In defence of Boris Johnson’s remarks about the wearing of the burqa and the niqab, his supporters have replied: “You need to read the full article to see the context”. I have now read Johnson’s full article. That is ten minutes of my life I won’t get back. It is remarkable that he gets paid a King’s ransom for such tosh. More galling, he has been doing it (certainly up to 26th July, three weeks after he resigned from the government) at our expense from 1 Carlton Gardens.
David Yelland, who was Editor of the Sun from 1998 to 2003, has tweeted:
I can attest, as a former tabloid editor, that Boris Johnson knew precisely what he was doing in his nasty, appalling column. He knows. The editors know. We all know. He is not fit to be PM.
— David Yelland (@davidyelland) August 8, 2018
If you tell me that the burka is oppressive, then I am with you. If you say that it is weird and bullying to expect women to cover their faces, then I totally agree – and I would add that I can find no scriptural authority for the practice in the Koran. I would go further and say that it is absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes; and I thoroughly dislike any attempt by any – invariably male – government to encourage such demonstrations of “modesty”, notably the extraordinary exhortations of President Ramzan Kadyrov of Chechnya, who has told the men of his country to splat their women with paintballs if they fail to cover their heads.
If a constituent came to my MP’s surgery with her face obscured, I should feel fully entitled – like Jack Straw – to ask her to remove it so that I could talk to her properly. If a female student turned up at school or at a university lecture looking like a bank robber then ditto: those in authority should be allowed to converse openly with those that they are being asked to instruct. As for individual businesses or branches of government – they should of course be able to enforce a dress code that enables their employees to interact with customers; and that means human beings must be able to see each other’s faces and read their expressions. It’s how we work.
The first thing that occurred to me on hearing about these comments was, refreshingly, articulated by Ruth Davidson. Describing Johnson’ comments as “gratuitously offensive”, she said:
If you use the analogy of Christianity, would you ever write in the Telegraph that you should have a debate about banning Christians from wearing crucifixes? It’s the same argument but it’s in a different faith so why are the parameters different for one faith and not the other?
In the last few days we have seen predictable defences of Johnson (I refuse to refer to him as “Boris” as it makes him sound cuddly and funny, which he ain’t) citing the right to free speech. Iain Duncan-Smith said:
We live in a land which has freedom of speech, freedom of worship and freedom of choice. If you want to uphold those, there will always be some that will take offence.
The right to free speech does not give you the right to shout “fire” in a crowded theatre. Likewise, purely gratuitous, disingenious and unnecessary ridiculing of one branch of society cannot be supported by the right to free speech.
Similarly, our rights to do or say things are balanced by whether or not they cause harm to others. – The harm principle written about by J.S.Mill in “On Liberty”. It is very clear that Johnson’s remarks have or will cause a ramping up of Islamaphobia.
Amazingly, Rowan Atkinson has defended Johnson’s remarks on the grounds that they are funny:
I do think that Boris Johnson’s joke about wearers of the burka resembling letterboxes is a pretty good one. All jokes about religion cause offence, so it’s pointless apologising for them. You should really only apologise for a bad joke. On that basis, no apology is required.
This remark has been neatly dispatched by comedian Shappi Khorsandi:
Leaving apologies aside, it looks like Rowan hasn’t set foot in a comedy club since 1984. The joke wasn’t good. It’s an old, obvious observation. I probably did a version of it myself once or twice back in the 1800s when I was a rookie standup and had no idea how to make jokes up yet. I can’t count the amount of comedians I’ve heard doing a letterbox/burqa gag. The former foreign secretary should, if anything, apologise for picking a tired old hackneyed gag out of the comedy club circuit’s jumble box. Stand up for free speech by all means, Mr Atkinson, but don’t confuse playground insults with humour.
There is no valid defence of Johnson’s remarks, which amount to gratuitous, cold-blooded, self-seeking oppression of a small, vulnerable and relatively powerless section of society.
I end with the words of Talat Yaqoob:
When (the Burqa) is mocked/belittled in such a public way, by a public figure, it endorses bigotry, it gives legitimisation to those bigots who threaten and attack visibly Muslim women in the streets – who are already more likely to experience attack. You are making their lives unsafe.
* Paul Walter is a Liberal Democrat activist and member of the Liberal Democrat Voice team. He blogs at Liberal Burblings.
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14 Comments
Brexit is not going well. Who ya gonna blame?
Well, there’s the intransigent EU ofc, but an ethnic minority has to be a good backstop.
Heaven forfend that the privileged and disingenuous elite who led us into this disaster should bear any responsibility.
A ‘joke’ is not a get out of jail free card. I remember the 70s club scene with its comics and their gags, preeminent amongst whom was Bernard Manning. Targets included Irish, Welsh, Scots, Asians, West Indians, Jews, gays, women, and indeed any group that could be considered not to be good old English working class.
It was a cruel, crude abusive humour that I am delighted to see consigned to the past, at least in the public arena.
This is about Boris career advancing his career, not a useful contribution to public debate. He’s not a comedian, he’s a politician and a senior one at that whose words carry weight and who uses them knowingly and irresponsibly. His hero, Churchill, was notorious for his barbed personal insults, but he made them in a less enlightened era and (as far as I’m aware) usually in private, and tended to target strong individuals rather than vulnerable minorities.
