Equal rights crusade goes on

WORDS MISSING // crime statistics with the sort of dreamy longing that's reserved for the reading of travel folders by people who are not going anywhere, but I found myself the other day almost mooning over a story in the New York Times, out of Tokyo, about what the Japanese National Police Agency calls 'a rising crime wave'.

It seems that last year what we call street killings, or random street crime, and what they call wanton murders, actually doubled. These crimes, the Japanese warn their people, are rooted in a changing society.

Well, never mind the cause for the moment, that's something anyway that we are – or I'm not – qualified to go on about. Let's look at the figures and better take the round figure for the whole of Japan. In 1982, then, street murders in Japan increased by about 90 per cent. In a country with a population of 118 million, that brought the year's grand total to 13. The New York Times man remarked, correctly, that that's just about as many murders as New York City has on a particularly rough holiday weekend.

The homicide figure may be alarming to the Japanese police but it's a figure the American police, in a score of cities here, would feel very happy with. A murder rate of 1.5 for every hundred thousand people. In Britain it's 2.8. In the United States, 9.8. You'd guess that robbery, being everywhere a favourite occupation of the unemployed young, would be many times more frequent than murder, but in Japan, only just. They have two robberies for every hundred thousand people. In Britain, I believe, it's certainly 30 times that, at least. In the United States, 250 per hundred thousand, 125 times the Japanese rate.

There's also a note that very rarely, but every now and then, a Japanese actually dares to cross a street against the red light. This is a crime apparently restricted in Japan to crass foreigners and yet for all the enviable minuteness of Japanese crime, the police seem to be right to discern a change, a developing change for the worse. They have, for instance, no problem with heroin or marijuana but young people are beginning to play around with more innocuous stimulants, but still illegal ones, and the arrests for what we call drug abuse have tripled in ten years.

The one statistic that gives the Japanese police as much concern as it does in America, certainly, is the rather frightening percentage of crimes, of violent crimes especially, committed by teenagers. In all Japan, over 40 per cent of all arrests for homicide, rape, robbery, assault, arson are of people under 18. Granted that the absolute numbers are minute, it suggests, as it does to us, the worrying prospect of a generation that's learning to be criminal early on and that's not likely to break the habit ten or twenty years from now.

You'll have noticed I compared the annual Japanese total of street murders – 13 – with the dozen or so murders committed in Greater New York on what the American reporter called 'a specially rough holiday weekend'. The figures for this summer are obviously not in but it's been the experience here that the warm weather brings out roving gangs of teenagers on the summer evenings. One city is trying to impose a curfew on teenagers between 10 pm and seven in the morning – a move that would seem a sensible way of cutting down the crime rate until you remember the Constitution of the United States. No sooner had the mayor declared a curfew than civil libertarians sued the city for violating the 14th Amendment, which guarantees to all citizens the equal protection of the laws. Since this is a matter which affects the rights of an individual – and that's what constitutional law in the United States is mainly about – it could go right on up to the Supreme Court.

Well, these are the dog days all right and there is a smidgeon of good news. Paradoxically, there's been less street crime than usual, in New York anyway, since the ferocious heat wave blanketed this continent in the middle of June and gives no sign of lifting itself. A deep scientific study has yet to be made but it does appear that when the streets are like ovens, fewer victims are out on a stroll and even the robbers and muggers prefer to hole up in some saloon or tenement and sit between the air-conditioner and the telly and watch the night baseball games.

It's about the only good thing I can say for the feeling, practically any place you go, of living through summer in Bangkok, because survival in a minimum of comfort is what most of us are after, we can only give just so much attention to the insoluble brawl in Lebanon or even to the civil wars in Central America. Though, as I more than hinted last week, there hovers over us like a thundercloud a great anxiety about the mission of the naval task forces that are being sent off the Caribbean and Pacific coasts.

