Letters
Questionable motives
Sir: Mr Ferdinand Mount's sensible remarks on the subject of rape in your issue of 30 January move me to write to you about a phenomenon which, it seems to me, has received too little attention in the Periodicals of the literate Right. There was a time when the overt expression of punitive longings was considered to be a peculiarity of the Tories, and especially of those terri- ble suburban ladies with their extraordinary hats and their talk of hanging and flogging. But this largely factitious Outcry over the suPposed inadequacy of sentences for rape has come almost entirely from the Left from dim, sanctimonious harridans of both sexes who, when any other crime except Possibly tax evasion is in contemplation, Would be most reluctant to admit that the state has any right to inflict punishment, as such, at all.
It would, I think, be going too far to say that for all middle-class lefties their socialism is a way of sublimating unrecognised sadistic impulses. But this rather unpleasant agitation should serve as
a reminder to the rest of us that many of these people are activated by motives quite different from and much nastier than those they would care to admit.
A. D. M. Lindsay 5'46 Kingston Avenue,
west Perth, Western Australia
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