15 Jan 2013 | Uncategorized
It was a few minutes before kick off last Sunday when when the banners went up. To be fair they were more painted bed sheets than banners. One read “£62 and we’re still here.” Another said “£62!! Where will it stop?” The tone of the first was defiant, the second quietly despairing. Either way, as protests go, they were well mannered.
There had been much debate about the price of away tickets for Manchester City fans at Arsenal. Premiership clubs offer a bizarre pricing hierarchy whereby fans of the most successful clubs (invariably the richest clubs) are charged most for tickets. This might have a degree of fairness if, say, Manchester City’s owner Sheikh Mansour paid for the fans’ tickets, but he doesn’t. The reality is that a Manchester City fan is just as likely to be struggling financially as a Reading or QPR fan.
Even by premiership standards £62 for an away ticket is ludicrously high. Some fans boycotted the match, and 900 of the 3,000-strong allocation were reportedly returned to Arsenal. Others (me included) decided to go, enjoy the match (City’s first league victory at Arsenal in 37 years as it happens) and sing their heart out about the injustice of it all.
City supporter Richard Taylor, an estate agent from Stalybridge, had painted the banner the previous night in Manchester. He says he was impressed with the result. “It’s a lot neater than I thought it would be. Ticket prices are a big problem, especially for away supporters. I thought the banner might get the issue a bit of publicity.”
The banner that was banned from the Emirates at Richard Taylor’s home before the match –
photograph Richard Taylor
So 10 minutes before kick-off, he unfurled his handiwork.
“We’d only had it up a few seconds when a steward came over. He said we’ve been instructed by our bosses to take it away. Actually, he said ‘I agree with what you are saying’, but I’ve been told I’ve got to take it away’. I told him he had no right to take it off me, that it was peaceful protest, and there’s nothing offensive about the banner. He said ‘Don’t make my work harder for me because then I’ll have to get the police involved’.”
Reinforcements soon arrived in the form of the Metropolitan police. A couple of officers hurdled empty chairs Sweeney-style to reach the refuseniks. “They came over quite aggressive actually, jumping over the seats to get to us. Two came over to me and two stood at the end of the aisle. They demanded Taylor hand over the banner or be arrested. “Well I wasn’t going to walk out and miss the match. I’d paid £62 for it, so I gave the banner to them. We tried to argue about it, but it wasn’t worth getting kicked out when we’d paid £62.”
Did they say what they would arrest him for? “No.”
By now the whole away end were singing “£62 and we’re not here” [an adaptation of an old Manchester City chant].
This is by no means the first time peaceful protest and freedom of expression have been issues at football matches. In 2010, Manchester United fans said that they had been over-policed after unfurling banners protesting against the club-owners, the Glazer family. In 2008 anti-censorship campaigners (including Index on Censorship) complained after there was talk of banning Glasgow Rangers supporters from taunting Celtic fans with a song about the Irish famine (“’From Ireland they came, brought us nothing but trouble and shame’.) In 1998, Swindon Town chairman Rikki Hunt threeatened to ban fans for life after they had staged a sit-down protest following a 4-1 defeat and chanted for the sacking of their manager.
I asked Arsenal if they felt a football match at the Emirates was an inappropriate venue for protest and whether they did not believe in freedom of expression. The spokesman laughed and pointed out Arsenal’s admirable record on inclusion (they were the first club to be awarded anti-racism campaign Kick It Out‘s Advanced level of the Quality standard). “Of course we encourage freedom of expression, but in this case the banner was just too big. It impeded the views of supporters and was a health and safety issue.” What would Taylor have been arrested for? “Breach of the peace.”
So I mentioned another incident that happened just after Taylor’s banner was removed — police approached a man in the crowd wearing a felt-tip scribbled T-shirt. This time there were around a dozen officers.The police asked him to remove his T-shirt, and eventually he did.
I asked Arsenal if this was also a visibility/health and safety issue. The club said it had no record of this encounter, but asked what the fan had written on his T-shirt. “You can stick your £62 up your arse,” I said.
“Ah well, that’s just offensive isn’t it?” said the spokesman. “It’s nothing to do with the views expressed, just the language.”
At the end of the match, Richard Taylor retrieved his banner — the police had left it with the stewards for him to reclaim. Although he was “disgusted” by the club’s reaction to the banner, he believes it has only served to publicise his cause.
He mentioned model football clubs such as Borussia Dortmund, where he travelled to early in the season in the Champions League. “Our tickets were £24, and we had free travel on the day” For Taylor his campaign has now become two-pronged — not only is he fighting football clubs that charge excessive prices, he is also campaigning against those whom he believes are prohibiting the democratic right to peaceful protest.
Simon Hattenstone is a feature writer for the Guardian and a Manchester City supporter. He tweets at @shattenstone
15 Jan 2013 | Uncategorized
As the trans/Moore/Burchill spat draws to a close, and an article that gave much offence to trans folk is taken down from the Observer’s site — it is time, perhaps to reflect how this episode encapsulates, in one seamless narrative, the two or three most serious issues facing free speech in the UK today.
