Problems of old age

Auberon Waugh

'If you want anything, see my solicitor,' said Lord Wigg, as his final word on the magistrates' court hearing which acquitted him last week of having used insulting behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace. From someone who has earned impressive sums in the libel courts recently, it is a tempting invitation, but I have never, in my own journalistic experience, found solicitors particularly forthcoming. No doubt they have their uses, but they seldom seem to volunteer those fascinating insights or titbits of details which might explain an otherwise puzzling narrative. So I must rely on published reports of this memorable and extraordinary episode.

Wigg was charged with kerb-crawling in the West End of London and accosting women—six incidents were listed--in such a manner as to have endangered the peace. His defence was that he was merely seeking to buy a newspaper, to wit the Daily Express. The Wells Street magistrate, Mr Lawrence Tobin a fearless, intelligent, honourable and experienced man, by all accounts—found that no threat to the peace had been proved, and Lord Wigg was duly acquitted.

Another great triumph for British justice, to be put beside the acquittal of Sir Gerald Nabarro in the famous Roundabout Case a few years ago. Even the police seem to come out of it well this time, which must be a source of great pleasure to such law-abiding people as Lord Wigg and myself. I found the Wigg incident absorbing for a number of reasons—not least of which was the identity of the character witnesses chosen. As a journalist and a Catholic myself, I was naturally gratified that a Member of the Queen's Most Honourable Privy Council, privy to many of Her Majesty's most intimate secrets, should, when his reliability was called into question, summon the assistance of a Catholic and two journalists.

Lord Mowbray, the Catholic in the case, gave evidence which, as reported, may seem to have been peripheral to the main point. He and his lady wife, who live opposite Lord Wigg's basement fiat in Warwick Square, were 'often struck by this rather weird figure out at night. He was walking forty yards or so, stopping, staring into space, and he gave one the impression he was officious or snooping.' Lord Wigg struck him as being a night bird.'

So much for the Catholic. Of the two journalists, Mr Chapman Pincher, who had known Lord Wigg for thirteen years, gave him the sort of reference one might give to a cook when there is plainly not much one can say about her cooking: 'I have never known him to tell me a lie in all the numer

ous altercations we have had. He sets enormous store by his integrity.'

The other journalist—Sir Harry Boyne, former lobby correspondent of the Daily Telegraph—was of particular interest to me, as I have been making a study of the relationship between politicians and parliamentary lobby journalists for many years. Sir Harry's testimony seems to mark a breakthrough in this delicate relationship: 'I would say he has two outstanding characteristics. One is truthfulness, another is his phenomenal memory.'

One or other of these outstanding characteristics must have been dormant on this occasion, if we are to believe the magistrate. Summing up. Mr Tobin said: 'I have the unenviable task of having to decide whether Lord Wigg, with a long and proud career of outstanding service to this country, is on this occasion lying as to these miserable events.'

With seemly reluctance, Mr Tobin came to the conclusion that Lord Wigg was, indeed, lying: 'Lord Wigg's account I cannot accept,' he said before commending the policeman, who had frequently been accused of lying by Wigg's counsel, for his straightforwardness and restraint. The only happy aspect of these miserable events is the vindication of Sergeant McNulty.

Mr Tobin was right, of course, to remind us of Lord Wigg's long and proud career of outstanding service: his period between the wars in the regular army; his gallant war spent in the Royal Army Education Service and ended with the rank of Colonel; his fearless hounding of Profumo out of public life and out of the Privy Council (for younger readers I should explain that Profumo had lied to the House of Commons about his sex life. Unlike Lord Wigg, Profumo was not on oath at the time, but it was the security aspect which worried our George, as he then was), for which he was rewarded with the nastiest job in Wilson's 1964 Government, allegedly that of spying on the Cabinet for possible security risks. Many would have shrunk from this snooping, spying and reporting on colleagues, especially on their sex lives, but the George of song and story did not shrink. Now, at the age of seventy-six, with only his various pensions, his parliamentary expenses as a Life Peer and his Presidency of the Betting Office Licensees' Association to live on, he stands as a terrible rebuke to all Englishmen with a social conscience.

It was this aspect of the matter which first aroused my concern. I use the word 'concern' advisedly, since it might seem boastful to talk of the deep compassion I feel towards old men who may have sex problems. It may or may not be safe to assume at this stage that Lord Wigg vi'as kerb-crawling and accosting strange women in the West End of London, as the magistrate decided and two policemen confidently testified.

Again, he may or may not have felt so ashamed of his actions that he chose to lie repeatedly on oath, as the magistrate rather seems to believe. Let us thank Heaven, at least, that his behaviour, if such it was, presented no threat to the peace.

But should old men be allowed to kerb crawl and accost at their 'will? If so, what about the unfortunate women so accosted?

They can scarcely claim compensation from

the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board, since no crime has been committed. If anY

more meaningful relationship develops from their encounters, of course, they can alwaYs claim to have been raped and collect that way. The going rate, according to the Board's report, is £1,000 for a rape which involves no physical injury and no ex"

ceptional psychological trauma. Now that rape victims are so well protected from impertinent questions about their Past history, I am surprised that more ladies of the town do not adopt this policy:

Another suggestion for the humane and progressive treatment of these old men is that they should be put in homes where they can accost, ogle and even discreetly goose the nurses, many of whom will probablY come from Jamaica or Pakistan, or even as far afield as Hong Kong. But this solution ignores important considerations of human liberty. What about those old folk wh° quite genuinely wish to buy the DailY_ Express, as they are legally entitled to do? Indeed it is the magistrate's opinion that

this was Lord Wigg's intention when he set off on his ill-fated expedition to the West

End. Quite possibly he only wanted to know

the latest down-market muck from William Hickey—a comparatively innocent taste, and certainly not sufficient reason to confine him in an institution or sentence him t° pinching black women's bottoms for the rest of his life.

Any discussion of this problem is bound to be clouded by an awareness that any

us might grow old and face a similar one. Those of us who missed the great teenage

sexual revolution and can only watch it

from afar, with whatever degree of vicar" ous longing, or jealous disapproval, or

mature, principled appraisal—we, the lost generation, can be certain only that our problems are likely to get worse, not better;

At the age of forty we will see the puzzle' wariness in the eyes of twenty-year-olds We are trying to chat up give way to embarrassi ment and dislike. Far worse, at the age ° fifty-five (or slightly older, with a strict regime of athletic exercises after Hoonter

Times) Davies's useful hints in the Sunday

it will be replaced by embarrassment an° pity. Then comes the kerb-crawl and Oa endless agonising search for a copY----an! copy—of the Daily Express. God heir 1.1' all and grant us a dignified old age, U troubled by such urges.n