Daily Express, London, 21 April 1981

Teachers in storm over the cane king

Ban his 'porn' ads, union told

By Bruce Kemble

TEACHERS got out a big stick yesterday to discipline their own union for publicising an alleged pornographic advertisement.

Cause of all the trouble was an advert in "The Teacher" for canes. A group backed by leading educationalists claimed the advertiser had more sinister motives.

They alleged at Eastbourne where the 258,000-member National Union of Teachers was in conference, that a newsagent from Bognor, Sussex, was using the paper to peddle porn.

The group, supported by former Education Secretary Lord Boyle, senior educationalist Lord Young and Sir Ashley Bramall, leader of the Inner London Education Authority, asked general secretary Mr Fred Jarvis to ban the advert.

They said: "It is intolerable that the N.U.T. should boost the sale of sordid wares manufactured by the Bognor Cane Company, run by the newsagent Eric Huntingdon."

He produced a magazine called "Family View" which includes material "similar to that contained in pornographic magazines catering for the sado-masochistic trade."

The teachers cited drawings and photos of "scantily clad and suggestively posed children" and said "obsessive and lurid" letters of the same style as appear in overtly pornographic magazines, were published.

The claims puzzled an official of "The Teacher." He said: "The Bognor company has advertised only canes and not its allegedly pornographic magazine. Nevertheless, we will investigate these allegations with a view to reconsider [sic] advertising."

But the man behind the row, 53-year-old Mr Huntingdon, the father of two, said it was the teachers who needed to be taught a lesson.

He said: "It's absolute nonsense and utter rubbish to say I publish porn.

"These teachers will use any stick to beat me with. I'm a God-fearing sort of Dad and I think I take the same view of caning as the majority of parents."

Mr Huntingdon who sells between 300 and 500 canes a week at 50p a time, mostly to teachers, admitted he had written and published a poem "Spanks for the Memory."

My "Family View" stopped appearing about two years ago.

Corpun file 11863

The Times, London, 22 April 1981

London Diary

Striking story from Bognor

By Michael Horsnell

The controversy over that sordid advertisement for school canes in The Teacher magazine, reported yesterday in The Times, has developed into a spanking good row spiced with the threat of legal action.

You will remember that the Society of Teachers Opposed to Physical Punishment (STOPP) has asked Fred Jarvis, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, which publishes The Teacher, to ban the offending ad.

Yesterday STOPP continued to castigate Mr Eric Huntingdon, owner of the Bognor Cane Company of Bognor Regis which placed it, will allegations that "a certain sort of magazine" he also published called Family View contains shocking details of spanking practices together with pictures of scantily clad females.

Tom Scott, STOPP's education secretary, told me: "The magazine has lurid stories of bare-bottom beating inflicted on teenage girls. It is also clear that some of the 'weapons' sold by the company are being bought by people who wish to indulge in sado-masochistic flagellation."

I have news for Mr Scott -- Mr Huntingdon, father of two teenagers whom he says he has never spanked with cane or leather paddle, is seeking legal advice.

What is more, Family View, a copy of which I have obtained, is about as lurid as the Radio Times, and the females pictured therein are about as undressed as the average underground train traveller in summer.

I was, in short, not shocked by it -- and neither will anyone else be. Family View, which never sold more than 100 copies, has been defunct since January last year.

Mr Huntingdon, aged 53, who is growing crosser by the minute, told me: "I am taking legal advice. What they have said is utter unmitigated rubbish. They seem to want to get hold of any stick to beat me."

His company sells between 300 and 500 canes a week -- nearly all of which go to the 79 per cent of schools which still administer corporal punishment in Britain. The eight varieties of canes sold, all 50p each plus packing charge, range from the A1 senior 34in long, to the A8 nursery version 20in long -- a short cane suitable for younger children who "are generally punished across their parent's knee."

Mr Huntingdon added: "The intention of the magazine was to give parents some guidance about the time a child should go to bed, how much pocket-money he should have and how much homework to do. There is still a need for a magazine like it.

"So far as canes are concerned, I ask STOPP what are their proposals for dealing with child crime and violence. They must have considered practical alternative methods of discipline. It is right that they should give equal energies to publicising their proposals as they have to make derogatory remarks about those who have yet to find a satisfactory alternative."