In an intriguing programme for BBC Radio 4 Sarfraz Manzoor looked into the story of real-life black cowboys in America. He also secured an interview with Herb Jeffries, still alive at the age of nearly 100, who starred as a black cowboy in films made in the 1930s for showing to black audiences in the segregated cinemas of those days.
But Jeffries – who had sung with Duke Ellington & Earl Hines – is white, Manzoor asserts, son of an Italian father & an Irish mother; although therefore quite dark complected he used Max Factor make-up to darken his skin for the screen.
Some internet sources do not mention this fact, others claim that his father had mixed African & Sicilian blood.
I am particularly intrigued by this story because of the way it mirrors claims about the background of Sir Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert & Sullivan fame), who was, according to Arthur Jacobs, his most authoritative biographer, also of mixed Italian/Irish descent.
Just goes to show how tricky it can be to put people into the right box.
Link
YouTube: Herb Jeffries – 1950
Herb Jeffries 'The Bronze Buckaroo'
BBC Radio 4: Forgotten Black Cowboys
Oakland Black Cowboy Association
Texas Black Cowboys
Related post
The Black Irish
Jackie Kay: Red Dust Road
Showing posts with label The swift. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The swift. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 02, 2013
Saturday, March 09, 2013
£40 per head
I decided to take a look at the entries for Gladstone in the Slave Ownership database
John Gladstone (father of prime minister William Ewart Gladstone) received over £90,000 in compensation (in 1830s money) for the loss of some 2,500 slaves on his estates in Jamaica & Demerara (part of modern Guyana) – implying that a slave was worth less than £40.
I got a surprise when I idly calculated the value for each estate, however. (The individual manifests underlying the claims, the documents I saw in the 1960s, go into detail about the personal characteristics which affect the value of a slave). On the Demerara estates the average value worked out at £50 or more per slave; Jamaican slaves were worth less than half that – under £20 per head.
The UCL website gives some assistance on this point:
Or maybe it has more to do with higher levels of indebtedness of Jamaican planters?
I shall have to see what more I can find out.
Link
Legacies of British Slave-ownership
Related post
Slave ownership
Human evaluation
John Gladstone (father of prime minister William Ewart Gladstone) received over £90,000 in compensation (in 1830s money) for the loss of some 2,500 slaves on his estates in Jamaica & Demerara (part of modern Guyana) – implying that a slave was worth less than £40.
I got a surprise when I idly calculated the value for each estate, however. (The individual manifests underlying the claims, the documents I saw in the 1960s, go into detail about the personal characteristics which affect the value of a slave). On the Demerara estates the average value worked out at £50 or more per slave; Jamaican slaves were worth less than half that – under £20 per head.
The UCL website gives some assistance on this point:
A commissioned group of officials were appointed by Parliament to determine who should receive what and on what basis. They carefully documented all claims made and all monies disbursed. The effect of this is that there is an extraordinary set of records, held in the National Archives at Kew, of the claimants and of the men, women and children that owners claimed as their 'property' and the monetary values that were assigned to them. If the claims were validated, having been checked in the relevant colonies, the owner received compensation. The amounts were fixed according to the classification of each individual - their gender, age, type of work and level of skill - and the level of productivity, and therefore profitability, of the different islands and territories. The average value of a slave in British Guiana (now Guyana), for example, was judged to be considerably higher than that in Jamaica.On the face of it an extraordinary difference in productivity, whether that be to do with factors such as soil & climate or the physical health of the slaves,
Or maybe it has more to do with higher levels of indebtedness of Jamaican planters?
I shall have to see what more I can find out.
Link
Legacies of British Slave-ownership
Related post
Slave ownership
Human evaluation
Thursday, March 07, 2013
Slave ownership
Back in the early 1960s, when the Public Record Office (now part of the National Archives) was in Chancery Lane, a friend took me see the records of compensation paid to slave owners when slavery was abolished in 1833. And grim reading it was.
Those records have now, in part, been placed on a publicly available database, though the interest seems mainly in tracing the details of all the slave owners (of whom there were many more, more widely spread, geographically & through the classes, than you might expect), rather than the individual slaves - who were itemised in the manifests I saw.
Even a search for owners names helps to show how many surnames still common use in the former British West Indies were bequeathed by these owners (not necessarily through paternity)
Link
Legacies of British Slave ownership database – UCL
Those records have now, in part, been placed on a publicly available database, though the interest seems mainly in tracing the details of all the slave owners (of whom there were many more, more widely spread, geographically & through the classes, than you might expect), rather than the individual slaves - who were itemised in the manifests I saw.
Even a search for owners names helps to show how many surnames still common use in the former British West Indies were bequeathed by these owners (not necessarily through paternity)
Link
Legacies of British Slave ownership database – UCL
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Blue blood
An absorbing new series on Radio 4 talks to people who must listen – intently- for a living.
It was while cardiac surgeon Jonathan Pitts Crick was talking about de-oxygenated blood returning to the heart – the blue blood – that it suddenly occurred to me to wonder why we use the phrase blue-blooded to mean aristocratic. What can be good, admirable or desirable about not having enough oxygen?
It seems unlikely that it could really be a dig, suggesting a class which is effete & decadent (in contrast to more lusty red-blooded types), since I always understood blue blood to be admired.
The Phrase Finder suggests that it a literal translation of the Spanish 'sangre azul', attributed to some of the oldest and proudest families of Castile, who claimed never to have intermarried with Moors, Jews, or other, darker skinned peoples. Their skin was whiter than white, fair enough for you to be able to see the blue in their veins.
The OED does not give us an etymology, but does include a quotation from Charles Kingsley’s Water Babies (published in 1863): Like an old blue-blooded hidalgo of Spain.
Yet another word to be careful about using.
Link
BBC Radio 4: The Listeners
Phrase finder: Blue blood
Related post
Passing white
It was while cardiac surgeon Jonathan Pitts Crick was talking about de-oxygenated blood returning to the heart – the blue blood – that it suddenly occurred to me to wonder why we use the phrase blue-blooded to mean aristocratic. What can be good, admirable or desirable about not having enough oxygen?
It seems unlikely that it could really be a dig, suggesting a class which is effete & decadent (in contrast to more lusty red-blooded types), since I always understood blue blood to be admired.
The Phrase Finder suggests that it a literal translation of the Spanish 'sangre azul', attributed to some of the oldest and proudest families of Castile, who claimed never to have intermarried with Moors, Jews, or other, darker skinned peoples. Their skin was whiter than white, fair enough for you to be able to see the blue in their veins.
The OED does not give us an etymology, but does include a quotation from Charles Kingsley’s Water Babies (published in 1863): Like an old blue-blooded hidalgo of Spain.