He should be callled Johnson not by a friendly name of Boris. He loves the Limelight. Like a child he needs the attention,to be loved (big ego). By saying what he does he gets that attention.He loves stirring it in the guise of ‘liberal discussion’ which stifles sensible debate (also disappears on holiday). The papers lap it up, it sells copy,the editors know that it boosts his ego. He reminds me of the Muppets, a n orange headed child. He should be seen but not be given too much attention.
‘Johnson (I refuse to refer to him as “Boris” as it makes him sound cuddly and funny, which he ain’t)’
Sadly his surname is shared by many people, including his much more reasonable father, brother and sister.
Fortunately, he has plenty of forenames. I propose that we, in future, refer to him as ‘de Pfeffel Johnson’ or simply ‘de Pfeffel’
‘with her face obscured’
The first thought of after hearing this was of the Sherlock Holmes story ‘The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger’. The lady concerned had a veil (for purely practcal reasons) which she removes during her interview with Holmes and Watson, to their shock and horror.
English women did wear veils in living memory, when they wanted privacy, not just in Sherlock Holmes. It was respected.
De Pfeffel studies Churchill. He wandered in the shadows writing in the dead years and rising when the chips were down (1940)Mr de Pf. thinks he is in the 30s ready for his. Churchill did not stir it with his comments unlike Mr. De P . waiting for his.future reignMr C. warned of the 3rd Reich and did not show racist tendencies, Mr P. does..He has delusions of grandeur. The Conservative party must beware of who they worship,caveat emptor, buyer beware.
In contradiction of Paul Walter’s main point “The right to ridicule is essential to free speech.” That is the title of Matthew Parris’ characteristically well-written, learned, well-reasoned article in The Times
of Saturday, in which he states that he is “less bothered by Boris’s ill- judged pitch for the groundlings’ cheers than by the language of censorship his comments have provoked from people who should know better. There’s an ugly intolerance of honest expression afoot in our era ” . He also states that “as a serious player in serious politics he (B. Johnson) should never have written what he did in his Telegraph columns” He also states clearly Boris Johnson’s shortcomings; Parris is no fan of his. Parris better expresses a Liberal view than other comments here.
@ Nigel Hunter “Mr C. warned of the 3rd Reich and did not show racist tendencies, Mr P. does.” Correct on the first half – incorrect on the second.
Suggest you read Professor Richard Toye, ‘Churchill’s Empire and the World that made him’, Macmillan, 20112. Just two quotes :
” his startled doctor, Lord Moran, said of other races: “Winston thinks only of the colour of their skin.”
“I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.” This hatred killed. To give just one, major, example, in 1943 a famine broke out in Bengal, caused – as the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen has proved – by the imperial policies of the British. Up to 3 million people starved to death while British officials begged Churchill to direct food supplies to the region. He bluntly refused. He raged that it was their own fault for “breeding like rabbits”.
Churchill, of course, had the excuse of being born ninety years before Johnson in very different times.
I think Mr Johnson is finding it challenging to distinguish between his private and his political life. Where the two differ, it is essential to be clear which hat he is wearing. Such a senior politician must know the effect his words will have or might have. Perhaps he should take lessons from the environmental movement and adopt the precautionary principle. If he is doing it for the effect, then he is stroking division, fear and anger.
Don’t let us be fooled by de Pfeffel Johnson’s self-promotion as a second Winston Churchill. By 1939, when he was brought back from the wilderness, Churchill was a decade older than de Pfeffel Johnson is now. During more than thirty years, he had served in three flavours of cabinet including two substantial stints in two of the great offices of state.
In the 1930s he had put himself outside the pale by first opposing greater self-government for India, suffered a severe traffic accident in the US, been nearly broke and then gone against ‘the will of the people’ by opposing the (very popular, and apparently successful) negotiations with Hitler.
Even after 1940, he wouldn’t have passed muster as a twenty-first century Prime Minister. He suffered a well hushed-up stroke in the middle of the war. He fought three elections and only ‘won’ the third – he was as dependent on the UUP as Theresa May is on the DUP.
If de Pfeffel Johnson wants his career to follow Churchill’s, he is just due to commence a decade in the wilderness (Churchill’s 1930s).
I just wonder …
Boris Johnson’s “letterbox” article includes the following: “ As for individual businesses or branches of government – they should of course be able to enforce a dress code that enables their employees to interact with customers; and that means human beings must be able to see each other’s faces and read their expressions. It’s how we work.”
It would be interesting to know from an opinion poll the what extent people agree/disagree with that (on a scale of 1 to 10).
Should shops be allowed to put up signs saying “Customers whose faces are covered will not be served”. Would such signs be racist/illegal/offensive?
There is a very simple distinction which people who defend such remarks on free speech grounds fail to understand or deliberately muddy. Censorship = the state preventing things being said, with legal sanctions attached. It is not an attack on free speech for an editor to choose not to publish something offensive. It is not an attack on free speech for someone to criticise a politician for saying something.
Censorship, by the way, is not always illiberal. In time of war some censorship is necessary. Where there is a reasonable fear that extreme verbiage could spark riots or hate attacks, there is also a case for censorship. But attacking Johnson for his remarks is not censorship and it wouldn’t have been censorship for the editor to spike them.