He can whistle

I was listening to Labour's shadow international trade secretary, Barry Gardiner, on Adrian Chiles's 5Live radio show this morning. Gardiner is a Question Time regular, perhaps because he is comparatively eloquent and unscary for a Labour front bencher. (John McDonnell, in contrast, can be eloquent but that just makes him scarier). Chiles was challenging Gardiner about the story carried in the newspapers today about Jeremy Corbyn having written a foreward to a new edition of J.A. Hobson's 1902 book Imperialism: a study. Jezza wrote his piece in 2011 before he was elected Labour leader and had to worry about the optics of calling the work a "great tome" despite its anti-semitic components, such as conspiracy theories about the Rothschild banking family and alleging that finance in Europe at the time was controlled "by men of a single and peculiar race". In recent times Labour members have been suspended for promulgating such tripe.

Gardiner naturally defended his leader, saying that journalists presumably spent time trawling through everything Corbyn has ever said to find things to discredit him (er, don't lefty journalists do that to Tories as well, Barry? I presume you won't be joining in any resulting clamour for Tory heads in the future). He also made the point that Hobson was "of his time" and that, while some of his views can't be defended, he was an important writer, influential in the evolution of  socialism. Indeed, according to some sources (OK, Wikipedia) Hobson influenced Lenin.

I'm not a great fan of Chiles's, but he bit back on this politely and with some precision, saying that these days that doesn't seem to matter to many people. I think the Oxford/Rhodes and Bristol/Colston cause celebres were mentioned. Gardiner tried to ignore this point and waffled on fluently.

Now I actually agree with that argument. I find calls to airbrush people who have done or produced great things  from history because of their views or behaviour unseemly. For example, the calls to ban Michael Jackson's music from the airwaves. I can understand why people might feel queasy. Indeed, I decided not to go to the Jackson West End musical Thriller currently touring the provinces after the recent TV programme on his paedophilic tendencies, though my decision was partly because I could see hardly any tickets had been sold so the atmosphere would have been flat. I feel this way partly because these calls for bans, redolent of the awful no-platforming tendency of university students, amount to selective censorship. I've written previously about the fact that we don't hear any such calls regarding  Wagner, Chuck Berry and others who have exhibited questionable ethics. OK, Berry's music isn't often heard these days but his status recovered long ago from his conviction for taking a 14 year old girl across state boundaries in the USA for the purpose of sex. There is a de facto ban on Wagner's music at the Israeli opera but that is a soft target - BMW and Mercedes cars aren't banned.

Leaving aside the question of whether you can separate the person from the body of work they have created, any such bans are effectively random acts of censorship. They are probably counter-productive, it would be better for people to be told about the good and bad in folk. The benefits of Colston's philanthropy could be coupled with explanation of the source of his wealth, doing something that was legal but abhorrent. Otherwise the slavery story doesn't get told either.

After all, it's a bit like saying we won't teach our children about the Romans because they had slaves.

Chiles put words into Gardiner's mouth, to the effect that he would presumably have clarified that there were only some aspects of Hobson's work that he was commending. It made me reflect that I hold the simultaneously contradictory view that everyone is worth listening to and has points of view I can learn from, combined with the belief that some people are fundamentally unsound and not to be trusted about anything, ever. Tony Benn would be an example of someone I would consider to be wrong about absolutely everything, confident that I would be right 80% of the time. As Hobson influenced Lenin he fits in that category like a glove. Along with Jezza.

So I look forward to all sorts of lefties noting that Margaret Thatcher wasn't all bad and had some really good policies. Ha!

Chiles started and ended the interview by commenting that he had heard Gardiner whistle very tunefully and he insisted Gardiner perform, even though the 1030 news bulletin was already 6 or 7 minutes late. Gardiner reluctantly obliged and, once he's got his tempo, a remarkably tuneful - almost soulful - version of Flower of Scotland  emerged from the radio. He certainly can whistle, as well as weasel.