Another voice
Jay's baby
Auberon Waugh
Many harsh and bitter things can be said against the Church of England in perfect truth. Most of them will be welcom- ed and admitted and made the subject of a new study group or working party. What cannot be said against it with any sort of straight face is that it is a racist organisa- tion. Yet no sooner are the words out of the mouth of some idiotic black clergyman in Southwark — needless to say the Reverend Tony Ottey also works for the race relations industry in that borough — than one hears a deafening noise as of wet flannels drop- ped from a great height. It is the Church of England beating its collective breast.
It was because of the Church of England's racism, said Mr Ottey, that 'they were no longer able to listen to the black person in their midst'. Several fellow priests and influential church leaders, according to the Daily Telegraph, see this tripe, delivered on the BBC Everyman programme, as 'a much-needed cue for public debate on racism in the church'.
Of course anything which prompts public debate is to be welcomed. What else have the poor clergymen to do, unable as they are to listen to the black person in their midst, but form study groups and working parties to debate the problem? The Revd John Gladwin, secretary of the Board for Social Responsibility in the Church of England, contributed his thoughts on the matter as a basis for further discussion. Mr Ottey had 'raised a very important question of which we are all conscious,' said Mr Gladwin. Although he did not feel that the church's official police could be described as 'racist', there were racist elements in the church, he said. 'Unwittingly the church could be accused of racism because we have not made the adjustments necessary in our attitudes and organisations.'
I do not wish to intrude on their impor- tant (sorry, vitally important) debates in any way except to draw attention to a na- tional epidemic of breast-beating which seems to have spread, like herpes, from these seasoned professionals to others who have less experience of coping with the distressing symptoms.
Latest to be affected are the nation's newspapermen. Not everybody shares my perception of newspaper reporters as genial, good-natured folk untroubled, for the most part, by the horrible things they see going on around them or by the awesome responsibilities of reporting them in a way which will please everyone concerned. But most would surely agree that penitential garb does not sit easily on them. It is a healthy convention that newspaper editors do not appear on televi-
sion to defend or apologise for editorial decisions; when they defend themselves in print, they usually make fools of themselves. But this Anglican mood of self- abasement, not to say self-loathing, emerges in the new practice of newspapers of attacking each other. No sooner does the Sun invent an interview with the Falklands war widow than the Mirror attacks it in the most violent and self-righteous terms. No sooner does one newspaper fail to secure the memoirs of a mass murderer or sex maniac at auction than it bitterly denounces the one which has been successful. They ac- cuse each other of cheque-book journalism like Russians informing on each other for hoarding gold.
I suspect it was all started by Harold Evans who retained, through all his social ascent from humble origins to the Queen's luncheon table, a dogged working-class self-righteousness which does not seem to have deserted him even now. It reached its latest peak on Monday of this week, when the happy and relaxed occasion of Granada's annual What the Papers Say luncheon at the Savoy was marked by a highly censorious article in the Guardian from Geoffrey Robertson, listing all the press's crimes of commission and omission throughout the year; and by the simultaneous publication of Sir Patrick Neill's last Press Council report, heavily criticising newspapers for showing too much interest in various people connected with the Ripper case.
As a professional scourge of the press, as well as protector of it, Sir Patrick's criticisms were delivered in moderate and balanced tones. There could be no excuse, he said reasonably, for making people's lives a misery just because they happen to be in the news, often through no fault of their own: 'This is not to advocate that the press should cease to be vigilant, to expose crime, malpractice and incompetence; it is an exhortation to temper zeal with discrim- ination and sensitivity.'
My one objection to this apparently blameless doctrine is to its supposition that everything reported in the press must necessarily be reported from the highest possible motives — to expose crime, malpractice and incompetence — rather than for the simple reason that people are likely to find it interesting. Let us take the case of Peter Jay's nanny's baby which we learned about on the same day. In fact the lad had been around for over three years, unmentioned in a single newspaper. What caused the story to appear was the nanny's demand for maintenance on the basis of her claim that it was almost certainly Jay's baby. Jay, being middle-class and Church of England, was prepared to admit that it might be his, but want to be sure before paying out further large sums. The nanny, coming from a slightly humbler back- ground, professed herself absolutely sure it was his and wanted money. The nation was invited to judge whether the boy Nicholas bears the unmistakable likeness of his alleg- ed parent, or whether he does not.
Personally, I should have been happier if we could have seen a photograph of the other possible father, who is said to be liv- ing in Canada, so that we could judge for ourselves which bears the closer resem- blance and so conduct our debates, our working parties and study groups in a better informed and more responsible atmos- phere. The nanny explains: 'I had an affair with Peter in the middle of an affair with my boyfriend, when we had a temporary' split. We only split up for two weeks, but I was not sleeping with him when I was hav- ing an affair with Peter.'
I3ut perhaps the boyfriend is protected because he is not an ex-ambassador to the United States, the son of a former minister, former son-in-law of a former prime minister, once described as 'the cleverest man in Britain', former chairman of TV-am and generally former Lord High Everything Else. I am not sure of the moral dimension involved. Is the decision to publish affected by the suggestion that his former wife, the former ambassadress etc, was having an af- fair at the time with an incredibly boring and ugly Washington journalist? If so, should it be? Even more important, does this broadcasting of the former nanny's claim come under the general description of `indecent hounding' of people in the news, as defined by Sir Patrick Neill? Should Jay be protected, on the grounds that the former nanny's claim belongs to the private sector of his life? Should we, as the lunatic Benn constantly urges, deal only with public issues rather than personalities?
I do not think so. Either the story of Jay's baby is interesting or it is not. I think it is jolly interesting. One can take any atti- tude to the story one likes — that Jay deserves our sympathy (as I feel), that he has behaved in a most gentlemanly fashion, all things considered, and that his nanny's sob-story should be taken with a pinch of salt; or that he has behaved abominably, and that his nanny is the victim of every form of exploitation. But none of us could have held any of these opinions if we had never heard the story in the first place.
It would have been of no national interest if Jay had been a don at Nuffield College, or even a financial journalist on the Times. But the truth of the matter, as I say, is that it is jolly interesting and those who would' try to prevent the public from learning, about such things do so at their peril. It Is only when one tries to construct a more, compicated justification, involving public' duty or public moralty or public anything other than simple curiosity, that one is liable to make everyone sick.
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