Yet another word to be careful about using.
Link
BBC Radio 4: The Listeners
Phrase finder: Blue blood
Related post
Passing white
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Language orders
Feeling bereft of inspiration for a topic for a quick post today I resorted to an old standby – look at how they celebrated Valentine’s Day 100 years ago.
I did not get that far – diverted by yet more evidence that there is absolutely nothing new in ‘political correctness.’
The following is an extract from The Times of 14 February 1913.
Related posts
Terminological debate
Old fashioned political correctness
Another N word
I did not get that far – diverted by yet more evidence that there is absolutely nothing new in ‘political correctness.’
The following is an extract from The Times of 14 February 1913.
That last sentence speaks volumes about the gulf that can grow between those at 'home' & those who fondly believe that everything in the old country remains as it was when they left, something that can affect migrants everywhere.The nomenclature of IndiansOfficial orders
The use of the word ‘native’ as a synonym for ‘Indian’, customary for generations in official & public speech & writing, has been discouraged in recent years, & more particularly from the time of Lord Minto’s Viceroyalty, owing to the dislike of the appellation shown by the educated classes.
Though it has now been generally discarded in official correspondence, reports & returns, the Government of India have deemed it desirable to give a definite direction to this effect to their officers.
The notification … recognises that in certain contingencies it is impossible to avoid the use of the word, eg in such phrases as … ‘statutory native of India’ (a term which includes the domiciled whites). But generally officers of Government have been directed to use the word ‘Indian’ instead of ‘native’ in all official papers …
Our readers are aware that this has long been the practice of The Times.
Related posts
Terminological debate
Old fashioned political correctness
Another N word
Friday, January 11, 2013
Indomitable lives
I have just been reading Two Lives, by Vikram Seth.
The lives in question are those of his great uncle & his wife, he Indian, she German Jewish, both born in 1908. They first met in 1930s Berlin, where Shanti-uncle was studying dentistry, & again in London whence both fled, Aunty Henny having been lucky enough to find a sponsor which allowed her a visa.
They married in 1951, by which time Henny’s mother & sister had perished in the camps & Shanti had lost his right arm at Monte Cassino, where he was serving with the British army dental corps. Although he was able to secure himself a job as scientific adviser to a dental products company, which provided him with a good salary, opportunities to travel & lecture on the latest research into scientific dentistry, he hankered after being able to go back to hands-on work with patients & being his own master. And so, with the help & encouragement of another practising dentist, he trained himself to manage – successfully - with only one arm.
After all this he & Henny settled for a comfortably middle-class life in a semi in the north London suburb of Hendon, where Henny died in 1989 & Uncle in 1998, just before his 90th birthday.
Vikram Seth lived with his uncle & aunt during his vacations, first as a sixth form boarder at Tonbridge & then at Oxford University, so the three became close.
This brief summary can scarce do justice, either to the story or to the masterful way in which Seth handles the material – the history of his own side of the family, interviews with his uncle in old age, a cache of documents belonging to Aunty Henny found in an attic (which had survived uncle’s attempts to destroy everything which brought him painful memories after her death), research in Germany – woven in with accounts of the sweep of German & Indian history.
Painful, inspiring & humbling – those are the words which spring to mind to describe what kind of ‘a read’ is this book.
Links
British Council: Vikram Seth
Vikram Set: Biography
Vikram Seth: Desert Island Discs
Related post
Peace & awe
The lives in question are those of his great uncle & his wife, he Indian, she German Jewish, both born in 1908. They first met in 1930s Berlin, where Shanti-uncle was studying dentistry, & again in London whence both fled, Aunty Henny having been lucky enough to find a sponsor which allowed her a visa.
They married in 1951, by which time Henny’s mother & sister had perished in the camps & Shanti had lost his right arm at Monte Cassino, where he was serving with the British army dental corps. Although he was able to secure himself a job as scientific adviser to a dental products company, which provided him with a good salary, opportunities to travel & lecture on the latest research into scientific dentistry, he hankered after being able to go back to hands-on work with patients & being his own master. And so, with the help & encouragement of another practising dentist, he trained himself to manage – successfully - with only one arm.
After all this he & Henny settled for a comfortably middle-class life in a semi in the north London suburb of Hendon, where Henny died in 1989 & Uncle in 1998, just before his 90th birthday.
Vikram Seth lived with his uncle & aunt during his vacations, first as a sixth form boarder at Tonbridge & then at Oxford University, so the three became close.
This brief summary can scarce do justice, either to the story or to the masterful way in which Seth handles the material – the history of his own side of the family, interviews with his uncle in old age, a cache of documents belonging to Aunty Henny found in an attic (which had survived uncle’s attempts to destroy everything which brought him painful memories after her death), research in Germany – woven in with accounts of the sweep of German & Indian history.
Painful, inspiring & humbling – those are the words which spring to mind to describe what kind of ‘a read’ is this book.
Links
British Council: Vikram Seth
Vikram Set: Biography
Vikram Seth: Desert Island Discs
Related post
Peace & awe
Monday, December 17, 2012
Being over-run by the herd of foreign and very dear pretenders
Foreign born – that is now the quick & dirty way to measure the number of ‘immigrants’ living in our country. I understand why, but I always want to ask – Yes, but how many of them are British, really?
Because lots of British-born-and-bred people spend part of their lives living abroad, for a whole variety of reasons such as marriage, work, education, just wanting a change. And many of them have children while living abroad, though few, if any, of us natives would regard those children as either foreign or immigrant when – if – the family return to live in the UK. It is a moot point whether their number is greater in these days of globalisation than it was in the days of the Raj, when, for example, few thought that Colin Cowdrey, captain of cricket, was not English.
I now have a poster boy for this question: Bradley Wiggins was born in Belgium.
I wonder just how many of ‘our’ Olympic medal winners would count as immigrants if we defined them by the country of their birth.
Links
Team GB: Bradley Wiggins
Bradley Wiggins has been voted the 2012 BBC Sports Personality of the Year
Related posts
Pantomime politics
The advantage of marriage
Friday, November 02, 2012
Football goes bananas
My heart sank when I heard that a referee had been accused of using racist language by calling a footballer a monkey. The claim is denied, but is this another word we have to keep in the mental censored box, whatever the context?
Context matters of course, &offence is easily understandable in the world of soccer where monkey chants from the crowd & the throwing of bananas (supposedly monkey food) on to the pitch are, or have been, rife throughout Europe as a way of insulting black players & trying to put them off their stride
Well it may turn out to be a mishearing amidst all the noise & argument that was going on – the footballer on the receiving end is called Mikel, after all.
But might the referee have used the word monkey in some non-racist, but unfortunately non-self-censored sense?
