Unsurprisingly, historians point out that we cannot cancel the past. Some argue that we can and should challenge the mythologies of official history. Removing certain statues, plaques and street names is, they say, part of that process. Is this what’s going on? If only…
This was an essay I wrote for The Brighton Society:
Early in 2015, just a week or so after the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris, I gave a talk to a class of journalism students in London. I had wanted to talk about an article in Brighton’s Argus newspaper some 18 months earlier but the events in Paris overtook the lesson I’d planned. The students wanted to discuss the 12 murdered cartoonists and journalists and what it all meant. However, the classroom session I’d originally prepared hadn’t exactly been irrelevant. My choice of the Argus example had been about illustrating the growing climate of hostility toward freedom of expression and the right to be offensive. I wanted students to explore the implications of a press article that had seemingly led to an outrage mob intent on revenge. Compared to the Charlie Hebdo attack, my small example from Brighton felt crass. But events in Paris entailed the same discussion point writ large – in a free society no-one has the right not to be offended. I will return to the Brighton example in a moment.