HYPOCRISY?
SIR,—John Gordon, as usual, contrives to be both hard-boiled and half-baked. Of course it is shocking that a boy (or a grown man) should be kept in prison awaiting trial for three months—or three weeks. But the legal cruelty of the unreformed homosexuality laws which Gordon not only tolerates but vociferously approves is every whit as reprehensible as the lack of remand centres.
The Joint Under-Secretary for Home Affairs has observed that this suicide might still have occurred in a remand centre, if there had been one. Quite so; the most shocking thing about the recent Consett tragedy is precisely the fact that, as Mr. Justice Elwes said, in a decent world the sexual misbehaviour of adolescents would be dealt with more humanely than by a criminal charge. Even if this was an exceptional case of aggravated sexual assault, was it sufficiently exceptional to justify the refusal of bail? We have not yet been told.
If none of this concerns John Gordon, his indigna- tion on the minor issue is indeed the merest cant.-- Yours faithfully,
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