Liddle Britain

No one deserves a knighthood more

23 June 2007

Rushdie is loathed — and not just by the mediaevally minded bigots of Islamabad, Tehran and the Finsbury Park mosque. He seems to be loathed by everyone else, too. No sooner had his knighthood been announced than the British Right waded into attack. They hate Rushdie because he has dared, from time to time, to cast doubt upon the righteousness of Britain’s imperial history, been a bit snide about the monarchy and occasionally remarked that our society was not always what is is cracked up to be. Can he not show gratitude, asked the Daily Mail’s Peter McKay in a column of magnificently ignorant bile. We give him expensive police protection when the mad mullahs order his death and he repays us by continuing to speak his mind. Beneath all this is the usually unspoken intimation of racism: Salman — well, he’s a darkie, isn’t he? A chippy little wog. Comes from Bombay or Mumbai or somewhere ghastly like that. You’d think he’d feel even more beholden to his adopted country (or his once adopted country) and less inclined to stick the boot in. You can’t trust them, can you? There is a strand of thought on the right which holds that immigrants — be they second, third or fourth generation — should simply shut up and mind their ps and qs.

The British Left hates him, if anything, even more. It has long carried a torch for Islam, despite the misogyny, homophobia and authoritarian impulses of the ideology — a political mispositioning occasioned, first and foremost, by the doctrine of multiculturalism. Also, Rushdie is not quite yer bona fide leftie, is he? He’s been a bit gung-ho about the war against Iraq and accused the Left of an infantile, reflexive anti-Americanism. And if the Left can’t get him for that, then they can always get him for having accepted the award and expressing himself to be humbled by it. Some Cambridge academic called Priyamvada Gopal (who he? — ed.) took a swipe on both of these grounds in, natch, the Guardian. The honour is a reward for Rushdie having divested himself of his old anti-establishment credentials, for having cosied up to the government.

And another anachronistic leftie, Will Self, did likewise in the Evening Standard. Isn’t it all more bother than it’s worth, accepting a knighthood, knowing the trouble it will cause, Self wondered aloud to his readers. Because you wouldn’t want to cause bother as a novelist, would you? Self began his attack by saying that he did not wish to offer succour to the Pakistani government as a result of his comments about the author. Aw, come on Will, why the long face? I bet right now, in Islamabad, as the diplomatic furore heightens, they’re saying to one another, ‘It’s OK, boys, we’ve been offered succour by Will Self, who used to be on that programme with Vic Reeves.’ What epic arrogance.