But, as I say, you can fret over the really big troubles only so long and I notice that I'm not alone in ferreting through the papers and magazines for trivia that take your mind off burning issues – or not trivia at all, but a return to pondering the big questions that have always been there and always will be, come war, famine, peace, hell or high water.

Of these questions, the one that will not die down in the United States is the question of women's rights. This is the time of the year when the so-called learned professions hold their annual conferences, like the American Bar Association, various medical societies, and, suddenly, it seems, a whole flock of congresses of women – women's bar associations, women's psychiatric conventions, black women's gatherings. Each of them has, of course, its particular professional interest but, all of them, this year, have renewed the lost crusade for that amendment to the constitution which would have said, simply, 'equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex'. What could be more obviously sensible?

When the agitation got under way a decade ago to have this amendment written into the constitution, I got a verbal spanking from some women lawyers for saying I didn't see the need of it since the 14th Amendment to the constitution, ratified so long ago as 1868, says plainly, 'No state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws'. Surely women are persons, always have been? And, in recent years have stressed the point by asking to be called chairperson instead of chairwoman or madam chairman.

However, I was told by women lawyers that the courts have not used the 14th Amendment to enforce women's equal rights. I was wrong, I relented. I have, ever since, stood as a soldier in the fight for equal rights. I have stood, I ought to say, as the rearguard to my wife's station in the front line. Behind every equal rights crusader, there had better be a consenting husband!

Let me remind you again of the incredible, sad history of the proposed new amendment. It was passed by the Congress and the next step is to send it to the 50 state legislatures. Three-quarters, a yes vote, from 38 states would ratify it and make it part of the constitution. Well, within a year or more, just under 30 states had ratified. The years dragged on. The time for ratification expired. It was extended by the Congress. In the meantime, one or two consenting states had changed their minds. At the end of ten years, the vote got to 35 and it never got beyond that. Three short.

Well, millions of American women are determined to resurrect it and put it up to the next Congress in January. Like countless Americans, I thought I knew the arguments on both sides and must confess I was not much impressed by the dread warnings of the opponents that pretty soon all the ditch diggers in the United States would be women, along with the coal miners and the marine corps.

Now comes a venerable and colourful figure in the person of former senator, Sam Ervin of North Carolina. Remember him? He was the chairman of the special Senate Watergate committee which met ten years ago and ran down all the dirty tricks and the bluff and the cover-up tapes in the White House and was more responsible than any other body for the doom of Richard Nixon's presidency. Senator Ervin, you may recall, is a roly-poly, very Southern, delightfully courtly, old country boy – a country boy who graduated from Harvard Law School and was the Senate's top expert on constitutional law.

Senator Ervin is not only against the Equal Rights Amendment, he says it would, 'crucify American womanhood on the cross of a dubious legal equality'. His case is the most powerful opposition case I've seen and I pass it on to you in summary because Senator Ervin is no alarmist, no male chauvinist.

He's looked at that simple sentence and decided that its passage would nullify all existing and future laws on these subjects. I guess he means 'could be made to nullify' the following laws: laws that exempt women from being drafted and sent into combat, laws that grant legal exemptions and economic protection to women in general and wives, mothers and children, in particular. Laws that impose on husbands and fathers the primary obligations to support their wives and children, laws that ensure privacy to men and women and boys and girls by requiring separate rest rooms in all public buildings, laws that permit or require segregation by sex in schools, hospitals and prisons. Laws that regulate marriage and make the right of one person to marry another depend on their being persons of different sexes. Laws that define as criminal sexual offences, such as rape.

In a word, Senator Ervin is saying that not only would the amendment abolish some legal inequalities, it would also deny women any privileges or legal considerations that have accumulated in the law on account of their sex.

Well, there it is. Senator Ervin is a formidable enemy. I'm going to have to move up to the front line and report his appearance on the horizon to my wife. I tremble to anticipate the noise of THAT confrontation.

This transcript was typed from a recording of the original BBC broadcast (© BBC) and not copied from an original script. Because of the risk of mishearing, the BBC cannot vouch for its complete accuracy.

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