I’M HAVING A COMMUNICATION DIFFICULTY
Posted: 04 May 2026, 01:25
I’M HAVING A COMMUNICATION DIFFICULTY
5 August 2005
My problem is that up until now I thought I was quite adept at listening to a conversation, understanding it and coming to some sort of reasonable view about the opinions expressed. However, all this has been thrown into doubt today by two related occurrences.
I was going about my life this morning, catching up on correspondence and checking the website when at 08:10 on Today on Radio 4 I heard George Galloway giving his views on the latest attack on him after he made a speech in the Middle East where he used some fairly colourful metaphors for the state of Baghdad and Jerusalem. Bear in mind he was speaking to an Arabic audience and expressing his solidarity with them. He described the cities as ‘two daughters who were being raped’ one by the coalition and the other by Sharon. I paraphrase but this was the gist of it.
The interviewer went for his throat about this and attempted to suggest that by doing this he was giving comfort to terrorists and justifying their actions. Not surprisingly, George reacted violently to this and denied any such thing. I’m sure that if you want to hear what he said you can access it on the BBC ‘listen again’ feature on the R4 website.
This is where I started to get into trouble. I was listening very carefully to George and whilst I hold no brief for his general views or methods I didn’t hear him utter any statement that I could identify as being untrue. I don’t even see his use of metaphor in the lecture as being out of order. He was speaking to his audience using language they would understand and empathise with, he was paying court to their culture. My mind went back to Churchill and the techniques he used in his famous wartime speeches. I’m sure you can all think of illustrations of his use of colourful language to get across a point, the one that springs to my mind is his speech to both Houses of Congress when he used ‘some chicken, some neck’ or again at Fulton when he talked of ‘an iron curtain descending across Europe’. My point is that whilst colourful and controversial, George’s metaphor was, I believe, accurate if slightly overblown to Western ears. Unfortunately WSC would have been incapable of tuning his delivery to Eastern ears as he was an old fashioned racist at heart due to his upbringing and education so we can’t find a directly similar example.
The next thing I hear is Tony Blair delivering his latest views on the legislation needed to protect us from inflammatory preachers and apologists for the terrorist bombers. I’m not suggesting that this was directly caused by George’s outburst, it has been a subject of debate since 7/7. However, it did cross my mind that opinions like those put forward by George this morning could possibly fall foul of the spirit of this proposed legislation. As I understand it the legislation will make it an offence to ‘justify’ or ‘support’ the activities of terrorists. Hazel Blears, supporting Tony Blair has said that 'free speech should not be tolerated if it tends to support terrorism or corrupt the young’ or words to that effect.
How can you tell when freedom of speech and opinion is under attack? Once you have made up your mind about that question, how can you decide whether the restrictions proposed are necessary or reasonable? As a matter of fact, I believe that Tony Blair is quite right in targeting certain people and organisations who have undoubtedly abused their rights in this country by intemperate speeches and actions. The danger arises when measures designed to control these activities are so loosely worded as to be capable of being used for other ends.
It seems to me that there are three separate strands intertwined here. The efforts of those dedicated to undermining and corrupting our society and culture on behalf of the terrorists. The public pronouncements of those who have deeply held beliefs about the causes of terrorism and are trying to understand the root causes and draw attention to them in order to give some direction to policy. The political imperative to maintain public acceptance for a course of action in the Middle East which has tapped deep wells of opposition in the country.
This is where I start to get really worried about my ability to analyse the information I am taking in. I start from the point where I abhor violence as a tool of politics, whether at home or abroad, there can be no justification for terrorist actions leading to the death of innocent people, I assume that this is a universal belief. How then do I square an event like the destruction of Falluja with four bombs in London? As I ponder this I hear the reports of the commemoration of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. I hear nothing about the widely held belief that the only reason for the second bomb on Nagasaki was to see whether a Plutonium based bomb was more or less efficient than one based on Uranium.
If George Galloway is to be a target for those who wish to stifle public pronouncement of any opinion contrary to that of the government, what do we do about Simon Schama who forecast this scenario before the second attack on Iraq? How about Cheri Blair’s recent pronouncements on human rights in the region? How about me, sat here trying to understand what is going on? Is Echelon up at Menwith Hill going to read my email because it contains the wrong keywords and flag me up as a dangerous subversive? Are the high-tech video cameras recently deployed in Barlick Town Centre capable of monitoring my movements? Is it possible that we could all be held without trial after an early morning call by the spooks? Who can say with certainty that none of this can happen?
My bottom line is that this sort of climate of opinion and the fact that I can be genuinely worried about the future of freedom of speech and opinion, however flawed my reasoning, is exactly what the terrorists are hoping to achieve. This does not mean that no measures at all should be taken to stop corruption and inflammatory pronouncements intended to further the aims of fanatics. What it means is that we should be very clear about any legislation passed to achieve this end. Voltaire said that even though he disapproved of what certain people were saying he would defend their right to say it. We should be very careful where we set the bounds of this right. If we go too far we destroy the very thing we are trying to protect.
