Another voice
Sad but interesting
Auberon Waugh
Two weeks ago a six-month-old girl called Pamela Burgin was killed by ferrets in her parents' flat in Crystal Palace. The parents had gone out for a drink. Later, two policemen cornered the ferrets and beat them to death with their truncheons. If one had to produce a comment on the above sequence of events, it would surely be along the lines — 'Sad but interesting'. Sad, because any death of a child is always sad, interesting because it was such an unusual way to die. None of the newspapers reporting it could think of another incident when a child had been eaten, or mauled to death, by ferrets. The nearest they could get to it was in recalling the case of nine-year-old Linda Wright, attacked by a stray ferret at her home in Skegness last January. But Linda's assailant was, to all intents and purposes, wild and would scarcely be affected by legislation requiring owners of caged ferrets to be licensed.
The sad case of Pamela Burgin is interesting from other points of view, of course. It confirms a vicious streak in these animals which I have always suspected. No boy will ever forget the day he shot his first ferret. In my case, I had been asked by the keeper, with a twinkle in his eye, if I would like to pick the little creature up. Innocently putting my hand into the cape, I found my finger bitten to the bone. Everybody fell about laughing. Later, the ferret was put down a rabbit hole and we waited with shotguns trembling for a rabbit to jump out. Thirty years later, I can't honestly remember whether I genuinely mistook the mean, trembling, pink-eyed creature for a rabbit . . .
But the chief reason, I insist, for finding the case of Pamela Burgin interesting as well as sad is its extreme rarity. No case has ever been recorded before, so far as I know, of pet ferrets behaving like this, and there is no reason to suppose that there ever will be again. Pamela Burgin, in her own small way, has made history.
So that, then, is the sum of my editorial comment on this unhappy event: very sad but jolly interesting. And there you might suppose we could leave the matter, turning to another page for other tales of adventure, passion, tragedy and good old British fun. But Mr Arthur Latham, Labour MP for Paddington, feels the matter should not be allowed to rest there: 'After this tragedy, there may well be a case for people to have licences enabling them to keep caged ferrets', he pronounced. Now we are given to understand he is urging the Home Secretary to review all laws on keeping animals. It is one of those rare occasions when one might almost be tempted to feel sorry for the Home Secretary, but of course such sympathy would be misplaced. Nothing would give him greater pleasure than to introduce a whole new range of laws on ferrets, forbidding them unequivocally from attacking sm#11.. Children, appointing neighbourhood ferretspfficers to enforce the law, requiring feiret owners to register with the police and submit to inspection by the local ferret authority, enabling ferret officers to enter any premises on which they have reason to believe ferrets are kept without a warrant, requiring anti-ferret devices to be installed on all doors and windows in hotels, lodging houses and public offices. The Health Education Council could then chip in with hours of television advertising on the dangers of ferrets and the import of live ferrets could be banned. Huge fines could be imposed on anyone possessing a ferret without the proper documentation. Politicians live for these opportunities to introduce a number of fatuous, unnecessary and restrictive laws in response to what they see as popular demand. Next, a twoweek-old baby in Neasden, almost certainly called Stephen, will die after swallowing a white mouse, and the whole thing win start again.
What is sad and rather frightening about Britain nowadays is that public opinion, to the extent that it exists, genuinely seems to support this response. Every bloody fool in the fish queue, all the old dears queuing up for their benefits in the Post Office, all the teachers, social workers and National Health supervisory staff who make up the rest of our population will agree, on learning of Pamela Burgin's horrible experience, that the government should do something about it. Never mind that both the ferrets and the baby are dead. Never mind that ferrets have never behaved in this way before,or that they would have behaved in just the same way if they had been licensed; never mind that there are already perfectly adequate laws against leaving your children unattended. Nobody uses the occasion of Pamela Burgin's death and the wholesome emotions it arouses to demand that the Home Secretary resign. This would be just as rational a response, since he has obviously let the ferret situation get out of con trol and the incident must raise doubts about his competence to deal with future developments on the white mouse front Yet our invariable response to any nevi, development, in the intellectual paralysis or the time, is that the government should somehow deal with it, extending its powers and restricting our own freedom — or more particularly the freedom of other people.' whenever necessary. So it has come about that the government now controls seventy per cent of the economy or whatever. If I had to find reason why this mental paralysis has sn much greater hold on Britain than on anY other country in the free world — why °11„/* leader writers invariably seem to be urginls more governmental action rather than less., whatever the political complexion of their newspaper — I would point to the notorious Section 2 of our Offical Secrets Act (which Mr Callaghan plainly has no more intention of changing than Mr Heath had). Many Conservatives are ambivalent ill their attitude towards Official Secrets, reckoning that agitation for change conies from those who secretly sympathise with our enemies, wish to reveal our milite„ secrets and undermine our Civil Service.' is time they sorted their ideas out. Never mind that we have no military secrets of tit! slightest strategic importance — the oniY thing of interest for the Russians to measilre„ is our negative capacity, what we haven; got, rather than what we have, and it wouln surely be better for the British people know this too. The main effect of Section hi which imposes a blanket restriction on 81 information about government, even cinvin to the much-quoted number of teacups in a pensions. office, is quite different an' altogether wider. It is to prevent anY informed criticism of anything the gr1v.; ernment or Civil Service does, or how. 1 does it, and thus inexorably focus attentra on what it doesn't do. This is why criticisill of the government always seems to be urr ing it to do more and more. Nothing could be more laughably inePt. The great scandals of our time are all hidden away in the gigantic, cumbersome machini cry of public administration — vast sums money frittered away on worthless projec1.5 — yet these are protected from publi scrutiny or criticism by its being a criminal offence to possess any information of ,arl kind obtained from any government officia or civil servant or contractor and impart 11 to any unauthorised person. Yet many Conservatives still feel that thes Official Secrets Act is something which ,1 only of concern to journalists, and proh.abi.Ys radical journalists at that. In fact it 1 responsible, more than any other statutorY measure, for our present state of economic. collapse and intellectual paralysis. I do suppose for a moment that we can trust 'Ws. Thatcher to change it — over-government 1s. too deeply entrenched, and the presen: arrangement too convenient — but at leas' we should carry in our minds where the weight of advantage lies.
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