WHEN Barbara Cartland was in her late teens, she was told about human reproduction. She was appalled. For months afterwards, whenever she found herself in the presence of any parent, she felt a horrified fascination: “Did they really do that?” On recent evidence, much of Britain is hardly more grown up. The vicarious obsession with other people’s sex lives demeans us. We know of nothing so ridiculous as the British public in one of its repeated fits of prurience.
There are circumstances in which it would be reasonable for the media to take an interest in individuals’ sexual behaviour. If the President of the Society for the Suppression of Divorce, who regularly called for adultery to be made illegal, also had a number of mistresses, his bedroom games should be fair game.
If a public figure’s private life had descended into such chaos that he was regularly incapable of performing his duties, that would also be a legitimate area for media inquiries. But there is no suggestion that this was true in any of the recent cases. The mere fact that the private life of someone in public life undergoes a period of complexity is no ground for an invasion of privacy.
Those who would try to justify their intrusion insist that anyone who indulges in extramarital — or even extrapartnership — sex is guilty of hypocrisy and deceit. That is true, and so what? As children, before we understood what we were reading, we were taught that hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue. As there will always be vice, it is desirable that it should pay such tribute.
Advertisement
MANY otherwise healthy marriages have gone through a hypocritical phase. This did not prevent the children from being brought up in a stable household. Exposure might have done. If the secrets of all marriages were laid bare, divorce lawyers would be even busier: the social problems caused by broken homes would be even greater.
The real hypocrite is not the spouse who occasionally falls short of his marriage vows. It is the newspaper editor who gloats over his victims’ humiliation while well aware that at least half of his own staff are just as guilty.
Sex and folly are close kin. During an earlier, much ventilated, sexual dégringolade, the leader column of this newspaper shook its head over the affair, while observing with wry wisdom that whatever organ governed male sexual desire, it was not the brain.
Not only a predominantly horizontal practice, sex is also a great social leveller. Its joys, its absurdities, its glories and its vulnerabilities are the common stock of all — and while undressing, everyone is entitled to be out of the public eye. The hazards of social prominence should not include the long-range photo lens or the chequebook journalist.
Advertisement
Over the past few decades the criminal law has ceased to police the private sexual behaviour of adults. No one is seriously suggesting that this could or should be reversed. Most of us believe that privacy is a basic entitlement in a civilised society and, like all such rights, only to be overridden in exceptional circumstances. So why should we allow the media to undermine it by effectively recriminalising adultery and by violating the right to privacy at its whim?
A generation ago, when Lords Jellicoe and Lambton had to resign from Ted Heath’s Government because of indiscretions, Bernard Levin expressed his incredulity. He predicted that this sort of thing would never happen again. In future, his fellow countrymen would be too mature to allow it.
In this instance, alas, Bernard was a less sure guide than Barbara Cartland to adult behaviour. But Bernard should have been right. It is time to stop this vulgar invasion of public figures’ privacy.
Advertisement
Bruce Anderson is a political commentator
Join the Debate at comment@thetimes.co.uk