Another voice

God's own kingdom

Alarge part of my time seems to have been spent defending journalists. There is an ineradicable suspicion of them in England which I find hard to explain ex- cept in terms of sexual guilt. Everybody, or nearly everybody, in England has a dirty Secret, usually sexual but sometimes referr- ing to some other habit or indulgence. This Passion for secrecy is glorified by the name of Privacy and fiercely defended by a whole apparatus of ingenious arguements: Mothers and wives will be upset; worst of all, children will have their feelings hurt. In one memorable case, it was announced that somebody's kids had cried on the way home from school. No doubt the journalist com- mitted suicide. Yet despite these frightful faux pas, I have always maintained that the practice of itimnalism — and especially gossip jour- nalism is a genial one, adding to the gaie- ty of the nation, on balance, rather than subtracting from it. People should be able to laugh at themselves and their curious habits: if they can't, it is their own fault. Wives are frequently miserable for no 'reason. Children's tears are quickly dried. Journalists, in my experience, are generally easy-going, unpompous people whose chief ,concern is to unravel good stories from the 'angled skein of everyday monotony and pass them on. They are seldom as com- petitive as is popularly supposed and never, In my experience, remotely concerned about the circulation of their newspapers. But there is another tradition in British Journalism which is less amiable. It is the "ill, self-righteous voice of the social rreformer, always demanding that the eformer, do something or other. This is called responsible, crusading journalism. Its founding father was, of course, W.T. ilead whose dismal series of articles in the Mall Gazette, 'The Maiden Tribute to Modern Babylon', describing how he had hcured a juvenile prostitute, resulted in the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 Which raised the age of consent to 16. Stead, who sank with the Titanic in 1912 — he 70th anniversary of this melancholy wevent fell at midnight on Wednesday this w— is Particularly honoured because he ant to Prison for three months as a result

als revelations, but his successors in the

seldom risk so much. Week after week ideous ladies with cracked lips dress up a1101 offer their services to escort agencies, rnr answer advertisements in contact tLagazInes for naughty parties on behalf of oite News of the World and Sunday People. shn.e forgives them because despite their rill tone it is hard to believe that anyone reads them for anything but a giggle, or perhaps in the case of a few lonely old

folk, for satisfactions of a more private sort.

But that is essentially what remains of the W.T. Stead tradition — partly because it is thought there are not any hair-raising scan- dals left to expose in England. In fact I have been told that child prostitutes are two a penny — or at any rate a Mars Bar apiece — in Liverpool, but nobody is much in- terested in them because they might prove a little embarrassing. They are the product of the Welfare State, new ideas on education and town planning, rather than the product of poverty and backwardness. Perhaps a socialist zealot could argue that they are the result of government cuts, or unemploy- ment, or the ending of free school milk, but I don't think many would be convinced where those dear little Scouse kiddies are concerned. They just like Mars Bars. Kids will be kids. Any crusading journalist from the South who started to investigate would probably have his nose punched by an angry parent. So they tend to be left alone.

But the W.T. Stead tradition, as I say, survives. A few weeks ago Mr John Pilger, the Mirror's fearless crusader, flew out to Thailand and bought himself a child of eight for £85 — presumably he claimed the money back on the Daily Mirror's ex- penses. There was no suggestion, so far as I could see, that he was trying to buy her for sexual purposes. Thai children are not only pretty, intelligent and charming, unlike their Liverpudlian equivalents, but also unlike their Liverpudlian equivalents they are very good workers. It was assumed that she would be given some light factory work when she would come under Thai regula- tions for minimum pay and conditions or possibly trained for domestic service. In her natural family environment, she would have been set to work in the fields.

Not a bad story, we must agree, but not quite up to the standard of W.T. Stead. Ap,art from anything else, Bangkok is rather a long way away — 6,132 miles by the British Airways route — and it is no good pretending that iniquitous behaviour has quite the same impact at that distance as it might in Liverpool. Why, one wonders, did he choose to go so far for his story? Are there no children for sale in Naples or Stockholm? Pilger's moral was tthat the government of Thailand must be corrupt or incompetent to allow such things to happen, and this was the point taken up in all four of the readers' letters which the Daily Mirror printed. I suppose they are ge- nuine.

Mrs J. Walsh wrote from the illustrious city of Liverpool, helpfully recapitulating Pilger's story for the benefit of those who had forgotten it:

`I just cried for joy when I read John Pilger's account- of the reunion between Thailand slave girl Sunee and her mother. Well done, John, for buying Sunee, eight, for £85 and saving her from a life of pro- stitution or forced labour in some slum fac- tory in Bangkok. The Thailand government must be inhuman to allow countless thousands of children to be snatched from their homes. Congratulations Daily Mirror for exposing this evil.'

Perhaps Mrs J. Walsh copied her style from the Daily Mirror's news pages. Mrs S. Argyle wrote from South Yorkshire:

`The Government must ban imports from Thailand until the authorities there stop the slave trade . .. I, for one, will never buy any goods from Thailand.'

Mrs S. Prosser wrote, also from South Yorkshire:

`As John Pilger suggested, I've sent a protest letter to the Thai premier (name and address follows). I've also written to my MP asking him to take action to help these poor kids. I urge other readers to do the same.'

It was kind of Mrs S. Prosser to repeat the necessary address. J. Johnson, of Peter- borough, Cambs, strikes a slightly more sinister note:

`How hypocritical can the Government get? It talks about freedom for Poland and Afghanistan, and freedom from com- munism. Now it is permitting the Thai premier to bring a delegation to Britain to promote sales of goods produced by child slaves. I'm ashamed to be British.'

As I say, I suppose that these letters are genuine. If they had been written by the masterly hand of Mr J. Pilger, they could not have made the point better. For several years I have held my tongue as Mr Pilger ex- tolled the virtues of the Soviet-backed Viet- namese army of occupation in Cambodia, now poised to invade Thailand's south- eastern border. It was not easy to defend the previous spartist regime of Pol Pot.

Thailand is a different matter. Like Cam- bodia, it is a beautiful country, but its gen- tle, happy people are still Buddhist and free. Bangkok may well have a few warts to show. Its inhabitants may have developed the masseur's art to heights undreamed of in Frith Street. But I have been there six times in the last four years, and I suspect that it is not hatred of Bangkok's amazing' massage parlours which inspires Mr Pilger. An article in last week's Sunday Times Magazine, repeating all the same chestnuts, confirmed me in the view that we are being softened up for a new development as hor- rible as anything we have yet seen in South- East Asia.

While everybody in England was celebrating the drowning of W.T. Stead on Wednesday night — in fact I suspect that he began to find the North Atlantic waters a bit parky around 2.30 a.m. on Thursday morning — I was landing in Bangkok to celebrate the city's 200th anniversary. While there, I hope to make some inquiries about exactly how Mr Pilger passed his time in God's own kingdom.