War on porn
The extensive series of arrests carried out in London last week should remove any lingering doubts about the seriousness with which the Government takes its newly accepted task of cleaning up vice and pornography. Indeed, on this as on other issues Mr Carr is steadily ridding himself of his earlier image as a man of the left-leaning centre. Since his partial reversal of policy on immigration from East Africa he has taken a right-wing stand on a number of questions, and particularly on several individual immigration cases: there has not been SO conservative a Home Secretary since Lord Brooke of Cumnor. In many respects this is highly desirable, and gives belated evidence of a determination to meet Tory election Promises on law and order or — to use the more euphemistic caption — freedom under the law. But it would surely be better if Mr Carr himself re-opened the debate that was carried on with such intensity in the summer of 1970, for individual decisions in this most sensitive of areas need to be set in a broad strategic context. It is clearly the settled intention of this Government to attempt the invocation of the law in areas of moral behaviour which the broad consensus of recent years has dictated should be left alone; to pursue a much harder policy than hitherto on foreign dissidents seeking refuge or solace in this country; and to enforce the general law O n immigration with real vigour. All this will he more than welcome to the broad mass of Tory supporters, and probably, indeed, to a large majority of the people as a whole: but it is necessary that the overall intentions of the Present regime at the Home Office should be made clearer, and an indication given of how far Mr Carr intends to go, and what he hopes to achieve should now be given.
Previous page
