You shouldn't be allowed to see what it is yet!

So this was in the local rag recently:

The 'anger', it turns out, is entirely felt by one man who feels so strongly about it that he wishes to remain anonymous, presumably worried that the region's roving bands of violent paedophile cartoonists will visit vengeance upon him.

He feels very deeply that the complete works of Rolf Harris should be withdrawn from the public domain:

I can understand books being written about people who committed horrific crimes, but this is something he has written himself…I think it’s disgusting this sort of offensive material is on show for anyone to see.

So, to sum up: he's quite happy for anyone to see and read books about 'horrific crimes' but thinks that  books like A Pet For You: Animal Hospital with Rolf Harris, Can You Tell What It Is Yet? and Rolf On Art: My Approach from First Steps to Finished Paintings are 'offensive'. They also found an 'outraged' user who did give his name and felt that The Best of Rolf CD should be banned too. The council isn't withdrawing the books for adults or the CD, but is taking away a book for children by Harris, as though there's something inherently paedophilic and contagious in the book, which completely baffles me. It's way beyond logic and rationality.

Why am I bothered? Because I came into the office at 7 a.m. this morning to do a live radio interview on the BBC's WM station with this chap and the presenter, and I spent yesterday thinking about how I feel. Sadly, our defender of public morality either didn't wake up or thought better of making a public stand: he didn't answer, and then switched off, his phone. We were going to talk about censorship, the nature of offence, the history of book-banning and whether art and artists can and should be treated distinctly.

Rather than let good material go to waste, you can have my take on the Filthy Books Furore. I guess that you won't be surprised that I'm against censoring books by bad people. I tend to believe that reading Rolf's book on art won't make you a bad person, it'll make you a bad artist. His books aren't offensive: he is. There's a difference. If you don't want Rolf to make 6p in royalties, don't take out his book.

I'd probably yank biographies of Savile and Harris from the shelves on the grounds that they're out of date, but keep the autobiographies. I strongly believe that a society that wants to understand itself shouldn't sweep material under the carpet but examine it. Savile's autobiography was astonishingly candid: perhaps closer reading would have caught him while he yet lived.

I just don't think that art should be judged by the standards of the artist's morality. Rolf's art was always bad art, whatever we did or didn't know about him. Caravaggio was a murderer: should we take his paintings down? The case I know most about is one I was going to mention on air because it's directly relevant to the BBC. Eric Gill was a talent sculptor, typographer and artist - one of the most fascinating characters of the twentieth-century. You've seen his work millions of times, because he designed Gill Sans, a beautiful typeface:

As well as typography, he carved the astonishing Prospero and Ariel figures on the BBC's Broadcasting House, and the Stations of the Cross in Westminster Cathedral:

Eric Gill: Ariel Between Wisdom and Gaiety

I tell my Media Ethics students about Eric Gill. I show them the artwork. Then I tell them about his sex life. He had affairs with his sisters (usually no reaction). He had sex with his daughters (some disquiet). He had sex with his dog (utter horror: I usually tease them for their moral hierarchies by observing that it's probably less cruel to have sex with an animal than to kill it, and ask what they had for lunch).

Does this catalogue of horrors mean that Gill's artwork is tainted? I don't think it does. Gill painted and sculpted eroticised images of his daughters and sister Gladys. Knowing this adds a degree of horror, but if I'd never know who the models were, or what their relationship was, I don't think anything intrinsic in the artwork would have communicated abuse or taboo. In many ways, knowing the background to some of the art makes it more complex and intense. I wouldn't hide them away because I don't think there's a magical connection between an artist's morality and his or her work. There are exceptions: I do think Graham Ovenden's art was explicitly paedophilic and don't believe his exquisite technique entitles him to a free pass.

Jimmy Savile recorded a series of road safety adverts, like this one:



Should this be banned? I think not. The message is unaffected by what we now know about Savile. In its time and context, it was perfectly reasonable, and retrospective horror about what Savile was up to in other situations doesn't taint the purpose and content of this text.

Books and pictures don't commit crimes. Writers, artists and photographers do. I agree with the ban on paedophilic photography and film because it requires the abuse of real people in its production. I agree with the ban on the circulation of such material because it stimulates the further abuse of real people. I disagree with the ban on fictional representations of illegal acts however. I don't think the imagination can be legislated against, however vile the products of that imagination are. I don't think fiction creates real victims. I think we should ban the execution of actual crimes, not potential ones.

Secondly, a blanket ban on the discussion or representation of illegal acts prevents understanding them. Book Ban Man explicitly says he's happy for people to read about 'horrific crimes'. He clearly doesn't think that reading about murder or sexual violence leads to more murder or sexual violence - so why does he think that a criminal's thoughts on felt-tip line drawing is 'offensive'? Though if he feels that no books by criminals should be allowed on the shelves, I'm tempted to agree: let's rid public libraries of the complete works of Jeffrey Archer!

Let's talk about Nabokov. Lolita is one of the vilest books I've ever read. As you probably know, it's an exploration of a much older man's sexual obsession with a very young girl. I do actually think that it's paedophilic, and that fascination with young girls pervades much of Nabokov's work. I still wouldn't ban Lolita nor do I think even great literature, let alone Rolf Harris's books should be totemised as magical objects with the power to turn ordinary people into slavering perverted beasts. Texts are framed and contextualised in particular ways: while I find Lolita creepy and unpleasant, I don't think it's an advert for an act society has deemed beyond the Pale. Additionally, texts don't exist in a vacuum. They aren't magic: readers create texts by reading from their own unique perspectives. I'm sure a determined paedophile could manage to turn Lolita into simplistic one-handed entertainment, and perhaps even Rolf on Art, but the problem is with the reader: s/he's the paedophile, not the book. S/he still would be even if the book had never been read. There's only a social and legal problem if the reader commissions or commits a paedophilic act.

Away from the sphere of illegal acts, I'm generally against censorship of other material. Too many texts have been banned because some politician or campaigner sees temporary, local advantage in it. I'm sure Evelyn Waugh had Ulysses in mind when he lampooned the government in the first chapter of Vile Bodies, in which poor Adam has his autobiographical manuscript confiscated by customs.

Oscar Wilde, Radclyffe Hall, Joyce, To Kill a Mockingbird, Harry Potter…all have been subject to bans for offending someone (well-meaning liberals don't like To Kill… being used in classrooms because it uses authentic but now-offensive racial epithets, while evangelists in the US condemn Rowling for promoting witchcraft). Social mores are complex and fluid: banning texts often seems very silly in a short space of time. It really bothers me that those with the loudest voices or cultural capital get to decide what gets banned. This isn't mature, democratic debate. It's the morality of the lynch mob.

It's impossible to ban books or anything else anyway. The Spycatcher case established that national boundaries had become meaningless: the book was banned in the UK but published overseas, and a judge ruled that as overseas publication had put any sensitive material in the public domain, British publication may as well go ahead. And this is before the internet, of course. Despite the spirited efforts of every government, material can't be buried for long. If all the libraries removed Rolf Harris's books from the shelves, anyone determined to learn how to draw anthropomorphic kangaroos could locate a copy on the web in seconds.

No, physical interdiction and legal intervention aren't any good when we're talking about ideas. I'm perfectly happy to ban the circulation of material depicting illegal acts, but it's far more important to discuss why we have taboos, and educate people so that they either don't feel or don't act on desires we collectively and calmly decide are damaging.

So anyway, that's what I'd have said in my 2 and a half minutes on local radio. And then the local paper would have led a violent mob to my front door.

Oh, and a final word of advice to libraries and readers. Don't buy books because they're (ghost)-written by celebrities. Buy books on the basis of quality.

Are all paedophiles conservatives?

'Here we go', you may be thinking. 'Old Voley finds a new and particularly tasteless way to attack the Tory Party, using the latest moral panic to make sectarian political points'.

And you'd be right, if I was drawing a straight line between the stuff floating around on the internet and  pictures like this:

Because it's obviously not true that all Conservatives or conservatives are paedophiles. 

But we can quite legitimately ask whether paedophilia is a conservative act. It all depends on your definition of conservatism. For me, a major element of conservative thought for the past few hundred years has been the preservation of oligarchic or elite rule. Take the former requirement that only property-holders could vote: the thinking was that only those who owned land had a significant stake in society and therefore a legitimate contribution to make to the governance of the country. Conservatism has always been about maintaining control of the levers of power against the evil or mindlessly destructive instincts of the Mob. This is what led Matthew Arnold, for instance, to promote mass education: without it, the Mob could never be tamed and trained. 

None of this is particularly controversial, I should add. Traditional conservatism's core belief is that an enlightened few know better than the masses what's good for them. There is another wing, free-market conservatism which holds that 'markets' make decisions in some abstract and theological way, and that all other social constraints should be abolished. It's obvious to me that the Conservative and Republican parties are essentially in a state of permanent tension with each other. Take the forests, for instance. A traditional Tory believes that forests are part of England's National Birthright or some such thing and need protecting. A Market Conservative believes that's all sentimental nonsense and forests are resources to be exploited. At some point they're going to clash. But what they agree on is that the needs and views of the masses are irrelevant. 

This leads me to my major point. In every major institutional paedophilia scandal, and in similar instances such as the rash of army recruit suicides at Deepcut, Hillsborough, Northern Ireland's state-run death squads, the Miners' Strike cover-up, the Birmingham Six fit-up and many more, the evil things done have been a consequence of the exercise of power. Bryn Estyn, the Welsh children's home used to supply children to untouchable local luminaries echoes the Kincora scandal, in which prominent Northern Irish politicians, the police and the British intelligence services covered up and perhaps participated in a paedophile ring. 

All these events share common DNA. They stem from the Conservative and conservative position that some people count and other people don't. The Deepcut recruits were at the bottom of a hierarchical system. The Hillsborough fans were Northerners, Scousers, plebs and hooligans in the eyes of the government and a police force which - as in Bryn Estyn - saw itself as a colonialist service defending authority against the subversive and primitive natives. Pat Finucane was a solicitor who defended terrorist suspects from all sides but when his activities came too close to exposing state involvement in murder, he was assassinated with the full knowledge of the security forces. Again: an individual's life and rights were subsidiary to the maintenance of a secret state. The same police force which fixed Hillsborough systematically faked evidence during the Miners' Strike because the miners were - in Margaret Thatcher's words - 'the enemy within': communities without rights in the zero-sum view. 

And so we come to Savile, Bryn Estyn and Kincora. Paedophilia is a crime of power. It assumes that some people have rights and others - the marginalised, the unwanted, the inarticulate - don't deserve consideration as individuals or as groups. The suffering of a child, or a miner, or a Northern Irish solicitor is irrelevant to the 'big picture'. Jimmy did a lot of work for charity. Some of Finucane's clients were terrorists. Scousers are lefty whingers. Kids in care are on the scrapheap anyway. The Deepcut teenagers were cannon-fodder. The poor and old Stoke population I saw on last night's heartbreaking episode of The Year The Town Hall Shrank are benefit-dependent shirkers. They don't get to share the 'rights' of ordinary decent folk, whoever they are. 

This is a conservative position. Some people matter, most people don't, especially the weak who lack the backbone to strike out, make something of themselves. If most people don't matter, they're fair game. They can be ignored, fired, written off, slandered, murdered or abused with relative impunity. They're both out of sight and out of mind. Consider the government's current mass removal of poor Londoners to distant Northern cities. It smacks of dehumanisation. To them, the poor don't have families, or social networks which constitute a community. They don't deserve them. They're just mouths to feed. But consider this: an unemployed teenage Londoner dumped in a hostile estate in Rochdale or Stoke is far more likely to get into trouble than one who can pop round to his grandmother's flat round the corner for a square meal and a chat. More importantly, that displaced teenager has a right to a family life just like the unemployed rich kid in Mayfair - but for the Conservatives he's just a pawn on a chessboard. 

This is why paedophilia is a conservative crime. It's activated by the refusal to recognise the victim's right to consideration as a discrete, feeling person. Like hunted foxes, their sensations are considered unconscious and irrelevant. Once a child, a group of people or even a whole class or race is dehumanised, they can be collectively or individually abused without compunction. 

I'll say it again. Not all Conservatives or conservatives are paedophiles. Most would be rightfully horrified at the idea. Some of the most monstrous conservatives have been members of other parties, such as Cyril Smith (another one admired while alive but whose obituaries accused him - probably correctly - as a child abuser). As a liberationist socialist, I would certainly put Stalinism in the same category: a tiny elite assumed that any atrocity could be committed on 'the people' in the name of 'the people' in pursuit of its own grip on power. But an ideology which consistently argues and acts in a way which implies that groups of people are inherently disposable is always going to be conducive to abusers and abuse. There is an unbroken continuum between Jimmy Savile's abuse of his position to destroy the lives of individual children and his friend Margaret Thatcher's abuse of her position to beggar and marginalise entire swathes of the population.  

Are the media hypocrites? The definitive answer

On the left (this is the Daily Star, but it could have been any of them), a picture of an underage girl complete with references to her breasts. On the right, an article lambasting the 'perv' TV bosses who allowed Chris Morris to broadcast a satirical programme attacking hysterical and hypocritical media pedophile scaremongering (click to enlarge):

Early morning moron

Hello campers. I'm looking forward to 12 hours in the office today. Why have I been here since 8 a.m.? Because this idiot took home the marked essays rather than the unmarked ones… so have to finish 16 rather involved scripts as well as teach. Aarrrghhhh.

Still, the day started with amusement: there's a fuss (in the stupid rightwing press) about a toy hamster which is meant to sing Jingle Bells, but apparently sings 'Paedophile'. Radio 4's flagship news show, Today, was so amused by this that it tracked down a recording. It doesn't sing 'paedophile', more like mmmmmmphile. Close enough for the kneejerkers.

What a very surreal start to the day.

In the world of proper journalism, the Guardian and 56 other newspapers have marked the start of the Copenhagen conference with a joint editorial setting out the case for serious and urgent action. I know we shouldn't need to rehearse it again, but the deliberate, irresponsible, selfish, short-sighted, greedy and cynical machinations of fossil-fuel pushers, Tories, repressive oil-dictatorships and other capitalists (shame on you, Canada and Australia amongst others, including us, but especially the USA) have muddied the waters so much that people are either disillusioned with, cynical about or bored by, the subject.

Let's be clear. In the short term, food prices are going to go up. Poor, black people are going to starve. Then the already destabilised weather systems will deteriorate further. More, poor, black people are going to die - drowned, displaced, starved, killed in wars over productive land and water. After that, amidst the mass extinctions, freak weather, heatwaves and rising tides, Western nations will spend their money on keeping poor, black people out of the temperate zones. It won't (and shouldn't) work.

After that, life will get immeasurably worse but I, mercifully, will be very much dead.

Copenhagen is already dubious - horsetrading for countries to justify keeping their emissions up as high as possible rather than taking a lead, but it's a start. We might manage to keep temperature rises to 2 degrees C - leading only to awful consequences rather than catastrophic.

More twitter fun

Twitter for Paedophiles: Glitter.

Twitter for plumbers: Shitter.

For exercise fanatics (or engineers): Fitter

For tired university teachers: Bitter

For batsmen: Hitter

For coffee drinkers: Jitter

For the messy: Litter

Educate, Inform and Entertain

The Daily Star featured Gary Glitter on its front page the other day - something like PAEDO HORROR GLITTER TAKES BUS (really - apparently cab drivers won't take him). Over a few beers, we wondered how Chris Morris would update his famous (infamous?) paedophilia episode. Here's what we came up with:

The Paedo-Files - not sure what the show would be, but it's a good pun.

I'm a Celebrity Paedo Get Me Out Of Here - celebrity paedos appealing for your early release vote.

Celebrity Paedo Big Brother: a 7 year old (some kind of Romanian orphan or one in the 'care' of Haringey Social Services, ie somebody nobody will miss) sits in the centre of the CPBB house, surrounded by CCTV cameras, watching Gary Glitter, Chris Langham and a selection of other internationally-famous pop stars and film directors who've been acquitted or never charged solve puzzles which get them further round the maze leading to said orphan's room. C4 are no doubt filming it now.

Coming soon: Paedo! Which closely-modelled-on-a-celebrity character committed unspeakable acts, with what implements, in which room? Family fun for all the family (not for under 18s).