The press
Keep it in the family
Paul Johnson
In a letter to the Times last Friday, Lord Devlin remarked that the case of Gillick v West Norfolk Health Authority 'may well be socially the most important to come before the courts in this decade'. Mrs Gillick was, in effect, asking the courts to rule whether parents or the state (rep- resented in this case by National Health Service doctors) were the best custodians of the welfare of under-age children. More specifically, she wanted a ruling on whether a doctor prescribing the pill to under-age girls plainly intent on illicit intercourse was abetting a crime, and whether a doctor could legally prescribe the pill to her own under-age daughters without her and her husband's consent. The judge ruled against her, and the family, though not without some evident misgivings. What gave the ease extraordinary interest, indeed pathos, Was the striking attraction of Mrs Gillick's many children, reflecting her own luminous tbLeauty. Watching them on television, I felt that, if all British families were like this One, and brought up according to similar standards of moral probity and parental devotion, most judges, at any rate those In the criminal courts, would be soon out of a job.
Such a woman as Mrs Gillick, public- spirited enough to go to law on behalf of her. Own and others' children, was obvious- ly Inviting insult from the left-wing press, and she duly got it. The Guardian produced have of the most inept and odious leaders I ave come across for a long time. 'In her dnevotion to causes', it began, 'Mrs Victoria Gillick reminds one irresistibly, though no doubt unfairly, of Mrs Jellaby in Dickens's Bleak House'. If the comparison was un- fair, why make it? It is not only unfair, it is grotesque. Mrs Jellaby is one of the most contemptible and unfeeling hypocrites in the Dickens pandaemonium. While devoting her entire life and energies to the supposed welfare of African natives, she neglects her own pathetic and demoralised children to the point of criminality. What Dickens is attacking is the abstract pro- gressive type who is tremendously in favour of humanity in general, and not much in- terested in humanity in particular — in other words, I'd say, the typical Guardian reader. The modern equivalents of Mrs Jellaby are those professional nuclear pro- test mothers who leave their husbands and families in order to rant about the dangers of the Bomb, and treat their small children as bits of demo-furniture. It would be dif- ficult to conceive of anyone less like Mrs Jellaby than Mrs Gillick. For Mrs Gillick is one of those people of whom Dickens and all intelligent reformers would most ap- prove: that is, a woman who discharges her own personal responsibilities to the full but still finds time to fight battles on behalf of other people.
The Guardian's attitude was, of course, predictable. I was surprised, however, to find some conservative newspapers siding with the verdict. The Daily Mail, while giv- ing Mrs Gillick full credit for her public spirit, and conceding that she 'has surely done a public service by testing the law on this controversial matter', thought `Mr Justice Woolf's careful conclusions do add up to a sensible and sensitive statement of the legal position'. This seemed to be the view of the Daily Telegraph too: 'Yester- day's ruling was no doubt inevitable'. It added, lamely: 'We can only hope it does not symbolise yet another slide down a slip- pery slope'. But if the slope is slippery, and presumably leading to disaster, why is the Telegraph not advocating return to firmer ground? Instead, it merely sympathised with 'many, probably most, parents' who 'share the distress of Mrs Victoria Gillick' in discovering that their legal rights over their children 'are not quite what she assumed they were'. The Telegraph admitted 'Paren- tal responsibility is still the cement of civilisation', but its conclusion was elegiac, not to say defeatist: 'If it goes out of the window it needs more than a court ruling, alas, to bring it back again'. That 'alas' strikes me as not just wet but spargefic- t ious .
The Times, while conceding that the legal distinction drawn by the judge 'conforms to present-day social requirements', did at least express 'uneasiness with the outcome of this case'. It argued that it was right that in exceptional cases (that is, when an under- age girl was clearly promiscuous and needed to be protected from some of the conse- quences of her wickedness) the doctor should be allowed to act 'at his own clinical discretion and without the consent of parents'. But it wanted 'firmer guidance and practice' within both health authorities and the medical profession to ensure that such cases remained exceptional. And it urged that 'official guidance' (and practice) should explicitly acknowledge 'the respon- sibility of parents for the moral and physical welfare of their children'.
Taking up this point, Lord Devlin in his letter drew attention to that old judicial standby — the resources of the common law. What the common law has been excep- tionally good at in the past is giving formal expression to the instinctive feelings of decent and sensible people on matters of public policy, and it is always there in reserve if Parliament and the statutory law are remiss or inadequate or unclear. He quoted a fine passage from Lord Radcliffe: 'We all feel that there are relationships aris- ing out of human institutions which deserve special protection from outside invasion or even voluntary relinquishment' — instanc- ing, in the first place, 'marital and parental relationships'.
Lord Devlin has a point, and I hope, too, that he is right in believing 'that the com- mon law will be found still capable of giving an answer to the question of whether it is the parent or the health authority who is to decide whether or not a child under 16 is to be provided with the means of sexual pro- miscuity'. If Devlin is right, then Mrs Gillick's cause, unlike her case, is not lost. But ought Mrs Thatcher, who so strongly professes a belief in the family and a desire to reinforce its responsibilities, to leave it to the common law? I am surprised that Fleet Street did not draw attention to this aspect of the affair. The Government has a huge majority and most of its supporters would confess themselves as devoted to the family principle as their leader. If a reaffirmation of the rights of parents, and the duties of the family — as opposed to the state — re- quires some kind of statutory backing, then there is absolutely no parliamentary excuse for not providing it.
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