THE PRESS
The Theatre of Cruelty
By JOHN WELLS
LOOKING back at the front page of the News of the World for April 17, it is very easy to imagine that one is reading a playbill for some macabre performance at the Grand Guignol. `Starting this week,' it begins, `the Murder Trial of -the Century.' Eighty-six witnesses . . . one hundred and eighty-nine exhibits, including an axe and two revolvers. A tape recording, of which at Hyde we heard but a snatch . . . is expected to be played in open court. Including £3,000 for that preliminary hearing at Hyde, the trial is expected to cost £20,000.' Certainly no expense had been spared, and it now seems that it did not all go on 'laying carpet,' as the News of the World went on, 'to drown the shuffle of reporters' feet as they sidle out to make their deadlines.'
But despite the drum-rolls and fanfares, and thanks largely to the discretion of Mr Justice Atkinson, the entertainment seems to have begun unrewardingly for the mob. TheEveningStandard threw in all its available resources, however irrele- vant, to gel it off to a good start, coming up on Wednesday with the headline: `Murder Strikes at Moor [sic] QC's_Family.' On Thursday the Daily .:xpress followed it up with the most lurid display so far: a front page headline 'Drama of 21 Words—Jury Told of Lesley Tape,' a lead story opening with titillating details about the little girl lying naked on a bed and being sub- mined to indignities, and then continuing: 'in pairs the twelve men bent to read. Only the sharp rustle of paper as they flicked over pages broke the silence for four minutes and 15 seconds.' There were also two full pages devoted to the trial inside the paper.
But all apparently in vain. It seems now to be generally agreed that coverage of the trial in the last few days has had little effect on sales, and the public appear to share the distaste shown by the citizens of Chester. As the People revealed in a baffled headline on Sunday, 'Even The Ghouls Stayed Away!' The highlight for the ghouls who actually turned up, according to the People, was the production of the axe. 'One old lady said "Oob," fumbled in her handbag, and extracted an Oxo cube which she carefully unwrapped and licked for the next hour.'
On Friday, when interest appeared to be falling off, phrases of a more dramatic ring began to fill the headlines. 'I thought he had hold of a rag doll' appeared in the Sun, and the Mirror expanded it : 'Smith says : "I thought Brady had a life-size rag doll. It was a lad.' There was talk of the Smiths being paid by a news- paper. Drama at last. But by Sunday the tide had gone down again, leaving only a few embarrassing pieces of flotsam on the sand. The News of the World itself, having voluntarily confessed to paying Smith at least £1,000 plus possible syndication rights which would give him, as the Express screamed, 'A Vested Interest in Conviction," rather glossed over the embarrassing exchange in court. But it did follow the Daily Telegraph in printing Smith's remarks about reporters from several other papers calling earlier to leave their cards 'with a f5 note tucked under- neath.' All the bland-faced critics in fact were suddenly unmasked as secret backers of the gory pantomime.
But the reflective pieces in the Sunday papers preferred to dwell in the main on the theatrical set and the costumes: 'Framed in dark wood and a hanging of crimson velvet, almost like the drapes of a four-poster bed, the Judge looked down on the barristers' (News of the World). 'The white gloves of the policemen are no longer shining white enough to make the detergent commercials' (Elwyn Jones, Sunday Telegraph) or 'Smith wore tight jeans, a smart jacket, and a dark blue shirt, open on his first appearance: for Thursday afternoon and today he has put on a tie of the same colour' (Francis Wyndham, Sunday Times). It seemed almost as if they had all been watching a rather dull play of which they had been promised and had expected so much more, and on which they longed to impose, either literally or metaphorically, their own ideas and direction. In suspending any moral judgment, in playing the part of disappointed ghouls, they themselves were obviously no more guilty than the public they represented and were serving. But perhaps now that we have learned to resist the delights of looking at freaks in cages, or making a Sunday afternoon outing of poking imprisoned lunatics with sharp sticks, it is possible that even the glamour of a raree-show like this, mounted at such trouble and expense, will eventually fade as well.
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