From the archives: “The bugger’s bugle”
David Blackburn 6:52pm
Today marks 50 years since the release of Victim, a ground-breaking film about homosexuality that was granted an X-certificate. Writing in the latest issue of the Spectator (subscribers click here), John Coldstream explains the significance of this frank and truthful film and its contribution to the national debate about decriminalising homosexuality. It was made four years after the publication of Sir John Wolfenden’s report into ‘Homosexual Offences and Prostitution’, which recommended that homosexual acts between consenting adults in private should be decriminalised. This contentious reform was not secured until 1967. When Wolfenden’s views were first unveiled, the Spectator defied the prevailing consensus in Fleet Street by arguing that homosexuality should be decriminalised. This prompted the Daily Express to brand the Spectator as ‘The Bugger’s Bugle’. Here is that original leader column:
Sweeping the Street, The Spectator, September 6, 1957.
There are two ways of looking at sexual immorality. One is to regard all illicit intercourse as a crime; the other is to regard it as a sin but not as something which concerns the state unless it has obvious anti-social consequences. The first has been out of fashion since the seventeenth century, when adultery was still a capital offence, and in most civilised countries the second attitude now prevails. But in England for the last eighty years there has been one notable exception. Since the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 homosexual actions between consenting males have been criminal, even when they are performed in private. This measure – the Labouchère amendment – was passed late at night without discussion and, possibly, by mistake. There is no doubt that the Wolfenden Committee (with one dissentient) is right to propose its repeal.
Whatever feelings of revulsions homosexual actions may arouse, the law on this point is utterly irrational and illogical. It is impossible to argue that homosexual actions between consenting males are more anti-social than adultery, fornication, or homosexual actions between consenting females, none of which are crimes. Not only is the law unjust in conception, it is almost inevitably unjust in practice. Save in very exceptional circumstances a prosecution can only be brought on the evidence of one of the parties concerned, who is necessarily as guilty as the party who is prosecuted. Indeed, it was a particularly unfair prosecution of this sort which was largely responsible for the setting up of Wolfenden Committee, and it is pleasantly ironical that the actions of those concerned in that case should have led to recommendation that the law should be changed.
There will of course be considerable opposition to this long-overdue reform. Many people still believe like Albert the Great that homosexuality is as contagious as any disease, though why they should overestimate its attractions in this way is far from clear. The Wolfenden Committee has come to the conclusion that ‘homosexual behaviour is practised by a small minority of the population’ and that ‘the law itself probably makes little difference to the amount.’ But that will not deter our newspaper moralists. ‘No one is more ferocious,’ writes Professor Weihoven in The Urge to Punish, ‘in demanding that the murderer of the rapist pay for his crime than the man who has felt strong impulses in the same direction’. ‘Distrust,’ said Nietzsche, ‘all in whom the impulse to punish is strong.’ But however strongly they may agree with Nietzsche’s admirable advice, the present strong reforming team at the Home Office is unlikely to be able to bring in a Government Bill. The Act's removal from our statute book will probably have to be effected by an independent and courageous backbencher such as Sir Robert Boothby.
Organised vice of any sort must always be suppressed. And children and young people must be protected. But so far as adult individuals are concerned, the Government should remember that it is the guardian of public, but not private morality: and this admirably written and constructed report gives no excuse for forgetting it.
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Nicholas
September 2nd, 2011 9:19pm Report this commentThe "murderer of the rapists"? Should this not be the "murderer or the rapist"?
Frank P
September 2nd, 2011 9:26pm Report this comment"The Act's removal from our statute book will probably have to be effected by an independent and courageous backbencher such as Sir Robert Boothby."
Yerrrss!
Backbencher and boy-bugger. And switch-hitting on the PM's memsahib. Of course the Kray Twins were just flexing their muscles back in '57. They didn't start pimping for Boothby until much later, just before he started batting for them in Parliament when the net closed in on them.
