A breath of fresh airwaves

A couple of decades back the Radio Society asked me to moderate a debate for its summer festival. ‘Between who?’ I asked them and was delighted when they replied: ‘It’s entirely up to you.’ I chose the charismatic hook-handed Muslim cleric Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Masri and the then leader of the British National party, Nick Griffin. They were quite big news at the time — but were not really allowed on the airwaves, still less television. Hamza wasn’t allowed on because ‘mainstream’ Muslim organisations objected and we always did what we were told by them. Griffin wasn’t allowed on because he was a ‘fascist’. In fairness, he got an occasional interview slot, but only on the condition that the interviewer could scream abuse at him and not let him say anything. This was the beginning of cancel culture, I think.

My point was simply that the general public had a right to hear the viewpoints of people in the news, regardless of how unpleasant their opinions might be. The debate went quite well, except that they agreed with each other about most stuff. I think old Abu won by a nose — he had a good, if harsh, turn of phrase. Skimming through the Daily Telegraph in the green room before the event, Hamza said to me: ‘Rod, I see your government has lowered the age of consent for homosexuals to the same as what it is for human beings.’ Feisty!

The point of the debate was ignored. Instead, over the following 20 years an ever greater number of individuals found themselves excluded from the national debate as the spectrum of opinion allowed to be broadcast narrowed and narrowed. Now we are in a situation where perfectly respectable scientists will be barred from the airwaves if, for example, they doubt the wisdom of that Swedish doom goblin, Greta Thunberg, or are less than sure that lockdown is the best way to combat the pandemic, or are worried about the possible side effects of the various Covid vaccines.