It Was My Fault I was Booed - an Exercise in Free Speech

On a recent visit to a well-known social media site (What is it called? Twaddle? Something like that), I found quite a few reactions to my appearance on the BBC Programme ‘Free Speech’ last Thursday evening, still, I think, to be found on the BBC iPlayer (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b041t6r9) but not for long.  BBC3? Not really a place I know much about, but I was asked very nicely to go on the programme, which involved a trip to Nottingham, always an interesting destination, plus a chance to glimpse, on the train there and back, the mysterious, beautiful Triangular Lodge at Rushton. I had not heard of this astonishing work of art and faith (it is all about the Holy Trinity) when I first saw it 45 or so years ago, and could not quite believe that I had in fact seen anything so lovely and unusual just sitting in the English landscape.  Since then I have always looked out for it on the stretch of track between Kettering and Market Harborough. One day I hope I shall actually go and visit the Lodge itself.

 

Also, the train to Nottingham stops at Market Harborough, which allows me to text messages to one or two trusted people saying ‘Am in Market Harborough’, knowing I will receive replies asking ‘Where ought you to be?’. This stretch of country is part of the large area of handsome, unpicturesque England which hardly anyone visits but which I always draw a strong feeling of reassurance

 

Anyway, there I was in a former Courthouse in the pleasantly restored bit of Nottingham just east of the centre, near the new tram tracks, not quite knowing what I had let myself in for, but certain it would not be the same as ‘Question Time’. This, after all, was a Youth Channel.  Two of the panellists spoke for Youth, Archie Bland, of the Independent, and Ava Vidal, a former prison officer, now a comedian.   

 

Perhaps slightly less youthful was Anna Soubry, an unusually interesting and engaging Tory MP (not that I like her politics, as I don’t, but she seems to have independence of mind and a good strong combative streak), former journalist, former barrister, now a junior Defence Minister.

 

I was there to represent age, and reaction, and polished leather shoes, and everything bad. And as I walked into the old courtroom in which the programme was to take place, I was booed by quite a few people in the audience, just for existing. I waved merrily at them.  Alas, this bit was not broadcast, as it might have helped viewers understand what sort of audience it was, more quickly than they otherwise might have done.

 

I received a strongly hostile reception from quite a few of them (nothing to worry about, but there were times when I simply couldn’t make myself heard above the shouts and heckling, which is never good) I am sure it wasn’t universal but it must have sounded sometimes as if it was. It got better later. It was almost impossible to discuss prison (it always is, as any intelligent and informed opinion cuts across the boilerplate and clichés of both tribal leftists and tribal Tories, and gets nowhere). I was also asked (I must do this again at a student meeting in London next month, at 6.30 p.m. on May 7th at King’s College in the Strand, with the great Theodore Dalrymple as my opponent. ) to discuss the death penalty, a topic that has now become a sort of ritual, as there is not the slightest chance of it ever being restored under acceptable conditions. Yet I think it dishonest to avoid it when asked.

 

Even so, I generally feel, when I make the excellent case for the capital penalty in facts and logic, that most people in the audience regard this spectacle as akin to seeing a dinosaur skeleton in a museum suddenly starting to speak. They are too astonished to hear much of what I say. One audience member misunderstood me so completely that I can only assume she was too shocked actually to listen to a word I had said.

 

Somehow, we ended up discussing circumcision, during which the anti-Hitchens loathing abated because they weren’t absolutely sure that my opinions were criminal, and then rape (a subject I never volunteer for). I stuck to a firm, defence of the presumption of innocence, but noticed that this immediately got me denounced as a supporter of something called ‘rape culture’. Does this mean that anyone who doesn’t agree that everyone accused of rape is a) guilty and doesn’t need a trial and b) should be locked up forever and a day , is a supporter of ‘rape culture’. I suspect so.

 

 

 

 

Anyway, when I ventured on to ‘Twaddle’ the next day I found that quite a few of its contributors were still, in a way, booing. The burden of their message was that I should have felt actually ashamed of what I had said, which in their view was plainly, objectively wrong. The worrying thing was that they really did think something of the kind, that it was morally wrong of me to have held and spoken out loud the opinions I expressed. Who has taught them this totalitarian view? Who has failed to teach them that their opponents are entitled to their opinions? I do not know, but those responsible have much to answer. I have said for some time that many of our more feral young people would make excellent concentration camp guards. But some of these ‘Twaddle’ contributors would make excellent members of some Committee of Public safety, breezily and without a qualm sending dissenters to their doom.

 

My absolute favourite was this one from a  young woman (I have corrected a minor spelling error) ‘You should review what you said, which led to you being booed.’

 

It was my fault, you see, that I was booed. It reminded me of the brave old days in the Hampstead Constituency Labour Party general management committee, circa 1979, then held in the magnificent surroundings of Sir Thomas Beecham’s old house, which had become the headquarters of the train drivers’ union, ASLEF. At these festivals of the higher philosophy, the chairperson would call me to order during my own speeches -  because I was being heckled . This tended to happen if one were too critical of the IRA, or supported the nuclear deterrent, or put in a good word for constitutional monarchy.

 

‘Comrade Hitchens!’ she would snap  ‘You are provoking the other comrades!’ I thought then that this was so unconsciously funny that it wasn’t worth pointing out that it was actually her job to call the hecklers to order. Nowadays I’m not so sure that it’s still funny.