A Point of View

By Brian Walden

In his weekly opinion column, Brian Walden considers privacy and who is to blame for the lack of it in modern life.

Zeta Jones and Douglas won their privacy case and £1m damages

My father used to say that though most of the people we knew loved gossip and spent hours discussing it, the fact was that none of us knew much about each other.

When one of life's disasters occurred astonishing revelations emerged.

At Mr Jones's funeral it turned out that Mrs Jones wasn't his wife - the real one was sitting alone in a pew at the back of the church. Long lost sons were ten a penny and popped up frequently, usually at Christmas.

Fifty or 60 years ago nobody seemed to resent not knowing all their neighbour's secrets. Being reserved and reticent about the really big things was thought to be part of the British way of life. Society in those days may have adored gossip, but it had a strong sense of privacy.

Nor were matters different when the scene changed from the humble masses to the great and famous. They enjoyed the same privacy as everybody else, if not more so.

When people are genuinely shocked by media intrusion into private life and private gatherings a set of conventions develop, which become a code.

Journalistic reporting used to be rooted in a decorous code that protected the secrets of princes, presidents and prime ministers. A modern tabloid journalist would have died of frustration in such a climate of restraint.

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Even some of us in the more toffee-nosed bits of the media might have thought a privacy code amounted to a restriction on free speech. Yet some of the older journalists I knew believed in the code and were shocked at its deterioration.

That decline has reached the point where the only reasonable assumption these days is that your privacy is never safe. Nothing is private and every celebrity with a secret is living on borrowed time.

There's an insatiable appetite for revelation and the famous, even the not-so-famous, can confidently expect to be secretly photographed, telephone tapped, spied upon, bugged and taped. As Howard Flight MP has learned to his cost, of which more later.

The coverage of famous figures used to be genteel and sedate. I can give two examples which by contemporary standards must sound almost beyond belief.

The prime ministers credited with making a major contribution to victory in two World Wars were of course David Lloyd-George and Winston Churchill.

Suicide pact

No woman left alone in Lloyd-George's presence was secure, but even more startling than this reckless behaviour was the fact that he lived openly with his mistress Frances Stevenson at the same time as he lived with his wife, Margaret. All of this was spiced up by Frances's two abortions and the suicide pact she entered into with Lloyd-George.

A modern editor would have to be tied to his chair to stop him personally cutting down the trees required for the innumerable extra pages needed to do justice to this tale.

At the time not a word of it appeared in print. Not a single word - though the facts were well known to Lloyd-George's political enemies.

The Churchill story is even more extraordinary. During his second premiership at the end of June 1953 Churchill had a severe stroke. Nobody piped up to say the public should be told and this disabling illness was kept secret.

Churchill's stroke was kept secret from the public

I can best show the true situation by quoting a historian of the Conservative Party, Lord Blake. "Mentally Churchill was never the same again and Cabinet degenerated into monologues. There was a lack of grip and decision. He should have resigned but he could not bring himself to do so. He continued for another year and a half."

Lord Blake didn't comment on the amazing restraint of the media, but though much was suspected the truth was never told, until years later. The difference between then and now could hardly be more glaring could it?

I think it right that Lloyd George's private life went unmentioned, but Churchill's stroke should have been public knowledge. But we need waste no time arguing about the old values. They've gone forever.

Politics, business and even your family life now operates under a new doctrine, which asserts that everything and everybody has discreditable secrets which ought to be exposed in the public interest.

'Kiss-and-tell girl'

This view destroys the last vestiges of privacy and the media usually gets the blame for it. But I'm not sure that's fair. I can't help noticing that the media is given a big helping hand.

Often newspapers and television programmes don't have to do anything except be there, because the story is handed to them on a plate. Many people no longer have the slightest regard for anybody's privacy, including their own.

In several recent scandals, reported in detail in the newspapers, it was obvious that the usual operation hadn't been mounted. The paparazzi weren't in the bushes peering through their telescopic lenses ready to take an embarrassing photograph. Sid Filth of the "Daily Beast" wasn't going through the dustbins and Glenda Snitch wasn't bribing the servants.

The newspapers were printing the story, but the juiciest bits were coming from the participants themselves. The newspapers were getting what they wanted, but they were being used.

Of course in those scandals the informants were amateurs, but using the newspapers to betray other people has become a profession.

No politician who's sober and has any brains at all is ever again going to assume that it's safe to speculate in front of an audience if he holds a position of authority

Some time ago I switched on television just as an attractive young lady was asked what her job was. "I'm a kiss-and-tell girl" she said eagerly. She explained that she hung around bars and clubs trying to pick up famous footballers or showbiz personalities. If her luck was in, she gave her all and then dashed off to a newspaper to supply it with the details.

Howard Flight has provided us with an enlightening example of what happens when one depends upon the values of the past and forgets what the modern world is like.

Last year Liam Fox, the Tory co-chairman, was taped secretly at a private meeting of the Bow Group. Another Tory MP Gerald Howarth was taped secretly at a dinner of the Freedom Association. Well aware that political waters are now infested with crocodiles and sharks, a Tory strategist warned Mr Flight to be careful when he addressed the "Conservative Way Forward" group.

Mr Flight wasn't careful enough. Why? Because in the back of all our minds we think we can relax with friends. We may even be thinking of Disraeli or Harold Macmillan. What we aren't thinking about are hidden microphones.

