Harvey Proctor - a footnote

In the Harvey Proctor piece I posted yesterday, I included a Daily Mirror front  page from the time of his 1987 trial. Excluded from that image for reasons of space was this bit from the top-right hand corner of the page, which I think illustrates public attitudes of the time towards homosexuality and towards Proctor's travails:

You see what they've done there? They've got a photo of him passing a clothes shop and they point out - sniggering and chortling - that the sign says L'Uomo Elegante. Well, that may be Italian for 'the elegant man', which 'aptly described the dapper MP', but it also sounds a bit like 'homo'. And that's apt as well. Because he's a homo, isn't he?

You might care to bear in mind that this is the Daily Mirror, the more enlightened of our tabloids in the 1980s.

Harvey Proctor

It is not easy to feel sorry for Harvey Proctor.

In 1987 he stepped down as a Conservative MP when he was charged for gross indecency, having been caught in a tabloid sting that involved flagellation games with rent boys. At the time, the age of consent for male homosexual practices was twenty-one, and the evidence was clear that Proctor genuinely believed that his partners were not only consenting but of age. They weren't, though they were over sixteen, our current age of consent.

Many of those who might have supported him, as the victim of press intrusion and of an unjust law, were reluctant to do so, since his attitude to race and immigration had already alienated most of civilised society. And many of those who had previously supported him precisely because of that attitude - well, they were now alienated by the revelation of his sexual proclivities.

Daily Mirror 21 May 1987

So, not many people have ever sympathised with Harvey Proctor. Nonetheless, it is worth reading the statement he issued yesterday, denying any involvement in an alleged child-sex ring at Westminster.

In the statement, he quotes extensively from what he says is 'the police disclosure document given to my solicitors two days before my first interview with the police'. And when you read the allegations as bald statements, you can see Proctor's point: 'My situation has transformed from Kafka-esque bewilderment to black-farce incredulity.'

Because it is alleged that the circle of abusers included a (current or former) prime minister, home secretary, head of MI5, head of MI6 and chief of the general staff. These men would gather in private houses where they would rape, torture and kill young boys.

I wouldn't deny that there have been, and are, men who take sexual pleasure in the torturing to death of children, but they are vanishingly few in number, surely? For so many of them to have reached such senior positions in society simply defies belief. They didn't manage to do so in the Third Reich, but they did in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s? It's implausible that the holders of these posts were all homosexual, highly improbable that they were all paedophiles, and frankly impossible that they should all be homosexual, paedophile, sadistic murderers.

The only way of believing such a thing is to go the full distance and claim that the establishment is staffed by an alien species with an entirely different sexuality to that of human beings.

Yet even that wouldn't explain why this circle, if it did exist, would welcome the likes of Proctor. He himself admits that 'Edward Heath despised me', and adds: 'As an ex-secondary modern school boy from Yorkshire, I was not a part of the establishment.'

This is surely true. He was just about tolerated on the Tory backbenches in Margaret Thatcher's second term, but even there many regarded him as being an unpleasant oik. It's difficult to see such an impressive cast of grandees inviting Proctor into their homes in the first place, let alone encouraging him to join them in 'punching and kicking' a young boy to death.

The allegations are self-evidently absurd. And they run the risk of making all enquiries into old cases of paedophile abuse seem absurd by association.

There certainly were paedophiles in the upper ranks of the establishment. I wrote about the case of Sir Peter Hayman, for example, last year. And certainly things were covered up. But however appalling we find paedophilia, it is still in a different class of behaviour to child-killing. And however shocking we find it that action was not taken, averting one's gaze is in a different class of behaviour to participating in a murderous orgy.

The police, it is said, have a duty to investigate complaints, and obviously this is a sensitive area and a difficult time. Even so, this sort of nonsense surely shouldn't take too long to dismiss. Instead Proctor has had the allegations hanging over him for months, allegations that he personally murdered two children, and connived at the killing of a third. He has twice been interviewed at length over the claims.

It's not easy to feel sorry for Harvey Proctor, but for once in his life he deserves sympathy.

Postscript: I posted this just as Newsnight started, which included an interview with Harvey Proctor. There is perhaps one thing that should be added. He was asked by Evan Davis why he thought his name had been mentioned in the allegations, and he replied that perhaps it was because he was homosexual and had once pleaded guilty to indecency charges, albeit for offences that are no longer offences.

Well, yes, but there is the nature of the offences as well. He admitted paying teenage prostitutes, less than half his age, so that he could beat them. If I were concocting a story of sadistic pederasts in 1980s Westminster, his name might well come to my mind.

It's still nonsense, of course. Even more so. If he had access to twelve-year-olds who he could rape and murder to his heart's content, why was he still playing Trivial Pursuit with nineteen-year-olds and spanking them when they got the answers wrong? That's a different psychology entirely.

But it's worth bearing the facts in mind when he protests that the police are pursuing a 'homosexual witch hunt'. Because that's a daft claim as well.

Like any other man

Jeremy Corbyn has been attracting a lot of press coverage in the last few days. Which is somewhat new territory for him. He's been in politics for nearly four decades, but he's never been much of a media favourite, not even on television and radio, where the lack of humour makes him a somewhat unengaging character.

When he did attract press attention, it tended to be hostile - as indeed it is this week as well - and sometimes very hostile indeed. This, to take just one example, is a Daily Mirror editorial in 1984 describing him as:

a stupendous mind-bending idiot. A man so insensitive to the decent feelings of others as to be completely numb. He wouldn't understand why voters have drifted in their millions from supporting his party. He wouldn't know how difficult he and his kind make it for their leader to win those votes back.

