Orders of the Day — Censorship of Plays (Repeal) Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 25 March 1949.

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Photo of Mr Benn Levy Mr Benn Levy , Eton and Slough 12:00, 25 March 1949

If he has to make decisions of that kind it requires not only that he should be able to look into the hearts of men, but also that he should be privy to the unforeseeable concatenation of cause and effect, which is one of the aspects of eternity. In other words it requires that he should have the omniscience of the Almighty. Now whenever we decide to instal somebody into the position of the Almighty, we must not be surprised if we encounter a certain difficulty in finding a candidate with the necessary qualifications.

I have looked up the qualifications of the present incumbent of the office of Lord Chamberlain and I note that his qualifications, among others, are that he is a director of Barclays Bank, an ex-Chancellor of the Primrose League and a member of the Turf Club; all of them estimable things in their way, but none of them, perhaps, quite achieving the level which I have previously predicated. It may be argued that, after all he is the headpiece and that the main body of the work is done by his Examiner. That, of course, is quite true. And the qualifications of Examiners have been many and various. One was newspaper man, one a bank manager, one a dramatic critic, another was a not very successful pornographic playwright, and so on. But I repeat that whether these are or are not the right qualifications is something which is really quite impossible to decide, because there is no such thing as the right qualifications.

The real basis of most of the opposition this afternoon has been the argument that, although the present system may be unreasonable and even ridiculous, in some way it works. That is the argument which has been planted in the minds of hon. Members by a circular from the managers' association. But perhaps those not connected with the stage were not fully aware that this circular was from the managers alone, who were not, of course, entitled, as their circular implies, to speak on behalf of the entire theatrical industry. The phrase "theatrical industry" "is, in fact, a new thing, introduced, no doubt, as a result of association with my hon. Friend the Member for West Nottingham (Mr. O'Brien). It used to be an art. The thought may conceivably very well have passed the managers' minds that to control in this arbitrary way an industry might be less offensive to our susceptibilities than to control an art, and, of course, in that they are perfectly right.

Let us examine this claim that "it works," which was raised by the hon. and learned junior Member for the Combined English Universities (Mr. H. Strauss) and other hon. Members. Let me say, first of all, that that is the defence of censorship in Russia. It was also the defence of censorship by Mussolini and by Hitler. It has always been the defence of censorship that it works; let there be no mistake about that. And it is perfectly true that there is one sense in which it always does work. It is always true that there is less friction and life goes more smoothly when only one man's opinion is allowed to prevail and in that sense it does work. But does it work well?

If we really think that censorship works better than free speech, why are we not clamouring to extend the boon to other fields of creative activity? That is the logic of it. I am sorry if I am logical—I suppose I have to apologise for it— but surely that is the inevitable logic of the situation and it is inescapable logic. If that is really what we mean, that is what we should be doing and we could do it, moreover, without overworking the present Lord Chamberlain. There are, after all, other functionaries of the Royal Household.

I jotted down a tentative allocation as a kind of working hypothesis. Novelists, for example, might be put under the supervision and control of the Crown Equerry, historians could be under the Keeper of the Privy purse, philosophers under the Master of the Horse, poets under the Hereditary Grand Almoner, journalists under the Coroner to the Royal Household—I cannot help thinking that he may have some time on his hands—preachers could come under the Mistress of the Robes and politicians under the chief Lady of the Bedchamber. I have omitted musicians and painters and scientists. No doubt they would soon be clamouring to be relieved of the burden of freedom and independence, once this example is launched, but I daresay they could be fixed up too.

This argument that it works is supposed to present a dialectical dilemma, because to rebut it involves one in the necessity of proving a negative. We are involved in the difficult problem of trying to prove that it does not work, but so strong is the case against censorship that for once it is possible to show even that. It works and it works well only if we believe that the plays of great creative writers should be destroyed or mutilated at the whim of a bank manager and that other great writers should be deterred from writing for the stage at all.

We have heard mentioned today the names of a number of eminent writers. As my hon. Friend the Member for West Nottingham (Mr. O'Brien) has said they have been largely, but by no means entirely, writers of the past. The reason for that is not very difficult. It always was and must be so; because the venerable names are inevitably more than 25 years old. If at the time when Ibsen was being put into the ashcan, anyone had raised the problem, as indeed they did, there was not an immediate sense of the ridiculous for the simple reason that at that time Ibsen had not achieved a venerable status. But, in addition to those names, I took the precaution of making a list, by no means an exhaustive list but merely a random list, of names of people who I personally happen to remember as having suffered censorship.

I am referring to censorship since 1737, since the present system was inaugurated. Here is the list: Aristophanes, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Gay, Fielding, James Thomson, Miss Mitford of all people, who was censored by George Coleman the Younger, of all people; and, coming to more modern times, Tolstoy, Wilde, Laurence Housman, W. S. Gilbert, Shelley, Sudermann, Shaw, Brieux, George Moore, Pirandello, Edward Garnett, Schnitzler, Gilbert Murray, Gantillon, Eugene O'Neill, Ernst Toiler, Eden Phillpotts, Evelyn Waugh, Van Druten, J. E. Flecker, Maeterlinck, Granville Barker and many others. That is a formidable list. It is really no use trying to diminish the matter by converting it into terms of statistics. To say that it is merely 1½ per cent. who have been destroyed does not mean that that 1½ per cent. cannot include names such as those I have read out. It did.