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On Being Censored
From: The British Library
| By:
Jonathan Meades |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
In this controversial and explicit feature, Jonathan Meades (right) argues that the British reputation for tolerance is "a cherished national self-delusion." On the grounds of "good taste," we have included the publishable examples from a contentious script for a major broadcaster in which Meades mounted a vehement polemic against the British public, the British prime minister, the Queen Mother (or "centenarian char-lady") and the religious establishment, among other behemoths. Meades discovered that tolerance does not extend to anything outside the received consensus. |
Being offensive
I did a television programme called "Everyman," and because it appeals to people who can read and write, it is buried in the schedules sometime round about midnight. |
I thought there was no point in doing another polite polemic along the lines of "I'll defend unto death your right to say it." I thought I would do something which was both an argument and an exemplar, and I thought that late, late at night, where the programme is buried, I would be able to get away with this. After 15 years of doing television, I was that green. |
The original script included, among much else, some of this: |
Britain is the most censored country in the developed world, which is bad enough. What is worse is that most of Britain does not object. The people of this country are not citizens but subjects enthralled to a prodigal centenarian char-lady, collude with the state in its multiple proscriptions, in its subjugations, in its vacuous cheerleading, in its patent lies. A spin doctor is a liar whom we pay for. And it goes without saying that this collusion encourages self-censorship; equally insidiously but less obviously, this collusion also promotes a homogeneity of opinion, a sort of consensus, which is fine. In fact, isn't it great? Here we are, a nation at one with itself, all pulling together in team spirit, a nation with a single goal, a nation with an agreed moral system. One might add, a nation gullible enough to be taken in by a pushy evangelical barrister, whose demagoguery is intellectually imbecilic, whose populism is no more than appeal for base level with a motive religiosity, whose unchallenged position as an elected dictator suggests that we are a nation of sleeping sheep and that we deserve such a touchy-feely authoritarian. |
I could feel somewhere that a blue pencil was coming out. I endeavoured nonetheless and the script became ever more explicit. |
One might add, too, that there is out there somewhere a bullet, probably a Loyalist bullet, with Saint Tony's name on it and that one day his brains will end up on Cherie's jacket, just as J.F. Kennedy's ended up on Jackie's jacket. One can only hope in those circumstances, that on the plane bringing home the body, Gordon Brown does not follow LBJ's example and carry out what the News of the World would call an "explicit sexual act" in the hole in his predecessor's neck. Of course, Gordon wouldn't, would he? |
There has never been a time in my adult lifetime when giving offence was more necessary. Scratch a sometime satirist and you find a sycophant. They line up to perform mainly lingual obeisance at No. 10, they want to be liked, just as their leader wants to be liked. And that is true British spirit, isn't it? The spirit of cosmetic rebellion, which is really a coded plea for membership of the club. A bit later in the programme I made the common garden assertion that Catholic priests are only in it for the kiddies. "I'm 44 and you're only 10, but I'm the kind of man that likes you little men. Call me father, son, call me father." There was a further line which someone took objection to, like "don't call it AIDS; call it botulism--too much bad meat in the can." And then I've gone and offended Hershey's Home and all of you on chocolate duty to Robinson's Dairy Box. |
The gentle backlash
Now, the BBC is the British Broadcasting Corporation, and thus (in my opinion) it treats its contributors like it treats its viewers, as children. The producer of this programme called me in a state of some embarrassment after she read the script and told me it had been referred as a matter of course to the head of Religious Broadcasting, and she said ominously that this gentleman himself would be speaking to me later. |
My previous dealings with him had been mediated by countless strata of bureaucracy. He had, for instance, objected--three or four years ago--to my alluding to Christian anti-Semitism in general and to the Vatican stance during the Nazi genocide in particular. He thought I could not say this because it might offend Catholics. But neither that nor a few other taunts actually warranted a call from the man himself and he was sweetly reasonable, that is to say, he was sort of obdurate in a rather sanguine way. He addressed me as though he was a schoolteacher addressing a smart-alec pupil and said, "Do you know some of this stuff is highly offensive?" And I said, "I know. That's the point." And he was incredulous that I could do this wittingly. And I said to him another commonplace, that the right to speak inoffensively is no right at all. "Oh, isn't it?" |
And then he got into his stride with "the BBC Charter this, our responsibility to the licence payer, common decency," which I pointed out to him is dead common; it's rather like common sense. And I said that nothing I was saying, nothing I had ever done, indeed on telly, was as offensive as the kind of wall-to-wall celebrity gardeners and celebrity makeover artistes and celebrity this and that, celebrity yobs--who are an insult to anyone with a three-figure IQ--and he replied that these matters were not within his remit. |
What does intolerance mean?
But who really should judge what is intolerant? We hear endlessly, "I'm absolutely, guys, tolerant of everything, apart from intolerance." So in this hackneyed construction, what does intolerance mean? Well, it obviously means anything outside the consensus. Thus, the assertion that I am tolerant of everything, save intolerance, really means that I am intolerant and can get away with being intolerant because the majority shares my prejudices. |
Anyone who boasts of his or her tolerance probably isn't tolerant. There is, of course, another side to this particular coin. Tolerance goes against tribal instinct; tolerance probably has to be learnt; tolerance is an insult to our taxonomical bent and to our appetite for espying differences, which is something which we enjoy not to do. And the British reputation for tolerance is, I believe, a cherished national self-delusion. |
It's part of the eternal British grand projet, part of an enterprise in which this country has come to excel, that of convincing ourselves that we are something which we are not. Why is it OK to calumnise the English when it isn't OK to calumnise Jews, Irish, blacks, etc.? Are they protected species? Yes, they are. So, in this hierarchy, who are the unprotected species? Well, Germans, of course, and the French and Muslims and Iranians and Iraqis and Serbs. It's one thing to object to the use of terms such as "kike" or "mick" or "nigger" and so on. It is quite another to object to Jew, Irishman, black. These are, or indeed should be, neutral signifiers, statements of racial fact, not presumed insults. But of course euphemism is another British specialisation, a way of saying we're sorry when we aren't actually saying the word "sorry," which is what we are doing most of the rest of the time. It is a wonder that we haven't invented a euphemism for "sorry." |
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