Insulting the readers
Sir: I have no doubt that among many people the recent prison sentence upon the editor of Bulldog (Notebook, 16 January) will produce a feeling that ... it is only the National Front again, anyway'. But I still have a deep aversion for almost every law which throttles publication, especially when, as in this instance, the laws were passed by 'establishment' political parties to try to suppress home-based minority parties.
The laws which have permitted this Bulldog sentence may indeed be the thin end of a very dangerous wedge, They are also a particular insult to the readers of periodicals generally: the present state of the law obviously regards readers as nothing better than uniformly programmed
automata, reacting in exactly the way that an editor wishes them to do. We also hear the usual bromides about 'impressionable youth' — as if young people were necessari- ly less critical of what they read than the older readership. No credence is given, for example, to the possibility of a negative, apathetic or contrary reaction to any given article, e.g. that what has been designed to stir up opposition or hatred might, in the event, produce sympathy instead. Such possibilities, however, are 'conveniently ignored' when suppression of opinion is the objective.
Similar assumptions are made with regard to 'pornography'. For instance it is assumed that the reader has no free will or restraint, but will be automatically stimulated into lust by any 'pornographic' display. This is obviously a false assump- tion, if only because individuals differ tremendously.
Do the Parliamentarians who pass our laws really believe that lust or — in par- ticular — racial tension will be lowered by the imprisonment of editors or the suppres- sion of publications? Surely such censor- ship is merely a method of driving such im- pulses away from the legitimate public printing press into the less predictable sub- cultures of the streets. But I, for one, would prefer any sort of tension to be channelled and intellectualised into the printed word rather than to become a suppressed powder- keg of uncertain location and unknown potential.
Edward Turnbull,
38 Elsdon Road, Gosforth, .
Newcastle upon Tyne
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