Another voice

Unfit for publication

Auberon Waugh 'We would restore real freedom of the press,' says Mr John Tyndall, chairman of the National Front in the course of an interview in this week's Observer. 'We wouldn't, of course, allow anything seditious or subversive or slanderous.'

Real freedom, in this context, presumably means a relaxing of the various inhibitions imposed by the Race Relations Act accompanied by a tightening-up of such freedoms as remain to insult, deride or criticise our political leaders. In all my years as a journalist, I have never once heard the phrase 'Freedom of the Press' used except to urge some further restriction on it. My settled conclusion is that practically nobody in Britain believes in it outside the tiny world of journalists, and precious few inside that world. Most people, I believe, prefer reading an unshackled press—although some are even made uneasy by that—but as soon as this freedom threatens to disturb their own tranquillity in the smallest way they immediately adopt attitudes whose repressiveness is only matched by extreme moral highmindedness.

I think the National Front have a right to feel discriminated against. Long before the passing of the Race Relations Act there were perfectly adequate laws against public conduct or language likely to cause a breach of the peace. They may well be a nasty, boring and humourless collection of fanatics, but I have never seen that there was anything more wicked about race hatred than there is about class hatred or religious hatred or the peculiarly intense and inexplicable hatred which my dear wife feels for Jimmy Connors, the tennis player. They are all part of the rich panorama of life. If I forbade my wife to express her true feelings for Jimmy Connors, I have no doubt they would fester inside her, creating little black eddies of resentment and paranoia which would eventually burst out in some hideous drama on the Centre Court at Wimbledon when Connors would expire, coughing blood, in front of the television cameras, with a lady's parasol sticking between his ribs; public subscriptions would create a Jimmy Connors Memorial Trust and we would be stuck with a hideous modern statue of the young man somewhere on those green and pleasant lawns. So, wisely, I let her have her say.

Musing on the race problem in the past, I have often wondered whether the issue which appears to unite such a large section of the British working class is not so much hatred of blacks as hatred of Mark Bonham Carter; the blacks are simply unfortunate enough to find themselves caught in the cross-fire of an historic battle. This perspective certainly allows for a more cheerful view

of that matter than is conventionally encouraged. As in the famous shoot-out in the 'St Valentine's Day Massacre' between the .forces of Al Capone and Bugsy Malone one can applaud every bullet, thrill to every 'oof!' And it is this element of cheerfulness, above all, which seems to be lacking from the great debate on race relations.

Another Sunday newspaper this week printed a long profile of Robert Relf, hero of racist advertising, which included an extract from one of his letters to an East African neighbour who received £109 a week in social security payments for himself, his wife and thirteen children. The newspaper—rather sniffily, I thought—dismissed his 'unsubtle line in venomous abuse' with the following comment : 'Normally the kind of language in Relf's letter would be considered unfit for publication in a newspaper but we reproduce it today because it is relevant in assessing Relf's motives and his public image.'

Ah yes, to be sure, it is most important that we should form the right assessment of Relf's motives and his public image. Many people's reactions, I know, will be quite different, but I must confess his letter had me rolling on the floor :

'So you bloated black Pig you feel that the State is not doing you any favours by paying you £109 per week to sit on your stinking great fat arse ... Well, you odious venereal black scum if I had my way. .. by putting a rope around your fat slimy neck and stringing you up to the nearest lamp post . . . Bloody good riddance you stinking fat Bastard.

(signed) R. Relf

PS. COME BACK HITLER ALL IS FORGIVEN.'

I can see many nice, easy-going, intelligent people pursing their lips at this point and saying no, it won't do, you can't pretend this sort of thing is funny. Think of the poor black man's feelings. This is all quite beyond the pale. One becomes positively indignant that anyone can be so rude, does one not ? I can only say, as a student of the vituperative arts, that this letter scores fairly high marks in its own right, that if one sees it as being addressed, in fact, to Mr Bonham Carter, it attains a certain poetry; and if one examines it from the point of view that other people, who are neither its writer nor its recipient, are going to take it very seriously indeed, then it becomes an object of the most exquisite comedy. Add to this that Relf's recent hunger strike and victory over the Race Relations Board have made him a folk hero of the West Midlands, bringing him hundreds of letters of support and an inscribed volume from Ms Patience Strong, the poet and women's magazine writer —

'Salute to a brave and courageous Englishman'—and the joke begins to assume cosmic proportions. Now Mr Relf is to be found at every function and fête organised by the National Front, to whom he has become the Che Guevara of the West Midlands.

Of course I can see as well as anybody that there is nothing funny about racial strife, nothing remotely funny about broken heads, spilt blood, terror and hatred in action. I keep a small file of letters I have received which are not so different in tone from the one which Mr Relf sent to his East African neighbour. Most of them, in fact, are from lady novelists and all are from authors. Once or twice in my career—certainly not more often than twice—I have even written such letters myself, always to novel reviewers. The error behind this form of abuse lies in supposing that it is possible to inflict any sort of wound by letter to a stranger. Only friends wound in that way. Just occasionally, perhaps, leafing through the file for a quiet chuckle, or to find a particular adjective which evades me, I experience a momentary twinge of unease over the depth and intensity of the hatred revealed. It is not so much what these people say as the evidence of their desire to say it which can occasionally give a man pause, if they catch him at a weak moment. But mostly, they are read for laughs.

I don't know why it is that race relations should attract so much foolishness and pomposity on both sides of the fence. I can quite understand people wishing there were fewer blacks around, and am not particularly shocked to hear such sentiments expressed although I might say, 'Tut, tut'. I can quite understand people feeling it wrong that others should be discriminated against on account of their colour, and might even give a feeble clap or two if somebody put this case forcefully enough. But what I know in my bones to be wrong is this insistence that we should all be prepared to take Mr Relf and Mr Bonham Carter seriously.

For myself, I see nothing to choose between the National Front and the Race Relations Board. Both are a collection of bores and busybodies and both are harmful to the extent they are taken seriously. Possibly not many people do take Mr Bonham Carter seriously and I am doing him an injustice, but we know from the newspapers that an enormous number of people are trying to persuade us to take the National Front seriously.

The chicken-and-egg argument of which came first out of Mr Robert Relf and Mr Bonham Carter may never be settled, but I feel certain that the only thing which gives the National Front glamour or popular appeal at the present time is the attempt by foolish, well-meaning people to suppress its views and treat its language as unfit for publication. The Race Relations Board is now in a quandary over Mr Relf. He has beaten them all, and it is terribly hard for pompous people to admit they are beaten. The kindest and wisest thing to do is to laugh at them.