29.11.2001

Media monster

There is nothing the media - and official society - likes better than scandals purporting to involve child sex abuse or so-called paedophilia.

It provides a perfect opportunity to whip up all manner of bigotry and, naturally, reactionary moralists can have a field day targeting their favourite enemies - the ?promiscuous 60s?, drugs, single mothers, feminism, gays and lesbians (ie, ?perverts?), political correctness, video nasties, rock music, bearded lefties, etc. Then, of course, come along all the ?solutions? - bring back the birch/hanging, national service, more ?family values?, make divorce harder, greater role for the church/mosque/synagogue/temple, and so on and depressingly on.

Watching the media - especially the tabloid end of the market - in full swing is always a sickening sight. A near total war is declared on rational debate - instead we get hysteria upon voyeuristic hysteria (after all, you have to sell your papers, don?t you?). Gruesomely, the word paedophilia is stretched and mangled to cover just about everything from the horrific rape of a young child of four to the clearly consenting sexual activity of a young adult of 14 or 15 years of age.

Here of course we come across the reactionary agenda promulgated by those who hanker for the ?authoritarian society? which so fires the soul of Daily Mail leader writers - that is, to tightly regulate, police and circumscribe sexual relations and behaviour. Sexual repression equals docile citizens, or so the theory seems to go. Large sections of official society still seem terrified to admit that young adults - who, yes, are under the age of 16 - can quite willingly consent to sexual intercourse (oral, anal or otherwise) with an older adult without being the victim of manipulation and abuse. Any transgressors of this sexual-ethical code are liable to public immolation.

To some extent or another, this seems to have been the fate which has befallen Jonathan King, the multi-millionaire pop impresario, who last week was transformed into the current public enemy number one - a sort of missing link between Osama bin Laden and Gary Glitter. In other words, heaven-made tabloid fodder. The demonisation of the former pop star (real name: Kenneth George King) was exemplified by the ?Evil lust of pop beast King? headline which appeared last week in The Sun.

Yes, by all accounts, King is guilty of being an unbearably arrogant, ruthless, unsavoury, possibly dysfunctional individual - and a vulgar Tory to boot (such is bourgeois society and its warped values, you could say). But seven years in prison on five counts of ?sexual assault?? To have his name placed indefinitely on the sex offenders? register?

The real question we need to confront is - is King ?a monster, or simply being monstered?, as Charles Shaar Murray in The Independent posed it, feeling uneasy about ?the full weight of orchestrated odium against King? (November 23). Carol Sarler of The Observer was even harsher: ?Guilty, yes, but does the sentence spring more from paedophile hysteria, homophobia and the venality of the ?victims? than from the law?? (November 25). Communists would add - yes, we also have a problem with the law as well, especially the irrational age-of-consent laws.

Of course, some of the anti-King animus is generated by a delight in watching the mighty fall, especially one so widely - and quite understandably - disliked. Always the supreme egotist and narcissist, in 1965 - at the early age of 21 and while still an undergraduate at Cambridge - King had a top ten hit with ?Everyone?s gone to the moon?. It sold 4.5 million copies. The follow-up single, ?It?s good news week?, a satire on the music of Bob Dylan, did equally as well. So rich, so young.

King also discovered (or at least claimed to) and promoted mega-groups like Genesis, 10cc and the Bay City Rollers, which obviously made him a bob or two. He was also responsible for - excruciating - best-selling songs like ?Una Paloma Blanca?, ?Lick a smurf for Christmas?, etc. In total, all the songs written, arranged and produced by him sold more than 40 million copies. If all that was not enough, he ran Decca Records and UK Records, produced the wildly successful The Rocky Horror show, and was the presenter of the (inexplicably) popular TV shows, Entertainment USA and No limits.

And King was still influencing the charts up to this year, when his pastiche of West Indian carnival music, ?Who let the dogs out??, became a big hit for the Baha Men. As King said, ?Some of them are rubbish. But they make people happy and make me money.? While we may disagree with the ?some? bit, it cannot be denied that he had a point.

So, you could say that King is the perfect embodiment of capitalist society and its profit-driven values and morals. We should not forget either his political activities. Between 1978 and 1979 he unsuccessfully stood as a parliamentary candidate for the Royalist Party in Epsom, Ewell and Richmond.

