PORNOGRAPHIC MATERIAL (Hansard, 2 July 1965)

§ Mr. Geoffrey Rhodes (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, East)
I wish to raise this afternoon the question of obscene, offensive and pornographic books, magazines, films and photographs which is spreading throughout the country. I want to refer, first, to the situation in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, part of which I have the honour to represent, and to raise three points.
First, constituents of mine have been sent through the post, unsolicited, a booklet called "Folio" containing pictures of naked females in which the booklet itself calls "highly provocative, all revealing" positions.

§ The Attorney-General (Sir Elwyn Jones)
If my hon. Friend will allow me to interpose, this document is now sub judice and will be the subject of proceedings in a London court in the very near future.

§ Mr. Speaker
I am grateful to the Attorney-General. In the circumstances, we cannot refer to it.

§ Mr. Rhodes
That information is a recent development and I am glad that my efforts in relation to this magazine seem to have borne fruit.

§ The Attorney-General
I hope that my hon. Friend will not consider my intervention 1082 discourteous. I apologise for not having told him before, but I received the information only about 10 minutes ago.

§ Mr. Speaker
The Chair at least is grateful to the Attorney-General, otherwise the Chair would have remained in ignorance.

§ Mr. Rhodes
The second matter which I wish to raise in relation to the City of Newcastle is a quayside stall which is open every Sunday morning and at which booklets of nudes and stories of promiscuity, perversions and sadism are being sold. The stall is manned by boys who are approximately 11 and 12 years old. I have sent to my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General photographs of boys performing this task. I have observed it going on and I submit that the employment of children in this way is an offence quite apart from the distribution of obscene material. I have further evidence that the parents of these boys were quite unaware how they were earning their 2s. pieces on Sunday mornings.
A Mr. Matthew Heslop, who runs a joke shop in West Street, Gateshead, has written to me, without any accusation on my part, to confess that he is the owner of the stall. He is reported in the Newcastle Evening Chronicle of Wednesday night as offering to help in this matter. The only offer which he has made so far has been to name the wholesaler who supplies the material because, he says, he is to blame. The best way that he and other booksellers in the city can help to co-operate in this matter is to withdraw the obscene literature from their stalls and, particularly in this case, to stop using small boys in the distribution of this material.
I want also to make a third complaint that approximately one-half of the booksellers and newsagents in the centre of the City of Newcastle, as I know from personal observation, are selling 1s. 6d. and 1s. 9d. magazines, the front covers of which suggest that they contain war stories. I have observed boys buying these books, and local teachers assume that they are circulating in schools in the city. But what do these apparent war story books actually contain? Quite apart from a liberal sprinkling in the centre of photographs of nudes, they contain 1083 stories detailing various types of perversion and sex sadism.
One of the books—my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General has a copy of the magazine—contains a photograph of a tiny girl whose arm was severed by a sexually-sadistic father. There is a picture of a woman lying on a hospital bed who had been literally lashed to pieces by a sadist. All this is being sold in the form of boys' magazines. I suggest that it is having a corrupting influence on children under the school-leaving age and I would certainly hope that some action will be taken in regard to it.
This kind of thing going on in that city is, I suggest, making the city centre a cesspool of slum literature, and the health of the city would be much better if the local police cleared this filth out. It seems to me an extraordinary thing that the city council, quite rightly, is spending an enormous sum of money to clear the slum houses out of the centre of the city and make the place a more attractive city to live in when, at the same time, there is such an inroad into that city of slum literature designed to create slum minds. I would ask the Attorney-General, who, I understand, is to reply to the debate, whether the provisions of the Children and Young Persons' (Harmful Publications) Act might meet the point.
When I raised this complaint in the City of Newcastle I was assured by some people who obviously knew more about this kind of thing than I do that really, though my complaints might be valid, the city was relatively clean compared with parts of London, and, in particular, Soho. I had never been to that district of this great City, but I spent two mornings touring round Shaftesbury Avenue, Greek Street, Gerrard Street and Moor Street in that area, and I readily admit that the situation there is infinitely worse than the situation I have just been describing, and I would be anxious to stop what is happening there from ever happening in the city part of which I have the privilege to represent.
