Between the spring of 1788 and summer of 1790 fifty seven complaints were made to London Magistrates by women alleging that they had been molested and stabbed [on the buttocks] by an individual stranger in public.

https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/412011/1/LIBRARY_COPY_PhD_Thesis_Final_Formatted_Version.pdf

Reports of ‘lady bottom cutters’ then spread like wildfire across the newly emerging mass media in the form of daily newspapers.

While it cannot be shown that there were no actual incidents of bottom cutting, initially, the media-amplified spread has been described as one of the earliest example of a ‘moral panic‘ where mass media take reports of deviance, construct them into a definitive form and exaggerate its geographic spread and frequency until ‘moral guardians’ in the courts, the police, the church, education and, of course, among politicians, call for action as if it were a real crisis in behaviour.

So ‘real’ had the crisis become, bizarre responses emerged:

The protection of female backsides was also proving a highly lucrative sideline for both blacksmith and satirist, with reports of the wealthy ordering bespoke copper cuirasses to wear beneath their skirts, the poorer orders having to make do with additional layers of the customary cork.Same source

Since then, across the mass mediated West, we’ve seen many moral panics distort reality before fading into the void of absent media gaze.

In the 1930’s violent comics would make our children violent.

In the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, rockers, mods, hippies and punks, fighting, getting high and sticking safety pins through their own cheeks, would bring in the end of civilisation as we know it, before they all then got jobs as accountants and plumbers.

In the 80s and 90s, Heavy Metal music played backward, told teenagers to kill their parents. Vice President Al Gore’s wife, Tucker (really) campaigned against it. Then Alice Cooper took up golf, playing with presidents.

Around the same time, I asked my Primary 7 class to name their favourite video – ‘I spit on your grave’ was popular. I’ve checked. none have since become serial killers.

There are too many moral panics to list here but they go on because they serve a purpose, to attract an audience and to create career opportunities for the calculating sort in a population made usefully anxious. This focus on identifiable groups as a threat to wider decency and safety enhances the popularity of conservative political groups promising strong law and order to control them, regardless of any reasonable or scientific assessments revealing the threats to be demonstrably trivial.

There are costs here. That’s no surprise in our hyper-capitalist world with its need for winners and losers in often brutal competition for fame, wealth, careers, homes, even food. Especially in those more unequal societies such as India, the USA, Mexico and the UK, drug and alcohol abuse soars. Depression, anxiety, violent crime and suicide run at twice the rate in more equal societies such as Japan or in Scandinavia. All of this is, of course, good business but the suffering is great and those employed to write up this world must at times doubt the value, even the sanity, of what they do.

Typically, a new apparently deviant, event occurs to titillate audiences, media amplify its prevalence, ignore any reasonable explanations, and unscrupulous figures jump on the bandwagon, feeding the media coverage. After a while, as it becomes apparent there’s little actually there to worry about, the whole thing just fades away, and media seek new fresh meat to keep circulation up.

Scotland, in the Age of Uncertainty, from around 2007, has become home to a particular type of moral panic, with all of the usual elements but with, more so than in many earlier examples, a usefulness for establishment figures who can ‘weaponise’ them in a campaign against Scottish independence and, in particular, the SNP in government.

Just a few examples:

1. Infected hospitals killing babies, in Scotland: A very small number of cases are linked to infections and building faults and massively over-reported but there is no proof, even after years of any causal role. Anas Sarwar is the moral guardian figure. SNP Government ministers are directly accused. Far greater baby death rates in Kent and elsewhere in England are not used in this way. The panic dies for lack of new material.
2. Bullying and sexual abuse in the SNP Government: A small number of minor accusations leads to massive reporting and even a court case where the accused is acquitted. Deeply hypocritical opposition figures try to exploit the situation and independence campaigners who feel rejected, join in. Support dips in the polls.
3. Corruption in the SNP Government: Funds vired from one heading to another, within an organisation, are used as the basis to suggest corruption in the SNP leadership. Arrests lead to no charges and, we can be sure, will not. Mass police presence around the leader’s home and the SNP HQ. The first police tent ever for a financial irregularity case, appears on a suburban lawn. Opposition figures again call for more law and order please. Support in the polls dips.
4. Latest in the moral panics for Scotland only, it’s the ferry crisis: Mass reporting of cancelled sailings in the face of the facts – 95% reliability and 100% safety over more than 500 sailings a day. The voices of the many satisfied, even proud of, their ferry service are not heard. Reality for all is defined by that of a proportion of those living in South Uist, population less than 2 000. This one is resilient but will fade to replaced another new one.

Again, there’s a price to be paid in stress, depression, anxiety for the majority and for those who must write this world into being but for those who exploit the status quo, including in the Labour Party, it’s worth it.

The ferry wars will end some day. What will be next?