The OED entry for monkey (plus related words) covers three printed pages, so there are clearly plenty of possibilities on offer.
If we look only at those examples which come under the heading of ‘A person regarded as resembling a monkey in some way’, then it has been used since 1500s to mean a child or a foolish person – still is in common use in phrases such as ‘little monkey’ or ‘cheeky monkey’ for children who are being mischievous. I suspect that I may also have, on occasion, berated the odd adult for being a cheeky monkey.
If the remark is alleged to have been made during one of those occasions where the player was protesting about some incident in which he had not personally been involved, I suppose it is just conceivable that someone might say ‘I’ll only talk to the organ grinder (ie captain), not the monkey.’
Other possibilities are that the ref said ‘Stop trying to make a monkey [fool] of me’, or ‘Go away before I really get my monkey up’ [get angry], ‘I’m a monkey’s uncle’ [surprised] or even ‘I don’t give a monkey’s’ [about your unfounded complaint].
Context matters of course, &offence is easily understandable in the world of soccer where monkey chants from the crowd & the throwing of bananas (supposedly monkey food) on to the pitch are, or have been, rife throughout Europe as a way of insulting black players & trying to put them off their stride
Well it may turn out to be a mishearing amidst all the noise & argument that was going on – the footballer on the receiving end is called Mikel, after all.
But might the referee have used the word monkey in some non-racist, but unfortunately non-self-censored sense?
The OED entry for monkey (plus related words) covers three printed pages, so there are clearly plenty of possibilities on offer.
If we look only at those examples which come under the heading of ‘A person regarded as resembling a monkey in some way’, then it has been used since 1500s to mean a child or a foolish person – still is in common use in phrases such as ‘little monkey’ or ‘cheeky monkey’ for children who are being mischievous. I suspect that I may also have, on occasion, berated the odd adult for being a cheeky monkey.
If the remark is alleged to have been made during one of those occasions where the player was protesting about some incident in which he had not personally been involved, I suppose it is just conceivable that someone might say ‘I’ll only talk to the organ grinder (ie captain), not the monkey.’
Other possibilities are that the ref said ‘Stop trying to make a monkey [fool] of me’, or ‘Go away before I really get my monkey up’ [get angry], ‘I’m a monkey’s uncle’ [surprised] or even ‘I don’t give a monkey’s’ [about your unfounded complaint].
Links
Related posts
Monday, September 24, 2012
Oh my Patrick & Patricia
If you are not allowed to call someone a pleb, should you be allowed to call anyone Pat?
Pat is the shortened form of the noble Roman Patrician, adopted as a still popular first name for boys, & a now less fashionable one for girls.
By distinguishing some as the patricians among us, you are, by implication, designating the others as plebs. So you should stop doing so.
On the other hand you might claim that Pat itself is an insult, since it is a shortened form of the word Patrician which was applied to members of a sect founded by Patricius (the teacher of Symmachus the Marcionite) in the 4th century, who taught that the flesh was created by the Devil rather than God.
Link
BBC: Andrew Mitchell row
Related post
Evidence based law
Saturday, September 01, 2012
Hairy coconuts
Christopher Martin-Jenkins, writing in The Times about the resignation of captain Andrew Strauss &the continuing absence (maybe) of Kevin Pietersen, speculates about which batsmen from the ‘reserve crop’ may best be able to cope with Sri Lankan spin during this year’s winter tour. The piece ends, mystifyingly, as follows:
‘Miller has already come up with one coconut in Jonny Bairstow. He has more ECB corn to earn now.’
My comment is not about possible mixing of metaphors, but the use of the word ‘coconut’.
I assume that Martin-Jenkins had in mind the coconut shy at an old fashioned funfair, which offered as prizes the then much-valued nut in its dry, hairy form. But ,given that a professional footballer has recently been fined £45,000 for calling another footballer a ‘choc ice’, a description deemed to be racist, & given that ‘coconut’ is used, by some, in the same sense of ‘black on the outside, white on the inside’, & that we are all patting ourselves on the back for being so enlightenedly inclusive in the wake of the Olympics, the word might have been avoided or removed.
Not that any racist slur could be inferred in this case – Bairstow is white – but it could be taken as an unkind reference to his ginger hair.
Elder writers are allowed twelve mixed metaphors per thousand words no matter how immiscible or risible - Esquire July 1992
Links
Related post
Tuesday, August 07, 2012
Judging by appearances
In his 1986 biography of Sir Arthur Sullivan Arthur Jacobs (himself Jewish) devotes an appendix to consideration of the composer’s ‘supposed Jewish connection’
The idea that Sullivan was Jewish was fairly common during his lifetime but is based on no evidence other than his appearance &, through examples such as Mendelssohn & Offenbach, the association of the idea of the romantic, commercially successful composer with Jewishness, as well as far-fetched claims about the origin of his name. These assertions, from the unfriendly & from sources such as the C19th Jewish Yearbook and those who, in the words of a poem written by one Reverend AA Green cannot resist ‘writing to the papers that the great men, all, are Jews’.
Such obsessions with assigning origins always reflect the preoccupations & anxieties, fears & enmities of the age. In mid-November 1919, just months after the Treaty of Versailles, at the conclusion of an article about the theory of relativity which he wrote exclusively for The Times, Albert Einstein took the paper gently to task for describing him as a ‘Swiss Jew.’
In this context it intrigues me that the face of the Olympics, national treasure, nation’s darling & now gold medal winner Jessica Ennis is never described by the media as black, in the way that, for example, is Lewis Hamilton & many others of mixed race parentage. I like to think that this is a hopeful sign, though of course since there is nothing at all novel in her status – Ennis is a long way from being the first black Olympic champion - the omission may simply reflect the fact that, for a journalist, it is simply not a story.
Seb Coe described her as a Sheffield girl, a member of the same athletic club which he joined as a youngster.
Simon Barnes called her ‘Britain’s magnificent Mona Lisa’ in The Times. From my own point of view that inscrutability, combined with a slight hawkish cast to her profile, provokes the fancy that, with a father who comes from the melting pot of Jamaica, she probably has some Lebanese or Syrian blood in her!
The irony & confusion in all this is made even more delicious by the observation by Ashling O’Connor, writing also in The Times, that Somalian-born but British hope Mo Farah might 'break a 28-year African monopoly in the 10,000 metres'.
The idea that Sullivan was Jewish was fairly common during his lifetime but is based on no evidence other than his appearance &, through examples such as Mendelssohn & Offenbach, the association of the idea of the romantic, commercially successful composer with Jewishness, as well as far-fetched claims about the origin of his name. These assertions, from the unfriendly & from sources such as the C19th Jewish Yearbook and those who, in the words of a poem written by one Reverend AA Green cannot resist ‘writing to the papers that the great men, all, are Jews’.
