Sir: It was scarcely fair to Lord Longford to ask
John Calder to review the latest volume of his autobiography, The Grain of Wheat (March 23). As the successful publisher ot a certain type of book Mr Calder has a vested interest in permissiveness, and would doubtless regard any suggestion of censorship as a threat to his lucrative business. His consequent bias against the would-be suppressors of pornography colours every word of his review.
Like others of his kind Mr Calder dismisses Lord Longford as a selfseeking publicist and the collaborators in his campaign against pornography as a "motley collection of late-Victorian puritans, cranks and misfits." To abuse your enemy, however, is not to dispose of his arguments, and the question Mr Calder should ask himself is this: is it true or not true that pornography (1) is ugly; (2) offends against good taste; (3) degrades the human personality; (4) reduces women to sex objects; (5) is an abysmally dreary substitute, tending as it does to masturbation, for normal and fulfilling sexual relations?
If the answer is in the affirmative — and nobody who has ever indulged in real pornography (as opposed to mere eroticism) could honestly deny it — it surely follows that society has as much right to protect itself from such a pernicious influence as it has to protect itself from drug-taking or dangerous epidemics. There is no doubt, moreover, that this is how it i6 seen by the vast majority of decent people, albeit they remain silent.
I am not aware in any case that Lord
Longford's committee advocated anything like censorship. All they asked for was a tightening of the law on obscenity and some suppression of the kind of display which disfigures the streets of London. In fact there wold appear to be a strong case for censorship when a show like Oh! Calcutta!, which in no other capital city, with the exception of New York, could be seen outside a brothel, is acted in a public theatre.
George Martelli
Wooth Manor, Bridport, Dorset
Previous page
