Is nothing sacred? Victoria Beckham wants to enjoy a tender moment in the back of the Bentley with her husband and before you can say “Smile, please!” there appears to be a paparazzo on the floor of the car invading the couple’s marital privacy. The Mail on Sunday, which published the revealing pictures, says the photograph catches the moment when the silver Bentley “was forced to crawl through the packed streets of the capital” at one o’clock in the morning, after the Beckhams had left Nobu restaurant in Park Lane.
By brilliant good fortune, the snapper was in a position to get a perfect picture of David’s head, shoulders, left leg and groin (click) seconds before Victoria’s hand (click) and then torso (click) enter the frame and the posh hand and famous groin meet (click). All shots are perfectly in focus, including a close-up which confirms that either David had been sitting on his wife’s mobile phone or that this was indeed an intimate moment.
What a scoop for the snapper! And what a moral dilemma for the Mail on Sunday. If the intrusive pictures had not so fortuitously come their way, the moral guardians of the nation might have felt obliged to argue that surely, all married couples are entitled to a discreet moment of passion on their way home from a private dinner at a favourite caff.
It’s not just the Mail, though. We are all confused about privacy, about what breaches it, and about the rights to it of those whose lives are otherwise dedicated to courting publicity.
The Queen recently used the law to try to ensure that her Tupperware containers remained a royal secret, whilst enjoying a public subsidy that specifically rewards her and her family for being a public spectacle. The actor Alan Davies is outraged that the press has finally found a way to promote his new television drama series, The Brief, by giving publicity to an off-screen romance (and now marriage) with his on-screen colleague Julia Sawalha; he talks darkly of John Lennon and Diana, Princess of Wales having been forced by an intrusive media to leave the country and get themselves killed. (You might recognise the amiably ordinary Davies if you saw him in the street – but you might not.)
Meanwhile, the unquiet grave of the late princess is to be robbed of every remaining secret, for no other reason than that unstable members of the community believe there was a royal or media plot to kill her. It is considered in the public interest that their minds be put at rest.
Sometimes, tragic cases arise from our failure to understand privacy and exactly what is protected by the data protection laws. Humberside Police claimed to believe that data protection laws prevented them from keeping records of allegations of sexual assault made against Ian Huntley, the school caretaker later found guilty of murdering two Soham schoolgirls. A gas company claimed it was similarly hindered from informing social services that it had disconnected the supply to an elderly couple who owed the company money. The couple were subsequently found dead.
In fact, despite regular calls from MPs for laws and penalties, regular legal musings on the Human Rights Act 1998’s impact on privacy, and regular undertakings from the Press Complaints Commission to tighten up its procedures, we have no specific law of privacy under the English legal system.
We learn this afresh whenever the rich and famous attempt to protect their reputations (Naomi Campbell) or wealth (Catherine Zeta-Jones), or when the high and mighty try to draw distinctions between their public lives (dictating what should happen to the nation’s children) and their private lives (deciding what should happen to the nation’s children who are related to them).
Campbell’s case against the Mirror for revealing her attendance at drug rehabilitation sessions, though hailed initially as a successful claim for breach of privacy (she later lost on appeal), was in fact fought on grounds of patient confidentiality. The judge made it clear that the Mirror had been entitled to reveal she was a drug addict even though she denied she was receiving therapy.
Zeta-Jones claimed to have established the principle that her privacy had been infringed when Hello! magazine published pictures of her wedding, the rights to photograph which had been promised exclusively to OK!, Hello!‘s competitor. In fact, the successful claims related to data protection and commercial confidence. OK! received substantial commercial damages while Zeta-Jones and her husband, Michael Douglas, received £50.
Though such cases have little to do with privacy they colour the debate – in favour of privacy legislation when the victim is popular, against when the victim is considered over-haughty. They also contribute to the notion that not being looked at or written about, and not being photographed in the wrong clothes without make-up on, is a human right, precious to the beleaguered rich.
Yet the not-so-rich have never enjoyed much privacy. The poorer you are, the more you share your day-to-day living with others. Cooking, eating, laundering, bringing up babies are all public activities in developing countries, but even in the towns and cities of Europe, space and privacy cost money. Poor families, however large, live in small flats or houses. Very poor families share their tiny living space with other families. Even middle-income families expect little privacy from neighbours or passers-by. Little point worrying that a footpath might offer a sneak view of your garden, when the walls of your high-density housing are so thin that you are privy to your neighbours’ deepest secrets. Most of us suffer our illnesses in public wards (or waiting on trolleys in corridors) and many have to answer detailed personal questions about income and spending when our old-age pensions or benefits will not stretch to paying all our bills.
The financial affairs of the rich have always been shrouded in secrecy, or subject to “commercial confidentiality”. The wages and benefits of the poor are everybody’s business. True, we are seldom forced into the press spotlight, but should a newsworthy tragedy enter our lives, our grief will undoubtedly be relayed in public.
Celebrity distorts the debate, generating a permanent low-level anxiety that, without dedicated privacy legislation, the press will run out of control. But the instances of intrusion which warrant such protection turn out to be remarkably few. It is certainly hard to defend the Mail on Sunday over its treatment of Brian Paddick, an openly gay senior policeman whose private life became the subject of two articles. Paddick argued that although he was a public figure, he had a right to privacy. But the case was settled out of court with the newspaper conceding that it had been guilty of libel. It had its facts wrong; the privacy issue remained unargued.
The number of complaints against newspapers is undoubtedly increasing (up 39 per cent to 3,649 during 2003), according to the Press Complaints Commission’s just-published report. But the industry itself remains opposed to privacy laws and to newspapers being punished by fines for breaches of the PCC code.
The press, first cautioned in 1989 for drinking in the Last Chance Saloon by David Mellor (later exposed in the press as a philanderer and liar), remains at the bar, apparently unconcerned at the call for last orders. We should probably leave the press there, marvelling at its good fortune. There are on the horizon far more serious breaches of human rights than the right not to be photographed without make-up. The life of Leo Blair will not be blighted if his father is occasionally asked about his plans for his son’s schooling, and it is too late for the royal family to repair the self-inflicted damage done to its reputation.
As for Mr and Mrs Beckham, they are not yet complaining about what would appear to be a gross intrusion into a very private moment. I wonder why.
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