Such obsessions with assigning origins always reflect the preoccupations & anxieties, fears & enmities of the age. In mid-November 1919, just months after the Treaty of Versailles, at the conclusion of an article about the theory of relativity which he wrote exclusively for The Times, Albert Einstein took the paper gently to task for describing him as a ‘Swiss Jew.’
“By an application of the theory of relativity to the taste of readers, today in Germany I am called a German man of science, & in England I am represented as a Swiss Jew. If I come to be regarded as a bête noire, the descriptions will be reversed, & I shall become a Swiss Jew for the Germans & a German man of science for the English”Arthur Jacobs simply dismisses, parenthetically & with an exclamation mark,Francillon's claim , which was repeated in a 1971 biography written by Percy M Young, that Sir Arthur Sullivan’s swarthiness was explained by his being partly negro.
In this context it intrigues me that the face of the Olympics, national treasure, nation’s darling & now gold medal winner Jessica Ennis is never described by the media as black, in the way that, for example, is Lewis Hamilton & many others of mixed race parentage. I like to think that this is a hopeful sign, though of course since there is nothing at all novel in her status – Ennis is a long way from being the first black Olympic champion - the omission may simply reflect the fact that, for a journalist, it is simply not a story.
Seb Coe described her as a Sheffield girl, a member of the same athletic club which he joined as a youngster.
Simon Barnes called her ‘Britain’s magnificent Mona Lisa’ in The Times. From my own point of view that inscrutability, combined with a slight hawkish cast to her profile, provokes the fancy that, with a father who comes from the melting pot of Jamaica, she probably has some Lebanese or Syrian blood in her!
The irony & confusion in all this is made even more delicious by the observation by Ashling O’Connor, writing also in The Times, that Somalian-born but British hope Mo Farah might 'break a 28-year African monopoly in the 10,000 metres'.
Related posts
Monday, June 18, 2012
Common heritage
As a Google search confirms, the word ‘heritage’ has been in use for some time as an alternative to something like race or ethnicity or culture or even identity, but I only really became aware of it recently.
At first I thought that the references to men ‘of Pakistani heritage’ in relation to ‘street grooming’ were something new, even a mealy-mouthed response to an embarrassingly distasteful subject. But now that my ears have been sharpened I realise that it just may be one of those changes in the use of language which allows the once-embarrassing to become a topic of comfortable discourse.
We each have a heritage (or two or three or four …); heritage is heritage whatever its colour or religion or … & we can all be free to choose which parts of that which our ancestors have bequeathed to us we wish to lay claim to.
It is not nearly as restricting as an identity.
Friday, June 08, 2012
Who cares?
When I first arrived in London as a student my Peckham landlady gave me an Awful Warning: Keep away from Commercial Road.
Commercial Road was built at the beginning of the C19th to provide a direct link for traffic between the West India Docks and East India Docks to the City of London. Its history is as turbulent as that implies. And, as late as the 1960s, to venture there, even in broad daylight was, allegedly, to risk abduction into white slavery. My landlady claimed that she had told her own daughter that she would be disowned if she so much as set foot on its pavement.
It wasn’t entirely clear who would be doing the abducting, but this idea of respectable white girls at risk from marauding hordes of alien men is nothing new. In the 1920s it was the Chinese, in the late 1950s & early 1960s the News of the World was full of stories of Maltese running prostitution rackets in London; one of my friends told alarming stories of quite regularly being accosted by small groups of Cypriots (2 or 3 men) as she walked from the tube station to her student hostel in Bayswater; the point was, though, that they rapidly lost interest when they realised she was never going to fall for their blandishments.
The girls most at risk are those who can be called vulnerable or needy – girls anxious for love which they don’t get – or feel they do not get – from their family or peer groups. Such girls can come from any class or background, but the more affluent & educated are less likely to fall into the trap of being exploited in truly gruesome circumstances. These days, since I read her memoir, Elizabeth Jane Howard usually comes to my mind when thinking about this subject.
We are currently going through a moral panic about predatory men of (most likely) muslim & Pakistani origin who prey on young white girls, posing a problem for those who would like to keep race, religion & culture out of such discussions.
The most alarming & dispiriting element of the background to this modern version of these ancient stories – why those men, those girls, in those towns – came in an edition of the BBC Radio 4 programme The Report last week.
Towns such as Rochdale in the north west of England have disproportionate numbers of private childrens ‘homes’ which ‘look after’ vulnerable girls on behalf of local social service authorities in the south of England, & on whom there is no obligation to register with the local authority where they are actually based. The reason is the same as that which is currently being trotted out for putting a cap on the amount of Housing Benefit payable to claimants in London – property prices are much lower outside the capital, & particularly in the North West.
Goodness knows what it would have cost the local authority which was paying a private sector company £¼m a year to look after just one troubled girl who, apart from her carers, had a whole house to herself, if that house had been in the South East.
Yes, of course there are elements of race, but men like these would never themselves have the confidence to approach confident girls, even those ‘up for it’, not least because of the role played by the public consumption of alcohol in getting to meet & socialise with such women, & all the problems associated with cross-cultural marriage – topics which have also had interesting coverage recently on Radio 4. Put all this together with an unusual concentration of vulnerable girls, statistically more likely to be white, a certain amount of nervousness by the authorities about appearing to be racist, plus our own ambivalent feelings about girls who are ‘bad’ & you have tragedies just waiting to happen.
One other disturbing piece of intelligence which has emerged concerns the role of ‘reality’ television; one girl whose sexual exploitation led to her murder, & a father now charged with the murder of six of his children who died in a fire, had both featured in television programmes about their problematic life styles.
*My landlady was not alone in her alarm: research in The Times archive turned up a letter from Edwyn Young, Rector & Rural Dean (!) of Stepney & a group of concerned Christians who wrote Wednesday, June 5, 1957, in advance of the publication of the Wolfenden report:
Commercial Road was built at the beginning of the C19th to provide a direct link for traffic between the West India Docks and East India Docks to the City of London. Its history is as turbulent as that implies. And, as late as the 1960s, to venture there, even in broad daylight was, allegedly, to risk abduction into white slavery. My landlady claimed that she had told her own daughter that she would be disowned if she so much as set foot on its pavement.
It wasn’t entirely clear who would be doing the abducting, but this idea of respectable white girls at risk from marauding hordes of alien men is nothing new. In the 1920s it was the Chinese, in the late 1950s & early 1960s the News of the World was full of stories of Maltese running prostitution rackets in London; one of my friends told alarming stories of quite regularly being accosted by small groups of Cypriots (2 or 3 men) as she walked from the tube station to her student hostel in Bayswater; the point was, though, that they rapidly lost interest when they realised she was never going to fall for their blandishments.