While building up his pop-entertainment-media empire, it now transpires that King had been busily conducting between 1969 and 1989 ?market research? with up to 20,000 young adults. It is claimed that part of this ?research? involved the ?sexual assault? of 27 ?boys? - ie, young men mainly between the ages of 14-16. The ?boys? said they were ?subjected? to touching, masturbation, oral sex, and, in a few instances, buggery, after King quizzed them about their sex lives - which often involved sexually arousing them by showing them photographs of a naked woman holding a sign reading, ?Let?s do it?. King also promised to ?procure? women for the young men. To many this was not an unattractive proposal. So they came back - and back, sometimes five or six times. Yes, not the most wholesome or ideal of human behaviour. But assault or rape?

The actual case against him began with an enquiry last year that did not concern King at all. Yet in the process two men claimed that King had committed acts of indecency as long ago as 1969 and 1971. In the end the Crown Prosecution Service would not bring these claims to court in any form. Nevertheless, King was arrested and someone - who? - leaked the fact of his arrest to the press. At this point, King?s longstanding friend and veteran media commentator/analyst, Roy Greenslade, ventures the opinion that the police were on a ?trawling? expedition - and, lo and behold, a hefty bunch of ?complaints? duly materialised. Some were demonstrably false and slaughtered on the spot. Sixteen eventually went to court and most stumbled there - the complainants were discovered to have been, for instance, not only willing sexual partners but actually over the legal age of consent.

So what was all that about?

Most of the youths, now in their 30s of course, will retain their anonymity but still pocket around ?10,000 each for their story. And the fiscal incentive does not stop there - they will also now be in line for a not insubstantial sum from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority. The individual sums involved are based on a tariff, a shopping list if you like, which the CICA makes public to any who ask - so much for a broken arm, so much for a single act of penetrative sex, so much for a multiple sequence, etc.

The case against King seems based on essentially uncorroborated acts of two or more decades ago - what witnesses? What DNA? What forensics? What records?

King - for all his seediness and venality - was not in a position of bureaucratic-state authority. This is not a children?s home or the boy scouts. King was not in authority, care or charge of any of the young adults he approached. One of them gave evidence to the effect that he had not greatly enjoyed the sex (hardly a novel human experience), but that King gave him ?40 - about two weeks? wages then - and he had gone back the following week for more. Surely, as Sarler writes, ?In the real world that?s called trade. Consensual, low-rent trade? (The Observer November 25).

Once again, what is described above is hardly a model of how communists think sexual relations should be conducted in our society of the future - or even in the here and now. Yet is it not perverse to let the state criminalise such freely entered into transactions? It is not as if we do not live in a society where the cash nexus is king of all it surveys.

Another case collapsed when the alleged victim, now aged 39, said he had been 16, not 15, when he had sexual contact with King and did not object at the time: ?I knew what was going to happen - call it consent,? he said. Though this in no way diminishes the genuine distress the man obviously feels now, it does not follow therefore that King should be imprisoned (predatory and opportunist though he appears to have been).

Another alleged victim, known as R, gave a graphic description of the disaster that his life had become ?post-King? - a rotten, miserable mess of drugs, alcohol and crime, all, apparently, due to Jonathan King. Maybe true, maybe not. However, Mr R, by all accounts, has for several years been unsuccessfully hawking his story around Fleet Street looking for a buyer. Only now, with the conviction of King, has his misery taken on fiscal value. The guy seems to have a very cool head for one so traumatised. Things are not necessarily what they seem - irrespective of the salivating stories the tabloids try to feed us.

Whatever the truth of the King story, it is truly incredible that the judge presiding over the case, David Paget, while sentencing King, actually told him: ?It may well be that your time in prison will not be easy.? Paget seems to be actively inviting the brutalisation of King while inside Belmarsh prison.

Inevitably, and crucially, this whole sordid episode, raises the question of what attitude communists and socialists should take to the legal of age of consent - which in the UK currently stands at 16 for straights and 18 for gays. In France the legal age of consent for homosexual male sex is 15, in Italy and Portugal it is 14, while in Spain and the Netherlands it is 12. In those countries King?s acts may well have been perfectly legal.

Communists call for the abolition of the age of consent - alternative legislation is needed which does not stigmatise and criminalise consenting sexual activity. Additionally, we fight for the humane and civilised treatment of prisoners - sex offenders included.

Danny Hammill