From: y77878g78tg6y767f6f@fdtgs.co   
      
   Thanks for your letter. Censoring, I think, would involve suppressing the   
   FACT that Guy Gibson had a dog of this name. That I would never support.   
   But is it 'censorship' to object to French Connection's sordid campaign   
   involving a jumbled F-word on its merchandise? Or to the use of filthy   
   language on the TV? Or to the transmission on prime time terrestrial TV of   
   a word which is a filthy insult to a lot of decent British people? It is   
   very hard to get on to prime time terrestrial TV( I for one am hardly ever   
   allowed on) precisely because it legitimates what it shows. You may not   
   realise that BNP supporters, the same sort who wear golliwog badges for a   
   'joke' . rejoice at the transmission of this ugly word. And I never said   
   that anyone who opposed the transmission of it would get pleasure out of   
   hearing it.  I said( and I have reproduced the article below so you can   
   see) that I didn't like the sniggering glee  some people show. You place an   
   interpretation on my words which is not justified by anything I wrote. If   
   the cap doesn't fit, why wear it?   
      
   I am not sure, either , about your use of the phrase 'so close to the war'.   
   My article is clearly about current attitudes to the war and our refusal,   
   60 years after it, to acknowledge that area bombing was a filthy, wrong,   
   unproductive strategy forced on us by our failure to build a proper army,   
   and to use decent firm diplomacy, in the years 1933 to 1936 when we could   
   have stopped Hitler.   The article is unambiguously directed at those who   
   watch it ( and praise it ) now and was in fact written partly as a riposte   
   to an absurd, fulsome feature a few days before  in the Daily Mail by   
   Andrew Roberts,  who is about 13 but maintains that the Dambusters is the   
   best war film ever made.  Sorry, but I'm 54, grew up in war-damaged   
   bomb-scarred Britain (notably Portsmouth)  in a Navy family, and I think   
   that's piffle .   
      
   I stopped being a Trotskyist in 1975, which I calculate as 30 years ago. I   
   view it as an important part of my education and never conceal or deny it   
   (unlike many Labour people who are still deeply embarrassed by their   
   Trotksyite or Communist pasts, precisely because they are still influenced   
   by them), but it's not much of an influence on me  in the way you suggest.   
   You really ought to be more interested in the subsequent 30 years, during   
   which I've been, in a mild sort of way, in one or two war zones, an   
   experience much more lasting and influential, as was trying and failing to   
   get my father to tell me very much about his time on the Russian convoys.   
   Trotsky was a bloodthirsty monster who believed ends justified means. I   
   have not moved from Trotskyism to some other all-embracing ideology, but,   
   having wrestled my way past Arthur Koestler,  find solace instead in   
   Hookerian Anglicanism, which really doesn't have much time for idealists   
   with remedies. I don't know what you mean by 'hardcore Toryism' but , given   
   that I excoriate the Useless Tory Party week by week, I think you may need   
   to reassess your facile summary of my position. What would a 'hardcore   
   Tory' believe in, exactly? I rather suspect he'd be watching 'The   
   Dambusters' on a continuous loop.   
      
   PH   
      
   (article reproduced below)   
      
      
   WE DON'T need a remake of The Dambusters, and I wouldn't be sorry if   
   I never saw it again.   
      
    I always thought I was pretty keen on my own country, but if you have to   
   like this film to be considered a patriot, then count me out.   
      
    I especially don't like the sniggering glee some people show about the   
   name   
   of Guy Gibson's dog.   
      
    I don't blame TV executives for bleeping it out when the film is shown   
   these   
   days. Who could possibly get any pleasure out of hearing it?   
      
    If the British Empire had survived, which I wish it had, it could only   
   have   
   done so if civilised people had stamped out the N-word. You do not need to   
   be   
   PC to loathe it.   
      
    Then there's the war and the way we portray it 60 years on.   
      
    The bombing of the German dams was a feat of great bravery and ingenuity.   
      
    I have always been lost in admiration for the young men who climbed, night   
      
   after night, into Lancaster bombers knowing they were likely to die a   
   particularly horrible death. I do not think I could have done it.   
      
    And the scientist Barnes Wallis was obviously a genius.   
      
    But the operation itself does not seem to have been much of a success, and   
      
   many of its victims were Eastern European slave workers, prisoners of the   
   Nazis who looked to us for liberation, rather than death.   
      
    As I recall, these details are rather skipped over.   
      
    In fact, we have never faced up, as a nation, to the truth about our   
   bombing   
   campaign.   
      
    We prefer not to know about the horrid carnage of German civilians, too   
   gruesome to describe here, which our bombs brought about. It is no good   
   saying they were all Nazis. How can a baby be a Nazi?   
      
    This form of warfare resulted from our feebleness and unpreparedness in   
   the   
   Thirties. We were complacent and wilfully ignorant about Europe - just as   
   we   
   are today.   
      
    If we had had a proper army and a proper foreign policy in 1936, Hitler   
   would have fallen, there'd still be a British Empire, we would not have had   
      
   to resort to the savage tactics of aerial bombing and the world would be a   
   better place.   
      
    THERE are far better war films. One is the 1958 epic about Dunkirk, a   
   box-office flop because it was too truthful, too soon, about the wavering   
   morale and unreadiness of 1940 Britain.   
      
    Another is The Cruel Sea, in which the true ruthlessness and loss of war   
   is   
   not avoided.   
      
    They don't need to be remade either. But they need to be seen, studied and   
      
   understood. Our fathers and grandfathers did not fight and die so that we   
   could delude ourselves into a boastful new complacency as bad as the one   
   that   
   pitched them into a terrible war.   
      
   c/o   
   ROBBIE   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)