The girls most at risk are those who can be called vulnerable or needy – girls anxious for love which they don’t get – or feel they do not get – from their family or peer groups. Such girls can come from any class or background, but the more affluent & educated are less likely to fall into the trap of being exploited in truly gruesome circumstances. These days, since I read her memoir, Elizabeth Jane Howard usually comes to my mind when thinking about this subject.
We are currently going through a moral panic about predatory men of (most likely) muslim & Pakistani origin who prey on young white girls, posing a problem for those who would like to keep race, religion & culture out of such discussions.
The most alarming & dispiriting element of the background to this modern version of these ancient stories – why those men, those girls, in those towns – came in an edition of the BBC Radio 4 programme The Report last week.
Towns such as Rochdale in the north west of England have disproportionate numbers of private childrens ‘homes’ which ‘look after’ vulnerable girls on behalf of local social service authorities in the south of England, & on whom there is no obligation to register with the local authority where they are actually based. The reason is the same as that which is currently being trotted out for putting a cap on the amount of Housing Benefit payable to claimants in London – property prices are much lower outside the capital, & particularly in the North West.
Goodness knows what it would have cost the local authority which was paying a private sector company £¼m a year to look after just one troubled girl who, apart from her carers, had a whole house to herself, if that house had been in the South East.
Yes, of course there are elements of race, but men like these would never themselves have the confidence to approach confident girls, even those ‘up for it’, not least because of the role played by the public consumption of alcohol in getting to meet & socialise with such women, & all the problems associated with cross-cultural marriage – topics which have also had interesting coverage recently on Radio 4. Put all this together with an unusual concentration of vulnerable girls, statistically more likely to be white, a certain amount of nervousness by the authorities about appearing to be racist, plus our own ambivalent feelings about girls who are ‘bad’ & you have tragedies just waiting to happen.
One other disturbing piece of intelligence which has emerged concerns the role of ‘reality’ television; one girl whose sexual exploitation led to her murder, & a father now charged with the murder of six of his children who died in a fire, had both featured in television programmes about their problematic life styles.
*My landlady was not alone in her alarm: research in The Times archive turned up a letter from Edwyn Young, Rector & Rural Dean (!) of Stepney & a group of concerned Christians who wrote Wednesday, June 5, 1957, in advance of the publication of the Wolfenden report:
“The solicitation of passers-by occurs principally in a short stretch of Commercial Road, an important main highway. Organised vice is rapidly increasing, & is rampant in an ever increasing area where houses are being acquired by those who desire to exploit vice”:
Links
Related posts
Thursday, May 10, 2012
A dirty, untidy state of a place
On the day that Radio 4 announcer Alice Arnold was getting publicity for tackling litter louts, I witnessed a similar act of someone being brave enough to take a stand against those who make a mess of our surroundings.
Four young lads had made a real mess just outside the supermarket entrance – some kind of fight involving biscuits, a mass of crumbs & some larger broken pieces left covering a wide area.
Just then the cleaner emerged from the store. When she spotted the state of things she remonstrated volubly with the boys – I just cleaned this not two minutes ago …- look everywhere else is spotless.
Then you could see the idea come to her: I’m going to get my brush & you are going to clean it up.
She did. And they did, looking suitably abashed & contrite.
OK, they were not the kind of boys you would cross the street to avoid, but what took some courage was that the cleaner was black, the boys white. Even in this day & age that risks a nasty reaction.
And your employer may not think it the best way to treat customers either – though in this case I am sure that there is not much doubt about whose side any other customer who witnessed the incident was on.
Coincidentally, the participants on In Our Time, about game theory, offered an explanation about why everybody indulges in the habit of dropping litter, even though it is in our collective interest not to mess things up this way.
So how come, at least in some times & places, the inhabitants do manage to act collectively to ensure a litter free environment?
Four young lads had made a real mess just outside the supermarket entrance – some kind of fight involving biscuits, a mass of crumbs & some larger broken pieces left covering a wide area.
Just then the cleaner emerged from the store. When she spotted the state of things she remonstrated volubly with the boys – I just cleaned this not two minutes ago …- look everywhere else is spotless.
Then you could see the idea come to her: I’m going to get my brush & you are going to clean it up.
She did. And they did, looking suitably abashed & contrite.
OK, they were not the kind of boys you would cross the street to avoid, but what took some courage was that the cleaner was black, the boys white. Even in this day & age that risks a nasty reaction.
And your employer may not think it the best way to treat customers either – though in this case I am sure that there is not much doubt about whose side any other customer who witnessed the incident was on.
Coincidentally, the participants on In Our Time, about game theory, offered an explanation about why everybody indulges in the habit of dropping litter, even though it is in our collective interest not to mess things up this way.
So how come, at least in some times & places, the inhabitants do manage to act collectively to ensure a litter free environment?
Links
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Thursday, March 08, 2012
Parochial correctness
Potential volunteer helpers at the London Olympics are, reportedly, being issued with My Games Maker Workbook which will help them respond sensitively to tricky situations.
But the examples quoted serve merely to demonstrate the utter parochialism of our concerns & obsessions about cultural practices which we may regard as just not British but which MUST BE TOLERATED* by all good liberal, inclusive folk.
Example 1: A spectator complains about two men holding hands. You are supposed to explain that ‘there is a huge diversity of people at London 2012, which includes gay, lesbian & bisexual couples.’
Just don’t pass on the information that in some cultures it is perfectly normal for friends to hold hands – how dare you presume to know anything about their sex lives? Even though it is perhaps probable that anyone from those cultures who can afford to come to the Games is likely to be a rich international sophisticate, well aware of British social norms.
Example 2: You are unable to tell whether the person who is asking for directions to the toilets is male or female. You are expected to tell them the way to male, female & ‘accessible’ toilets, not ask them which they require.
Well of course you are. Even if you are 100% certain of their gender why assume that they are asking purely for their own needs & that, since they are not in a wheelchair, they have no problem with ‘inaccessible’ toilets.
Example 3: Should anyone object to a woman being allowed to wear a headscarf, you are supposed to explain that she is wearing a hijab, a form of Muslim headwear which some women ‘choose to wear as part of their faith.’
Well tell that to anyone who asks why the Queen is wearing a headscarf in that photo of her riding in Windsor Great Park. And good luck to you if you can reliably distinguish between a headscarf, hijab, & a nun’s veil.
And wasn’t ‘An Olympics spokeswoman’ herself being a tad insensitive when she explained the need to ‘ensure that all volunteers would be singing ‘from the same hymn sheet’?
