A Question of Tone

Mr Aspinall asks for ���objectivity��� about his tone in his interrogation of me on my acknowledged failure to speak upon behalf of Christopher Jefferies.

 

Right:

 

Remember the origin of this was my own unprompted statement of regret that I did nothing to speak up for Mr Jefferies, which followed a TV dramatisation of his treatment. I had no need, other than my own regret, to confess this. I had no specific responsibility towards Mr Jefferies, any more than did dozens, perhaps hundreds of others who also failed him at this time. I thought it was right of me to admit this, not least because the shame I felt would be strengthened and I would be more careful to speak out in future in such cases.

 

So now look at this, from Mr Aspinall 6  days ago:

 

What I'd like to know is why Peter Hitchens hasn't waited for someone else in his trade to defend Bell and the principle of the presumption of innocence. I shall be careful, here. There was no article by Mr Hitchens entitled: 'Christopher Jefferies and the Presumption of Innocence.' Why defend this principle using the example of a dead person when Jefferies was then (and I assume he still is) alive? With Mr Jefferies, Mr Hitchens could have defended the principle AND aided an innocent man. (Zola didn't wait for someone else to write in defense of Dreyfus.) Why did Mr Hitchens choose to do nothing to help Mr Jefferies, yet he chooses to speak for Bell?

 

I responded, within the comment. ***PH writes. A good point. I have recently, in published work, expressed my shame and regret that I do not do so. It is partly for this reason that I am so engaged in this case***

 

I assumed this would be the end of it. But No. The following day Mr Aspinall returned to the subject. This is crucial in measuring the tone. A question once raised and once answered with (it seems to me) considerable frankness) is a question. But the same question then repeated (implying very specific personal cowardice of a deeply shameful sort for someone who does what I do) ceases to be a question and becomes an inquisition. The tone is not that of a person satisfying his curiosity, but of one seeking to expose wrong-doing or provoke a confession of it.

 

Mr Aspinall wrote (my subsequent responses are interleaved in his comment, marked*** as usual):

 

 

Peter Hitchens says that his decision to do nothing to help Christopher Jefferies - the man whose character was ruined by (some of) the press in the Joanna Yeates murder case - is partly why he takes such an active interest in the Bell case. This makes sense. I'm left wondering why Peter Hitchens *didn't* write in defence of the principle of the presumption of innocence and use Mr Jefferies as the example. He says he waited for someone else to stop it, which implies he was aware, as it was happening, that Mr Jefferies was being ruined, and was (perhaps?) poised, fingers hovering over the keys, waiting for the moment to start writing - but didn't. We know why he started writing for Bell - so what stopped him writing for Jefferies when the same principle applies? Was he instructed to write nothing by editors, because there was a clear Jefferies 'line' being taken?

 

**PH writes: No. ***

 

Was he worried Jefferies might have been guilty, and that his opponents would have smeared and misrepresented him as having been defending a killer instead of a principle? (Something they almost certainly would have done.)

 

 ***PH writes: I don't think it was as specific as that. I'd have had to have got a lot nearer doing something than I did to have had such a defined fear. It was just a general cowardice mixed with a consciousness that I was failing in my duty. Has Mr Aspinall never experienced any such thing? I really don't see why we need to get so profound about this. I failed, through my own fault, and have admitted this in public, in the place where I failed. I can't say it's much fun to do this, but if the only response is to be accused of following non-existent orders, I might think twice before making such public confessions again. Unrepentant people seem to get an easier time from this contributor.***

 

Mr Aspinall continued: I know (and acknowledged in my first comment about this) that Mr Hitchens has stated his regret for doing nothing and has publicly, and in print, apologised to Mr Jefferies. I am not looking to make mischief, here. I am just interested to know what prevented Mr Hitchens writing for Jefferies when he knew at the time it was the right thing to do.

 

 

 

*** First there the sentence ���I am just interested to know what prevented Mr Hitchens writing for Jefferies when he knew at the time it was the right thing to do.���

 

But I had and have clearly explained this. It was a failure of courage, not to my credit. I don���t wish to make a boast out of this, because it would be wrong, but are such confessions common in my trade? I think not.

 

I had of course technically invited the question by my own confession, but I do not think that good manners, as should exist between one sinner and the other , each with his own frailties, justified any further questioning.  Mr Aspinall has not elected me to anything, nor appointed me to anything, and I owe him no special duty. He is certainly not my confessor. Never mind. The question had been asked, and I had answered it. But the questioning continued, with the clear implication that I was hiding something and not telling the full story. Why else continue to ask in this ill-mannered interrogative fashion?

 

 

It is of course this ���was he instructed���?��� sentence which is inquisitorial, suspicious and accusatory . Indeed, it contains, in the form of a question, a suggestion that I was acting under instructions which, made in any other way, would be definitely defamatory, especially as it is entirely baseless. It may actually be defamatory. As the late Sir John Junor once painfully discovered, his belief that it is never libellous to ask a question is not true in law.   I replied to this, interspersing my comments in his original comment, and thought it would be the end of the matter. But no.

