RARELY FIND MYSELF in agreement with the edi- torial opinions
of the Sunday Times, but in its leader on the Wolfenden Report debate it has said something which needs to be said in Tory circles. 'Criminal law ought to be not only in accord with a publicly accepted code of morals, but also both enforceable and enforced. If it is not enforceable it is worthless. If it is enforce- able but not enforced it only brings the law into contempt.' The law against 'homosexual acts between adults in private is, for obvious reasons, not enforceable, except on very rare occasions— occasions, incidentally, which are frequently only revealed through blackmail. The law against soliciting by prostitutes is enforced only by a rota system of arrests which, if anything, brings it into greater contempt than if it were never en- forced at all. I can understand the reluctance of some liberals not to allow the Government to take the easy out-of-sight, out-of-mind escape hatch, by getting prostitutes off the streets; but the public face of vice has become an evil only second to the vice itself—in the sense that in some districts of London it is impossible for a girl to walk from the Tube to her home without being pursued by the invective of tarts and the invita- tions of predatory men. If there has got to be dirt, I prefer it swept under the carpet.
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