In Soho, mixed up amongst the strip clubs, are these shops which do not ever have the names of the proprietors on the outside but which are usually content merely with a placard or notice, "Books 1084 and magazines" on the outside. There must be very great profits in this trade, because these are expensive sites, and they are pouring out a mass of pornographic films, photographs and books. Most of the stuff being sold is sheer pornography. I have, for example, seen on the shelves of some of these shops pictures of women laid out displaying their sex organs in a provocative manner. I can only say that the police of that area must know what is going on. In one shop I visited I was told that there were more interesting photographs to be purchased behind the counter, photographs, for example, of couples indulging in unusual forms of sexual intercourse. In one shop I was actually invited to meet some of the girls who had co-operated in making those photographs.
I am not, for two reasons, so much concerned with what is going on in that area. First, it is not part of my responsibility, it is not part of my constituency; and secondly, in any case, the prices of the products being sold, I would imagine, put them beyond the pockets of the relatively young. The shops, certainly from my observation, have an adult clientele. But I would make the point that it might be a good thing if the Attorney-General or the Home Secretary, to whom I have written about this, were to visit these disgraceful places, and I would invite them to do so, and I ask the question why is it that the Metropolitan Police do not act? I should have thought that they could act under Sections 2 and 3 of the Obscene Publications Act, 1959. Certainly, I believe that what is going on there does not bring any great credit to this city.
By way of making more general comments, having dealt with a particular example—there are many others I could raise if I had the time—I want to make the observation that this flood of obscene literature began to grow probably at the end of 1960, partly because of the relaxation of the policy of price restriction on the importation of printed matter from overseas, particularly from across the Atlantic, which made it possible for this literature to be sent here relatively cheaply.
A great proportion of these books and magazines come from the United States and Canada and some from France. I think that some are brought as ballast in 1085 ships and I believe, from the information I have available, that millions of the books are being imported every year. I pose the question whether or not the Customs authorities might act in this respect, perhaps under Section 42 of the Customs Consolidation Act, 1876, or under the Customs and Excise Act, 1952. I understand from American Embassy officials that a number of the magazines imported have been banned as unsuitable for sale in certain States of the Union.
There is widespread support for the kind of protest I am making. I have received 125 letters—more than I have received on any other subject—principally from headmasters, teachers and parents who object to the growth and distribution of literature of this kind. I want to avoid any misconception. I do not approach this problem in the manner of a Victorian prude. I believe that I am a relatively modern parent. I believe in the free and general natural discussion of sex matters with my wife, my children and my friends. I do not object to the general liberalisation of discussion of these matters.
But I am concerned about the commercial prostitution of sex in the name of liberty. There is far too much filth attached to the shirt tails of freedom. Many crimes have been committed in the name of liberty. I believe that our children should be free from contamination in school or in shops by the kind of presentation of sex as something sordid and dirty and sadistic.
The overwhelming majority of parents try to bring up their children with a view of sex as something decent, natural and one of humanity's greatest gifts. The commercial "sharks" who are selling the kind of literature I have described are selling sex as something unpleasant, perverted and natsy. It is in the interests of parents and children that I believe I am justified in initiating this debate.

§ The Attorney-General (Sir Elwyn Jones)
My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, East (Mr. Rhodes) began his speech by referring to particular examples in the trade in pornography to which he drew the attention of the House. He has given some information about the participation of young children in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in this trade which I can only describe as alarming 1086 in character, but I must immediately tell him that these are matters for investigation by the local police and I hope that he will alert them immediately, if he has not already done so, when he has information about infringements of the criminal law.
I emphasise this in order to remind the House that neither the Director of Public Prosecutions nor I as Attorney-General nor the Home Secretary himself have the means of investigating these matters. Complaints of the purveying of pornography should be addressed to the police, who are ready and willing to investigate them. Obviously, I cannot discuss any individual case, as my hon. Friend will appreciate, but in regard to literature which has been on sale in Newcastle—some examples of which he has been good enough to send to me—I can say that forfeiture orders on some of these publications have been made by courts in different parts of the country. Others of these magazines have been seized and placed before the courts, but forfeiture orders have been refused. One of the difficulties in dealing with this matter is that judgment with regard to it varies from court to court, and year to year.
I have said that public vigilance is essential in regard to these matters, but the House may be interested to know that complaints actually made by members of the public about this business are remarkably few and far between. This year in the metropolitan area only five complaints have been made to the police by private individuals.

