Issue 255 of SOCIALIST REVIEW Published September 2001 Copyright © Socialist Review
I have never been a great fan of the writing of Hugo Young, the Guardian bigwig columnist, but an article that he wrote shortly after the Brass Eye furore did strike a chord.
Young made a very simple point--that there was a marked contrast between government and media reaction to a very real incident of mindless and brutal violence by the Italian police in Genoa and to Chris Morris's Brass Eye satire about paedophilia. While government ministers rushed from studio to studio to declare how sick to their stomachs they were made by a television programme that none of them appeared to have seen, apparently nobody was having any tummy trouble listening to accounts of the police rampage in Genoa.
One dead young man, attacks on non-violent protesters asleep in a hall, broken bones, ruptured spleens, threats of rape, urinating on prisoners, forcing them to sing fascist anthems--none of this could produce anger, ire, tears or even a little stomach sickness.
While Italian opposition politicians were fulminating about police behaviour, Britain was doing a diplomatic deal, and Jack Straw was issuing anodyne, emotionless statements. Indeed, the loathing that Tony Blair showed for the protesters during the summit rather suggested that the New Labour line was that they got what they deserved.
Chris Morris, on the other hand, made a television programme. He didn't physically attack anyone, he didn't kill anyone, and he didn't rupture spleens or break bones. What he did do was attack media hysteria, deflate a few overblown egos and dared to tackle elements of the issues surrounding paedophilia. Anyone who remembers the utter hysteria of last summer, which ended up with demos, witch-hunts and physical attacks on people regardless of innocence or guilt, will have understood what Morris was trying to do. He is attacked for making light of a serious subject, yet in reality what he showed was that the hysteria of the media is itself responsible for making serious discussion of the issue nigh on impossible.
It's a hysteria that means otherwise perfectly intelligent people will go on television and talk utter hogwash. To see celebs announcing that there were rays from computer keyboards that allowed paedophiles physical access, or that if they could get a child to touch the computer screen this would allow the online paedophile to fondle them, was both truly funny and truly frightening. Utter nonce sense, as Phil Collins would say.
That the media reacted to the programme exactly as Morris had portrayed them only strengthened his message. The Daily Mail ran a story saying smuggled videos of the show were being watched by paedophiles in prison. A piece of utter nonsense whichever way you spell it, and a wonderful confirmation of Morris's view.
The nonsense was of course matched by Tessa Jowell et al, who with their sickly New Labour/Old Morality sermonising have added more than a little to the hysteria.
It doesn't matter that many survivors of abuse have stated that the hysteria merely makes their lives worse, adds to feelings of guilt and shame, and makes them less likely to confide in others or seek help.
The hysteria also leads to disproportionate fear and alarm. I heard a mother of a two year old on a radio phone-in explain that she wasn't worried about her child when it came to traffic (she had taught the child to cross the road). No, she never let the child out of her sight because there were paedophiles lurking everywhere. The fact is of course that her child is much more likely to suffer at the hands of a driver then a paedophile. What is more, the paedophile will in the main not be lurking in dark corners but will be part of, or known to, the family of the child. However, all this gets lost in the hysteria, and you wonder about the quality of life for both a mother and child who will never be out of each other's sight. Although of course the puritanism of New Labour, with its talk of parental and civic responsibility, now appears to make it a criminal offence for parents to ever let their children out of their sight.
Growing up as one of five children, I look back a little surprised that we all got through childhood largely unscathed. There were a few near misses for most of us, despite the fact that my parents were by any stretch of the imagination conscientious, and my mother was frequently run ragged.
Somehow we got through--not everyone is so lucky. In recent years I know of two tragic accidents: one involved a child being scalded, she will be scarred for life; the other a fatal car crash in which a child lost his life. In the first incident the child's mother was holding the boiling water when the child ran into her. In the second the mother was driving the car, and probably at fault.
They were unlucky where my parents were lucky. Neither was prosecuted, and nor should they have been. No court case, guilty verdict or sentence can be worse than the agony they have gone through. The recent trial of the couple in Wales who played with their newborn baby while their other child and a friend played on a railway line was truly heartbreaking. What good could this prosecution possibly serve?
A warning to all, someone remarked to me. Yet warning or no, dedicated parents will still make mistakes, take their eye off the ball, allow the exhaustion of everyday living to distract them.
Are the courts now to be filled with such tragic couples, in order to warn others, to humiliate them for their lack of civic responsibility, and to be branded in public for a tragedy that will haunt them forever in private?
For all these reasons, if Chris Morris's show has had any impact on the current moral hysteria surrounding all aspects of childhood, he will have done society a very great favour.