It's always been a source of embarrassment and perplexity to me that some of my favourite childhood cultural items betoken a degree of racism and sexism on behalf of their protagonists and creators. John Buchan's Portuguese Jews, if not actually waiting to biff Richard Hannay over the head, were certainly lurking in the background pulling the levers of finance; then there was Guy Gibson's dog in The Dambusters, awkwardly named for a remake, you might think; and reading The N-word of the Narcissus by Joseph Conrad on the bus down to Notting Hill required a certain amount of discretion, if not the actual brown paper cover. Girls knew their place (although they were certainly sometimes "spirited") and Johnny Foreigner was always untrustworthy, unless he happened to be a loyal servant, perhaps in Kipling or John Masters.
("Loved by all", reads an inscription to a dead officer in the chapel at Sandhurst; underneath continuing, apparently without irony, "Killed by his servant").
As I have written many times here, people did things differently then. Attitudes were different. People behaved differently. Some of this phenomenon is visible in the multiple trials of celebs which are giving the courts something to do in these relatively crime-free times. To be clear, Jimmy Savile, Stuart Hall and some of the other 70s behemoths did things which would be inexcusable in Britain at any time in the last five hundred years; but we are also guilty now of judging past behaviour by current standards.
One of the women giving evidence against Dave Lee Travis said that when he came up behind her as she was on air and put his hands over her breasts, she did not at the time think of it as a sexual assault. At the time. Again and again we hear the words "The BBC did nothing about it". Those two things are connected. One of the reasons for pusillanimous management at the Corporation might just have been that, like the complainant, they did not at the time think that the type of behaviour she alleges (and which Travis denies) constituted a sexual assault. The entire culture of the 60s and 70s was predicated on the free-sex-let-it-all-hang-out premise which in practice merely resulted in a lot of women getting their bottoms felt. But no-one would have described being goosed in a lift a sexual assault. Not then. It was merely bad manners, and someone who did it was a nuisance or a boor.
We imagine in our smugness that future generations won't look at our conduct and point the accusing finger. But the values which look permanent to us are about as stable as a chocolate fireguard. They will shift again, and we will look as stupid and outdated as colonials urging one another to "play the white man".
What has any of this got to do with the Chris Rennard affair? Maybe not much. The conduct Lord Rennard is accused of is quite recent and is, so far as I can work out, much less serious than the awful things Jimmy Savile - probably - did. So Lord Rennard is supposed to have given the impression that a little bit of slap and tickle would lead to party advancement? Who could possibly have thought that a man in a position of power would do that? And thank goodness that women have always resisted the temptation to flutter eyelashes or to don high heels at a job interview.
I feel sorry for Chris Rennard for two reasons. One is that a substantial part of the vitality in this news story comes from the fact that Rennard is physically unattractive. He looks fat, complacent and venal. If he had occupied the corpus of Colin Firth I wonder whether we'd be hearing as much about him.
The second reason is that he has been subject to just about the most incompetent public witch trial by the Lib Dems it is possible to imagine. That Alastair Webster QC should have concluded that Rennard was not guilty beyond reasonable doubt, but then added the rider that the allegations were "broadly credible" defies belief.
The Lib Dems deserve every iota of contempt that is coming their way at present.
As for Nick Clegg's bizarre assertion that a man found not guilty under his own party's internal procedures should nevertheless apologise, this proves Clegg's unfitness to run so much as a petrol station, let alone the office of Deputy Prime Minister. Incidentally my sources tell me that Rennard is not the only senior member of the Lib Dem hierarchy who has the reputation of being a serial groper and adulterer. There is a whiff of hypocrisy here as well as incompetence.
Rennard may or may not be a loathsome creep. I don't know, and neither probably do you. But in fifty years I'm pretty sure observers will look back at our sex-obsessed society, where hardcore porn is available to all at the touch of a button, and marvel that although we turn a blind eye to teenage boys surfing for lesbian action on the net, touching someone's bottom will get you sent straight to prison.
