No doubt you’ve read about the editorial in The Spectator, edited by Boris Johnson, about the beheading of Ken Bigley.
The article, in the issue dated 16 October, says people in Liverpool “cannot accept that they might have made any contribution to their misfortunes, but seek rather to blame someone else for it, thereby deepening their sense of shared tribal grievance about the rest of society”.
It says Liverpudlians “wallow” in their “victim status”, adding it is part of the “deeply unattractive psyche” of many in the city.
The article goes on to say Ken Bigley’s brother Paul was wrong to say the Prime Minister has “blood on his hands”.
It says Mr Bigley took a risk by working in Iraq against the advice of the Foreign Office, and that “his motives and misjudgements… should, without lessening sympathy for him and his family, temper the outpouring of sentimentality in which many have engaged for him”.
It also says the city made a scapegoat of police in the wake of the Hillsborough disaster, refusing to acknowledge the part played “by drunken fans at the back of the crowd who mindlessly tried to fight their way into the ground”.
For the whole text of the editorial, head over to The Spectator – you may need to register with them for free.
Basically, I agree with the sentiment of the article. It’s true that we have not seen so much grieving for the 80-or-so British soldiers who have died in Iraq since the war started. Ken Bigley knew what he was getting into when he started working there – he ignored Foreign Office travel advisories and, quite frankly, common sense. Of course he runs the risk of getting kidnapped or killed if he’s working in one of the most dangerous countries on Earth. I deplore the fact that he was killed. I don’t in any way condone the fact that he was kidnapped and executed. What I don’t understand is how his death can have affected so many people. Well, in fact, I know exactly why – the Daily Mail, the Sun, the Mirror… all sensationalised the story to such an extent that it was difficult to ignore it. It would be interesting to see how many people how have heard of Ken Bigley would be able to name the two Americans who were kidnapped and beheaded at the same time (Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong).
I appreciate that many people will have hugely different opinions, but that’s what this blog is for – it let’s me explain how I feel about something. That is also what an editorial or op-ed column in a newspaper or magazine is for. It is not news. It is one journalist’s take on the news. And I feel strongly that the Spectator editorial is completely justified, especially in that context.
I agree that some of the comments about the Hillsborough tragedy were ill-advised, and some were just plain worng, as Boris himself says in his apology to the people of Liverpool:
What on earth was I thinking of?
How could I possibly have approved an attack on Liverpool?
I will tell you the genesis of the piece. I was driving a child to a football match, and we were listening on the radio to the start of the England-Wales game, where it was the intention to hold a minute’s silence in memory of Ken Bigley.
I listened with mounting disbelief and disgust; because instead of keeping silent – as the people of Liverpool kept silent – the crowd started to jabber. Then they started to swear, and jeer, and catcall.
After what seemed like barely twenty or thirty seconds the ref was so embarrassed that he gave up, and blew the whistle for the start of the game. The following day I looked in the papers for an account of this disgrace, and found nothing, and thought we should have a piece on it.
I brooded on the causes. How could people behave so thuggishly, when called upon to hold a minute’s silence?
It occurred to me that the crowd’s reaction showed there was something by definition false in the decision to hold the minute’s silence. The ceremony required people to show an emotion that – manifestly, alas – they did not all feel.
Suppose a British crowd had been asked to hold a minute’s silence for those who died in the second world war. Or suppose that they were asked to commemorate all the British soldiers who have died in Iraq, or the victims of some IRA atrocity.
I don’t believe that silence would have been interrupted by anything more than a cough.
So it struck me that a large part of the crowd was in a sense rebelling against an imposed sentiment; and that made me think about a leader on the difficulties of the culture of sentimentality in modern Britain. No doubt I shall be strongly criticized for saying this, but I still believe that the underlying point of that editorial was serious, and was worth pondering.
Whatever apologies I am about to make, it would be absurd and Orwellian if I were to perform a complete intellectual U-turn, and repudiate, this week, the main point of a leader I published last week.
I still think it worth saying that it is a sad truth that tumultuous displays of grief, like those we saw for Ken Bigley, will tend to encourage the Islamic terrorists, because they increase the political value of each kidnapping and murder.
Time and again, in the leader, we stressed our horror and revulsion at Ken Bigley’s death.
Time and again we extended our heartfelt sympathies to his family. But we also pointed out that it was wrong of some of the Bigley family to say that Tony Blair had Ken’s blood on his hands, because in our view the people who had Ken Bigley’s blood on their hands were the people who killed him.
And I say that because I do not believe it would have been right for the Government to negotiate with his kidnappers in such a way as to encourage further kidnappings, and jeopardize the lives of others working in Iraq.
We concluded with a point – which I stick by – about risk, and the risks Ken was willingly running, and our modern refusal to accept that we may be in any way the authors of our own misfortunes. I now think that the point was valid, but that it was tasteless to make it in the context of Ken Bigley’s death.
I am truly sorry for any offence we may have caused his relatives.
But I am sorry, too, for the hurt and dismay we have so evidently caused in our description of Liverpool. There may well be some Liverpudlians who still answer to the characteristics in question – just as there are all over the country. We should not have generalized, so as to seem to refer to everyone in Liverpool.
Above all, we have simply no excuse for getting our facts wrong about the Hillsborough tragedy. We said “more than 50″ Liverpool supporters died. That was I suppose technically accurate, but the real number was 96, as ten seconds on Google would have shown.
And we should clearly not have blamed drunken fans at the back, when this cause was specifically ruled out by the inquiry report.
If you’re interested, there’s another opinion at Boriswatch. There’s also a bit in the FT, whcih describes Boris as “Boris Johnson, editor of The Spectator, MP for Henley, Tory spokesman on culture, general good egg and TV star”.
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