*From Latin tolerāre to bear, endure
But the examples quoted serve merely to demonstrate the utter parochialism of our concerns & obsessions about cultural practices which we may regard as just not British but which MUST BE TOLERATED* by all good liberal, inclusive folk.
Example 1: A spectator complains about two men holding hands. You are supposed to explain that ‘there is a huge diversity of people at London 2012, which includes gay, lesbian & bisexual couples.’
Just don’t pass on the information that in some cultures it is perfectly normal for friends to hold hands – how dare you presume to know anything about their sex lives? Even though it is perhaps probable that anyone from those cultures who can afford to come to the Games is likely to be a rich international sophisticate, well aware of British social norms.
Example 2: You are unable to tell whether the person who is asking for directions to the toilets is male or female. You are expected to tell them the way to male, female & ‘accessible’ toilets, not ask them which they require.
Well of course you are. Even if you are 100% certain of their gender why assume that they are asking purely for their own needs & that, since they are not in a wheelchair, they have no problem with ‘inaccessible’ toilets.
Example 3: Should anyone object to a woman being allowed to wear a headscarf, you are supposed to explain that she is wearing a hijab, a form of Muslim headwear which some women ‘choose to wear as part of their faith.’
Well tell that to anyone who asks why the Queen is wearing a headscarf in that photo of her riding in Windsor Great Park. And good luck to you if you can reliably distinguish between a headscarf, hijab, & a nun’s veil.
And wasn’t ‘An Olympics spokeswoman’ herself being a tad insensitive when she explained the need to ‘ensure that all volunteers would be singing ‘from the same hymn sheet’?
*From Latin tolerāre to bear, endure
Link
London 2012: Diversity & inclusion
Related post
Habit or hijab
A fashion item
London 2012: Diversity & inclusion
Related post
Habit or hijab
A fashion item
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Translating offence
Last week’s Times obituaries recorded the death of Ann Dummett on February 7, just six weeks after that of her husband Sir Michael Dummett who had been Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford.
Lady Dummett was a very active campaigner for racial justice in this country, & the obituarist’s mention of the Dummetts’ membership of the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination (CARD) reminded me of something I meant to record on this blog.
By the mid-1960s CARD, under the chairmanship of Dr David Pitt, a London GP, was regarded by some as too patient, polite & simply not radical enough, too NAACP & not enough of the new Black Power movements in America or of French ideas of negritude & the philosophy of Frantz Fanon.
English radicals soon had a new racial activist to champion. One Michael de Freitas changed his name by deed poll to Michael X & announced the formation of a new body called the Racial Action Adjustment Society (RAAS).
The fact that he had been an associate of Rachman & may have already had a criminal record (I can’t remember) only gave him more credibility in the eyes of some on the Left.
I don’t know how many of them were aware of the reason why Michael X chose to give them the acronym RAAS for their front page headlines, although I expect they know now.
I was reminded of that when Bali Rai explained a cosely related word in his contribution to Radio 4’s Four Thought on 1 February.
Lady Dummett was a very active campaigner for racial justice in this country, & the obituarist’s mention of the Dummetts’ membership of the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination (CARD) reminded me of something I meant to record on this blog.
By the mid-1960s CARD, under the chairmanship of Dr David Pitt, a London GP, was regarded by some as too patient, polite & simply not radical enough, too NAACP & not enough of the new Black Power movements in America or of French ideas of negritude & the philosophy of Frantz Fanon.
English radicals soon had a new racial activist to champion. One Michael de Freitas changed his name by deed poll to Michael X & announced the formation of a new body called the Racial Action Adjustment Society (RAAS).
The fact that he had been an associate of Rachman & may have already had a criminal record (I can’t remember) only gave him more credibility in the eyes of some on the Left.
I don’t know how many of them were aware of the reason why Michael X chose to give them the acronym RAAS for their front page headlines, although I expect they know now.
I was reminded of that when Bali Rai explained a cosely related word in his contribution to Radio 4’s Four Thought on 1 February.
Links
Ann Dummett obituary: Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants
New York Times: Remembering Michael Dummett
Historical Geographies: Dr David Pitt
Ebony November 1961: Dr David Pitt
DANGO: Campaign Against Racial Discrimination
BBC Four Thought: Bali Rai
YouTube: BBC 4 Thought - School Talk On Racism By Author Bali Rai
Urban dictionary
Ann Dummett obituary: Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants
New York Times: Remembering Michael Dummett
Historical Geographies: Dr David Pitt
Ebony November 1961: Dr David Pitt
DANGO: Campaign Against Racial Discrimination
BBC Four Thought: Bali Rai
YouTube: BBC 4 Thought - School Talk On Racism By Author Bali Rai
Urban dictionary
Monday, February 13, 2012
Coke
When I was a student in London in the early 1960s I met more than one young man who said that it was his ambition to marry the daughter of the man who held the local franchise for Coca Cola.
If any achieved his ambition he must now be living a very comfortable retirement.
Operating profits rising by 12% a year; volumes growing by 13% a year in China, & even 2% up in Europe - recession proof Coke is ‘refreshing a world looking for hope, optimism & renewal’ according to Chairman, Muhtar Kent.
Well the aspiration as expressed by those fellow students was a jokey way of summarising complex arguments about economic development. The young men were the brightest & best, sent to the UK for a university education before going back home to what we then called one of the Less Developed Countries, one that was perhaps not yet even formally Independent.
From a purely personal point of view, a beautiful wife with an indulgent father who could offer his son-in-law a job demanding nothing more than the import of the magic syrup to be mixed with water & gas, put into (presumably imported) bottles, corked & sold to a grateful populace.
Status. Possibly an easy route to political power.
What more could a young man want.
Links
The Coca Cola Company full year and fourth quarter results for 2011
Related post
Colonial scholars
If any achieved his ambition he must now be living a very comfortable retirement.
Operating profits rising by 12% a year; volumes growing by 13% a year in China, & even 2% up in Europe - recession proof Coke is ‘refreshing a world looking for hope, optimism & renewal’ according to Chairman, Muhtar Kent.
Well the aspiration as expressed by those fellow students was a jokey way of summarising complex arguments about economic development. The young men were the brightest & best, sent to the UK for a university education before going back home to what we then called one of the Less Developed Countries, one that was perhaps not yet even formally Independent.
From a purely personal point of view, a beautiful wife with an indulgent father who could offer his son-in-law a job demanding nothing more than the import of the magic syrup to be mixed with water & gas, put into (presumably imported) bottles, corked & sold to a grateful populace.
Status. Possibly an easy route to political power.
What more could a young man want.
