CULTURE OF SECRECY

It would be understandable if the public developed a deep cynicism over the
events leading up to the unveiling on Friday of Jack and William Straw as
"the mystery cabinet minister and son". Under normal circumstances this
would have been a relatively minor story about the foolish behaviour of a
youth whose father happened to be a prominent figure. But thanks to a
blundering judiciary and a muddled attitude towards freedom of the press
and the public's right to know, it smacked of an old-fashioned cover-up.
Just as bad, it opened up a divide in the country between the knows and the
don't knows.

The French, whose elite have finessed the art of excluding large chunks of
the population from important information while freely exchanging it among
themselves, had the cheek to accuse the British of hypocrisy. Though it is
painful to admit when it comes from such a source, they had a point. There
was a smell of hypocrisy about how the media and Westminster knew the
identity of the Straws while the rest of the country did not. It was as if
time had stood still since the Profumo affair when only the chattering
classes were originally in the know. Britain's deep culture of secrecy,
which has so damaged the country's faith in its institutions, has been out
in force parading its self-righteous fatuity these past two weeks.

John Morris, the attorney-general, has done himself no good by being a
legal stickler. Perhaps he was, as he protests, merely trying to protect
the identity of a young man who could face criminal charges and he would
have done the same for a prominent Tory politician. It was unfortunate that
the home secretary was a cabinet colleague and an old friend. Mr Morris
certainly took his responsibilities seriously, battling to the last to
suppress the identity of the Straws even when millions knew the name.

Nor was that all. Before seeking an injunction to prevent The Sun
publishing the minister's name, the Treasury solicitor issued heavy-handed
warnings to newspapers threatening all sorts of punishments if they dared
to flout the law - that is to say, the law officers' interpretation of it.
The High Court then extended the remit of the 1981 Contempt of Court Act,
which had been brought in to liberate the press after the gagging of this
newspaper over the thalidomide scandal. By deciding in favour of the
government in its initial judgment, the court added yet another restriction
on press freedom - already threatened by a back-door privacy law.

Matters could have rested there, pending an appeal, had the Keystone Cops
not made a surprise entrance by arresting the reporter from The Mirror who
is alleged to have enticed the minister's son to supply cannabis. To
outsiders it looked as if there was one law for the lawmakers and another
for the rest of us. Mr Straw seemed an innocent in this comedy of errors, a
man who had acted with parental responsibility by taking his son to a
police station and was prepared to disclose his identity. Thanks to the
Scottish and French press, the auld alliance, his anonymous anguish was
short-lived. Others have not escaped so lightly. The eager Mr Morris has
been made to look ineffectual. As the home secretary rightly says, if his
son can marry and fight for his country, he should not be protected from
publicity just because his father is famous. We would expect no less given
Mr Straw's enthusiasm to "name and shame" young people who break the law.
Fortunately, common sense prevailed in the end and the operation of the law
has been saved from a state of perpetual farce. It was a fortuitous escape.
Only the collapse of flimsy legal arguments, imploding under their own
contradictions, made it possible.

What has happened to Downing Street's antennae? Once the foreign media
started reporting Mr Straw's name and it hit the Internet, it was just a
matter of time before the Scottish press would legitimately publish it.
There was as much chance of withholding it from the English public as there
was of hushing up Edward VIII's affair with Wallis Simpson after the Bishop
of Bradford had alluded to it. Will the Establishment never learn that
honesty is invariably the best policy in a tight spot? Further
embarrassment has been spared only because a sensible High Court judge
realised that yet more suppression was hopeless and a baffled public was
let into the secret. What should have been a minor story has been
transformed into a headline grabber dominating the entire media, the home
secretary has been deflected from his duties and the law on which we all
depend for our liberties has been made to look an idiot.

There are two conclusions. The first is that the new Labour government is
as eager as any old Labour or Tory one to muzzle the press, using the
courts if it can. More worrying still are the implications of this for when
the European convention on human rights is incorporated into British law,
allowing judges to decide on privacy issues. The instinct of many judges is
to protect the status quo, which bodes ill for the public's right to know.
The second is over the battle against drugs. Mr Straw has rightly stood out
against the fashionable demand to decriminalise cannabis. Now he knows at
first hand the extent of the problem. The war against drug-dealing must go
on but the Straw affair reinforces a basic concern: the suppression of the
truth. Only through openness will this government avoid the cynicism that
destroyed its predecessor.