That scented bubble you live in in Old Queens Street is rose tinted too, apparently. If you want to rely on your archives, pull some of the stuff about the meat rack in Piccadilly, circa 60s. The rent-boy run. Where the main predatory punters were famous BBC slebs and executives.
Children must be protected indeed.
Send them to church, perhaps? They'll be safe there. In particular the the RC Church.
Consenting adults in private (no more than two - btw) was the concession. And adult then meant 21 and over.
What was it that happened to Clause 28?
"Organised vice must always be suppressed." ??
Really? Fucking hypocrisy (literally), Mr Blackburn!
TrevorsDen
September 2nd, 2011 10:08pm Report this commentAnyone think FrankP is a bit obsessed? Seems to know a lot.
Austin Barry
September 3rd, 2011 12:18am Report this commentToday male pillow-biting and yelps of recondite pleasure are as mundane as boy-girl knee-tremblers against the wall of the Ealing Tesco.
The only meaningful comment on homosexuality I've heard is Sir Michael Gambon's deadpan comment that he had to give-up gayness because it ' made his eyes water'.
Frank P
September 3rd, 2011 1:37am Report this commentWhat's this "Anyone think?" crap TD? Not brave enough to accuse me of being queer on your ownio?
Twat!
The oldest ploy of sodomites known to man is to accuse anybody who disapproves of the insidious perversion of being queer himself. Or was it just a little too close to home for you and the phraseology made your eyes water?
Perhaps you'd like to point to any fallacious element in my above comment? And I forgot to point out that the paper that labelled the Speccie "The Bugger's Bugle" at the time was owned by Max Aitkin. Now it's owned by a porn baron. Progress in your eyes, perhaps?
Frank P
September 3rd, 2011 2:32am Report this commentA little light reading for Trev:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/09/tiberius_redux.html
I think Tiberius posts here, too, does he not?
Baron
September 3rd, 2011 9:09am Report this commentto decriminalized homosexual behavior is one thing, to bestow the status of a protected species on those who indulge in it is another.
TrevorsDen
September 3rd, 2011 9:45am Report this commentYou seem a bit obsessed Mr Frank P - obsessed in an anti way I would have thought. Certainly there seems nothing useful in your diatribes that might add to the sum of human knowledge.
For my part it seems sad that the artistic breakthrough that was 'Victim' should end in the gratuitous explicit homosexual sex peddled by the BBC (inevitably) and Russell T Davis in Torchwood.
a j scott
September 3rd, 2011 10:06am Report this comment"The Mask of Treachery" gives another slant of what other mindsets can get mixed up in simple homosexuality.
Fergus Pickering
September 3rd, 2011 10:13am Report this commentI think that all sex is sinful except that which is expressly for the procreation of children. But we are born to sin and I don't think it matters where you stick it given the original sin. Any takers?
wrinkled weasel
September 3rd, 2011 10:19am Report this commentVictim is a propaganda piece for Turnbull and Asser!
Nevermind the theme, "Victim" is a sublime time capsule of London and life in the early sixties. For those of us who just like watching the immaculate suits and hearing the clipped theatrical voices and London by night, it's a masterpiece. Wake up and smell the sea island cotton and ciggies.
Baron
September 3rd, 2011 10:32am Report this commentit's about the tenth posting, you want Baron out, you tell him, he'll oblige.
Baron rather enjoys Frank’s outbursts of honest speaking cutting to the chase better than the florid yapping of some others, in a language of the acceptable side of the contemporary street, too, it’s a different matter whether one agrees with him or not, here for inst. the blue blood barbarian’s view ain’t miles apart from Frank’s.
Frank P
September 3rd, 2011 11:57am Report this commentNo not 'obsessed' TD, just determinedly against the increasing facilitation of buggers to get the 'age of consent' lowered into the age where most young boys are vulnerable to the guile of determined sodomites. Sexual behaviour is part instinctive, but part nurtured - hence the cultural differences in sexual mores around the world. Never heard of grooming? And commenting on a piece posted by someone else is hardly obsessive, is it? If it is, then all who comment hereupon are 'obsessive' in your eyes.
