The BBC was right to broadcast Bob Vylan
So while it's always enjoyable to see the BBC embarrassed, and tempting to join the calls for its director general, Tim Davie, to step down for not pulling the plug on its Glastonbury coverage, I nevertheless don't do so. Serious business must come before transitory pleasure, and urging the BBC to censor its coverage still further seems to me to risk even bigger problems down the line.
Why? Well, it's precisely because I don't have confidence in the BBC that I don't trust them to exercise any further discretion over what we can see and hear. Speech that is illegal – and that is unfortunately a very uncertain boundary nowadays, a problem in itself – is one thing. Speech that is just unpleasant is another. The supporters of the original Online Safety Bill had one go, thankfully unsuccessful, at least formally, at banning such 'legal but harmful' language. I don't want to see the BBC given a second chance to police this grey area entirely on its own authority.
Now I have had the counter-argument made to me that if a band on the Glastonbury stage had embarked on a rant against criminal immigrants or Islamic dress codes the BBC would have pulled it pronto. Only anti-Semitic hatred (let's call it what it is, we know what 'death to the IDF' means) gets a pass.
That's extremely likely. But it's not an argument for banning even more speech, however crude and unpleasant. It's an argument for being more robust, more able to hear unpleasant concepts, and then to judge those retailing them accordingly.
Don't get me wrong. I am not suggesting the BBC should actively platform racists and anti-Semites in its programming. But when people on the BBC express such opinions, the BBC shouldn't cut the feed but should let us hear them and judge them. We need to be less like children living in the Harry Potter world where certain words must not be said, and more like adults.
Urging broadcasters to exercise more discretion takes us precisely in the wrong direction. The more encouragement you give the BBC to police speech, the more they will use it. They will always err on the side of caution and will always favour their own values. It is already impossible to express doubts about climate change or net zero on the BBC. There is already too much guiding of opinion, reporters telling us someone is making 'fake' or 'unfounded' claims. No. Just tell me what they said and I'll make my own mind up.
And that is the second reason for my hesitation in joining the bandwagon. It's the facts that are the problem, not the reporting of the facts. If large numbers of people, otherwise respectable and presumably somewhat affluent, are prepared to chant something pretty close to 'Death to the Jews', don't we need to know that? Isn't it telling us something we ought to be aware of about our society?
If 'Bob Vylan' are telling us, apparently to the audience's approval, that they've 'got the gammons on retreat' and 'we're coming for you' to take back 'land that ain't theirs', doesn't that tell us something about how well multiculturalism and integration is going?
Let's face it, if the BBC had not let their feed run, none of this would be a news story. We know that because there has been almost no comment about the band Kneecap's words in support of Palestine Action, because the BBC didn't cover it .
The BBC rightly reports on the anti-Semitic hate marches across our cities, and covers their disgusting posters and slogans, because we need to know about them. So, when something similar happens in front of their eyes, the right reaction is not to censor it, but to make sure we know about it.
The problem is that too many people don't want to know. They prefer to say that multiculturalism is generally working well. 'Yes maybe there are a few problems but basically everyone can get along as long as we don't push it.' That is the attitude that makes it difficult to discuss the cultural consequences of mass immigration. It is the attitude that made it 'inappropriate' to dwell on the rape gangs scandal until about two minutes ago and that helped the gangs get away with it.
The problem we have in this country is not too much free speech but too little. We can't face obvious problems and we hide that from ourselves by not discussing them. The BBC is comfortable with that. I'm not. I'd rather have proper, honest, news and debate, and risk people hearing 'inappropriate' comments, than everyone being frightened to open their mouths in case they upset someone. We're not far off that point now. Time to turn back.
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