SLANGING THE SPOUSE
the proprieties of publicising politicians' families
ONE the first pieces of advice I received from my old editor, Kingsley Martin, was: Go for a man's policies as hard as you like, but leave out personal abuse. It's wrong in itself and it doesn't pay — sensible people will suspect you have a weak case. Above all, never go for his wife or family.' He had got all this from old Scott of the Guardian and it remains valid today, though as the gossip-column mentality takes over more and more of the media, such wisdom is of the past. I can't recall Mrs Churchill or Lady Dorothy Macmillan being dragged Into the political argument, and as recently as Jim Callaghan's time, his wife was spared completely. Mrs Attlee was, in- deed, criticised, but solely for her driving. Mary Wilson, I fear got some of the backlash of the Marcia phenomenon, but no one was nasty about her. Strong- minded wives like Dora Gaitskell, who occasionally gave her views forcefully in Private, avoided media attention complete- ly.
Slanging the spouse really started with the Thatchers, perhaps because it was thought a male was fair game. Over the past eight years I have been amazed at the forbearance and good nature of Denis Thatcher, who has been turned into the unpaid comic lead of a political soap- opera. John Wells has made an entire career out of him. But at least Wells has wit. Others who have followed through the hole he made in a civilised convention are not so subtle. A recent cartoon in the Daily Mail, on the eve of Mark Thatcher's wedding, showed his father dead drunk on the floor. This could not conceivably have been published even ten years ago, and it shows how quickly the decencies can be eroded. Moreover, some of the attacks on Denis Thatcher have been equally menda- cious but deadly serious, and have come not from the tabloids but from the posh Papers. The Sunday Times went so far as to tap his bank account. The Observer tried to tangle him in the so-called Oman affair.
Has any Labour MP protested about the harassment of the Thatcher family? I do not think so. On the contrary, some of them have joined gleefully in the hound- ing. So the party is not in the ideal position to complain now that Glenys Kinnock is a target. Nor is her position the same as Denis Thatcher's. Like the Gorbachevs, the Kinnocks have been jointly presented by the Labour publicity machine as a youthful, forward-looking partnership. Nothing wrong in that, but it does perhaps entitle one to ask who it is, within the partnership, who carries more weight. Moreover, Mrs Kinnock frequently makes public her political views and fulfils strictly political engagements. She is in politics to a much greater degree than any other lead- er's spouse before her. Above all, on the issue of unilateral disarmament, where the Labour Party under Kinnock's leadership has made a historic change of policy, it is legitimate to speculate and comment upon the degree of her influence. Whether it is prudent for Tory politicians — especially ministers — to do so is another matter. In my view the public have already got the point about Mrs Kinnock's strong charac- ter, and Neil Kinnock's shortcomings, and can safely be left to make their own judgment.
What is detestable, by any standards, is `Looks like the strike's over.' the attempt to hurt Deirdre Wood by publicising her father's alcoholism. It is not entirely clear who was responsible for making the facts public, since the News of the World decided not to publish the story, and the first the Greenwich electors — or anyone else — knew about it was when the Labour Party called a press conference to denounce the smearing of its candidate. Labour may thus have benefited from the affair but at the cost of shouldering some of the moral guilt. What I cannot understand is why tabloid editors should encourage or permit reporters to delve into the private life and background of a candidate like Ms Wood, whose hard left opinions and asso- ciations ought to have been top of the agenda for covering the by-election. As it was, they were pushed into the background by mean and idiotic controversy about her age, weight and family.
Press coverage on this occasion played straight into the hands of Lord Longford, who last week initiated a debate in the Lords about the sins of the tabloids. But, as I have often said to him, if the tabloids are worse than they were, so is the press as a whole. Some of the nastiest gossip- columns are to found in 'quality' papers, which are now prepared to trivialise se- rious issues and handle material which, a decade ago, would have been left strictly to the bottom end of Fleet Street. I thought it significant, last Sunday, that the first I heard about Ms Wood's father was on the BBC, and the first I read about it was in the Sunday Telegraph. What Lord Long- ford should have been deploring is the decline in standards of accuracy and litera- cy in the media generally, which reflects the catastrophic state of our educational system — responsible for a national culture in which seven million adults are illiterate.
Lord Longford was also mistaken in the remedy he proposed — to forbid foreigners to own national newspapers. This sounded like an ad hominem argument aimed at Rupert Murdoch. If non-Britons had been banned from owning our newspapers, there would now be very few of them left. Murdoch has saved not only the Sun but, in all probability, the Times, and Sunday Times too, just as Conrad Black has saved the Telegraphs. My only complaint about foreign owners, who have skills and re- sources — and guts — which our own fellows often seem to lack, is that they don't spend enough time here or devote enough attention to the editorial quality and views of their properties. But that is another point. If Lord Longford and those who agree with him seriously want to improve the morals of the press they should be demanding a privacy law. The difference it would make to media be- haviour, at both ends of the market, would be truly sensational.
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