PERMISSIVE CENSORSHIP
The media: Paul Johnson
surveys the growing number of taboo subjects
THE study of history suggests that the sum total of intolerance in society does not vary much. What changes is the object against which it is directed. Those who shape the conventional wisdom at the top are always anxious to censor unorthodoxy, thus de- monstrating their power and consolidating their grip. In recent years it has been fascinating, and also frightening, to watch the developing paradox whereby the era of permissiveness, introduced in the 1960s, has become in the 1980s the era of Permis- sive Censorship. The old taboos have been turned on their heads, rather as Marx Upended Hegel's dialectic. Sections of soci- ety who once complained of injustice, like blacks, homosexuals, and militant women, now demand not just equality but pri- vilege, including the right to censor their critics. With the help of their liberal allies, they are getting their way, too. There are now large and important areas of public Policy where open debate is impossible.
One such subject is Aids. It would be difficult to conceive of any problem which is of graver concern to ordinary people, Which is so surrounded in uncertainty, and where the need for free investigation and discussion is more urgent. Yet enormous and successful efforts have been made to control the debate and to direct it solely along approved channels. Last week's de- bate in the Church of England synod, which in effect gave the go-ahead for homosexual clergy to practise their vices, was an impressive demonstration of the homosexual lobby's power — and by the lobby I do not of course mean the pathetic creatures in the gallery who booed and hissed any statement of orthodox morality, but the far more substantial figures who operate behind the scenes.
Successful efforts have been made to conceal the identity of doctors suffering from Aids, to allow them to continue in practice and prevent the media from inves- tigating the subject. Last week I drew attention to the problem, though as read- ers were perhaps aware I was obliged to use very guarded language. Self-censorship by editors and writers who do not want to go to jail is now the order of the day. The Mail on Sunday reported this week that it 'felt obliged to seek clarification from a High Court judge in chambers on Friday on how far we would be allowed to go in reporting this issue'. Solicitors working for 'an unknown and unnamed local authority' had delated the paper to a judge who, in turn, had referred the matter to the Attor- ney General for possible contempt of court proceedings. The paper wished to report the news of the death from Aids of a consultant working in the kidney unit of a hospital. It gave the opinion of what it called a 'leading expert': 'In my view, the work of a consultant in a dialysis ward would bring him into close contact with the blood of patients. There could be enor- mous risks'. Yet even to report this matter it had first to seek the permission of a judge. The subject of race is another vast area of public concern where censorship, often backed by law, operates at a number of levels. Indeed I think it can truthfully be said that no newspaper now dares to publish articles which discuss Britain's race problems frankly. Legal censorship by the 'While there's lifestyle there's hope.' Race Relations Industry is reinforced by such bodies as the Press Council, the NUJ and other unions, as well of course by Labour-controlled local authorities. The lengths to which these last bodies will go to impose conformity to their views is illus- trated by the appalling case of Mrs Mau- reen McGoldrick, a completely innocent victim of Brent Council. As the list of prohibitions published last week indicates, 'racism' and 'sexism' (entailing dismissal from your job) can be expressed not only by words, including such traditional and harmless expressions as 'love', 'Inv' or `lovey', but by gestures or the absence of gestures, categorised under the heading of racist body talk. Even after she was rein- stated, Mrs McGoldrick was reported, at a meeting of the National Union of Teachers, for being photographed holding a five-year-old Asian girl in her arms: this was judged to be a case of 'white imperial- ism'. A council employee who looks at his watch while in conversation with a black is likewise liable to a charge of racist body language. Just saying and doing nothing may be dangerous, like the military offence of 'dumb insolence' in the old, unreformed army.
Permissive censorship now operates throughout the arts, with varying degrees of severity. When US feminists succeeded, at least for some time, in preventing the New York publication of Kingsley Amis's novel Stanley and the Women, people said such things couldn't happen over here. Not in quite the same way, of course. But permissive censorship is being operated all the time by the television duopoly. The suppression of Ian Curteis's Falklands play proves that it is impossible to get into the BBC any dramatic material on this subject, however brilliantly written, which does not present Mrs Thatcher in an unfavourable light.
There are many other taboo subjects on television. Take the actual case of an elderly Polish couple who were harassed and beaten by a family of black neigh- bours. The local Labour council backed the blacks and accused the couple of racism. They eventually got justice in the courts. A play highlighting such a case would stand not the smallest chance of reaching our television screens. Nor would a play which illustrated the role of homosexuals in spreading Aids, or the cruelty and intolerance often practised by social workers, or the tricks and frauds of a left-wing 'investigative journalist', or the arguments in favour of such permissive hate-subjects as capital punishment or foxhunting. Imagine a play putting, say, the ordinary white South African in a good light. It might be written with the skill of Shakespeare but it would not get a showing on British television. The truth is, we are subject to as severe a censorship as Victo- rian England, but it is done by different kinds of people and serves different in- terests.
Previous page
