The Fall of Rome

There wasn’t a wide range of newspapers available to read on the screens (reading stands) at School. The Times sticks in my mind - it introduced me to the word ‘brothel’ and its correspondence columns carried a fascinating exchange about ‘the abominable crime of buggery’. Apparently this had been put on the statute book by Henry VIII’s Reformation Parliament. Under Mary that parliament’s legislation was repealed en bloc, so having the accidental effect of not only removing her father’s anti-papal legislation but also the secular penalties for sodomy. In Elizabeth’s reign parliament restored the status ante quo: sodomy was once more a crime. I think the correspondence was engendered by the imminent publication of the Wolfenden Report. There was, of course, no Daily Mirror let alone the Daily Worker. The only representatives of the popular press were the Daily Express, which fervently espoused Beaverbrook’s ‘dynamic creed of Empire’ and the News Chronicle, a token concession to non-Conservative thinking. On Sundays anyone whose family home was within travelling distance of the school was given an automatic exeat from the end of Chapel to evening prep. Consequently there were no Sunday newspapers.
  In the 1950s Anglicanism and Conservatism were givens at the sort of school I went to; I guess they probably still are. Between leaving school and going up to university I was received into the Catholic Church. University changed my politics. And with that went a change in newspapers. I started reading the [Manchester] Guardian during the week and opted for the Observer on Sundays. Whilst there was no real weekday alternative to the Guardian for an educated leftie, the Sunday Times would have been a possibility for Sundays. This was long before the Dirty Digger got his hands on it: the paper had a tradition of investigative journalism inspired by a strong sense of social justice. I think I went with the Observer because it had been founded in the 18th century - a period to which I’ve long had a romantic - or should that be an augustan - attachment.
  In 410 the world was rocked by Alaric’s sacking Rome. Although the Empire staggered on in the west for another 60 odd years, Augustine of Hippo was right to see it as an event of unparalleled importance. It marked the end of civilisation and the descent of Europe into its present day condition of squabbling Ruritanian statelets which the Americans quite rightly view with an incredulous mixture of amusement and contempt. On the 11th October I knew how St Augustine felt. The Observer published an article whose flouting of that newspaper’s liberal tradition was as violent as Alaric’s rape of Rome. Its headline - ‘I'll only be happy if smoking is banned. We should no longer tolerate the minority threatening the lives of the majority’ - says it all. Augustine wrote the De Civitate Dei in response to the sack of Rome. I wrote a letter to the Editor:

"Sir, Duncan Bannatyne has hit the nail on the head: passive smoking is, at best, a deeply unpleasant experience for the non-smoker, and the evidence that smokers seriously, and often fatally, damage their health is irrefutable. As is the evidence that the internal-combustion engine does enormous damage not only to the health of millions of humans alive today, but to that of generations to come. Damage not only to the human race but to every other species with whom we share this planet. Fortunately we can be sure that Duncan will have kicked the motoring habit. He will be advising the mothers of 12 year would-be athletes to make their sons walk to school thereby avoiding both obesity and poisoning the planet. To assume otherwise would be to accuse Duncan of the rankest hypocrisy: enjoying a feeling of moral superiority from condemning the vices of others whilst continuing to indulge his own."

It wasn’t published. I thought that I’d possibly made a mistake in appearing to attack the motor car. When I was an FE lecturer I found that to do so was a real no-no. Whilst I am sure that students would have quite happily accepted such essay topics as ‘Women are men’s natural inferiors. Discuss’, or ‘Write an essay supporting the idea that anyone with acne should be tortured to death’ - well it’s a view, they would have probably responded - when I set the topic ‘The motor-car is the curse of the twentieth century. Discuss’ they reacted with howls of rage. I was quite clearly mentally deficient.

The Observer did print a letter in response to Bannatyne:

"Perhaps Duncan Bannatyne should be appointed the government's pensions tsar ('I'll only be happy if smoking is banned", Comment). Then he can explain how the baby-boom generation survived in the decades when smoking levels were over 70% and is now causing the government such a headache with their long, healthy lives, despite Prof Gerard Hastings stating that 'few smokers live to collect their pensions'.

Perhaps, too, Mr Bannatyne can work out how to pay for all these pensions. In the old days, the chancellor would have simply whacked up tobacco duties, but not much point in that these days. A hefty tax on health club membership fees might do the trick. Jeff Fendall"

If I were a cynic, I’d imagine it was selected for publication because the weakness of its argument could only provide comfort to the Bannatynians. I therefore made a second attempt to repel Alaric:

"As an occasional smoker, I fear that Jeff Randall’s reply to Duncan Bannatyne’s article will only confirm the anti-smoking brigade’s belief that we are simpletons who need protecting from ourselves. When I was an undergraduate in the early sixties virtually all of my friends smoked; only one still does, the rest gave up decades ago. That is why they have lived to collect their pensions.

  The problem I have with anti-smokers as opposed to non-smokers is their tone of moral superiority. Their pretence that they are motivated by a concern for the public good. If they were they would be campaigning vigorously against the motor-car which by any measure does infinitely more harm to the planet than smoking. But that would mean sacrificing their own pleasure rather than someone else’s. I write as a motorist but not, I hope, as a hypocrite."

Again the letter wasn’t published. So as far as the Observer is concerned John Stuart Mill might as well have never lived. As long as the nauseating Bannatyne is happy the misery of millions of smokers no longer able to enjoy their pleasure in private is of no consequence. And I think the word ‘happy’ is the key to it. Yes smoking is a fairly disgusting habit and the world would be better off without. And the world was probably better off without the murderers on whom Lord Justice Goddard passed the death sentence. But, if his clerk’s account of the state of his lordship’s breeches is to be believed, the pleasure which the eminent judge received had little to do with the administration of justice. Given a choice between breathing a bit of stale tobacco smoke and listening to Bannatyne ejaculate in his trousers, I know which I’d opt for.