Links
The Coca Cola Company full year and fourth quarter results for 2011
Related post
Colonial scholars
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Brotherhood
In 1961 Harold Macmillan had to move his rising star, but turbulent priest, from the post of Colonial Secretary; Iain Macleod’s attitude towards the pace of decolonisation was anathema to the right wing of the Conservative Party. It may even have been too far to the left for Macmillan himself, with the proposals for the break up of the Central African Federation (the present Malawi, Zambia & Zimbabwe) in particular threatening to turn the wind of change into a damaging gale.
At the Conservative Party Conference, which took place in Brighton shortly after the reshuffle, Macleod made a farewell speech, which, according to DR Thorpe, was seen by his supporters as the greatest of his career. He ended by quoting Robert Burns’ A Man's A Man For A' That:
When Macleod’s successor at the Colonial Office, Reginald Maudling, first met his officials shortly afterwards, he said, “‘I suppose I’m looking at a lot of people who believe in the ‘brotherhood of man’”.
Obviously the idea of brotherhood, particularly between Black & White, between African & European, carried particular potency at the time.
In September 1962, as reported in NY Journal-American, Martin Luther King gave his reassurance that he wanted the white man to be his brother, not his brother-in-law, that civil rights were not the same thing as miscegenation.
No wonder that a quotation from a probably not-very-distinguished British political novel of the same era, in which a rising Conservative star puts a block on his career by remarking to a fellow dinner guest 'I said I wanted the African to be my brother, not my brother in law' sticks so firmly in my memory bank.
At the Conservative Party Conference, which took place in Brighton shortly after the reshuffle, Macleod made a farewell speech, which, according to DR Thorpe, was seen by his supporters as the greatest of his career. He ended by quoting Robert Burns’ A Man's A Man For A' That:
Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a' that,)
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an' a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
It's coming yet for a' that,
That Man to Man, the world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that.
When Macleod’s successor at the Colonial Office, Reginald Maudling, first met his officials shortly afterwards, he said, “‘I suppose I’m looking at a lot of people who believe in the ‘brotherhood of man’”.
Obviously the idea of brotherhood, particularly between Black & White, between African & European, carried particular potency at the time.
In September 1962, as reported in NY Journal-American, Martin Luther King gave his reassurance that he wanted the white man to be his brother, not his brother-in-law, that civil rights were not the same thing as miscegenation.
No wonder that a quotation from a probably not-very-distinguished British political novel of the same era, in which a rising Conservative star puts a block on his career by remarking to a fellow dinner guest 'I said I wanted the African to be my brother, not my brother in law' sticks so firmly in my memory bank.
Saturday, January 07, 2012
Insulting men
On Friday Woman’s Hour addressed one very puzzling aspect of one of the latest rows about racism in football.
Liverpool’s Luis Suarez, has been handed a heavy penalty for racism against Manchester United's Patrice Evra.
This tale is complicated by the nationality of the players involved & by the fact that there is a long history of rivalry, even enmity & hatred, between the two teams.
We are told that Evra started the spat by saying something ‘disobliging’ about Suarez’ wife/mother/sister. Suarez responded with a volley of the n word in Spanish.
But Evra has received no sanction or punishment at all; his insult apparently breaks no rule of footballers’ code.
Womans Hour sought the advice of experienced commentator Alan Green (a man who can always be relied on for an opinion) and former player Pat Nevin
Pat Nevin’s contribution was illuminating. First that only Latins seem generally to regard the impugning of the honour of a female relative to be an insult to a man, & secondly that most British players would react to such an insult with ‘Don’t be ridiculous’ rather than with fists or verbal retaliation.
I am sure that that is an oversimplification but he has a point. Offence has to be accepted as well as offered.
Football still has to answer the question of why insults to women on the field of play are not considered unacceptable.
Liverpool’s Luis Suarez, has been handed a heavy penalty for racism against Manchester United's Patrice Evra.
This tale is complicated by the nationality of the players involved & by the fact that there is a long history of rivalry, even enmity & hatred, between the two teams.
We are told that Evra started the spat by saying something ‘disobliging’ about Suarez’ wife/mother/sister. Suarez responded with a volley of the n word in Spanish.
But Evra has received no sanction or punishment at all; his insult apparently breaks no rule of footballers’ code.
Womans Hour sought the advice of experienced commentator Alan Green (a man who can always be relied on for an opinion) and former player Pat Nevin
Pat Nevin’s contribution was illuminating. First that only Latins seem generally to regard the impugning of the honour of a female relative to be an insult to a man, & secondly that most British players would react to such an insult with ‘Don’t be ridiculous’ rather than with fists or verbal retaliation.
I am sure that that is an oversimplification but he has a point. Offence has to be accepted as well as offered.
Football still has to answer the question of why insults to women on the field of play are not considered unacceptable.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Evidence based law
Can you remember what you were doing on 10 March 2009?
Or what was in the news? My own blog doesn’t show anything on which I felt compelled to comment.
I would be surprised if even the local press carried reports of one routine incident which took place on that day in Hackney, east London, a borough which saw a lot of action in last summer’s riots.
One group of people must remember all too clearly.
No cannabis was found. The young man went on to use the F-word twice more & was duly arrested for this; there was a “scuffle” & in due course he appeared before the magistrates charged both for the swearing & for assault on a police officer in the execution of his duty.
He was found Not Guilty of assault, but Guilty of swearing & fined £50.
There is a problem however: Parliament has not made it an offence to swear in public, as such, (something for which most of us must be grateful). The prosecution must show that ”the defendant used threatening, abusive or insulting words within the hearing of someone else who was caused or was likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress by hearing them.”
And so the case finally found its way to Appeal on Thursday, 17 November 2011, whereupon the rice pudding really hit the fan, & the events of that day in March 2009 suddenly became news.
Because, according to large sections of the press, the Judge declared that ‘It’s OK to swear at policemen because they’re used to it.’
That last quote comes from a piece by Robert Crampton (a journalist I normally admire) writing in The Times last Tuesday. He lives in Hackney & wrote of a hard core of fellow residents, young males who are ‘dangerous, occasionally lethally so … a potential menace to anyone who gets in their way … ultra-sensitive to perceived slights … anything that interferes with them behaving in any way they want.’
The job of keeping the rest of the population safe from such feral beasts falls to the police & the courts, so ‘it really isn’t sensible to do anything that undermines the authority of either.’ He ends with the words ‘You couldn’t make it up’, implying that that is exactly what the judge did with the law.
If however you read the judge’s written report it is clear that he not only could not, but did not, do that.
Fortunately the two lawyers acting in this appeal had boiled these down, ”in their concise and helpful submissions”, to just six.