5 August 2005
5 August 2005
My problem is that up until now I thought I was quite adept at listening to a conversation, understanding it and coming to some sort of reasonable view about the opinions expressed. However, all this has been thrown into doubt today by two related occurrences.
I was going about my life this morning, catching up on correspondence and checking the website when at 08:10 on Today on Radio 4 I heard George Galloway giving his views on the latest attack on him after he made a speech in the Middle East where he used some fairly colourful metaphors for the state of Baghdad and Jerusalem. Bear in mind he was speaking to an Arabic audience and expressing his solidarity with them. He described the cities as ‘two daughters who were being raped’ one by the coalition and the other by Sharon. I paraphrase but this was the gist of it.
The interviewer went for his throat about this and attempted to suggest that by doing this he was giving comfort to terrorists and justifying their actions. Not surprisingly, George reacted violently to this and denied any such thing. I’m sure that if you want to hear what he said you can access it on the BBC ‘listen again’ feature on the R4 website.
This is where I started to get into trouble. I was listening very carefully to George and whilst I hold no brief for his general views or methods I didn’t hear him utter any statement that I could identify as being untrue. I don’t even see his use of metaphor in the lecture as being out of order. He was speaking to his audience using language they would understand and empathise with, he was paying court to their culture. My mind went back to Churchill and the techniques he used in his famous wartime speeches. I’m sure you can all think of illustrations of his use of colourful language to get across a point, the one that springs to my mind is his speech to both Houses of Congress when he used ‘some chicken, some neck’ or again at Fulton when he talked of ‘an iron curtain descending across Europe’. My point is that whilst colourful and controversial, George’s metaphor was, I believe, accurate if slightly overblown to Western ears. Unfortunately WSC would have been incapable of tuning his delivery to Eastern ears as he was an old fashioned racist at heart due to his upbringing and education so we can’t find a directly similar example.
The next thing I hear is Tony Blair delivering his latest views on the legislation needed to protect us from inflammatory preachers and apologists for the terrorist bombers. I’m not suggesting that this was directly caused by George’s outburst, it has been a subject of debate since 7/7. However, it did cross my mind that opinions like those put forward by George this morning could possibly fall foul of the spirit of this proposed legislation. As I understand it the legislation will make it an offence to ‘justify’ or ‘support’ the activities of terrorists. Hazel Blears, supporting Tony Blair has said that 'free speech should not be tolerated if it tends to support terrorism or corrupt the young’ or words to that effect.
How can you tell when freedom of speech and opinion is under attack? Once you have made up your mind about that question, how can you decide whether the restrictions proposed are necessary or reasonable? As a matter of fact, I believe that Tony Blair is quite right in targeting certain people and organisations who have undoubtedly abused their rights in this country by intemperate speeches and actions. The danger arises when measures designed to control these activities are so loosely worded as to be capable of being used for other ends.
It seems to me that there are three separate strands intertwined here. The efforts of those dedicated to undermining and corrupting our society and culture on behalf of the terrorists. The public pronouncements of those who have deeply held beliefs about the causes of terrorism and are trying to understand the root causes and draw attention to them in order to give some direction to policy. The political imperative to maintain public acceptance for a course of action in the Middle East which has tapped deep wells of opposition in the country.
This is where I start to get really worried about my ability to analyse the information I am taking in. I start from the point where I abhor violence as a tool of politics, whether at home or abroad, there can be no justification for terrorist actions leading to the death of innocent people, I assume that this is a universal belief. How then do I square an event like the destruction of Falluja with four bombs in London? As I ponder this I hear the reports of the commemoration of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. I hear nothing about the widely held belief that the only reason for the second bomb on Nagasaki was to see whether a Plutonium based bomb was more or less efficient than one based on Uranium.
If George Galloway is to be a target for those who wish to stifle public pronouncement of any opinion contrary to that of the government, what do we do about Simon Schama who forecast this scenario before the second attack on Iraq? How about Cheri Blair’s recent pronouncements on human rights in the region? How about me, sat here trying to understand what is going on? Is Echelon up at Menwith Hill going to read my email because it contains the wrong keywords and flag me up as a dangerous subversive? Are the high-tech video cameras recently deployed in Barlick Town Centre capable of monitoring my movements? Is it possible that we could all be held without trial after an early morning call by the spooks? Who can say with certainty that none of this can happen?
My bottom line is that this sort of climate of opinion and the fact that I can be genuinely worried about the future of freedom of speech and opinion, however flawed my reasoning, is exactly what the terrorists are hoping to achieve. This does not mean that no measures at all should be taken to stop corruption and inflammatory pronouncements intended to further the aims of fanatics. What it means is that we should be very clear about any legislation passed to achieve this end. Voltaire said that even though he disapproved of what certain people were saying he would defend their right to say it. We should be very careful where we set the bounds of this right. If we go too far we destroy the very thing we are trying to protect.
5 August 2005