A Very English Scandal - BBC1

[Lat-Literal]

You should have written it!

No need...….it was written by Britain's history.

I experienced the liberal and more overt leftism among 18 year olds when 11 at my posh school in 1974. I experienced how by the time we were all 16 in 1979 most of those in my class were ultra conservative. Those are the two generational strands which have informed the character of the two main parties since 1979, albeit in Labour in two distinct ways.

I experienced the smell of the rubbish in the chute beside my grandmother's tower block flat just off the Walworth Road when working class Tories and more traditional Labour types were wondering if it was Mrs Thatcher or Mr Steel and Mr Jenkins who would improve life along the lines of the past as it was perceived (if not indeed the National Front if it got worse).

I experienced how they concluded largely on the basis of the "highly symbolic of everything that has gone wrong" Thorpe affair that it would be the former. Not that any of them had a clue what Thatcherite economics would bring, nor did they in the early 1980s. That was when I was in Yorkshire and travelled regularly between two parts of the country, one of which would happily have gone to war on behalf of Mr Scargill and the other happily against him. And I was aware that gay men in my university were breaking the law in 1982-83 and later.

Not that it was of any especial relevance to me.

As for the courses, the first was on civil liberties in which, probably in my third and fourth week there, we were asked to consider the rights of those who had wanted the age of consent down to 4 since the mid 1970s. I remember deciding to miss the fourth week on the grounds it was beyond the pale and instead drove to Scarborough on what was a lovely sunny day.

[Sir Velo]

. And I was aware that gay men in my university were breaking the law in 1982-83 and later.

Which law was that? I wasn't aware there were any laws which only punished gay men after 1967.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Which law was that? I wasn't aware there were any laws which only punished gay men after 1967.

The 1967 law decriminalised homosexual acts between consenting men over the age of 21 in private. Men aged 18 - 21 (typical undergraduate age) could not legally have sex with each other, and any man over the age of 21 could be prosecuted for having sex with any man "under age".

Also, gay men (of any age) could be legally harrassed for public displays of affection - holding hands, kissing - and even prosecuted if a visitor to the house of a gay couple saw them doing so in their own home.

Such aspects of the 1967 law were only cleared up in the late 1990s, to allow gay men parity with their heterosexual and lesbian contemporaries.

[Lat-Literal]

The 1967 law decriminalised homosexual acts between consenting men over the age of 21 in private. Men aged 18 - 21 (typical undergraduate age) could not legally have sex with each other, and any man over the age of 21 could be prosecuted for having sex with any man "under age".

Also, gay men (of any age) could be legally harrassed for public displays of affection - holding hands, kissing - and even prosecuted if a visitor to the house of a gay couple saw them doing so in their own home.

Such aspects of the 1967 law were only cleared up in the late 1990s, to allow gay men parity with their heterosexual and lesbian contemporaries.

Yes indeed.

I knew a lot about sexual identities and social problems, the support groups and the legislation precisely because I listened so much from the age of 11 to phone in radio. Even at 14, I could have written long essays about them when ironically very little of it would ever have been pictured in my mind because in the main all parts of society are not given to huge displays of interactional affection in public. In those days in particular, that would all have been considered continental. At university, the average student was probably inclined to leap into bed with someone else, usually of the opposite gender, and to talk about it afterwards. I doubt, though, I admired it much for among other things it seemed to run counter to ideas about long term commitment and loyalty. These are also values which I carried across to employment. They ultimately went the same transitory way. In terms of same sex relations, the talk would have been on voting for equality but it didn't run in tandem with discussion about whether two men would get married and become parents. Rather, it focussed on the need to avoid certain pubs in case one was groped or the discovery in one case of a vibrator under a bed when one friend moved into a room that two men had previously vacated.

So, this was, what, 1984, perhaps. It was unlikely to have been earlier. The Thorpe affair six years earlier needs to be comprehended in that cultural context too. As some would have said at the time, and perhaps many, they didn't quite understand what two men would actually be doing in bed. When they did come to a conclusion it tended to be on one thing only. The position was that the university authorities could, in theory, have called out the police on two men in a bed. They could have also censured me for not attending seminars in which I was supposed to be discussing the rights or otherwise of people who wanted to promote the idea of men having sex with boys or girls. It is hardly surprising that the public with, on average, a lower IQ was confused and in the confusion the Thorpe affair was to produce such a furore. As the election result proved, the old establishment got it wrong in thinking that it would turn the tide back in its favour. Not only the gun but all of the other components, mad to many, were so remote from people's lives it was not separated out from it in any way.

And when it came to those who wanted to legalise sexual relations with children, I have to say that it wasn't only in 1982, when aged 19, that I encountered that particular agenda being promoted by a wing of the establishment. In 1979, aged 16, I had applied to join the Liberal Party - not the Young Liberals who I had thought were probably a bit wild - and with the application form there was a lengthy newsletter from the Young Liberals which was advertising along with information about spliffs one of those people's magazines. It was like having a really disturbing and incomprehensible world being dropped casually through the letterbox and I put it in the rubbish bin as well as deciding that I definitely would not join, delaying party membership until the SDP in 1981. What I absolutely know is that had the public known as much as I knew, there might today have been only a rump of both a Labour and Liberal Party and both might well have indeed been replaced by the SDP. The vast majority of viewers of the recent programme will have been blissfully unaware of most of it.

[Serial_Apologist]

I'm not aware of any groups, at any point in my time, that have campaigned for adult rights to sex with children. Most of the "alternative lifestyle" people I was connected with in the early 1970s would have been horrified at such an idea, and I think that was generally true of communes etc based on presumptions of trust between participants, even around "open relationships". The issue of adult guilt and male possessiveness were not to be foisted on the under-aged. I suppose I could google to try and find out; it's just that what with allegations of state snooping and insecure personal data I would be concerned that "other people" would be concerned about my possible motives for googling around such a subject!

