AIDS: WORDS NOT DEEDS
to grave faults in the Government's advertising campaign
GOVERNMENTS have in the past used advertising successfully to promote objects in the public interest. Seventy years later, we still remember the mesmeric Kitchener ad: 'Your country needs you.' But in that instance the Government was absolutely clear in its aim and there was no pressure group trying to deflect it. Today, life is not so simple. Successive Governments, for instance, have never been able to make up their minds about whether they dare wean themselves from tobacco duty and go all out to campaign against smoking. They cannot even decide whether to ban tobacco advertising. The compromise they evolved, the compulsory 'health warning', serves no Purpose except to reveal official pusil- animity.
Alcohol poses a similar problem. Here the Government has accepted a responsi- bility to preach openly against drinking and driving. It launches an advertising offen- sive around this time of year. These pre-Christmas drives have usually been under-financed, feeble, and much less effective than word-of-mouth terror- rumours about police behaviour. Consider- ing the number of people killed annually in drink-related accidents (nearly 1,100) and the enormous cost to the public of repair- ing victims who survive, it seems odd that only £750,000 is available. According to the ad-man's weekly, Campaign, this meant limiting it to press, posters and radio — no television. The magazine also reports a sorry tale of delays and disagreements about the style of the ads, partly because of the large number of government depart- ments and other bodies who have an influence in the matter.
Is the Government being dissuaded from a more effective campaign by pressure from the alcohol lobby and by its own financial interest in keeping up the excise revenue in the festive season? It's possible. It's also possible that the lack of impact of its anti-Aids campaign so far is due to its mortal fear of offending the permissive lobby. The chief apparent object of last week's full-page ads (`Aids is not pre- judiced') appears to have been to protect homosexuals from ostracism. That may be a desirable end but it is not going to stop people contracting the disease. The open- ing of the text, 'It's true more men than women have Aids. But this does not mean it is a homosexual disease,' seems to me a pretty disingenuous approach to the sub- ject. After all, at present by far the most likely way in which a young person may catch Aids is by contact with a homosex- ual. The great majority of victims and carriers so far diagnosed are homosexuals. In the United States and Britain the disease crept into the normal population via male bisexuals. The likelihood of any promiscuous male homosexual having Aids is now very high. The number of female prostitutes also infected is rising rapidly. A straightforward, honest ad would have begun with a specific and urgent warning against sexual contact with homosexuals and prostitutes. But that would have evoked instant accusations of prejudice. So the text is cravenly vague — 'the infection is mainly confined to relatively small groups of people'. It reads as though it was inspired by people whose idea of a fate worse than death is to be criticised in the Guardian.
The ads have also been shifty about the precise way in which Aids can be caught. They imply that sexual intercourse and the use of shared needles are the sole means. Is this strictly true? A News of the World reporter who posed as an Aids victim found a widespread belief among ordinary people that the virus could be contracted via glasses in pubs, tattooing, hairdressers' scissors, even taxis. If the ads are to carry conviction, the Government ought to come clean and tell the public exactly what the evidence is on these and similar points, or admit frankly its own ignorance.
Confidence in the 'expert' advice behind the campaign is not enhanced by the Department of Health's confusion over prophylactics. The ads show that it puts all its trust in the condom. But they do not state, as any old pox-doctor knows, that condoms are by no means a sure safeguard against venereal infection. In a disease like Aids, which is fatal and incurable, to encourage the public to rely on an unsure prophylactic is irresponsible, to put it mildly. Moreover, the Department's policy on this issue is contradictory. As a doctor pointed out in a letter to the Sunday Telegraph, the DHSS is still plugging and subsidising the Pill (which is no defence against the disease) as a contraceptive and, by enabling doctors to issue it to children, encouraging them to sleep around and so risk contracting Aids. The truth is, the only sensible advice the Government can give the public can be summed up in six words: chastity before marriage, fidelity within it. But that would be to endorse traditional Judaeo-Christian morality, and so is auto- matically ruled out.
Finally, as with all advertising cam- paigns, the effectiveness of the ads cannot be separated from the actual quality of the product — which in this case is government policy. Ads warning about the risks of alcohol or tobacco are bound to be ineffec- tive if the accompanying government ac- tions, as seen by the public, are cowardly or hypocritical — inadequate sentences for drunk drivers, huge revenues drawn from excise duty. Equally, the public will not trust the Government's Aids campaign until it sees ministries acting as well as preaching. Ordinary people may be ill- informed on Aids but they are not fools.
They note that councils pay full-time offi- cials to proselytise on behalf of homosex- uality, that books advocating homosexual- ity are circulated among children by local authorities, that clubs and facilities, often subsidised from the rates, enable homosex- uals to meet, pick up partners and so spread the disease. All these activities are legal. Equally, the Government has done nothing to halt the spread of Aids through prostitution. In parts of London, for inst- ance, it is hard to find a public telephone which is not plastered with the illegal tele-ads of prostitutes. Why are the police not acting against these offenders who obligingly give their phone numbers? Writ- ing in the Sunday Mirror, George Gale lists the institutions and practices of the permis- sive society which are now 'destined for the bonfire', from 'gay' clubs and dating ser- vices to 'tax laws discouraging marriage and social security handouts encouraging bastardy'. But so far the Government has given not the slightest indication that it has any plans to ring down the statutory curtain on promiscuous sex. It is beginning to speak the language of the Aids-haunted Eighties, but its acts are still rooted in the heedless, hedonistic Sixties. Until it syn- chronises deeds and words, its Aids cam- paign will fail.
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