A number of cases establish that expletives such as "fuck" or "fucking" are potentially abusive words, whether uttered to a police officer or a member of the public.
But it is a question of fact, to be decided by the magistrates on the basis of the evidence presented to them, whether words and behaviour (with which police officers are indeed too wearily familiar) produced a reaction only of boredom or, in the circumstances (including the time, the place, who the police officers were), caused the harassment, alarm or distress, which are needed to turn use of such abhorrent language into a crime.
The lawyer who was in charge of the case at the magistrates court provided no such evidence – the police officers were not asked the question, nor was evidence presented to show that anybody else had complained.
Where witnesses have said nothing and been asked nothing about experiencing harassment, alarm or distress, there is no sound basis for the court to reach that conclusion for itself.
BUT, said the judge, this is not to say that such words can NEVER cause police officers to experience alarm, distress or harassment.
We can all draw our own inferences, based on such evidence as we have heard or read about in this case, together with our own experience & prejudice.
Perhaps he was one of the dangerous young males – why else would the police be searching him? In which case he should have been found guilty as an example to others of his kind.
Or perhaps it is a tale wearyingly familiar to anyone who numbers black males among their respectable friends & family, in which case he ought never to have been brought to court in the first place.
But these inferences are based on generalised belief, not evidence specific to this occasion.
We hear a lot these days about the need for ‘evidence’ in science, medicine & politics. Sometimes we may doubt the validity of such evidence & so doubt the need for anything more than ‘common sense’ in reaching decisions or taking action in those areas of life.
But surely we are all agreed on the need for evidence-based law.
So I say three cheers for Mr Justice Bean, who kept this need firmly in the front of his mind. And for the system which puts it all down in writing & makes it available for us to read at a few clicks of a mouse.
It has taken approaching three years to get this conviction overturned – a long time in the life of a young man. If he was not known to the police before, he is now.
And if there is now a widespread belief that it is OK to swear at the police, well that comes from journalists, not the judges.
Thanks to Bystander & Beneath the Wig whose blogs pointed me to the evidence in this case.
Or what was in the news? My own blog doesn’t show anything on which I felt compelled to comment.
I would be surprised if even the local press carried reports of one routine incident which took place on that day in Hackney, east London, a borough which saw a lot of action in last summer’s riots.
One group of people must remember all too clearly.
PC Challis and PCSO Mr Mcllvaney were looking for people who, the police had been informed, might be in possession of cannabis. They found one young woman and three young men … outside a block of flats. The officers decided to search the three men. One objected and said, "Fuck this man, I ain't been smoking nothing". PC Challis told him that if he continued to swear he would be arrested for an offence under section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986.
No cannabis was found. The young man went on to use the F-word twice more & was duly arrested for this; there was a “scuffle” & in due course he appeared before the magistrates charged both for the swearing & for assault on a police officer in the execution of his duty.
He was found Not Guilty of assault, but Guilty of swearing & fined £50.
There is a problem however: Parliament has not made it an offence to swear in public, as such, (something for which most of us must be grateful). The prosecution must show that ”the defendant used threatening, abusive or insulting words within the hearing of someone else who was caused or was likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress by hearing them.”
And so the case finally found its way to Appeal on Thursday, 17 November 2011, whereupon the rice pudding really hit the fan, & the events of that day in March 2009 suddenly became news.
Because, according to large sections of the press, the Judge declared that ‘It’s OK to swear at policemen because they’re used to it.’
That last quote comes from a piece by Robert Crampton (a journalist I normally admire) writing in The Times last Tuesday. He lives in Hackney & wrote of a hard core of fellow residents, young males who are ‘dangerous, occasionally lethally so … a potential menace to anyone who gets in their way … ultra-sensitive to perceived slights … anything that interferes with them behaving in any way they want.’
The job of keeping the rest of the population safe from such feral beasts falls to the police & the courts, so ‘it really isn’t sensible to do anything that undermines the authority of either.’ He ends with the words ‘You couldn’t make it up’, implying that that is exactly what the judge did with the law.
If however you read the judge’s written report it is clear that he not only could not, but did not, do that.
“Such language is familiar to most courts. A search on the legal database Lexis for cases in which either the word "fuck" or the word "fucking" appear produces 2,124 results. Even allowing for duplication in the way that cases are reported and transcribed, or for cases which appear in more than one report, the total is still very large.”The judge must pay due regard to the decisions made in those cases; it has all been heard before..
Fortunately the two lawyers acting in this appeal had boiled these down, ”in their concise and helpful submissions”, to just six.
A number of cases establish that expletives such as "fuck" or "fucking" are potentially abusive words, whether uttered to a police officer or a member of the public.
But it is a question of fact, to be decided by the magistrates on the basis of the evidence presented to them, whether words and behaviour (with which police officers are indeed too wearily familiar) produced a reaction only of boredom or, in the circumstances (including the time, the place, who the police officers were), caused the harassment, alarm or distress, which are needed to turn use of such abhorrent language into a crime.
The lawyer who was in charge of the case at the magistrates court provided no such evidence – the police officers were not asked the question, nor was evidence presented to show that anybody else had complained.
Where witnesses have said nothing and been asked nothing about experiencing harassment, alarm or distress, there is no sound basis for the court to reach that conclusion for itself.
“This is particularly so in the case of police officers because … they hear such words all too frequently as part of their job.”
BUT, said the judge, this is not to say that such words can NEVER cause police officers to experience alarm, distress or harassment.
It depends … on the facts. And where a witness has been silent on the point it is wrong to draw inferences.
We can all draw our own inferences, based on such evidence as we have heard or read about in this case, together with our own experience & prejudice.
Perhaps he was one of the dangerous young males – why else would the police be searching him? In which case he should have been found guilty as an example to others of his kind.
Or perhaps it is a tale wearyingly familiar to anyone who numbers black males among their respectable friends & family, in which case he ought never to have been brought to court in the first place.
But these inferences are based on generalised belief, not evidence specific to this occasion.
We hear a lot these days about the need for ‘evidence’ in science, medicine & politics. Sometimes we may doubt the validity of such evidence & so doubt the need for anything more than ‘common sense’ in reaching decisions or taking action in those areas of life.
But surely we are all agreed on the need for evidence-based law.
So I say three cheers for Mr Justice Bean, who kept this need firmly in the front of his mind. And for the system which puts it all down in writing & makes it available for us to read at a few clicks of a mouse.
It has taken approaching three years to get this conviction overturned – a long time in the life of a young man. If he was not known to the police before, he is now.
And if there is now a widespread belief that it is OK to swear at the police, well that comes from journalists, not the judges.
Thanks to Bystander & Beneath the Wig whose blogs pointed me to the evidence in this case.
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