You still didn't answer my question, or explain why your snide suggestion importuned the support of others. Craven douchebag!
As for 'knowing a lot' - another snide implication - well after investigating International Organized Crime for a major segment of my career and discovering that one of its main staple sources of revenue was (and still is) the exploitation of predatory commercial sex with all its possibilities, I did get to know quite a lot about it as an objective investigator. One of the things I learned during that period was that blackmailing of homosexuals was a very rare crime, much exaggerated by the 'gay'community in their efforts to get their proclivity legalised. The original legislation that changed the law was the thin end of the wedge (pardon the expression) as many at the time averred that it would be. The game goes on; I shall continue in my implacable opposition to further useful additions of the Bugger's Charter, regardless of your petty efforts and innuendo.
M. Rowley
September 3rd, 2011 11:58am Report this commentIt's a sad reflection that the film's appeal for tolerance towards homosexuality has been subverted into where we are today, with anything other than outright celebration and approval of gay sex being considered 'homophobic'.
Nicholas
September 3rd, 2011 11:59am Report this comment@wrinkled weasel.
There are quite a few old British films that do this, with extended 'documentary' shots of 'Cleese's London' (©) ancillary to the plot. I always get mixed feelings though, fondly remembering some of it but also reminded of the darker, drab and depressing aspects of life at that time. The realities of the smog and coal smoke blackened buildings, dirty macs, omnipresent BO in the typing pools and incredibly cold and uncomfortable cars are hard to convey to younger people who never experienced them. And the kitchens, my goodness, the kitchens.
Publius
September 3rd, 2011 12:34pm Report this comment@Frank P
I am told that 'buggery' is popular among heterosexuals.
Still and however, I must say I find these nineteenth century pseudo-clinical terms of hetero- and homo-sexual rather silly.
John Richardson
September 3rd, 2011 1:26pm Report this commentAustin Barry.
Thank goodness you are wrong, or perhaps more acuratly; you are not telling the truth.
When human sexual perversion does not matter; then nothing matters.
wrinkled weasel
September 3rd, 2011 2:06pm Report this commentNicholas, it all comes flooding back.
In those days you could always flee to the welcoming warmth of a London Taxi, and the most you got from the driver was "certainly, sir".
I went into Harrods once to buy a hanky. This was a kind of statement of intention; i.e, that I may be only 14 but I knew where the sartorially astute bought their hankies and I wanted to be like them. Whilst I was in there, being grovelled to over the purchase of a hanky, Duncan Sandys walked in and got exactly the same treatment as me. The great man smiled at me and exuded gentle charm.
I felt all was well with the world. When I eventually bought my first Jermyn Street shirt, measured up as a youth by a very attentive gentleman, one sort of felt that everyone, including the very attentive gentleman, was having a nice day.
Baron
September 3rd, 2011 3:57pm Report this commentBaron rather enjoys Frank’s outbursts of honest speaking cutting to the chase better than the florid yapping of some others, in a language of the acceptable side of the contemporary street, too, it’s a different matter whether one agrees with him or not, of course.
4th
3rd
Frank P
September 4th, 2011 4:58pm Report this commentPublius,
Nothing 'heterosexual' about invading the arse of another human (or animal) - whether male or female. Comes under the heading of debauchery, as well as buggery, in my lexicon. Seems that 'metrosexual' might cover it, though I'm not sure what they means or includes. Dirty bastards! Incidentally - who 'told you' Publius and why did he/she think it would be of interest to you?
Publius
September 5th, 2011 10:33am Report this comment@Frank P
"who 'told you' Publius and why did he/she think it would be of interest to you?"
Presumably this is wit on your part.
Frank P
September 5th, 2011 11:33pm Report this commentM'Lord, let the record show that Mr Publius declined to answer the question.
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