Having a sense of humour is no longer a good thing
Once upon a time, politicians who wished to ingratiate themselves with the public used coyly to say: “I must confess to having a sense of humour.” Would this be a wise confession to make today?
Michael Gove and Neil Kinnock have come under attack for making “inappropriate” jokes on air about Harvey Weinstein. Mr Weinstein is officially no laughing matter, although I must admit that whenever I am reminded that he is an honorary Companion of the British Empire, I guffaw. No Weinstein jokes are permitted, it would seem, even when – as in the Gove/kinnock debacle – the butt of the joke is not his alleged victims but John Humphrys.
Last week, the rising young MP, Tom Tugendhat, criticised Boris Johnson for his jokes as Foreign Secretary: “Humour is fundamentally cultural. It is really hard to do cross-cultural humour.” Mr Tugendhat is being somewhat hypocritical. I know him well and though I have no wish to damage his career, I hereby name and shame him as a very funny man himself. But I fear he is right. That, indeed, is why not all of us unreservedly welcome a multicultural society. We would like to be free to laugh now and again.
In these difficult circumstances, we must give thanks that Theresa May is our Prime Minister. No one has ever succeeded in smearing her as someone with a sense of humour.
The Spanish government is widely criticised in this country for being “heavy-handed” in its treatment of Catalan Nationalists. Obviously it should behave with restraint. But I am impressed that Spain takes its own constitution and rule of law so seriously.
One even reads that our own handing of the Scottish referendum has, by contrast to Spain’s behaviour, peacefully settled the matter for a generation. In fact, we gravely mishandled it, though, in the end, the right side won. The battle in Scotland is not over yet.
David Cameron gave in too readily to the claim by the SNP that the future of Scotland is solely a matter for Scottish voters, rather than for the whole United Kingdom. Spain rejects the equivalent claim by Catalan nationalists, because its constitution of 1978, which at last brought stable democracy to the country, understands that separatism has the capacity to undermine the whole.
Democracy does not mean illegally installing ballot boxes and then pretending that the result is a genuine vote. It means seeking the opinion of the people within the legal order. The Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont has not done this, and so, if he persists, it would be morally justified (though quite possibly not tactically astute) to arrest him for sedition. It is a mad, bad thing to pretend you have a democratic mandate when you don’t.
Our part of Sussex is famous for its bonfires round November 5. I am a Sussex man, but also a Catholic. Should I feel offended and threatened? Perhaps, in theory, I should. Perhaps, 200 years ago, I would have done. In practice, I don’t.
There are two reasons. The persecution of Catholics – horribly on display in the current television drama series, Gunpowder – was indefensible, but the fear of Catholic temporal power was not. The plot was real. Foiling efforts to overthrow the state is something we should indeed remember, remember – especially in an age when the motto about the past is too often “forget, forget”.
The second is that the repetition of something over centuries, through ceremonies, parades, fireworks and so on, need not be a way of keeping fear and hate alive. It may become a way of taming them. This has happened in the case of poor old Guy Fawkes. When we burn him, more than 400 years after his actual death, we do so with a sort of affection. This is hard to explain, but true. Style for Soldiers is a wonderful charity, invented by the Jermyn Street shirtmaker, Emma Willis. She understood that the young British servicemen maimed in Iraq and Afghanistan lost not only – in many cases – limbs, but also pride. By measuring them up for free smart shirts, elegant walking sticks and so on, she helps them regain dignity.
And with dignity, comes selfexpression. At a moving dinner at Spencer House last week, several of the injured men stood or – if severely disabled – sat, and declaimed poems they had written themselves. Although sometimes humorous (yes, soldiers, at least, are still allowed to joke), they are also painful because they confront hard facts.
Severe injury cannot always be recovered from, physically or mentally. As one “soldier poet”, Karl Tierney, puts it: “I used to be a soldier/i marched along with pride/i went to fight in foreign lands/not all of me survived.”
The saddest thing said to me on what was, in many ways, a happy occasion, came from one exserviceman who now lives in a part of a big British city, where Islamist extremists flourish.
“I feel more exposed there than I did in Afghanistan,” he told me. “At least when I was there, I had my mates.”
‘That is why not all of us welcome a multi-cultural society. We would like to be free to laugh now and again’