Over all lies the question of censorship.
I do not believe Julie Burchill’s article should have been published: doubt it would find space in a respectable publication were it written about any other minority; and have little time for the many in the press who defend it on grounds of free speech.
Once up, though it should not have come down as it did.
The damage was done, in terms of hate speech published and serious traumatic stuff distributed where it could do most harm, in the original publication. 48 hours on, copied, commented, archived its dread power was mostly spent. (And meanwhile, the fatuousness of the Observer decision to remove the piece was instantly exposed by the Telegraph’s mischievous counter-decision — to put it back up! Will they, one wonders, be paying a repeat fee to the Guardian for the privilege? Have they even, one wonders, sought permission not just from the author — but the article’s original publisher, the Observer?)
It leaves an awkward hole on the Observer website, filled by an apology that most in the trans community feel is mere token: too little too late, and the suspicion that it only finally went when Observer lawyers pointed out the paper could run the risk of prosecution. From whom is not entirely clear.
One person who took the matter to the police did not get very far. They told him, he claims, that they could not act because no identifiable group of individuals had been targeted. Huh?
They suggested, instead, he try the Press Complaints Commission. But the PCC won’t intervene because no named individual is targeted (which is why some groups would like to see a right of class complaints under whatever new regulations are put in place post-Leveson).
Still, the legal dimension does drain, somewhat, the worth of the apology — as does recent press conduct in respect of their sacred cow of freedom!
The Observer, happy to host the initial carefully confected abuse, stuck doggedly to its rules of moderation. Why, though, bother to moderate at all, I inquired, not altogether facetiously — as another commenter, reproducing an extract from Burchill’s piece with “women” substituted for “trans women” found their post blocked.
There is much lack of consistency here. The same press that squeals “censorship” at the least attempt to regulate, is other times busy taking out libel writs when people say nasty things about them (Daily Mail take heed!). Meanwhile, if you live by a creed of happily dishing up offence to all and sundry, Moore and Burchill, don’t be surprised when someone trumpets that offense back at you.
If questions of censorship topped the bill in this case, lesser issues also played a part: the question of online etiquette, for instance.
As Brooke Magnanti writes eloquently in the Telegraph, today’s world is more interconnected than ever before. Any and every faux pas regarding a minority community is magnified: so politeness is more than its own reward. It is the price one pays for not being continually distracted from what one wants to say by the need to apologise for every least deviation from the currently acceptable mode of expression.
Barrier to free speech? Yes: sort of. But also common courtesy: for why would you go out of your way — as Suzanne Moore clearly did at the start of this episode — to insult the subject of one’s writing?
Then there’s the “cabal” thing: the suggestion by Julie Bindel that online nastiness might be being orchestrated — in this case by a bunch of trans activists. Well, hardly. It makes as much sense to detect caballerous behaviour in informal links on the journalistic side of the kerfuffle: from the saccharine tributes paid by Burchill to her friend, Moore — or the pre-tweeting of a line from what Burchill eventually filed by colleague and co-author, Nick Cohen, approximately 24 hours before it went live. Nothing wrong with this, especially as it appears to reflect behaviour exhibited by most journalists, myself included.
However, the online “monstering” of Moore that Burchill objected to was probably the least organised behaviour around. Elsewhere, I’ve likened it to the murmuration of a flock of starlings, wheeling this way and that in instant response to external stimuli: “mobbing” any predator, actual or potential, that puts their nose above the parapet.
But that’s not right, either. We live, all of us, nowadays, with the reality of social networks. If Moore writes something offensive about trans folks, then, she must get that her views will percolate at light speed across the web. The angry and the obsessed and the merely voyeuristic will turn up, in a trice, to deliver a good drubbing and the net effect (no pun intended) is likely to be horrid.
I’ve been on the receiving end of net monsterings twice. They are awful and not for the faint-hearted: a sort of bullying lite, with most individuals making reasonable if sharp comment, but the whole being much worse than the sum of the parts, and the total effect being one of intimidation. I sympathise with those on the receiving end. I sympathised with Moore.
But I am not sure where to go from there. Bullying is bad. But how, short of implementing online some exceedingly illiberal “common purpose” laws do you stop it? I’m stumped.
Moore temporarily rejoined Twitter to address the issue, and while she may not exactly have agreed to kiss and make up with the trans community, she has agreed to talk about kissing and making up.
Meanwhile, the speech issues of our age, the responsibility of press and public alike for online offence rumble on unresolved — albeit with a growing sense, in the trans community and elsewhere, that they are already returning to their bad old ways.