§ Mr. Rhodes
Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that one possible reason for this is that if a complaint is lodged with the police by an individual and when the matter goes to court the case against the people concerned is unsuccessful, a counter-charge of libel and slander can be brought against the person making the complaint?

§ The Attorney-General
I doubt whether there could be any prospect of success for such proceedings in libel and slander. I do not want to give advice on any particular case, but I should have thought that that anxiety was unwarranted, and that people could be assured that if any member of the public becomes aware of the purveying of obscenity complaint should be made to 1087 the police. I am quite sure that it could be made with safety.
There is one point that I should make to my hon. Friend. It may be that there has been a change in the climate of public opinion about this matter. Nevertheless, he has told the House that he has received over a hundred letters from members of the public since he started ventilating this matter, so public concern obviously exists at what is going on.
He asked me in particular about the tide of pornographic literature which comes into this country from the United States and Canada. He is right in saying that some of it has been banned in the United States. As he said, the theme of these American paperbacks is almost always the same—a combination of sadism and sex. The writing is trash. Offensive pictures add to the sale value or saleability of the magazines.
My hon. Friend has explained how the flood started, after 1961, when restrictions on the importation were relaxed as a result of the greater availability of dollars and a change in the regulations about importation, but I can assure him that already the Customs authorities have been doing a great deal, and have produced some very remarkable results. Between 1961 and 1963 the Customs authorities and the police between them seized 1,863,000 obscene novels which had been imported. The House will see that pornography has become very big business. Hundreds of thousands of obscene magazines were also seized during that period. In 1964, no fewer than 401,000 obscene paperback novels were seized, together with 579,000 magazines of a similar character. In this year, to date, there has been the seizure of 107,000 dirty novels and 555,000 magazines.
That gives a picture of the extent of the success of intervening in this trade and preventing a distribution which would enable each child in this country between the ages of 12 and 14 to have a copy of this muck. The action of the Customs authorities is vigorous and the police are doing what they can.
Of course, it is a very difficult problem to tackle. The paperbacks are imported in large cartons described on the invoice simply as "paperback novels" with no 1088 list of titles and no further description. In spite of the difficulties, this success has been achieved and there is reason to think that the battle against this wave of pornography is, at any rate, not being lost. The position has been improved because of the passing, in 1964, of the Obscene Publications Act. That Act made it easier to prosecute the purveyors of this filth. Now, the possession of an obscene article or publication for gain is an offence. That has greatly strengthened the armoury of the law and it may account for the evidence of a diminution in this importation. The risks of forfeiture are now greatly increased.
Prosecutions have been brought under the 1964 Act. Since it was introduced, there have been four prosecutions for possessing obscene material for gain in which the accused were convicted. Three other cases under this Act are now pending. I will say at once that purveyors in this trade are, if I may use an expression which is not wholly Parliamentary—"fly customers". They keep only a limited supply of these obscene publications in stock. Therefore, they are not excessively worried by its forfeiture. We may have to see whether the armoury of the law needs strengthening and we are watching the position with care.
On the subject of publication of obscene material within this country, the most widely produced pornography is in the form of "pin-up" magazines of the type which my hon. Friend has described, of women in underclothes and naked in provocative and often obviously obscene attitudes. Some idea of the extent of this business can be gauged from the fact that in one seizure recently the police seized over 8 tons of such magazines. I assure my hon. Friend that, within the limits of manpower in which the police now have to operate, they are doing what they can. But one of the difficulties is that the printers and publishers of this muck are changing every day and they are fly-by-night customers. The police efforts, therefore, are facing great difficulties.
I assure my hon. Friend that the authorities are doing their utmost to restrict and, such as they can, to quell this big business in pornography.