 

Mr Aspinall returned once again, this time to claim that my answer had been ���vague��� ��� again the innuendo that  am cocnealingsome important and guilty detail.

 

Here, with my responses interspersed, is his third comment:

 

Peter Hitchens has responded to my question about Christopher Jefferies. Though his answer is vague, he says ***PH writes: What does he mean 'vague'? It is a statement of the truth, which on such matters tends not to appear in itemised, specific accounts. I shall make no further responses to this tiresome, self-righteous nitpicking, and suggest Mr Aspinall examines his conscience for moral failures of his own (assuming that there are any such), from now on***** 'It was just a general cowardice mixed with a consciousness that I was failing in my duty. Has Mr Aspinall never experienced any such thing?' Probably, yes. It's almost certainly the case that I've been a coward in some matters in the past. I'm only asking about what it was Mr Hitchens was afraid of? ***PH writes: I was afraid of acting and felt safer in inaction. Mr Aspinall seems unable to grasp that nobody ever asked me to intervene, that nothing in my life suggested that I personally had any specific duty to do so. And that, had I never confessed to my failure and my regret for it, nobody would ever have known that I thought it might have been my duty or that I had failed in it. The insinuation, that I feared some identifiable punishment or threat, is baseless. Fear, as those who have experienced it well know, does not need to be specific. Most fear, in my experience, is a vague presentiment that something unpleasant lies around a certain corner or beyond a certain door, and that it is best not to turn that corner or open that door. This is why people are so reluctant to take the first small steps which would otherwise lead to major changes in life, such as changing their minds. They don't want their fears to take a specific shape, any more than the child which fears there is a monster under its bed wants to look to see if it is really there, in case it actually is. Instinct tends to guide this far more than reason. Indeed, reason is often the best way of conquering such fear*** Mathew Parris, in the Great Lives programme, praises Hitchens for his pugilism, and we all know that our host isn't scared of being in a minority, that he likes to argue, and that he cares more for principle than he does popularity. It's those facts which make the Jefferies question interesting. I am NOT looking to pour slime over our host - I'm genuinely interested. ***PH writes: I do not believe this assertion. I had no special reason to act on behalf of Mr Jefferies, any more than anyone else inside or outside my trade. I had never met him and knew nothing of the case.

 

(In the case of George Bell, it might reasonably said that having nominated his as a 'Great Life' I was personally bound either to retract my view or to defend it) . Mr Aspinall can only make these insinuations because I publicly confessed to having failed in what I now know to have been my duty, by waiting for someone else to do what I should have done. I could have kept this private. If I had never mentioned it, it would never in a million years have occurred to Mr Aspinall to raise the matter, or to think that I had any business intervening in this injustice, one of dozens every year in which people might or might not intervene. **** But there was no 'accusation' that Mr Hitchens was following orders, just a question about that as a possibility. ***PH says: He should not be so disingenuous. I have too high an opinion of Mr Aspinall's intelligence to believe that he really thinks this was not an accusation, though, as such accusations have to be, it was cunningly couched, so that he could deny having made it, as he has done*** I know that our host is repentant about his lack of action, which is why I quoted his apology to Mr Jefferies in my first comment. 'I might think twice before making such public confessions again. Unrepentant people seem to get an easier time from this contributor.*** ' Well, he shouldn't think twice, and I hope he doesn't think I'm giving him a hard time - because, on my word of honour, I not trying to. I don't know who the people are to whom I seem to give an easier time; one regular contributor is getting to the point where he won't discuss anything with me because my attempts at precision are conveniently dismissed as 'pedantry.' ***PH writes: Well, whoever that is, I begin to feel some sympathy with him ***

 

Not content with this, he came back a *fourth* time, once again, to repeat , oh so innocently, the insinuation that I was acting under orders, which he of course asserted was not any such insinuation, which seems to me to fall into that fine old category, identified by Alexander Pope, of being 'willing to wound, but afraid to strike' . Even though he had made it before, and I had rebutted it before, and yet here he was, making it again. :

 

On the Jefferies / Bell question, I���m happy to leave the discussion where it is. I was asking only because I thought it was interesting. I (wrongly, obviously) assumed there would have been a specific reason behind our host���s choice to say nothing on the presumption of innocence principle for Jefferies; if there was no specific reason, then there wasn���t ��� that���s that. I used two speculations about what this reason *might* have been: one was to ask if there was any editorial line being followed ��� quite a vague speculation because I didn���t offer any guess as to why such a line *might* have come down from the brass. The second was a specific question about how Mr Hitchens���s opponents might have smeared him as defending a killer and not a principle (which I think they would have done) had Mr Jefferies been found guilty. I offered these as being two ends of the ���who knows?��� spectrum. They were not offered as disguised accusations.

 

This is what I mean by his tone. I am sorry he cannot see it. I shall not, in any case, respond to him in any fashion ever again.