LORD LONGFORD
2. The Press
DENNIS HACKETT
Three weeks of reading the Cork Examiner — a good, functional provincial paper that doesn't assume its readers to be idiots — brought me back to the British press with something of a jolt. For here, not only are we treated like idiots but the activities of those who behave like idiots are given a prominence that implicitly suggests that finding them in high places will give comfort to us all. I refer, of course, to the publicity surrounding Lord Longford's asinine tour, with his wellmotivated voyeurs, of Copenhagen.
But in an August that was unusually newsworthy, habit possibly decreed that there had to be a genuflection to tradition and a really silly story blown out of proportion. And in these days of straightened circumstances in Fleet Street, once they had gone to all that expense with reporters, photographers and the rest, something had to be made of it. Peregrine Worsthone was there in a dual role as a member of the commission and a reporter. Nicholas Tomalin for the Sunday Times, having none of the inhibitions which might spring from being associated with such a crass venture, pointed out that Mr Worsthorne was the only member of the commission who wasn't handled or harassed during the visit. Be that as it may, it seemed to me, after reading Mr Worsthorne's lengthy piece in the Sunday Telegraph, that he just couldn't make up his mind. He seemed to think that what might be food for Denmark might not be good for Britain because the former "is a small, highly educated, affluent society almost ideally suited to this kind of experiment."
Why so I wonder, unless you make the assumption, understandable from the
Sunday Telegraph, that affluence and education make people less prone to sin. Anyway I'm glad, and I'm sure the Sunday Telegraph's entire readership is also, that our Perry never wants to see another pornographic show or magazine or film in his life. I must say I don't either — even without a visit to Copenhagen — but I do know that lots of appetites will have been whetted by what Lord Longford saw.
Strangely I suspect the News of the World, which has chronicled native deviations for years, didn't make the trip. Maybe they were frightened in case they, like Mr Worsthorne, were cured of the urge and so lost their raison d'etre. Instead they bought 'Porn Probe Girl Sue' to tell what it was like in what they had the brass to call ' Sin City.' Well Miss Pegden, whose picture added a little glamour to the whole comic occasion, told it pretty straight and unsalaciously, which no doubt disappointed the features people who were stuck with filling the whole page. And she extended what I'm sure was meant to be a helping hand to Lord Longford who, she seemed to fear, might still be suffering from shock, by saying that he might have gone "with a lesser idea of what he was going to see." He must have.
Plaintive and looking more than ever like a worn-out broom that has swept too much dirt under too many carpets, he asked in the Sunday Mirror (which possibly missed Sue Pegden by a whisker): "Why are People Laughing at Me?" Having previously been known in more successful ventures as Lord Pakenham and Lord Longford he was re-styled for this occasion 'Lord Porn.' Really he has no luck. Obviously suspecting that his pornography commission was about to be drowned by the chuckles, he said the joke was over and now there was the serious business. He seemed to entertain the naive idea that the Press Council idea might be expanded to save us from further corrupting influences. Obviously he doesn't read the populars well these days or he would know that suggestion has been raised to a fine art and that they don't need outright pornography. And this apart from the fact that the Press Council is understandably quite dumbfounded amid an ocean of innuendo.
On Monday Mr Cecil King, also a member of the commission, became a mourner at the feast and pointed out in the Sun that so far as pornography was concerned, the Danes had nothing to teach us or, rather, show us. He hadn't been invited to go and he wouldn't have gone (heavens what spice that 6ft 7in figure would have added), but the journey hadn't been necessary, he argued, and had made the commission look ridiculous. It will be interesting to see how the commission realises his sensible exhortation that it should "get back on its real path "; interesting to see if Fleet Street and television allow them to.
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