UNITED KINGDOM
The Spectator
Rod Liddle 12 July 2014
I suppose we must accustom ourselves to the fact that some 30 years ago Britain was in the grip of a terrible paedo–geddon — even if, at the time, we did not quite know it. More shockingly still, it was not simply light entertainers who were fiddling about up and down the country, with their cunningly coded messages to children about having an ‘extra leg’ and sinister injunctions to restrain kangaroos. It was, it seems, everyone. The Home Office has announced an enormous inquiry into the whole business, covering a considerable number of major institutions — the government, the BBC, the Church of England and so on.
Some large organisations are missing from the current remit of this inquiry (which will, of course, be headed by an expensive QC): the AA, for example, and the Methodists. But there will surely be room for a separate investigation dealing with them and others like them. No stone will be left unturned, so long as it was a stone put there at least 30 years ago and the person hiding beneath it is either dead or as near dead as makes no practical difference.
This, so far, accords with a great British tradition — our much-cherished 30-year rule. If anything really scandalous occurs involving members of the establishment, we will only discover the truth three decades or so later, no matter how many inquiries are held in the interim. This was true of the Hillsborough tragedy and Bloody Sunday; it seems to me highly likely that in 2033 it will suddenly be revealed that Tony Blair misled the House of Commons and the public over the invasion of Iraq and the police will be seen carrying black plastic bags out of the retirement homes and hospices inhabited by former members of his cabinet, if black plastic bags have not been made illegal by then.
It is always 30 years because by then the people responsible have been well removed from even the most trivial levers of power, or have died. If the US were Britain, then round about now Woodward and Bernstein would be revealing to a shocked nation the true story of the Watergate break-in.
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