But Mr Flight was being taped surreptitiously and the tape was given to The Times. Labour ministers declared there was a secret Tory agenda and to show there wasn't Michael Howard denounced Mr Flight, removed him as deputy-chairman and took him off the candidates list.

This unpleasant episode will have long-term consequences. I said that "what we aren't thinking about are hidden microphones". Well we shall be thinking about them from now on. No politician who's sober and has any brains at all is ever again going to assume that it's safe to speculate in front of an audience if he holds a position of authority.

Changing habits

That may be no bad rule for all the rest of us. In a society where privacy isn't respected and not a hair is turned when gross violations of privacy go unpunished, indeed unremarked, it behoves sensible people to change their habits.

Talking with friends I must, over the years, many times have said half-jokingly "oh don't be paranoid". We've all said it haven't we? But if they really are friends I'm not sure that the proper advice isn't "please do be paranoid".

At least we ought to warn our friends and be warned by them, that we can't be sure that anything we say or do anywhere is really private. Perhaps the lack of privacy won't matter, or we can get used to it.

But there'll always be the nagging feeling that if we do slip up we shall be betrayed and nobody will care. For the moment there's no strong feeling in many quarters about privacy. But who knows? A love of privacy may come back into fashion when most people are sufficiently disenchanted by what we've got now.

Add your comments to this story using the form below:

Mr. Walden says that the media usually gets the blame for destroying the last vestiges of privacy but pleads "But I'm not sure that's fair. I can't help noticing that the media is given a big helping hand." It may well be given a helping hand by those seeking to make money or achieve some kind of notoriety from their disclosures, but how does that justify the media's publication of every last bit of lascivious / embarrassing / cringe-making detail? The media is predominantly responsible for this tittle-tattle culture from which we now suffer - and they do it with a single purpose in mind. It makes money. (Unfortunately, there seems to be an increasing public appetite for such dross, but that's another issue.)
Steve Pauline, Warrington, UK

I find it hard to believe that somebody working in the media can be so naive and defend the media as if they were innocent in the destruction of individual privacy. Kiss and Tell girls make a living because the media effectively has them on their payroll. In several recent scandals does it not occur that the person telling the story has to do so because the media have bribed them into giving them the 'Exclusive'? It's just like outing a major pop-star: either they tell the story as an exclusive, or the media outlet runs the story regardless and with their own twist.
David, UK

Politicians have long pushed to remove privacy from the rest of us, firstly with the blanket Echelon system, and now ID cards. So I find it really hard to care if they lose theirs, particularly as the major decisions they make affect us all so much.
Pat, London UK

Once again another perceptive,erudite and well constructed article by Mr. Walden. It is rare to come across journalism of such a high quality, both of thought and also technique and structure. A lesson in intelligent writing.
Wiggy, UK

Am I the only one who thinks there is too much privacy, not too little? Yes, people's private lives are one thing, whether they be politicians or 'normal' people. But if Howard Flight makes a public comment at a meeting open to the public, what is 'secret' about the taping? Politicans above all should be aware that in this day and age, there is no real 'off the record'. And that, surely, is a good thing. The worst news stories today are those that rely on "sources close to the minister" or those "speaking on condition of anonymity".
Steve, Bedford, UK

Mr. Walden adopts a somewhat nostalgic view of the relationship between the press and their prey, but speculates that maybe privacy doesn't matter to people nowadays. What would be interesting would be to try to establish if the lack of privacy in today's public life makes any difference to the type of people willing to take on such roles. If lack of privacy reduces the quality of such people then maybe a case can be made to restrict press freedom/intrusion, but this involves the kind of value judgements which often prevented people from making a contribution to public life in the 'good old days'.
Martyn Wiliams, United Kingdom

I stood in a queue at the supermarket recently and was horrified to notice the amount of tabloid rubbish that was available in the magazine rack. Is there no end to how many times a certain format can be dredged up? If the public didn't pay out so much money to read this junk, there would be no market for it. Whilst I consider the behaviour of the paparazzi to be a disgrace, the public appetite for this intrusion disgusts me. And it never seems to be important as to whether or not it is accurate reporting.
madeline, UK

The general public gorges itself on the business of other people whether they be fact or fiction. The most popular programmes on TV are soap operas where the dirty linen of fictitious characters are on display. Then we have the fly-on-the-wall programmes such as Big Brother. It's a similar mentality to going to a public execution, watching someone else's misfortune in the smug belief that it's not happening to us.
John, Hampshire, UK

I notice that the only people who seem to be able to avoid intrusion are newspaper proprietors and journalists. Lord Black held great political power in the UK through his ownership of the Telegraph group, yet not one of the rival papers investigated his business dealings. We know next to nothing of the lives of the people who seek to influence our voting at the next General Election through their writing in the papers and their interviewing in the media. One wonders why.
John, Nottingham, UK

What privacy will there be in the future, when blogging becomes an everyday feature of many more lives? At the moment, 4 out of 5 students living in my flat have blogs. Outside, I have stumbled across the blogs of other people I know, and many who live close by, but I don't know. Fortunately, most blogs are vain and full of whining and ranting, mostly about the bloggers themselves. Yet their friends do get mentioned, and so I would not be surprised if, in 20 years' time, every Briton has been mentioned in an least one or two blogs. Maybe not by name, but by their actions.
Robert Holbach, UK

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