‘It’s a witch-hunt,’ said my friend Tony, referring to the Windsor-Giuffre saga.
‘No,’ I said, adopting my academic stance. ‘It’s what we sociologists call a symbolic crusade fuelled by moral entrepreneurs. It’s what happens when a group wishes to change things for what they see as better, and often use an event as a pretext, masking their real intent.’
‘You mean like prohibition,’ he said.
‘Exactly. The subtext there was to protect white women from the passions of the black population when inflamed by drink. It was the same in Canada when a magistrate used the magazine Maclean’s to whip up an anti-drug campaign. All very well in principle, but what she really believed was that the Chinese population’s sole ambition in life was to degrade young white women and eventually take over the white race — the “Yellow Peril”.
More from Morton
‘As a result, gangsters made a great deal of money. And,’ I continued, ‘it wasn’t the first example. At the end of the 19th century, there was a campaign to protect children, which resulted in the Incest Act. Now, there was no actual need for anything more than a tweaking of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885. The subtext was the reform and cleaning up of the working classes. You could even argue it was their subjugation; that is, if you take a Marxist approach.’
‘I suppose you could say the outcry after Dunblane was an example,’ he said. ‘Get rid of guns when all you needed was better control.’
‘And then there was the Lawrence inquiry,’ I continued. ‘You could argue that this was, to an extent, hijacked by interests with a view to weakening the Metropolitan Police. As I say, this is another.’
‘What is the purpose of all this?’ he queried.
‘The ultimate aim is the destruction of the monarchy or even Trump.’
‘Isn’t that a bit far-fetched?’
‘I’m only saying it is an argument. What on earth is the purpose of getting Andrew Windsor to the States to give evidence unless it is an anti-Trump move?’
‘Or’, he warmed to the theme, ‘it could be to take our minds off the budget.’
James Morton is a writer and former criminal defence solicitor
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