All ages are gullible – including our own

In the great days of the Daily Telegraph’s Peter Simple column, when I was a youth, that acid but hilarious satire on contemporary Britain had a cast of imaginary characters of whom one of my favourites was the Very Reverend Dr Spacely-Trellis, the ‘go-ahead Bishop of Bevindon’. Spacely-Trellis was a ‘modern’ Anglican of the sort disposed to question the Virgin Birth, the divinity of Christ, and quite possibly the existence of a deity. Most of those interludes featuring the left-of-centre bishop ended with him in the pulpit and in full cry about the evils of the hour, concluding ‘We are all guilty!’ as his despairing flock dived for the nearest door or window.

This week we look back in horror at the incompetence of the Metropolitan Police’s handling of the ‘top people’s paedophile ring’ affair which dominated the news some five years ago. And I’m loth to defend either the Met or the Bishop of Bevindon. But I do have to remark that we’re all guilty. If the police were obviously stupid (and I think they were), then so was much of the news media, many politicians and commentators, and many ordinary citizens too.

Much of the nation was prey to the kind of moral panic that abandons all common  sense and throws healthy scepticism to the winds. So were the news media, who for the most part broadcast or published the crazy fantasies of sick minds as straight reports of claims seriously made by serious people. There was a widespread belief that such stories might be true.

Let me remind you of just a few. You’ll remember that the late Leon Brittan, a former home secretary of unimpeachable integrity, was among the innocent people accused by the now disgraced and convicted liar Carl Beech, code-named ‘Nick’; as was the blameless Field Marshal Lord Bramall.