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October 4, 2024 - 4:30pm
It’s less than 20 years since the offence of blasphemy was abolished in most of the UK. So why has one of the country’s leading literary festivals taken fright at the prospect of authors expressing “potentially problematic views” on religion? Not just religion, either. Chairs of sessions at this year’s Cheltenham Literature Festival have been sent “new guidance” on how to handle a long list of subjects, including “migration, sexuality, gender and military action”.
The email from festival organisers declares: “If, during any of your events, a speaker shares an opinion that could be deemed controversial, please reinforce that everyone is entitled to express an opinion, however Cheltenham Festivals does not endorse the views shared on stage.” By “controversial”, the festival means views “that may be harmful to an individual or group of people, particularly those who have been historically marginalised or oppressed”.
It’s familiar, weaselly language, revealing the extreme jitters felt by organisers of literary festivals. Earlier this year, two of the biggest, Hay and Edinburgh, ended deals with longtime sponsors Baillie Gifford following pressure from a little-known activist group calling itself Fossil Free Books. Sponsorship and how to pay for the arts are subjects that might well be debated at festivals, but there is a terror of controversy in the literary world.
Events that should be a bastion of free speech now exist in fear of drawing the ire of people who have no commitment to it. You won’t be surprised to learn that Cheltenham’s number one source of anxiety is not campaigners against climate change but authors with “gender critical views”. The priority is revealing: there are far fewer transgender individuals than women, but “misogyny” only comes in at number two on the list of concerns.
By the festival’s own admission, the purpose of the guidance is not so much to avoid upsetting audiences as heading off trouble — “to protect […] the charity from complaints”. Trans activists are currently the group most likely to raise a stink, and they have plenty of supporters who are ready to amplify their claims. Some authors argue that such tactics have already been successful, pointing out how rarely gender-critical writers feature in festival programmes.
In Western countries, it’s clear that women currently have more to fear from the self-styled “most oppressed” group in society than from religion. But religious intolerance is on the rise in the UK, demonstrated by the fact that a teacher at a school in Yorkshire has been in hiding for more than three years after he showed a cartoon of the prophet Mohammed in class. Since then, we have seen open support expressed for an Islamist terror group, Hamas, at demonstrations in London and other British cities.
It’s hard to imagine a worse moment for a literary festival to promote the slur that the free expression of controversial ideas is “harmful”. We live in an increasingly intolerant society, in which saying the wrong thing — criticism of strict forms of Islam or gender ideology — carries an unacceptable risk. The people who shout loudest are rarely right, and the literary world needs to stand up against the activists’ veto.
Joan Smith is a novelist and columnist. She was previously Chair of the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board. Her book Unfortunately, She Was A Nymphomaniac: A New History of Rome’s Imperial Women will be published in November 2024.
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SubscribeIt’s a strange place, the literary world, or publishing. A wild place masquerading as a civilized, whose rules are unnatural selection and you must conform or go heavily camouflaged if you are to survive.
I used to enjoy the Hay Festival in the days when it was about literature. Like so much now the literature is a mere tool for delivering a set of beliefs, some of which I highly destructive.
I’m not quite sure this has much directly to do with the Baillie Gifford situation. In that case, the activist group were pressuring the organisers to cut ties with an investment firm unless the firm devested from fossil fuels. The organisers didn’t but Baillie Gifford understandably decided it wasn’t worth the bad publicity and pulled out.
The equivalents for gender controversies would be if there was some organisation sponsoring the festival with real or perceived Gender Critical views (which is kinda rare, given the vast majority of companies avoid taking a position on the subject), and pro-transgender activists were pressuring the festival to cut ties.
The point here is that demands weren’t coming from the corporate sponsors, they were coming from the activists.
I’m surprised that PEN-International hasn’t said anything. PEN-America has been busy with book banning in schools. Quite a few are books are about race (black people) and LGBTs. Also books that have a scene with characters innocently mentioning sex. Weirdly, books about art and classical music have been banned in one school district in Missouri. Anyway, banning books because the writer is gender critical or whatever, is dangerous. Bookstores that hid or didn’t order Helen Joyce’s book Trans were banning a book that was compassionate about trans people. Most of the people who tried to ban the book didn’t read it. PEN-International needs to be very loud about what’s happening in Britain. These book festivals are frequented by adults . If they are offended or having a breakdown because of a book, stop reading it. Or start reading children’s books. Kimberly