ANOTHER VOICE
Constraints of an empire on which the Sun never sets
AUBERON WAUGH
Acurious incident which occurred at Barrow-in-Furness was reported in some of the newspapers on Sunday. On Wednesday of last week, it appears, Mr Raymond Bloor, a 34-year-old distribution foreman, found that he had seven frames left in his camera, so he and his wife decided to use them by taking some photographs of their three-year old daughter Rachel, after her bath, when she was playing around naked on a rug. When they took the film into Boots to be developed, Boots gave it to the police.
Next two policemen arrived on the front door with these seven photographs in their hands. Bloor was ordered to stand outside his living-room door, while the detectives fired personal questions at his sobbing wife inside. Mrs Bloor has ,apparently been reduced to a nervous wreck by the experi- ence, unable to sleep and given to uncon- trollable fits of tears. One of the policemen involved in the incident explained to the Mail on Sunday: 'It is normal practice for us to be handed suspicious pictures and clarify the situation in which they were taken. You have to bear in mind the current child abuse situation and the need to be vigilant.' Two situations in two sentences. I won- der who taught the Barrow-in-Furness police to talk like that. More particularly, I wonder what convinced the officer that the current child abuse situation is any diffe- rent from what it has ever been. All we know for sure is that the child abuse industry, in its anxiety to increase its own importance, has been kidnapping children from respectable and normal homes and using the statistics obtained from this activity to claim that there has been an enormous increase in the sexual abuse of children.
When talking about child abuse in this context, I am referring only to sexual abuse of children. I am quite prepared to believe there has been an increase in child abuse by neglect and cruelty, in line with the general brutalisation in our society brought about by educational reforms, subsidies for single parents, working mothers, tranquil- lisers and all the rest of it. But I am not aware of any respectable statistic showing an increase in the perverse and reprehensi- ble taste for sexual congress with small children. The only important truth about the 'current child abuse situation' would appear to be that there has been a great increase in the public appetite for reading about it. This appetite embraces not only the usual prurience about sexual matters, which it is the acknowledged duty of the gutter press to cater for, but also a general feeling of sentimentality about children and the need to find something about which we can all, as a nation, agree. We all think that sexual abuse of children is wrong and horrible — even, I dare say, those who practise it. It gives us a common enemy, a common feeling of being under attack, to suppose there has been a great increase in the business. And there can be no doubt that it helps sell newspapers if they appear to be taking our side against a solidly pederastic establishment, dedicated to the violation of the nation's kiddies.
But I find it alarming when these vulgar frenzies are translated into administrative action. Politicians, it is true, are naturally prone to jump on any surf-board offered by the Sun or News of the World. We saw it with Mr David (Dave') Mellor, in his campaign against drugs, which culminated in Customs officers breaking into the house of my friend Alexander Chancellor and tearing it to pieces under the anguished eyes of his family. We saw it with Mr Bottomley and his campaign against the non-existent increase in drunk driving acci- dents, which has resulted in a number of exhibitionist Chief Constables being let off the leash to terrorise innocent citizens in their areas. But at least these horrors resulted from Ministers reading the gutter press and trying to suck up to it. So far as I know, there is no Minister for Child Abuse, no Edwina Currie figure telling us it is the greatest threat to health since Chernobyl. The police who raided the Bloors' home • were acting on their own assessment of the current child abuse situation — derived, no doubt, from read- ing the Sun, the Guardian and suchlike rubbish, but without the further authority of a ministerial directive.
This seems to me a worrying develop- ment, if we are to be governed by whatever ill-informed drivel the newspapers decide to print, or their specialist correspondents pick up from a pressure group in the field. The thought of a policeman's knock on the door in obedience to whatever Lunchtime O'Booze has been telling him about the current child abuse situation is distinctly alarming.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Moors murderers' activities, which started some time before hanging was abolished by the Labour government of 1964, and some time before.the last hang- ings on 13 August 1964, one of which was in Manchester. In fact John Kilbride went missing in November 1963, before Brady and Hindley moved to live with Hindley's grandmother in the village of Hattersley (sic) near Manchester where they were later apprehended. But by the time they were convicted at Chester Assizes in May 1966, it was too late to hang them.
The North has never been able to forgive or forget this. Although the Sun newspaper did not exist in its present form at that time, its spirit was already abroad in the north of England. I do not suppose that a month has passed since then without some popular newspaper referring to the mons- ter Hindley, or referring in mute approval to the parents of the victims, their endless vindictive campaign of retribution, their bitterness and hatred, their publicity- seeking and self-pity.
Last week we read of their reaction to Mr Hurd's decision not to have Hindley hypnotised to see if she could remember where she had buried one of her victims. It was 'cruel', 'heartless', and 'hurtful', they said.
After the end of the last war, hundreds of thousands of parents all over Europe never learned where their sons were buried, or how they died, or even, with any absolute certainty, beyond the lapse of time, that they were dead. Until well into the present century, it was more normal than not for mothers of families to lose one, two or even three of their children in the first ten years of life. In deference to all the millions who have suffered such a cruel loss in silence, we might be tempted to leave these particular stricken parents alone after 25 years, at any rate until they have some new misfortune to tell us about.
But I welcome their interruptions. They provide one of the very few reminders available that we are not yet ruled by editorials in the Sun newspaper.
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