JOURNEYS TO THE FUTURE
By now (1968) the left-of-centre consensus on economic policy was being challenged and would continue to be. But the new liberal consensus on moral and social matters was not. That is to say that people in positions of influence in government, the media and universities managed to impose metropolitan liberal views on a society that was still largely conservative morally. The 1960s saw in Britain the beginning of what has become an almost complete separation between traditional Christian values and the authority of the state. Some politicians regarded this as a coherent programme. But for the great majority, myself included, it was a matter of reforms to deal with specific problems, in some cases cruel or unfair provisions.
So it was that I voted in 1966 for Leo Abse’s Bill proposing that homosexual conduct in private between consenting adults over twenty-one should no longer be a criminal offence. In the same year I voted for David Steel’s Bill to allow abortion if there was substantial risk that a child would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped, or ‘where the woman’s capacity as a mother would be severely overstrained’. On both these issues I was strongly influenced by my own experience of other people’s suffering. For example, when I was a barrister I had been moved by the humiliation I had seen inflicted in the dock on a man of considerable local standing who had been found engaging in homosexual conduct.
On the other hand, some aspects of the liberal agenda, even at the time, seemed to me to go too far. Divorce law reform was such a case. I had talked in my constituency surgeries to women subjected to a life of misery from their brutal husbands and for whom marriage had become a prison from which, in my view, they should be released. In these circumstances divorce might be the only answer. But if divorce became too easy it might undermine marriages simply going through a bad patch. If people can withdraw lightly from their responsibilities they are likely to be less serious about entering into the initial obligation. I was concerned about the spouse who was committed to make the marriage work and was deserted. I was also very concerned about what would become of the family of the first marriage when the man (or woman) chose to start a second family. So in 1968 I was one of the minority who voted against a Bill to make divorce far easier. Divorce would be possible where it was judged that there had been an ‘irretrievable breakdown’, broadly defined, in the marriage. I also supported two amendments, the first of which made available a special form of marriage that was indissoluble (except by judicial separation). The second would seek to ensure that in any conflict of interest between the legal wife and children of the first marriage and a common-law wife and her children, the former should have priority.
Similarly, I voted against Sydney Silverman’s Bill to abolish the death penalty for murder in 1965. Like all the other measures listed above this was passed by Parliament, but subject to a Conservative amendment to the effect that the Act was to expire at the end of July 1970 unless Parliament determined otherwise. I then voted against the motion in December 1969 to make the Act permanent.
As I had shown in my earlier speech as a backbencher on corporal punishment, I believed that the state had not just a right but a duty to deter and punish violent crime and to protect the law-abiding public. However sparingly it is used, the power to deprive an individual of liberty, and under certain circumstances of life itself, is inseparable from the sovereignty of the state. I never had the slightest doubt that in nearly all cases the supreme deterrent would be an influence on the potential murderer. And the deterrent effect of capital punishment is at least as great on those who go armed on other criminal activities, such as robbery. To my mind, the serious difficulty in the issue lay in the possibility of the conviction and execution of an innocent man — which has certainly happened in a small number of cases. Against these tragic cases, however, must be set the victims of convicted murderers who have been released after their sentence was served only to be convicted of murder a second time — who have certainly numbered many more. Despite all the uncertainties and complexities, for example of forensic evidence, I believe that the potential victim of the murderer deserves that highest protection which only the existence of the death penalty gives. The notion of certain particularly heinous murders as ‘capital murders’ (as under the 1957 Act) — a concept which now again underlies changes in the system relating to life sentences — seems to me the right model. I have consistently voted in Parliament for a return of capital punishment for such murders.
As regards abortion, homosexuality, and divorce reform it is easy to see that matters did not turn out as was intended. For most of us in Parliament — and certainly for me — the thinking underlying these changes was that they dealt with anomalies or unfairnesses which occurred in a minority of instances, or that they removed uncertainties in the law itself. Or else they were intended to recognize in law what was in any case occurring in fact. Instead, it could be argued that they have paved the way towards a more callous, selfish and irresponsible society. Reforming the law on abortion was primarily intended to stop young women being forced to have back-street abortions. It was not meant to make abortion simply another ‘choice’. Yet in spite of the universal availability of artificial contraception the figures for abortion have kept on rising. Homosexual activists have moved from seeking a right of privacy to demanding social approval for the ‘gay’ lifestyle, equal status with the heterosexual family and even the legal right to exploit the sexual uncertainty of adolescents. Divorce law reform has contributed to — though it is by no means the only cause of-a very large increase in the incidence of marriage breakdown which has left so many children growing up without the continual care and guidance of two parents.
Knowing how matters have turned out, would I have voted differently on any of these measures? I now see that we viewed them too narrowly. As a lawyer and indeed as a politician who believed so strongly in the rule of law, I felt that the prime considerations were that the law should be enforceable and its application fair to those who might run foul of it. But laws also have a symbolic significance: they are signposts to the way society is developing — and the way the legislators of society envisage that it should develop. Moreover, taking all of the ‘liberal’ reforms of the 1960s together they amount to more than their individual parts. They came to be seen as providing a radically new framework within which the younger generation would be expected to behave.
Indeed, this was a period of obsessive and naive interest in ‘youth’. Parents worried so much about the ‘generation gap’ that even teenagers began to take it seriously. A whole ‘youth culture’ of misunderstood Eastern mysticism, bizarre clothing and indulgence in hallucinatory drugs emerged. I found Chelsea a very different place when we moved back to London in 1970. I had mixed feelings about what was happening. There was vibrancy and talent, but this was also in large degree a world of make-believe. A perverse pride was taken in Britain about our contribution to these trends. Carnaby Street in Soho, the Beatles, the mini-skirt and the maxiskirt were the new symbols of ‘Swinging Britain’. And they did indeed prove good export earners. Harold Wilson was adept at taking maximum political credit for them. The trouble was that they concealed the real economic weaknesses which even a talented fashion industry and entrepreneurial recording companies could not counter-balance. As Desmond Donnelly remarked, ‘My greatest fear is that Britain will sink giggling into the sea.’[12]
12
Desmond Donnelly was a Labour MP for almost twenty years. He resigned the Labour whip in 1968 in protest at the withdrawal from east of Suez and died a Conservative.