Watching the Mad Men series on Amazon Prime – the fictional story of an advertising agency in the 1950’s – underlines just how much progress we have made as a society in the last seventy years.

Undoubtedly patriarchal and sexist – female characters are either stay-at-home wives, or working in the typing pool – it’s clear we have made great strides in gender equality since then.

Aside from the evident and alarming misogyny; all the cast are depicted as heavy smokers and light up in their office and home with impunity. Casting my mind back to the earliest days of my career in media, I can still recall the heavy toxic pall of smoke in our office and the well-worn carpet leading to the cigarette vending machine on the middle floor.

The purpose of this article is to explore how it was possible for repetitive, fraudulent propaganda in the media to convince us all that tobacco inhalation was not only not dangerous to our health but was, in fact, likely to be ‘healthy’.

How did First World countries fall for such blatant falsehood. One which resulted in chronic ill health and incalculable deaths for their citizens?

The reality is it was led by the tobacco industry and it was a hugely lucrative business. Worth millions, if not billions, in profits so it paid dividends to perpetuate the falsehood. Vested interest superseded the health and well-being of our citizens to our collective long-term detriment.

The use of their own industry doctors – willing to sell their soul and their profession down the Swanee for their 10 pieces of gold – embedded this false narrative. It was effective because most of us only look at the headlines and few beyond it. Because medical ‘experts’ were wheeled out to perpetuate the illusion; most of us assumed that it must have been true. The media never lies.

But it was not true. It was dangerous propaganda which destroyed countless lives.

My first question, therefore, is this; how many lives might have been saved had the Government acted sooner to ban adverts, remove vending machines and ultimately legislate against smoking in public places? Had they jailed the merchants of disinformation who deliberately and knowingly misled the public?

To its eternal credit, legislation to ban smoking in public places was finally instigated in the UK by the Scottish Executive (now Government) in March 2006. It took more than a year before England and Wales finally followed suit.

Of course there was a fierce backlash. There always is where vested interests are at play. Yet no-one would now question the rightness of their action nor question how many lives it saved as a result. The truth was, and remains, self-evident.

We now face another wholesale propaganda campaign which is costing countless lives and perpetuated by vested financial and ideological interest groups. So called ‘experts’ are being wheeled out to convince us of a false narrative and we are all falling for it hook line and sinker.

In this instance it starts with the proposition that domestic abuse is a ‘gendered crime’ i.e a crime perpetuated ‘overwhelmingly’ against female victims by male perpetrators.

This false assertion has been challenged twice by the UK Statistics Authority based on factual evidence – ONS /Police data. Yet the sensationalist headlines continue unabated.

The legendary Erin Pizzey – a global expert in domestic abuse and founder of Refuge – was ostracised and ejected from the very organisation she set up, for daring to speak this truth.

“Out of the first hundred women who came through our refuge doors, sixty two were as violent, if not more violent, than the men they had left behind“

Erin and her small team of compassionate volunteers had to pin little notes on the children to remind their mothers not to beat them when angered.

By stating her simple truth, this amazingly courageous and compassionate woman received multiple death threats, her dog was killed and she was forced to flee the country. Despite her many years saving countless women and children, her incredible legacy and immeasurable contribution to our society, has been deliberately smeared and tarnished. Libelled and defamed. Truth and goodness extinguished.

Erin understood this simple fact. Abuse is trans-generational. Those who grow up in violent and dysfunctional households were themselves at risk of becoming either victims or perpetrators. Without therapeutic intervention, the cycle of abuse continues.

Tragically, the female perpetrator support units Erin set up to help female abusers and thus end their personal cycle of abuse, were immediately shut down when the new CEO of Refuge took over.

Erin’s explanation was a simple one: “female perpetrator support units didn’t fit their narrative that women should only ever be seen as victims- never as perpetrators”.

An explanation evidenced by Ms Horley’s momentarily unguarded comment to the Spectator.