[Lat-Literal]

I'm not aware of any groups, at any point in my time, that have campaigned for adult rights to sex with children. Most of the "alternative lifestyle" people I was connected with in the early 1970s would have been horrified at such an idea, and I think that was generally true of communes etc based on presumptions of trust between participants, even around "open relationships". The issue of adult guilt and male possessiveness were not to be foisted on the under-aged. I suppose I could google to try and find out; it's just that what with allegations of state snooping and insecure personal data I would be concerned that "other people" would be concerned about my possible motives for googling around such a subject!

Well, it was the small groups under the umbrella of NCCL when what became leading Labour figures were at the helm. It was elements of the Young Liberals who were at loggerheads with Peter Hain. And it was academia. Ironically, Ms Harman prior to being at NCCL, was at the university I attended just as she was becoming an MP. She hated it, mainly on the grounds of an alleged sexual proposition from a member of its staff. In the main, I had a very happy time there. I am not saying that it was in any way unique in including in the only compulsory introductory course for Politics students that sort of subject in weeks 3 and 4. There was a strand of opinion in civil liberties that was still pushing for an open debate. I would imagine what emerged in the late 2000s about all that was taking place in a wide range of institutions was precisely why it was able to flourish. It could reinforce ideas in those institutions that there was never anything sinister in them at all. All of this was in many a newspaper circa 2011-2012. Most of it is public knowledge. But not the age of consent at 21 and how contradictory that was in the overall round with a myriad of irrational goings on alongside it. As for personal data, my assumption is that none of it is private or ever has been.

Mary says that Scott was 21 when he met Thorpe in 1961. I say he might have been 20. It looks like an argument. Actually it isn't. The main point is the illegality circa 1961. Scott protests throughout the years. He rightfully feels aggrieved. From 1967, when Thorpe becomes leader and there is sexual reform, it on paper becomes easier for him. He can say if push comes to shove "oh that was then, it was an unenlightened age". But Scott keeps pushing. He pushes well into the 1970s. Of course, Thorpe by then has a marriage to consider and very significant political prospects. He finds to his dismay that the establishment is not prepared to support him to get the man out of his life. And this coincides - it actually starts from 1970 with a peak beginning in 1974 - with the Campaign for Homosexual Equality etc infiltrated by people who are sexually inclined towards children. That of itself is not helpful to mainstream members of the CHE as it does precisely what they don't want it to do, ie to conflate the two campaigns in the public's mind. Arguably, Thorpe becomes desperate not only because of his own circumstances but because the public could make a false read-across between what was illegal in 1961 and what was illegal after 1967, regarding them as the same.

Some might say how ludicrous. The distinction is an ability to give consent. But consent was a-muddle in the 1970s. The new generation was consenting to more of an adult nature in a wider variety of contexts but most folk were either feeling invaded by a media liberalism to which they were not giving consent or - in the case of jack-the-lads - joyous but bewildered.

[Bryn]

I'm not aware of any groups, at any point in my time, that have campaigned for adult rights to sex with children. Most of the "alternative lifestyle" people I was connected with in the early 1970s would have been horrified at such an idea, and I think that was generally true of communes etc based on presumptions of trust between participants, even around "open relationships". The issue of adult guilt and male possessiveness were not to be foisted on the under-aged. I suppose I could google to try and find out; it's just that what with allegations of state snooping and insecure personal data I would be concerned that "other people" would be concerned about my possible motives for googling around such a subject!

Have you not come across references to the P.I.E.? The "I.E." expands to "information exchange". It ran from 1974 to 1984. It had a level of support within the NCCL. Eventually the organisation was broken up and the principals brought to trial.

[Lat-Literal]

Have you not come across references to the P.I.E.? The "I.E." expands to "information exchange". It ran from 1974 to 1984. It had a level of support within the NCCL. Eventually the organisation was broken up and the principals brought to trial.

And with its closure, it clears the lines on the left in 1984, 17 years after 1967, for the first MP to be openly and uncontroversially gay. Chris Smith. Then it's mainly just a case of introducing greater equality - further decades; ascertaining what was going on in the Thatcherite Tories during the mid 1980s and earlier; and unravelling the layers of issues in institutions since the year dot. That takes 27 more years before any of it is acknowledged. On this basis, I'd think the smooth transition to Brexit will be completed in 50-75 years.

Thorpe - he was on one of history's long cusps.

That is essentially it - the motives and the fate.

[Serial_Apologist]

Have you not come across references to the P.I.E.? The "I.E." expands to "information exchange". It ran from 1974 to 1984. It had a level of support within the NCCL. Eventually the organisation was broken up and the principals brought to trial.

Now that you mention it... but oddly enough, only as a tiny detail.

[Lat-Literal]

The fantastic thing about Woodstock, of course, is the angle in which all aspects of inter-personal relationships are subsumed into music, a field and simply a concept of togetherness.

I am not sure that human beings are at their best when they see the universal world as secondary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyTUF5gP2KE

[LMcD]

All I wanted to do was share my views on a TV drama!

[Nick Armstrong]

All I wanted to do was share my views on a TV drama!

[Richard Tarleton]

As a sucker for courtroom dramas I was disappointed the trial was so compressed - I can't remember what happened, but the other three were on trial as well and all we heard was the verdicts. And we didn't get some of Carman's and Cantley's juicier quotes.

[Nevilevelis]

All I wanted to do was share my views on a TV drama!

Likewise!

[gradus]

Now that you mention it... but oddly enough, only as a tiny detail.

I seem to recall an article in The Guardian written by one of those involved in the PIE. Extraordinary to think that a newspaper would give space to them.