Jane Fae is a feminist and writer on issues of political and sexual liberty
http://janefae.wordpress.com/
14 Jan 2013 | Uncategorized
There has been a hell of a lot written in the past week or so since the New Statesman published feminist writer Suzanne Moore’s article Seeing red: the power of female anger, and I really do not want to go over the details again. There’s more to be written on transgender issues by people with far better knowledge than I. Suffice to say, people got angry over a phrase in Moore’s piece, she was rather forcefully criticised, responded in kind, and gave up her Twitter account as the weight of group anger became too much. Then Julie Burchill further fanned the flames with a massively controversial article in the Observer.
What I want to briefly focus on here is the frankly disastrous response to the furore over Julie Burchill’s Observer article by International Development minister Lynne Featherstone. Weighing in to the twitter discussion on Sunday evening, Featherstone tweeted that Burchill should be sacked by the Observer, and subsequently implied agreement with another tweet suggesting that Observer editor John Mulholland should also be sacked.
Let’s leave aside for a moment the fact that Julie Burchill is not actually on staff at the Observer, and can’t be sacked, and examine just what’s happened here: a government minister in a modern democratic state has demanded that a journalist be punished for writing a contentious article. And then nodded along with the notion that a national newspaper editor be sacked for publishing a contentious article. An article that has not, as yet, been deemed illegal, or even in breach of the Press Complaints Commission code.
Featherstone has made a mockery of Britain and the EU’s declared commitment to promote free speech. Cast your mind back to the 2011 riots, when it was suggested that social networks be shut down to prevent people co-ordinating movements. The state media of regimes such as Iran and China gleefully reported this suggestion, using it both to mock the UK’s hypocrisy and to justify the censorship of their own people.
Now imagine the next time a newspaper such as China’s Southern Weekly steps out of line, and a senior Communist Party member calls for the head of a reporter or editor. Should a Foreign Office official even attempt to condemn such censorship, be in no doubt that the authorities in China will point to Featherstone’s intemperate tweet and say the UK is in no position to lecture.
There’s the international aspect. Now look at the domestic. Independent editor Chris Blackhurst has said he fears that politicians will use post-Leveson statute to “wreak their revenge” on the press. Speaking on Sky News, Blackhurst commented:
“Once a draft Bill goes into the Commons and the Lords and once they get their teeth into it they can add all sorts of amendments.
“That’s where the revenge will happen. That’s one reason why some of us are very keen that there should not be statute.
“It’s not just expenses, let’s not forget there are a lot of MPs, all sorts of shenanigans down the years, many of which we all know about and have been highlighted, and they can’t wait. They are sort of ‘bring it on’.”
Pro-statute campaigners such as Hugh Grant tell us that we should not be alarmed by the prospect of a new press law. But when, even before such a law is debated, a government minister thinks it’s OK to interfere with the press in this manner, why should we trust politicians with free speech?
9 Jan 2013 | Uncategorized
Protests against The Innocence of Muslims at the US Embassy in London (Demotix)
This one sneaked under the radar before Christmas. On 6 December, UK parliamentarian Alex Cunningham, the Labour MP for Stockton North, tabled an “Early Day Motion” demanding that the British government ban the controversial anti-Islam film “The Innocence of Muslims”. The moved was backed by 14 other MPs — 11 Labour, two Liberal Democrats, and RESPECT’s George Galloway.
Here’s the text of the EDM in full:
That this House notes the anger of Muslim constituents in response to the online video, The Innocence of Muslims; is offended by the vile, Islamophobic slurs it makes about a faith followed by over two billion people worldwide; believes that the film constitutes incitement to hatred on the grounds of race and religion; further believes that the film itself is of appallingly poor quality; and urges the Government tomake provision for its banning.
Note the invocation of our friend Muslim anger; note the absurd generalisation of the feelings of “two billion people worldwide” — none of the 15 signatories is actually Muslim. Note the remark on the “poor quality” of the film, a classic censor’s gambit (“it’s rubbish anyway, so this doesn’t really count as censorship”), but one which also raises the question of whether they’d call for Innocence of Muslims to be banned if it was well made. All rather grim.
The signatories are listed below (source http://www.edms.org.uk). Is your MP part of this censorious set?
Alex Cunningham Stockton North (Labour)
Iain Wright Hartlepool (Labour)
Simon Danczuk Rochdale (Labour)
Ian Lavery Wansbeck (Labour)
Jim Dobbin Heywood and Middleton (Labour)
Andy McDonald Middlesborough, Labour
Ronnie Campbell Blyth Valley (Labour)
Sandra Osborne Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Labour)
Kelvin Hopkins Luton North (Labour)
Alan Meale Mansfield (Labour)
George Galloway Bradford West (Respect)
Andrew George St Ives (Liberal Democrat)
Mike Hancock Portsmouth South (Liberal Democrat)
Roger Godsiff Birmingham, Hall Green (Labour)
Mary Glindon North Tyneside (Labour)
Read more on The Innocence of Muslims:
A new argument for censorship? Padraig Reidy asks if this time is different from previous blasphemy rows
