Why shouldn't we show Churchill smoking a cigar or Enid Blyton's Golliwogs?
Why are we rewriting history, asks Grimsby Telegraph Thursday columnist Peter Chapman.
Read an excerpt from today's Odd Man's Week column below - and add your comment.
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Should images of Winston Churchill smoking be erased from history?
Read the full Odd Man's Week in today's Grimsby Telegraph.
THIS week I thought I’d give a final airing to a word you won’t see again or hear again but which was once a commonplace at Riby Square.
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This word is not a nice word and, with the passage of time, has virtually vanished from our vocabularies.
But it was – and is – a word. And simply because habits and circumstances change it does not mean it never existed.
Scrobs. There we are. Six letters. Derogatory. But a word.
This week the revisionists have been “at it” again, redesigning our pasts to fit our present day, denying the very existence of yesterday.
Harold Wilson was our Labour prime minister for many years. He smoked a pipe. He was seldom interviewed without his pipe being in view.
Like Stanley Baldwin before him, he enjoyed a pipe. Some of you will recall the old advertisement for Dr White’s Glasgow Presbyterian Mixture “as smoked by the Rt Hon Stanley Baldwin”.
“My thoughts grow in the aroma of that particular tobacco,” said Mr Balfour. And the Glasgow firm used the quote in their ads.
In the immediate future there is to be a television programme about Harold Wilson and, because smoking tobacco is now – now! – frowned on, shots of him with his pipe are to be erased, deleted, at least minimised.
Let me give you another example.
Down in Berkshire Enid Blyton’s home town is to celebrate her life and books.
But the books were for another age 50 or 60 years distant. And oddments, odd words, are not now in use and modern sensitivity now calls for their review.
Thus The Three Golliwogs is now The Three Bold Pixies.
I am reminded of Robertson’s jams and Florence K Upton’s wonderful postcards!
We can’t go thorough life denying the past and its attitudes.
We can’t turn our backs on Captain W E Johns, and Percy F Westerman and G A Henty and so on who all wrote for Empire.
We can’t separate cigarettes from Hollywood and cigars from Churchill. Nor can we fiddle about with Dickens and Shakespeare.
Come On England. We don’t use these words now or hold disagreeable attitudes. But we did and denying it is, frankly, pathetic.
5 Comments
by Dexxx
Thursday, February 21 2013, 9:48PM
“If we had enjoyed political correctness during the forties would we have the time to have won the war ?.”
by s_pike
Thursday, February 21 2013, 3:00PM
“It's PC Times and Dam Buster Guy Gibson's dog has had a change in nationality as well as a name change and is now called Digger. Hmm, perhaps Digger shouldn't be applied to those down under anymore – better watch myself and expect ****s.
It's a funny old world today.”
by Rambling_Mick
Thursday, February 21 2013, 1:43PM
“Ahh - the lament of the guilty: I saw it on TV so I copied it.
In society today, we are brought up not to use our initiative and common sense, but to adhere to certain tight restrictions. Through legislation we are being told how to think and behave. The extreme measure of todays society is discipline or lack thereof. A local bobby on the beat, who knew everyone and their parents, would issue a clip behind the ear to the youths and then tell their parents so when they got home the discipline would be worse. Now, simply taking someone's photograph against their will is classed as common assault.
Although there have been studies as to where the violence originates from, it has never been pinpointed to violence or other behaviour on television. If it had, then everyone watching a car chase sequence from a Hollywood blockbuster would be tearing around the streets, sliding their car around corners and not caring for the pedestrians.
When you start to airbrush history, you start to change it. What next: Do we gloss over the Holocaust because it might offend people, or forget the cruel treatment that hostages received in the middle east, just because 2 or 3 people might be offended? No. History needs to stay as it is. No airbrushing, no sugar-coating.”
by THEAPPLE
Thursday, February 21 2013, 12:29PM
“who,is saying you cant look at this imigary or say these words or read about certain historical facts?..surprise surprise no one ,yes there was a who har about golli***s,yet we can still by them ,now renamed but it its self is what it always was ,a doll depicting american entertainers both black and white who woulld wear makeup in this way so's the audience didnt know what colour they actually were,and so they were able to perform with no colour bar,a good thing I say and something that should be celebrated,Scrobs,is local slang ,what it isnt and never was ,was an insult,there are some tv prog were there is more smoking that actually happened,which is just as bad as not showing it at all,if it happened it happened,anyone who is influenced that easily by smoking cos they seen it on the telly isnt worth bothering with,And as to altering history this is happening all the time its like Hitler burning books to remove anything he didnt like,inthe 1970s one of our greatest stars,Indeed "the leader" was Gary Glitter,you watch a programe about 70s entertainment and he's not mentioned,thats like saying yes we had a war in 40s ,and not mentioning Adolf was anything to do with it”
by NaFili
Thursday, February 21 2013, 10:24AM
“Fully agree. The attempt to reinvent Vikings as no more than jovial itinerant market traders and play down the brutalities of the Islamic expansionists while highlighting the sins of the crusaders are worthy of Orwell's "Ministry of Truth".
Even at folk festivals, ancient folk songs, part of the primary evidence of contemporary social conditions and attitudes, have been censored and bawdlerised.
The truth is that, for thousands of years of written history, the world has been a pretty brutal place where the "job spec" for human leaders usually included a willingness to murder your own family if necessary, in order to rise to the to the top and maintain your position there.
The idea of universal human rights is relatively recent and choosing your leader by universal franchise is still a luxury for a minority.
They say that those that won't learn the lessons of history are condemned to repeat the mistakes and horrors.
Tell it how it was. Treat us like the adults we are. I think we are intelligent and sophisticated enough to handle the facts and make our own value judgments about what went on in the past.”