Political commentary

Sex and Mr Fairbairn

Ferdinand Mount

rr he symptoms are unmistakable: the I crowded benches, the buzz, the expec- tation, the tremble of nausea in the gullet. A scene of Sex'n'Violence'n'Humiliation is about to unfold.

For starters, we have an apology for the conduct of Mr Nicholas Fairbairn, the Solicitor-General for Scotland, by Mr Fran- cis Pym, the Leader of the House, in his best undertaker's manner. Mr Pym is a dab hand with the apology, especially on behalf of other people.

It is a terrible day. Mr Fairbairn has already been collectively reprimanded by the Cabinet for talking to the newspapers before making his statement to Parliament. Now he is apologised for by Mr Pym. The interview with the Prime Minister is still to come. And now he must rise and repeat the statement which his superior, the Lord Ad- vocate, is making in the Upper House.

I remember Mr Fairbairn 20 years ago. Then, he looked like a young hare, with a nibbling, quizzical expression and hair standing up like frozen bracken. Set him on the hillside and he would be perfectly camouflaged, except for the emerald-green velvet smoking jacket he used to sport. He stood out even then — literate, bouncy, irritating but spunky.

• Now he looks distinctly jugged. Twenty years of Bar and Chamber have left a rasp in his voice and, at the best of times, an acerbic melancholy in his manner. This is not the best of times. He speaks very slow- ly, obviously in great distress, to the delighted jeers of the Opposition. On his own side, you can feel the shrinking away from him.

He begins awfully: 'With your Lord- ships' permission . . . ' Guffaw, guffaw. When repeating a statement made elsewhere, you are not supposed to impugn the dignity of the Commons by including the preamble.

The prisoner in the dock reads on. The facts are not much in dispute. Four youths were charged with rape and attempted murder. The victim was found to be unfit to give evidence. The case was dropped. Terri- ble. Simple.

That really is all there was to it. The most determined efforts to crack Mr Fairbaim's story merely reinforce it. A full page of the Sunday Times, headlined HIDDEN BLUNDERS IN RAPE SCANDAL, dredges up only the following relevant important facts: three months after the attack, the victim tried to kill herself with a drug overdose; a year after the attack (by which time the case had been dropped) she tried to throw herself out of a window.

She is now reported as saying that she does wish to give evidence in a private pro-

secution. That may or may not be the result of some outside influence on her. But it is unquestionably not the same thing as the prosecution forcing her to give evidence, which nobody seems to be advocating. Im- agine the outcry if she had been made to give evidence and had then killed herself a week later.

Donald Dewar, a decent enough Labour lawyer, asks why the papers were not mark- ed pro loco et tempore, that is, left lying on the table until the victim recovered suffi- ciently to give evidence and, alternatively, why the Crown Office did not proceed with a different charge, such as assault? But if, a year after the offence, the victim was still suicidal, how much longer would it have been reasonable to leave the charge lying?. Was there not something in Magna Carta about not denying or delaying justice? And any lesser charge runs into much the same difficulty; the case cannot be deployed without mentioning the incidental cir- cumstance that the woman was raped and the rape cannot be proved. without the woman herself giving evidence.

It is the most peculiar spectacle you can imagine. A middle-aged man looking like a jugged hare, reduced to the verge of weep- ing and yet continuing, amid the most derisive squawks and jeers, to talk, on the whole, perfectly good sense. Rape 'has special difficulties which no other serious crime has because it involves sexual rela- tions and the consent to sexual relations'. Guffaw. 'Rape involves an activity that is normal' (actually, he did not say that to- day, but Willie Hamilton brings it up as an example of Mr Fairbairn at his most outrageous).

It is one of the age-old conventions of Parliament that sexual intercourse is not a normal activity. MPs do not commit it, be- ing in this sense not unlike angels.

It can also be said with total confidence that no member of parliament has ever pounced upon or even made so much as an indelicate suggestion to his secretary.

By contrast, not merely does Mr Fair- bairn claim that sexual intercourse is a nor- mal activity, he is known to have practised it himself; worse, he glories in the fact, and a secretary at the House of Commons, it is claimed, tried to hang herself from the rail- ings outside his house as a result.

All this is serious enough. But I suspect that the ultimate crime which has rendered Mr Fairbairn such a pariah is his declara- tion that he is 'fond of women'. To be both erotic and Scottish is too much for English stomachs. Think how disliked Hugh Mac- Diarmid was south of the border — and north of it too, for that matter. But to be fond in both the leg-over and the affection- and-sympathy sense is unpardonable.. Perhaps if Mr Fairbairn was prettier, or. I.1 he did not wear such funny clothes, or if his tongue was not so sharp, he might be

forgiven. But I doubt it. He is an forgivable sort of person.

Feminists and masculinists unite in hovi, ing him down. As the dreadful comblu. harvester leaves only the small patch !:31 corn standing, the hare panics. Mr Ful,r; bairn begins to make terrible gaffes. 11.e claims only last week, in the High Court to Glasgow, to have obtained a conviction IP! case of rape 'in which the evidence was suc!. that one might not have obtained a convlc, tion'. Oh, oh. 'The crime of rape is so chl. ficult. I have long experience of it.' Ha, ha' The word is so often repeated that the sense is raped out of it. The stunned nui agination begins to see a great queue 0 smirking public persons — judges, Puril alists, feminists, policemen, psychiatrists' television producers — all waiting their tntlir to bounce up and down on these Pon bruised bodies. You get so sick of the argu, ment that you resort to statistics to wash the A taste out. All sexual crimes in England and Wales: 1970 — 24,163, 1975 — 23,731' 1980 — 21,107. Rape: 1970 — 884, 1975-- 1,040, 1980 — 1,225. Indecent Assault on° Female: 1970 — 12,609, 1975 — 11,09' 1980 — 11,498. What does this mean? That we ,_aret assaulting women much less often but tn.'' when we do we make a thorough job of This sounds unlikely, and will sound ev'a more unlikely when you take account of much more remarkable statistic, the shaIre decrease in Unlawful Sexual Intercourse with a Girl under 16: 1970 — 4,973, 1975; 4,533, 1980 — 3,109. Now as it is universal' ly agreed that more under-age girls are se''' ually experienced today than ten years agc); the natural conclusion is that what we al faced with in these matters are changes ie10 , the readiness of witnesses to report ti'e crime and of the police to prosecute. In th,. case of rape, the Sexual Offences (Amend t, ment) Act, 1976, was specifically intericiv to encourage women to report rape v. enabling them to remain anonymous 1v. reports of court proceedings. We have not the faintest idea whether women stand in greater danger of being raped today than they did in 1970 or in 1870. In this realm, we are beset by a cluste, of historical fantasies, some fed 11) prurience, others by political propaganda: The present obsession with rape 5 wonderfully significant of nothing. We can oi not deduce from it that British socielY 'e this particular moment is any sicker or rro,t... violent than usual. It means only that pollt,le cians and newspapers believe we ha‘..., nothing better to think about. With three million unemployed, you may regard that as a curious belief. But politics, like journ . alism, has a short attention span. it Pro ceeds by random hops in which individuals are liable to get squashed with little or 111 warning, as Mr Fairbairn was. Next wee.k,it may be buggery or metrication. You PI' have to keep on your toes.