does indeed seem to favour the removal of all library books which portray heterosexual families as 'normal' in its campaign to 'counter the pernicious effects of heterosexism'.
Newspapers have seized on the activities of the Haringey Lesbian Group (or Women's Action against Rape, Women Against Nuclear Weapons, Prostitutes' Collective, Catholic Mothers for Peace, or whatever label they choose) partly because they feel that lesbianism and male homosexuality may still be unpopular causes. By a process of osmosis, it is easy to suggest that the Labour Party, despite putting Neil and Glenys Kinnock with their delightful children in its shop window, is really controlled by black extremists like Bernie Grant and his loony lieutenants: lesbian triumphalists and proselytising sodomists to a person.
In a sense, this is perfectly fair. All the political parties are to a large extent at the beck and call of special interest groups; the field-sports lobby tends to assemble under the Conservative banner, the 'anti-cruelty' brigade under Labour. Some who feel strongly against hunting might well be tempted to vote Labour despite a natural inclination towards Conservatism, just as one of my daily women, a life-long Labour supporter, could not bring herself to vote Labour last time because of the Labour manifesto's commitment to end hunting. Subservience to any minority pressure group inevitably carries the risk of offend- ing either an opposed minority or — in the case of homosexual militants — the majority.
Heterosexuals may not be in any sense 'normal', and many of them are un- doubtedly extremely wicked people, but they are the majority. It is surely the job of those on the other side of the political fence to make sure that people notice it when lesbians are being given priority in council accommodation or whatever.
I draw attention to Haringey's lesbian pressure group only because of the bizarre and unpopular nature of its demands. But the truth is that nearly all local government initiatives nowadays seem to derive from the lobbying of one special interest group or another, and the same is becoming more and more true of Parliament, as we saw in the opposition to the Shops Bill. In local government, our attention is sometimes drawn to the more picturesque results of this constant agitation by zealots or bigots, as when Neasden declares itself a nuclear- free zone in alliance with Nicaragua, or Tower Hamlets forbids foxhunters to ride across its territory. But very little attention is drawn to the remorseless activity of these pressure groups lobbying in every field.
No doubt they are inevitable in a demo- cracy. But I think a distinction should be made between those pressure groups which represent a collective interest and those which represent no more than a shared opinion.
Thus, if we break down the unprincipled front which defeated the Shops Bill, and exclude those whose opposition to it was inspired simply by political opportunism or spite, one sees the first category operating in MPs who were influenced by representa- tions from retailers unwilling to employ extra staff, and by trade unionists terrified of the thought of working harder; the second category includes those who either professed or borrowed deeply held Sab- batarian convictions. Similarly, one can break down the Haringey lesbian agitation into first category demands — for pre- ferential housing and employment policies — and second category demands, for the banning of teterosexise literature from the libraries.
It is the second category of special interests which I feel ought to be opposed, automatically and almost blindly, by all who do not share them. Obviously, some espouse excellent causes, like the preserva- tion of Georgian or Victorian architecture, although I tend to feel that a society which treats the preservation of its beautiful buildings as a 'special interest' rather than as an elementary function of good govern- ment, is already doomed. The truth is that people who form groups to impose their own points of view are almost invariablY people who should be shouted down and persecuted whenever an opportunity Pre- sents itself. I am not, of course, speaking about those who would seek to convert us to their point of view, only about those who seek to impose it. I have often had occasion to draw attention to the Temperance fanatics in the DHSS, BMA and other organisations, wh° have now succeeded in making it illegal to drive a motor car at most hours of the day or night. Soon the animal extremists will stop us eating frogs' legs. Worse than anY of these, the anti-tobacco terrorist organ- isation, Ash, threatens government reg" ulations banning smoking from work places by next year. A government quang° is investigating its ludicrous claim that '1IP to' a thousand people a year die from secondary inhalation of tobacco smoke. The important truth that smoking Is socially beneficial was spelled out by the weasel-like Duke of Gloucester last week, when he argued that smokers not only gave £5 billion in excise to their fellow citizens every year, but also saved them £25 billion in pensions and other benefits by dying prematurely at the rate of 100,000 a yearrli have an uneasy feeling that if smoking di° not exist as a voluntary habit, the govern- ment would have to invent something t°, take its place. But that is not my point. I would like to urge the formation of Secret Society which is so secret that It. never meets and exists only in the minds 01, its members, dedicated to the frustration.or any and every special interest or minority pressure group in the land. Our purp0se. is not to persecute minorities, only minoritY groups, and above all their spokesperson .°1; The Anti-Democratic Action Society 0 have no temporal manifestation, and the only record of its activities will be held bYci the Recording Angel. I propose, secon and carry the Motion, nemine contr.a., dicente, that the Society be now in ex's' ence.
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