Another voice
Hark, the dogs don't bark
Auberon Waugh
Miami Beach, Florida
As I left England, the Daily Mirror was running an excellent series on child prostitution in Britain, centred around the notorious London King's Cross Station. I was particularly pleased by this series — in any case, it is surely the sort of thing we all ought to know about — because I felt I might have inspired it. Drawing attention to the Mirror's admirable indignation about child prostitution in Thailand in the Spec- tator last April, I asked why it did not send reporters to Liverpool where, by some ac- counts, child prostitutes can be bought for the price of a Mars bar. The reason, I snide- ly suggested, was that reporters would be beaten up by the girls' indignant parents.
But the King's Cross story was nearly as good. On this occasion, the Mirror did not make the claim that child prostitution had 'become a major industry' in Britain, nor did it recommend a boycott of British-made goods until the Government had done something about it, but it did attribute the behaviour of these unfortunate children, straight from Mrs Shirley Williams's marvellous Comprehensive system, to the shocking, unspeakable, obscure etc. pover- ty which now grips large parts of our un- just, rotten etc. society.
Perhaps this is right. Perhaps, If these girls did not become prostitutes, they would starve or freeze to death. I prefer to at- tribute their behaviour to negligent parents, boredom and greed. It is not easy to believe. that Britain is in the suffocating grip of poverty if you happen to be on Miami Beach at this time of year. Last year over 400,000 oppressed British workers and their families came out here on package holidays, and although the numbers are likely to be down this year as a result of the pound's poor performance against the dollar, one sees them everywhere lying like prize mar- rows in the sun or quacking serenely as they paddle in the shallow, soup-warm waters of the bay.
One could argue that the terms of the Mirror's condemnation of the Thatcher regime show a desire to destabilise it, or at any rate justify a degree of revolutionary excess in whatever government replaces it. I prefer to see the workings of a genuine social conscience, even if it is given to exag- gerated expression, over-simplification and occasional wrong-headedness.
It was because I was not entirely convinc- ed that the same explanation applied to Mr John Pilger's account of the child slave traffic in Thailand that I first took an in- terest in the matter. Thailand is a country of which I happen to be rather fond although I am not, as some have suggested, an agent of the Thai government. The tradi-
tional peasant practice, after a bad harvest, of sending older children to work under a system of indenture in Bangkok is one of the less attractive features of that society, whether one chooses to maximise it or minimise it. Child kidnapping is not a ma- jor feature of the scene, but to the extent that these scandals exist they are fair game for visiting foreign journalists who wish to creat a little cheap sensation or to exercise a well-heated social conscience.
I do not believe it to be fair journalism to represent the Thai government — because it allows both foreign and domestic jour- nalists to print whatever lurid stories they like — as a corrupt organisation in the pockets of brothel-keepers and slave- traders. What infuriated those who know Thailand, whose government is mild, benign and high-principled, if rather inef- fectual, was the apparent propaganda pur- pose behind Pilger's article. Pilger has unflinchingly supported the Soviet-backed Vietnamese not only in their original inva- sion of Thailand's Cambodian neighbour but also in their subsequent occupation and colonisation of it. Vietnam has since told the ASEAN countries that its occupation of Cambodia is irreversible and unnegotiable, despite occasional 'leaks' to the contrary. Yet Pilger was able to make a documentary film about relief operations in Cambodia without once revealing that it was a country under military occupation by a 180,000-strong foreign army, let alone that the Vietnamese were eating their way like locusts through the stricken country and ac- tually sending food back to the north of Vietnam. Perhaps he did not know this. Or perhaps he sees his behaviour as justified in the broader interests of 'committed' jour- nalism.
The more sinister interpretation of his behaviour is somewhat weakened by the en- joyable way he has ended up with egg all over his face on this occasion. Cut off as I am from most human communication at the moment, I do not know whether he in- tends to proceed with his libel action and make even bigger fools of himself and the Daily Mirror than he has already. Given the hysterical level of his moral posture and the natural pomposity of a preacher he may prove quite incapable of admitting that he has been taken for a ride, in which case the present farce will run all the way to the High Court.
We may fall over backwards to say how sincere Pilger undoubtedly was in his desire to buy a slave girl, how genuinely he thought he had bought one, how deeply he feels for children and all the rest of it, but the fact remains that his article's main drift was to discredit the Thai government and
Thai society generally for allowing '200,tm slave-girls' — Tim Bond's figure — to font I a 'major industry'. One expects this sort nf thing from the Sunday Times, but tracli' tionally one has always expected a higher standard from the Mirror's foreign coverage, and it is to the Mirror's behaviour that I would like to turn next.
On hearing of the press conference given by Thailand's Director-General of the Labour Department, the Mirror's edito.r, Mr Mike Molloy, sent a long telex to 10 saying that his account was a 'total fabrica- tion': 'The report by John Pilger is entirelY true and substantiated by documentation and witnesses. It is clear to us that the child's mother has been coerced into your ludicrous story of a film . .. Let me assure you that if the allegations printed in the Thai press, as a result of your press con- ference, were printed in this country the Daily Mirror and Mr Pilger would be seek' mg maximum damages for slander .. • , . I believe Mr Molloy to be an honest ana fair-minded man, but this seems a curious reaction if he genuinely believes that the Thai government is lying and coercing witnesses. .Why does he not print the Director-General's accusations alongside his own irrefutable proof as further evidence of Thailand's venality? Why take refuge behind the laws of libel to prevent word of it getting out in the English pressY A corollary of Mr Molloy's belief that Thailand is a ruthless, Latin-American-style dictatorship, dedicated to slavery and other vice — he does not appear to have accePted the Director-General's invitation to go an". see for himself — must be that the 1.111 press is so cowardly or incompetent that it cannot or will not discover the truth of Mr Pilger's claim to have bought a starving,: bronchial, orphan slave-girl kidnaPPeu from the north of Thailand when in fact he paid a large sum of money to tricksters for a charade involving a Bangkok schoolgirl. Yet anyone who reads the Thai press — and one does not need to leave London for that — will see that it takes an extraordinarily sceptical attitude to its political leaders, fre" quently making outrageous accusations of sexual irregularity against government ministers, even against the Prime Minister. I do not think it is the Thai press which comes badly out of this story. After threats of libel action from Mr Pilger himself and from the Mirror's lawyers who are acting, for him, not a single newspaper has dare°, to mention the Director-General's claims. le can understand certain sorts °I businessmen using the libel laws in this WaY to silence debate, but not a respectable British newspaper. Which, I wonder, is ttle more cowardly and incompetent press? As Thailand approaches its first elections f°I. many years, with a Muslim insurrection ,111 its southern provinces and a huge, hostile army poised on its Cambodian borders, ale least compliment Britain might pay to thaL pleasant, humorous people with their gentle Buddhist religion is to investigate the mattert and establish who is telling the truth abon John Pilger's `slave-girl'.
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