Letter From London

The Wolfenden Report is almost like Suez come again. The newspapers have been full of it: every dinner table rings with controversy. The most unlikely people have views and mean to air them.

The Departmental Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution was set up three years ago under the chairmanship of Sir John Wolfenden, the Vice-Chancellor of Reading University. Its members included two High Court judges, three women, two Members of Parliament, and several doctors, lawyers and ministers of religion. The real reasons why the committee was set up and why its conclusions have attracted so much interest are two: an increase in the number of prostitutes standing about the streets of London and some widely reported prosecutions for homosexual offenses, which involved well-known public figures from Peers of the Realm down. Whether these vices have actually increased seems doubtful, but the publicity attendant on them certainly has. The newspapers worked up a great outcry about how shameful it was for foreigners and young people to see so much vice flaunting itself in London.

AL

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Anthony Lejeune

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The Wolfenden Report is almost like Suez come again. The newspapers have been full of it: every dinner table rings with controversy. The most unlikely people have views and mean to air them.

The Departmental Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution was set up three years ago under the chairmanship of Sir John Wolfenden, the Vice-Chancellor of Reading University. Its members included two High Court judges, three women, two Members of Parliament, and several doctors, lawyers and ministers of religion. The real reasons why the committee was set up and why its conclusions have attracted so much interest are two: an increase in the number of prostitutes standing about the streets of London and some widely reported prosecutions for homosexual offenses, which involved well-known public figures from Peers of the Realm down. Whether these vices have actually increased seems doubtful, but the publicity attendant on them certainly has. The newspapers worked up a great outcry about how shameful it was for foreigners and young people to see so much vice flaunting itself in London.