Do not go topless into the conference chamber, unless you are breast-feeding
FRANK JOHNSON
Mr Gerald Howarth, Conservative member for military Aldershot, this week did something unusual, possibly brave, and perhaps foolhardy. He became the first politician I can think of, since the 1960s defeated all the century's previous decades in such matters, to say something stuffy. During questions to defence ministers, he denounced those army girls, one of them a lance corporal, who posed nude for the Sun.
The army 'is not a game', he said. 'It's a fully professional service, and women should not be able to treat it in the way they have been doing. Replying, Mr John Spellar, armed forces minister, was not brave at all. Rather bafflingly, he said that Mr Howarth had been reading the wrong newspapers. That is what ministers say when they accuse newspapers of making things up. But how could the Sun have made up those pictures, or indeed those girls? Perhaps he meant that Mr Howarth should not have been looking?
Here I have some sympathy for Mr Spellar. I am a great believer in the idea that, in politics, if you do not look at a problem, it eventually goes away. But, being a Labour man, and therefore a looker at problems by conviction, this cannot be what Mr Spellar meant. The most likely explanation is that, since Mr Spellar had to give Mr Howarth some kind of an answer, he was just spinning words to fill out the time, especially as he concluded with the ultimate time-filler: he was awaiting the inquiry.
We in the press gallery, arriving for defence questions as Mr Geoff Hoon, Secretary of State for Defence, and his team reached the front bench, had wondered how the page-three issue would be raised, if at all. As questions proceeded on other matters, we passed the time with puns, euphemisms and double entendres of varying degrees of depravity. I think I might have contributed something about Secretary of State Geoff feeling Hooney. One is not at one's best on these subjects.
I assumed that, if any male MP raised the page-three issue, he would be laddish about it. We would all then write about recruitment to the Royal Army Topless COR!, or some such. A Tory MP would be laddish, that is; Labour MPs have long since been scared off laddishness by their party sisters. They want female breasts; indeed, they want them in the Chamber — but only when the breasts are being fed from. A few
beery older trades-union members, mainly from the North, hold out for laddism, but only in private. There is also Mr Joe Ashton, the Old Labour relic whom a tabloid caught visiting a massage parlour. Miraculously he survived the sisterhood and is still an MR Sadly for the lads, he was not present at these defence questions. But I did the Tories a disservice. Except for Mr Howarth, they shut up. That was cowardly, but it would have been still less brave for them to have been laddish. Laddishness is the contemporary refuge of Tory politicians seeking to indicate that they are against 'political correctness'. It is as bad as the political correctness. Either that, or Tories make concessions to political correctness themselves, as Mr Hague did with his appearance at the nation's most politically correct annual function: that Carnival.
Mr Howarth was neither laddish nor politically correct, but what a pre-1960s politician he would have been. As I indicated above, he was a breath of stuffy air. His unspoken assumption was that, if we are to have women soldiers, we cannot have a good proportion of them stripping for the newspapers. He probably could not say quite why. I cannot say quite why. But something tells us that it is not right for an army. Before long, men would demand an equal right. Or gays would demand that they be afforded their own military nudes. Mr Tatchell would take up that cause. The Labour party would oppose him to begin with, then give in. It invariably does in the end.
It cannot be emphasised too much how recent is this politicians' fear of stuffiness. Only with the 1960s were they expected to embrace the newest and the latest, especially that of the young. The Beatles were already famous under the late Macmillan, and throughout the Douglas-Home premiership. But only Douglas-Home's successor, Wilson, went out of his way to be photographed with them.
Previously, even the first prime minister who depicted himself as a Man of the People, Lloyd George, referred in the 1920s to his opponents as embodying the discordant music of the jazz band'; and at a time when jazz was the young's latest thing. Since Wilson, only one prime minister, Heath, has been openly stuffy. He both played, and listened to, great music. He entertained guests at No. 10 with an ensemble of madrigal singers. Lord Callaghan once quoted a pop singer, but it was Marie Lloyd, who died in 1922. In any case, T.S. Eliot wrote an essay on her. This might be thought of as one of the first cases, before the 1960s, of an intellectual, creative artist flattering mass taste, were it not for Eliot's tone ('Among all of that small number of music-hall performers, whose names are familiar to what is called the lower class, Marie Lloyd had far the strongest hold on popular affection'). So Lord Callaghan cannot be accused of brandishing a name known to the youth of his time.
There is no evidence that stuffiness costs a politician votes. The unstuffy Wilson lost the subsequent election. So did the stuffy Sir Edward, so they were neither damaged nor harmed. Common observation suggests, however, that politicians can never win over the young, or anyone else, by an ostentatious attempt to share their tastes. I have never met a young person who, after a politician has mentioned, or been photographed with, a pop singer, has accepted that the pop singer was the latest thing. The very fact of a pop singer's being known to a politician — all of whom, in the eyes of the young, are archaeologically old — proves that the pop singer is past it.
Yet they go on. That is, the politicians do. Mr Hague, no sooner had he become leader, was not content just to attend the Notting Hill Carnival, but wore that infamous baseball cap while doing so. It threatened to ruin him almost before he had started. Sir Charles Guthrie, retiring Chief of Defence Staff, asked about the nudes under his command, observed, 'We do employ healthy young people.' And he is retiring. He cannot have much to lose. Let us hope that his successor is stuffier under fire.
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