Nearly 80 years ago, the English speaking world’s original state-subsidised theatre, the Abbey in Dublin, provoked a riot with the debut of Sean O’Casey’s play The Plough and the Stars. The occasion was not the first on which the venue’s repertoire had prompted an act of civil disobedience, JM Synge’s Playboy of the Western World having long since earned that accolade.
References to women in their shifts and the possible existence of prostitution no longer have the same capacity to offend, as society in Ireland as well as in Britain became more secular and more relaxed in its attitude. One hesitates to use the description ‘permissive’, given that that word has become so corrupted by politicians into a term of abuse only, but the description otherwise would be apt.
To say this evolution in public taste found favour with everyone would be an exaggeration. But then tolerance in such cases is measured not by what those with the most liberal views are in favour of but rather what people of a more conservative outlook will either accept, however grudgingly, or protest within the parameters of the law alone.
The limits of this consensus are today less defined than once they were. In terms of its focus, the Birmingham Rep protest was actually more restricted than some - not a blanket objection to any depiction of wrongdoing in the Sikh community but to the specific siting of the action within a temple. This consideration is negated entirely, however, by the violent intimidation that followed in the wake of the initial complaint. As a result, a venue has for the first time had its programme effectively censored by an act of physical force.
British governments are notoriously wary about prescribing people’s behaviour on moral issues. Frequently they avoid even imposing a parliamentary whip on their own backbenchers for legislation covering such matters. This laissez-faire attitude falls down, however, if an administration hesitates to remind its citizens that they have no right to employ the arbitrary use of force to prevent others who are acting within the law themselves.
Such a stricture presupposes, though, that the law provides possible recourse for objectors. As Mary Whitehouse’s famous 1981 case against Michael Bogdanov’s staging of The Romans in Britain demonstrates, it does. As that case also showed, what it does not do is guarantee success for either prosecution or defence. And when it does not, all of us have a chance to change laws we do not like, by virtue of our ability to elect the very people who make those laws.
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