Sing up, Van, it’s still a free world
VAN MORRISON is not one of my all-time favourite singers. If my non-driving spouse and I fall out on long car journeys (it happens) then he has been known to stick on a Van Morrison CD as a petty act of revenge, knowing full well that I cannot retaliate while in control of the vehicle.
Oh, all right, I’ll admit that Gloria and Moondance are OK and I can appreciate that Van is a genius and, yes, Astral Weeks and all that. But that shouty voice makes me flinch. And he always looks so disagreeable.
Van the Man (as men tend to call him) is now in hot water because he’s gone and said the wrong thing about coronavirus, releasing three songs which include lines such as. “No more lockdown / No more government overreach / No more fascist bullies / Disturbing our peace … Pretending it’s for our safety / When it’s really to enslave” and “Imperial College scientists making up crooked facts”. Poetry it ain’t.
As a result of Sir Van’s rant a Belfast councillor has said that Morrison – previously one of Northern Ireland’s most celebrated sons – should have his freedom of the city revoked. Though come to think of it, freedom of a city seems a funny idea in the age of lockdown.
The Northern Ireland health minister said, “we expected better from him” and has accused him of being “bizarre, dangerous and irresponsible”. Hang on – surely “bizarre, dangerous and irresponsible” is a minimum requirement for any self-respecting rock star? Or was that just in the 1970s?
Usually if anyone says anything contentious these days they find themselves “cancelled” and “noplatformed”, with demands s for apologies to everyone one everywhere.
Van probably doesn’t care. Why should he? He’s been a paid-up member of the awkward squad for most of his 75 years so it’s hardly likely that he’d release a song hymning the benefits of hand sanitising gel.
And surely people still have the right to hold contrary views. Even if they’re utterly barking. Whatever happened to being tolerant of others?
I’ll tell you what happened to being tolerant. Every Saturday in the market square of my quiet, civilised little town, a mild-mannered Covid denier sets up his stall and hands out leaflets to anyone who is passing explaining how coronavirus is a hoax, vaccines are a sinister ploy by Big P Pharma and Government to exert mind control, and so on.
Peop People stop and talk to him politely. Some may agree. Others enter into a conversation. Most smile, walk on and go to the greengrocer’s stall.
Nobody jumps up and down and says he should be sacked from his job, or arrested, or cancelled, or banned or imprisoned. Because this is not social media. This is the real world.
Yes, tolerance is alive and well in Britain. It’s just being drowned out by noise.