Nigger

I HAVE JUST BEEN WATCHING for the umpteenth time, the Dam Busters; the story of the RAF's 617 squadron under the command of Guy Gibson who carried out a raid on the Möner  Eder and Sorpe dams in Germany during the last war.

            

             I continue to watch it nowadays to see if the channel showing it censors the name of Gibson's dog, a black Labrador called Nigger; who sadly dies when he is run over early in the film. Today it was the turn of Channel 5 to show this wonderful tribute, not only to the air crews bravery, but also to the stiff upper lip - and thankfully Channel 5 kept all references to Nigger without being frightened, through political correctness, to 'redact' all mention of the poor dogs name.

            

            The BBC would no doubt have had a panic attack if they had to show it complete – or at the very least post a warning at the beginning of the film informing the viewers that in 1943 when the raid took place all of us British were considered, by today's liberal standards to be racist; and the viewer should view the film through this prism – I must say however, It is quite liberating to be able to write Nigger without having to plant five asterisks after the 'N' as is always the case nowadays.

           

            I believe Nigger was a popular name in the 1940's and 50's for black dogs. It was a time before dogs had to be kept on a leash (about 1960). At the time I was a 10-year-old: there was a dry cleaners near where I lived. The man who owned it suffered with polio and could not provide his dog with the exercise it needed. The dog was a mongrel, and yes, you have guessed it – it was black and called Nigger.

            

           We were a group of four or five children (depending upon who was avilable on the day). We allowed Nigger to hang out with us. He stayed with us all day long, following us and retrieving the pieces of drift-wood we found and threw along the shore-line for him to chase down and retrieve – he hung out with us until we either got tired of his company; or became too old to consider him any more…children can be cruel; but unintentionally so.

WHEN WE USED THE WORD nigger, none of us thought of a black man, only a black dog, as did, no doubt Guy Gibson. Like nigger the term negro is no longer thought to be politically correct…despite its innocent etymology. According to the dictionary definition its etymology  dates back to 1545-55 < Spanish and Portuguese 'black' < Lain nigrum, masculine accusative of niger 'black'.

            

            Negro and nigger are each etymologically linked with the other. But negro (meaning black) is still often used today. My brother who is an artist buys paints manufactured abroad where the term Negro only means what it says – black.

            

            I was always aware  of the insulting nature of the word nigger; primarily by living through the America civil rights movement in the 1960s, as well as watching, definitively, the film In  the Heat of the Night  (1967) at 17, directed by Norman Jewison.

            

            The film was about a black New York cop, Virgil Tibbs, who, while visiting his family in Sparta Mississippi finds himself being arrested as a suspect in a murder purely because of the colour of his skin.

            

            The yokels are racist by any description of the word either then or now. Tibbs is arrested and shows the local red-necks how to conduct a proper criminal investigation culminating in the arrest of the murderer. In the Heat of the Night, was liberal propaganda, but this did not mean that its message was either unworthy or invalid – it just took a pot at the racism of the American South.

TODAY 'NIGGER' HEADS the pantheon of political correctness's most hated of hate words. It sits at the apex of the liberal list of odium whose public use is now regarded by law as a hate crime. Today nigger is comparable to what fuck use to represent in the 1960s and 70s. Nigger is the modern liberal's fuck- word – to be repeated  on penalty of a lost career if working in the media, sport, or the public service.

            

             But apart from nigger, if we trawl the list of liberal hate words, there is a bounty to be collected by political correctness added to almost overnight. The politically correct lexicon is gaining ever more entries; each of which can ruin a career, and even lead to imprisonment. If this is not comparable to Orwell's dystopian vision as described in 1984 – then what is?

           

             have never ever, in my 64 years referred to any  black person, either publically or privately as a nigger: it is a nasty  and malicious form of address for anyone to use, and deserves a thrashing from the person they use it against: this would be a far healthier alternative to the censoring of free speech, however unattractive. Banning words will only infuriate people of a liberal or libertarian bent, as it should in a democracy built upon free speech.

FUCK WAS  FIRST USED on television in the UK by Brendan Behan on Panorama in 1956 (but he was too drunk for anyone to notice); he was followed by Kenneth Tynan on the 13 November 1965 while appearing on the BBC.

            

             Now we have nigger. How long will it be before this too will become just as acceptable as fuck?  – well it never will, in all probability, become as common-place as fuck, thankfully. But what may happen is that it will become perfectly acceptable for one black person to use it against another (as I have already witnessed on the screen) - whether in a television debate, documentary, film or drama. Blacks do use it to insult  fellow blacks because of its potency to offend. But if a white person uses it in public the great  leviathan that is English law will descend upon his or her head.

           

             It is better for free speech for such name calling to go ignored if possible, until its use causes little offence among the black community. Only then will it stop. By criminalising certain words, as our liberals do; there may come a time when they may consider themselves lucky to have had their hegemony challenged by a popularist Ukip rather than a popularist BNP, of the type now gaining ground within the extremes of the European Union.

            

            Of course people's sensitivities must be respected. But those whose sensitivities are under attack must learn to ignore them and pity the philistines who wallow in such a depravity of the English language. The word nigger is a potent weapon in the racist armoury; it prods and provokes until multiculturalism outlaws it as a satanic noun to be expelled from the liberal rapture once and for good. Words are just words after all. They can portend great literature and rhetoric; but they can also cause insult to an ethnic minority.

            

            But it serves no purpose in criminalising aspects of the English language. To deny free expression, is to deny democracy. Tynan understood this when he used 'fuck', either casually or deliberately, in an interview with the BBC which brought the full weight of the small 'c' conservative BBC viewers  down around his neck.