Letters From A Tory Daily views on British politics and the Conservative Party from a centre-right thinker who writes letters on his blog to politicians, journalists and many others.

Dear Sienna Miller,

Seeing as the financial crisis and the Brand/Ross debacle continue to bore everyone, it was interesting to see your landmark legal action about the paparazzi get some coverage today.  Unlike Russell Brand being an insensitive, vulgar and obnoxious idiot, I find your legal case genuinely interesting and it is an issue that I feel extremely strongly about.  You are seeking compensation from one of the most notorious firms of paparazzi after claiming she had been victim of a “campaign of harassment” and that they have made your life “intolerable” – and I say ‘good on you’.

Whenever I hear people say that we live in a ‘media age’ and that celebrities have to accept that their private lives will be invaded once they become famous, my blood starts to boil.  As I said in the ‘Why I write these letters’ page on this blog, I am a fierce defender of everyone, including celebrities, having a right to privacy.  If your legal action is successful, it is conceivable that sections of the media could be inundated with claims of privacy breaches and harassment, which I have no problem with.  For photographers to hang around outside people’s homes, stalk them, harrass them in the street, follow them around on nights out, snap them going for a walk in the park (often with their children), chase them in cars and hide around street corners is disgusting and just goes to show how depraved our media culture has become when the public lap up the destruction of people’s private lives just to provide them with a few giggles as they read through Hello magazine.

Your lawyers claim that in the past four months you have suffered from physical and verbal abuse and have twice been involved in dangerous car chases with photographers.  During yesterday’s preliminary hearing, the court heard your complaints of a series of incidents including being confronted outside her house in Maida Vale, London, on 22nd June “and then chased by car in a dangerous manner to Heathrow airport”. On 21 July, following your return from Italy, you were pursued and harassed in west London, and on 28 August, after returning to London from Ibiza, you were also pursued when walking your dogs in the park with your mum. Other examples include being “pursued in a dangerous manner all the way from Stroud to Heathrow” on 7 September, which you found “very frightening” and understandably so.  The harassment even included an incident in which you were pursued to a petrol station in Malibu, California and subsequently ”hounded and taunted”.

There are two things that I am appalled by about this situation.  Firstly, I find it totally unacceptable that the fear felt by you is not just tolerated by the police but has become entirely routine in the lives of so many people.  I don’t care how famous you are – I still believe 100% that you should have a private live that neither I nor anyone else is entitled to know about.  As I said in ‘Why I write these letters’, the only exception to this should be if an elected public official or senior figure behaves in a way that it does not meet the high standards expected in public office – but even then, the vast majority of their lives should remain undocumented.  Secondly, it is very sad that people like you who are hounded and harrassed by photographers should have to resort to using laws that were designed to protect people from stalkers in order to get the press to back off.  Why do we not have laws protecting people from being followed at any time, anywhere and for any reason?  How can it be legal to chase someone in a car, hang around outside someone’s home when you don’t know the owner, take pictures of someone who you have never met or stalk someone as they go about their daily lives?  How can this be accepted by society? 

You will have to prove that you were relentlessly pursued on several occasions and suffered harrassment just to stop the paparazzi from invading your privacy.  How tragic that this is the only line of defence you have.  Your barrister even said that the pictures published by the group of photographers that you have going after captured “essentially private moments”. My attitude is ’so what?’ – every part of your life, bar stepping on the red carpet to attend a film premiere or a magazine photo shoot, is a ‘private moment’.  Your entire live should be private unless you decide otherwise, and I think it is terrible that you should have to go to court to get people to understand this.  Good luck to you, Sienna.  I sincerely hope your court case is successful.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory