The Progressive

Draper V Dale round two

The head of BBC One Jay Hunt gave an excellent interview on the Today Programme this morning explaining the reasons behind the decision to suspend – not ‘sack’ - Carol Thatcher from the One Show for her ‘golliwog’ remarks.

She made two important points. First, that the comments were not made in ‘private’ as Thatcher’s supporters have claimed but in a BBC green room with 12 other people present (including journalists), with Carol on BBC time in her role as a reporter for the One Show.

Second, that the BBC has a responsibility to its audience and that it simply was not appropriate to employ someone who thought it was acceptable to use the word ‘golliwog’ as a joke – a term viewed as a highly offensive and indeed racist by a sizeable proportion of the BBC audience.

Meanwhile the spat between Derek Draper and Iain Dale over the controversy continues to rumble on. My blog on the affair yesterday which was cross-posted on Labour List seems to have generated a fair bit of comment. One commentator Adam in London raised the issue of BBC double standards over its treatment of Chris Moyles, Jonathon Ross and Russell Brand in comparison to Thatcher. My response, which I also posted on the Labour List site, is below:

Can't argue with you on the point about Chris Moyles and I am not here to defend the BBC. He should be sacked. He won't be, because he is too popular, but then that's ratings for you. They do funny things to to director generals' heads. Ditto the case with Russell and Brand.

Nonetheless the BBC was right to fire Carol Thatcher over her comments, however innocuous they may seem. After the Celebrity Big Brother debacle broadcasters began to realise that the only way to deal with racist language was to operate a zero tolerance policy towards it; otherwise they can be accused by their audiences of turning a blind to or even condoning racist attitudes - which is exactly what happened in the case of Big Brother and Channel 4.

Of course if an employee at a 'normal' organisation had used the same phrase as Thatcher the sack would rightly have been seen as a bit of an over reaction, although some form of disciplinary action would surely have been appropriate.

But the fact is the BBC has its reputation as a public broadcaster to think about and for the reasons mentioned above simply can't be seen to tolerate the use of such language by its employees. Thatcher ought to have known the word 'golliwog' was likely to cause offense to sizeable proportion of her audience, even if she didn't intend to be racist. She is the daughter of a former PM, after all.

And don't give me that guff about what she said was in private and therefore somehow off limits. Why is something any less offensive because it happens to be said behind closed doors?

To go back to Iain Dale's role in the whole affair, by leaping so readily to Thatcher's defense I think at best he has been quite naive and worse rather insensitive to the effect the everyday use of such language has on ethnic minorities. He should apologise, and move on.

Iain Dale's doublespeak

Quite a spat seems to be brewing between stalwarts of the political blogosphere Derek Draper and Iain Dale about the latter’s defense of Carol Thatcher over her sacking from the BBC for her behind the scene’s utterance of the word ‘golliwog’.

This certainly seems to be a bit of a hot button issue for Dale. In response to a blog I posted in January on Prince Harry’s now infamous use of the word ‘paki’ the Tory blogger commented to clarify his remarks about the use of the word being ‘acceptable’ in those terrible 1970s sitcoms such as Mind Your Language, before it was monopolised by the National Front as a term of hate.

I wasn’t entirely convinced by his answer then and I don’t think his defense of Carol Thatcher’s remarks is particularly convincing now. On Sunday Dale wrote an excellent rejoinder to a vile column by Peter Hitchens in the Daily Mail challenging the casual homophobia that seemed to belie his every word. Why, then, can’t Dale see that the same level of scrutiny ought to apply to the casual bandying about of offensive and racist terminology by overpaid celebrities?

Harry's good intentions

The media storm surrounding Prince Harry’s ill-judged remarks in the video released by the News of the World on Sunday continues to rumble on.

This morning listeners to the Today Programme were treated to an extraordinary debate on the issue between the chair of the home affairs select committee Keith Vaz and the former Welsh Tory minister Rod Richards.

I am sure Richard’s astonishing contribution will have had many BBC listeners choking on their cornflakes.

Having said how, in his day, he was quite happy to have the mickey taken out of him by fellow MPs for his Welshness – including insinuations about having had sexual relations with sheep - Richards went on to insist that, as far as he was concerned, “Paki” wasn’t an offensive term, but an abbreviation for "Pakistani".

Never mind an increasingly exasperated Keith Vaz telling him how offensive the term actually was. Never mind that the father of the solidier whose Harry’s comments were directed at has since come out to describe it as “a disgraceful insult” and “hate word”. The former Tory minister wouldn't be persuaded. If the speaker of the word doesn’t regard it as offensive or doesn’t intend it in an offensive manner, Richards seemed to suggest, then it probably isn’t. In other words, lighten up.

Revelations about his sexual proclivaties aside, Richards' comments go to the heart of the problem with Prince Harry’s own muted defence of his actions – that his comments were meant affectionately and not in a racist manner – a position that has garnered sympathy in some quarters of the blogosphere.
Whether the intention behind Harry’s use of the world “paki” was malicious or not, or whether Richards' thinks it is an abbreviation and not an insult, is in many ways beside the point. It is simply not their place to judge how offensive the term is to Asian people.

Even the most cursory knowledge of Britain’s recent social history would have warned Harry how insulting his use of the term was likely to be to his colleague Ahmed and his family. As Iain Dale points out in his blog on the controversy yesterday the term “paki” came to prominence in the late 1970s and 1980s when it was used by the National Front and BNP as a term of abuse in their virulent campaigns against Britain’s Asian communities at the time (although I take issue with Dales’ assertion that before then its use was perfectly acceptable in sitcoms such as Mind Your Language and Love Thy Neighbour).

Although race relations in Britain have moved on somewhat since that time the word still retains its power to shock and is still regarded by my Asian friends (and partner) as a particularly offensive. For Harry to think it was a suitable term to use in a nickname for his Asian friend was ignorant to say the least.

In the debate on the Today Programme Keith Vaz made an important point about the effect the tolerance of such language has on efforts to recruit and retain ethnic minorities in organisations such as the armed forces. Whatever the intention behind the use of such language, its acceptance can lead to a culture where minorities feel marginalised and unable to complain about instances of abuse for fear of not being “one of the lads”. No wonder therefore army chiefs are worried about the effect Prince Harry’s comments are likely to have on the army’s already pretty dismal record for ethnic minority recruitment.

So it doesn’t really matter whether Harry intended his comments to be racist or not; the damage they have done is real regardless of the motive behind them. Words, just like guns, can wound. It's a painful lesson for the Prince, but one that by now he really ought to have learnt.

The Oxford Union invite will only help legitimise the BNP

The Oxford Union has voted to go ahead with the invite to the British National Party (BNP) leader Nick Griffin and Holocaust denier David Irving to speak at a free speech event at the Union on Monday November 26th. Despite opposition, the Oxford Union Debating Society members voted by a margin of 2 to 1 to continue to extend the invite made some weeks ago.

As I stated earlier in the week, debating with the likes of Griffin and Irving may well prove intellectually stimulating for some members of the Oxford Union but the realpolitik is that the BNP is very keen to be seen as moving into the mainstream of British politics, an invite from the Oxford Union may well help the BNP in achieving this ambition.

The racist, bigoted politics of hatred expounded by the BNP will, as a result of the Oxford Union's invite, help the likes of Griffin secure some short term political credibility. In the minds of some the invitation will signify that the views of the far right are gaining in respectability.

Big Brother - Glorifying ignorance

We shouldn’t be surprised at the racism on Big Brother when we spend our time cultivating and celebrating ignorance. Martin Luther King Jr said “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” Jade Goody has been catapulted to fame precisely because of her lack of knowledge about the world around her. Thinking that East Angular (sic) was abroad, and that Rio de Janeiro was a person, became something to admire. Even fame and fortune has failed to widen her horizons – when asked what the one thing she wanted to know in all the world was, Jade asked why Eskimo’s didn’t die from the cold and whether they sounded like dolphins (thinking they lived in Antarctica). If she hadn’t asked that, she would have wanted to know whether mermaids ever existed.

But ignorance extends further than a poor grasp of geography, and Celebrity Big Brother has shown us where it can end up. As Jade, Jo and Danielle ganged up against Shilpa earlier this week, it was clear that their fear and loathing of her gave way to a nastier exposition of their lack of cultural understanding. Shilpa is a beautiful Bollywood star who is haughty and often extremely aggravating, but we shouldn’t expect this to give rise to racism in itself. Jo, formerly in S Club 7, suggested that Indians were thin because they undercooked their meat which gave them the squits. Nothing to do with malnutrition and lack of access to clean water then? She added helpfully “they eat with their hands in India don’t they - or is that China?”. Danielle, formerly Miss England, replied “you don’t know where her hands have been”. Yet eating in Indian culture is incredibly sophisticated and anything but primitive or dirty. Yes, Indian food is best enjoyed eating with your fingers - how else can you use a naan to mop up your chicken tikka masala? But it is also considered quite rude to touch the food of others, and some Indian etiquette suggests that eating with your left hand is unclean.

We ought to be positive about the fact that around 7,600 people have complained to Ofcom about the racist remarks – I doubt we would have witnessed such an outcry thirty years ago. Let's give Jade, Danielle and Jo the benefit of the doubt too: they probably would not consider it acceptable to attack Shilpa directly for having brown skin, and they would not use the vile racist epithets which used to be commonplace in the 1970s. I would guess that when they emerge and learn that they've been widely accused of racism, they will be astonished and affronted.  Racism is not as open or virulent as it once was. But what we see here is racism nonetheless - the racism of cultural ignorance.