ANOTHER VOICE
On how that non-existent Gibraltar bomb may yet find its mark
AUBERON WAUGH
Perhaps it is only because I love money so much, but I am seriously worried that if Mrs Thatcher and Sir Geoffrey Howe, not to mention Nanny Hurd and every other pontificating oaf in the Government, plan to use the Gibraltar killings (or executions) as the opportunity for an all-out attack on the press and broadcasting media, they are going to end up not only with egg all over their faces, but blood as well.
Their calculation was well set out by Sir Peregrine Worsthorne last Sunday. Simul- taneously with his own David Wastell on the facing page and with Mr Brian Walden in the Sunday Times (who also happened to be interviewing the Prime Minister that week), Sir Peregrine had been struck by the thought that it might be a good idea to revise the mediaeval concept of outlawry, whereby known IRA members could be shot at will by the police and armed services (Worsthorne and Wastell) or im- prisoned (Walden). In Worsthorne's pre- scription, Mrs Thatcher would be awarding herself the much coveted 00 licence to kill, or at any rate to organise murder gangs on the South American model.
No doubt the idea has something to recommend it, but I do not propose to discuss it here. What worries me, as I say, is that the Government, through talking only to itself and such elevated but like- thinking intellects as Sir Peregrine and Mr Walden, is going to get itself into really serious trouble. This was foreshadowed by the thug Bernard Ingham, Thatcher's press secretary, in his attributable briefing to the Observer's Richard Harris on Sunday, when he warned of the official government view that television standards, as exempli- fied by interviews with witnesses of the Gibraltar killings/executions, had 'declined to the point of institutionalised hysteria'.
Mrs Thatcher's objective, we learned, is to try and create a climate of opinion which will not tolerate the media overstepping certain bounds. Well and good. It is a permanent desire of government to intimi- date the press and broadcasting (oh, all right, the media) whenever possible: 'Broadcasters and newspapers will be told that they operate within society and are obliged to uphold its institutions, notably legal proceedings.' Fine. Go to it. There are already elaborate and oppressive laws of contempt. On this occasion, they were not infringed. Make them tighter. Where the Government goes terribly wrong is in supposing that it can use the Gibraltar killings for this purpose.
'Public opinion in this country does not give a button about whether the SAS tried to arrest or warn three IRA terrorists before shooting them down like dogs,' announced Sir Peregrine at the beginning of his rumination. Such a statement may ignore the diversity of public opinion, but is borne out by opinion polls as well as by the general tenor of letters received by the Daily Telegraph, and of conversations overheard in public houses up and down the country. So far so good. Insofar as public opinion exists, we might reasonably assume that it supports the wholesale shooting of IRA suspects out of hand. It is only when the Government plans to use this sentiment to whip television and the press, inevitably making sworn enemies of them both in the process, that I start trembling for my tax reductions; and only then that the spectre of a new Hattersley Terror looms.
Sir Peregrine goes on to argue that the SAS initiative may have been technically illegal, not to say criminal, but since both government and public opinion (not to mention high-principled thinkers like Wor- sthorne and Paul Johnson) support it, the time has surely come to change the law and make it perfectly legal for the army and security services to gun down suspected terrorists and other political wrong-doers. All this is at least arguable; at any rate, it is not my intention to dispute it on this occasion.
What it ignores is the rhetoric employed by Mrs Thatcher and Sir Geoffrey Howe to use this somewhat murky episode as an opportunity to stifle the media. Their talk is all of upholding the rule of law. Of course, it is balderdash. There is no law forbidding comment or speculation on an inquest to be held at some unspecified date in Gibraltar. The chances of a juryman in Gibraltar having seen a television broad- 'Flares are back.' cast on LWT or Ulster Television are in any case minute. So far as the Gibraltar episode is concerned, it would appear that the offending media are far more con- cerned to uphold the rule of law than is the Government. There was no similar com- plaint by Sir Geoffrey or Mrs Thatcher about the vicious smear campaign con- ducted by some newspapers against a key witness, Mrs Carmen Proetta, denounced by the Sun as 'The Tart of Gib', who claims she saw two unarmed men and a woman gunned down as they tried to surrender.
Public opinion might be prepared to let the Government get away with murder, under the circumstances, particularly if it is confused by rumours of a non-existent device in the terrorists' possession capable of exploding a non-existent bomb from many miles away. Certainly the media, well-disposed towards the Government and grateful for its tax cuts, would be prepared to play along for the most part. But everything depends on how the Gov- ernment's case is presented by the media. A slight difference of emphasis in presenta- tion and public opinion would quite simply not be prepared to condone the idea of unarmed civilians being shot down like dogs while they were concerned only to surrender. Neither Mrs Thatcher nor Sir Geoffrey Howe is popular enough to be entrusted with this degree of discretion.
The contradiction in their approach between upholding the rule of 'law' against the media and ostentatiously flouting the rule of law in Gibraltar — is unimportant compared to the use which the media can make of this contradiction once it is suffi- ciently stirred. There is already an unease which is not confined to dedicated pilger- ists, progressives and IRA sympathisers in the media.
By their actions to date, Mrs Thatcher and Sir Geoffrey Howe have already en- sured that the Gibraltar cover-up will be subjected to a greater degree of hostile scrutiny than would have been the case. Only thugs like Bernard Ingham, used to handling the terrified poodles of the Par- liamentary lobby, can suppose that press and media are capable of being publicly intimidated and called to heel. If they push their luck to use the Gibraltar cover-up as an excuse for disciplining the media, it will explode in their faces much more effective- ly than any IRA bomb yet sent by post.
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