Well, it's a point of view. It may or may not be worth noting that, six months before this was published, the Daily Mirror had been bought by Robert Maxwell.

It's that man again

Silly Season has started well this year. On Saturday the Sun ran a fabulous front-page picture of the present Queen as a child in 1933 giving a fascist salute in her back garden. Since Adolf Hitler is thus thrust back onto the news agenda, I thought it'd be worth looking through the newspapers to see what impression he made on the British press when he was first noticed. So here are some extracts from 1923:

'Already the so-called Bavarian Fascists - the National Socialist Workers' party, under Herr Adolf Hitler - are dreaming of "an army of revenge" which, according to Herr Hitler, is to "restore Germany to her former greatness".' - Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer 16 January 1923

'Hitler is known to be a very energetic person, and has long been known to be preparing a "putsch" against the Berlin government.' - Gloucester Citizen 23 January 1923

'In unoccupied Germany the chief manifestations of madness occur in Bavaria, where one Adolf Hitler, a house painter by trade, has found a large and dangerous following whose objects, apart from revolution, are not much clearer than those of the Italian Fascists, whom in general they would like to copy. If they succeeded, Germany, like Italy, would be in the hands of a military dictator.' - Manchester Guardian 30 January 1923

'The political prophets are in a better position. They benefit by the anti-Republican sentiment of the authorities, and are enabled to carry on their propaganda unmolested. The most successful is Dr Adolf Hitler, the "Bavarian Mussolini". But his influence is beginning to decrease, for after three years of agitation he has accomplished nothing beyond holding reviews and designing emblems.' - Daily Express 15 February 1923

'At last night's Fascist rally in the Crown Circus, half an hour before the proceedings began the large hall was filled, and on his arrival, accompanied by his usual bodyguard of storm troops, the Fascist leader, Adolf Hitler, was given a reception that a returning victorious general might envy... The deliberately provocative attitude of Hitler's storm troops, who swagger truculently about the streets of Munich, is becoming more noticeable every day.' - Times 13 April 1923

'The Bavarian Nationalists, of whose leader, Adolf Hitler, a portrait appears on our "Personal" page [above], recently held a great demonstration at Nuremberg. They had adopted the swastika as a badge for banners and armlets. Their aim is declared to be to overthrow the Republic, restore Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, eject Jews from Germany, and prepare for a war of revenge against France.' - Illustrated London News 15 September 1923

'Dr Gessler, the Minister of Defence, was yesterday appointed Dictator of Germany by President Ebert... Great nervousness prevails in Munich. According to reports in the Berlin newspapers, Adolf Hitler intends to let loose the forces which he commands. If he does so it is certain that the "Putsch" would not be confined to Bavaria, and it is probably with this knowledge that President Ebert has issued his decree.' - Daily Mirror 28 September 1923

'"He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day" is evidently the motto of Herr Adolf Hitler, the commander of he Bavarian National Socialists. The fact that he did not press his objection to the Commissioner-General's ban so far as to hold his much-advertised fourteen meetings last night, has severely shaken the prestige of the Fascisti leader, and it will probably take some time he recovers from the blow.' - Aberdeen Journal 29 September 1923

A fine day for haymaking

Today is the sixtieth anniversary of the hanging of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be executed by the state in Britain. This is an extract from one of the best pieces of journalism I know, written by William Connor (better known as Cassandra) and published in the Daily Mirror on 13 July 1955:

It's a fine day for haymaking. A fine day for fishing. A fine day for lolling in the sunshine. And if you feel that way - and I mourn to say that millions of you do - it's a fine day for a hanging.

IF YOU READ THIS BEFORE NINE O'CLOCK THIS MORNING, the last dreadful and obscene preparations for hanging Ruth Ellis will be moving up to their fierce and sickening climax. The public hangman and his assistant will have been slipped into the prison at about four o'clock yesterday afternoon.

There, from what is grotesquely called 'some vantage point' and unobserved by Ruth Ellis, they will have spied upon her when she was at exercise 'to form an impression of the physique of the prisoner'.

A bag of sand will have been filled to the same weight as the condemned woman and it will have been left hanging overnight to stretch the rope.

IF YOU READ THIS AT NINE O'CLOCK, then - short of a miracle - you and I and every man and woman in the land with head to think and heart to feel will, in full responsibility, blot this woman out.

The hands that place the white hood over her head will not be our hands. But the guilt - and guilt there is in all this abominable business - will belong to us as much as to the wretched executioner paid and trained to do the job in accordance with the savage public will.

IF YOU READ THIS AFTER NINE O'CLOCK, the murderess, Ruth Ellis, will have gone.

The one thing that brings stature and dignity to mankind and raises us above the beast of the field will have been denied to her - pity and the hope of ultimate redemption.

The medical officer will go to the pit under the trap door to see that life is extinct. Then in the barbarous wickedness of this ceremony, rejected by nearly all civilized peoples, the body will be left to hang for one hour.

IF YOU READ THESE WORDS OF MINE AT MIDDAY the grave will have been dug while there are no prisoners around and the Chaplain will have read the burial service after he and all of us have come so freshly from disobeying the Sixth Commandment which says 'Thou shalt not kill'.

The secrecy of it all shows that if compassion is not in us, then at least we still retain the dregs of shame. The medieval notice of execution will have been posted on the prison gates and the usual squalid handful of louts and rubbernecks who attend these legalized killings will have had their own private obscene delights.

Britain and Europe (slight return)

Twenty-five years ago, the Schengen Convention began the process of abolishing all border controls between states in what was then still the European Community. Britain, however, decided not to participate, prompting the Daily Mirror to lament our blinkered attitude in a stinging editorial published on 20 June 1990: