'Warm, funny and blunt,' said the Guardian of Myra Hindley. The tabloids were more accurate

Spectator, The, Nov 23, 2002 by Glover, Stephen

MEDIA STUDIES

The tabloids kept Myra Hindley in prison. They threw away the key. I recall once overhearing a home secretary reassuring a tabloid editor that `he would never release Myra'. The same man might lower the age of consent or give greater freedom to homosexuals, but he knew that the one thing he could never dare do was to let Hindley out of prison. Who says the press has no power?

In death the tabloids were as implacable as they had been during her life. The Sun: `At last, Myra is where she belongs ... HELL.' The News of the World: `Monstrous Myra Hindley went to hell this weekend with the four searing words: "I want my mother."' Actually, there was a degree of inadvertent compassion here; Hindley wanting her mother made her human, while also reminding us that she deprived mothers of their children. At the same time one wondered how the red-tops could be so certain that Hindley was heading for hell. Possibly the News of the World's investigative reporter Mazher Mahmood had donned his latest disguise and been down there himself for a quick recce. Theology has never been the red-tops' strongest suit. For them there can be no redemption in the next world for those who truly repent.

Many civilised people will have been shocked by the red-tops' response to Hindley's death. It was shocking. And yet in a way it was less so than the detached and Olympian judgments of some of the broadsheets. Somewhere in the foaming vitriol of the tabloids there was a sense of pity that was not wholly confected, and an identification with the victims' families that was not entirely a sham. In their elemental way they had grasped the enormity of what Hindley had done. Some of the broadsheets made ritual noises about the horror of Hindley's crimes before moving on quickly to what was for them a much more important issue: the iniquity of keeping a supposedly rehabilitated woman in prison for so long. According to the Guardian, Hindley and her even more sinister accomplice Ian Brady `had become victims of a tabloid-inspired justice'. The paper thought that `her overlong imprisonment [had] demeaned our society'. The leader-writer did not consider the real victims - the children whom Hindley and Brady murdered, and whose bodies were buried on the moors. Both the Guardian and the Independent ran measured obituaries which made much of Hindley's growth into a fully rounded human being. `Warm, funny and blunt,' was Peter Stanford's verdict in the Guardian. His view was that she had, in effect, become a totally different human being.

But had she? If she had become a normal person with a properly developed sense of right and wrong, would she have campaigned for so long - and encouraged others to campaign on her behalf - for her release? A truly Christian, repentant person would surely have taken the view that her own freedom was an issue of the utmost insignificance when set alongside the enormity of her crimes and the unending pain of her victims' families. She would have set her sights on the hope of redemption in the next life, knowing, as a Christian, that there could be none in this. Nor am I at all convinced that she was rehabilitated, though it is difficult for an outsider to judge. She had served 20 years in prison before owning up to two further murders. Maybe the change came later. But Hindley did not send a single reply to a stream of letters from the mother of Keith Bennett, whom she and Brady killed. The boy's mother only wanted Myra Hindley's help in finding her son's body. Hindley's refusal to assist does not seem markedly Christian, nor does it obviously suggest that she had been fully rehabilitated. I can't for the life of me understand how the Guardian and others can be so sure that she was.

Kevin Marsh has been made editor of Radio Four's influential Today programme in place of Rod Liddle, now of this parish. Mr Marsh is described by New Labour sources as a Tory. In fact, he is simply a robust, independent journalist. As editor of The World at One and PM, he has made himself unpopular with Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister's director of communications, by continually taking on the government. The World at One, with the excellent Nick Clarke in the chair, has been more fearless in its items about New Labour than any other current-affairs programme in the BBC's entire output. This has inevitably led to complaints from Mr Campbell.

How will Mr Marsh's appointment affect the Today programme? New Labour was not happy during much of Mr Liddle's stewardship, and Tony Blair has refused to appear on the programme for several months. Mr Liddie was hardly pro-Tory. Indeed, he resigned after having been accused of being anti-Tory. He has also admitted, at a private meeting of industry colleagues last Thursday, that he was forced to fire the very right-wing Frederick Forsyth from Today's Saturday-essay slot for political reasons. But certainly he often gave the government a hard time. Mr Marsh, if his track record is any guide, may go further.