Laurie Taylor, blackbirds, neo-liberalism and Manx Fiddling

Here's a post I prepared (while I had the chance) on Wednesday night. Whether it's worth posting I'll let you be the judge!

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It's a lovely night here in Morecambe, still and sunny and sinking softly towards sunset. Collared doves are pouring out their three-note tune in counterpoint to the wood pigeons with their five-note tune. There's a robin doing his trickling little song somewhere, a starling gargling on a drainpipe, and sundry blackbirds letting rip melodiously - all against the backdrop of a chap playing what I'm guessing to be Manx folk music to himself on a violin (and to the whole neighbourhood, as he's got his door open, and we've got our windows open to listen to him). O to be in Morecambe now that May's here!

Meanwhile, if someone isn't playing Manx folk music to your neighbourhood this evening and you're not too busy booking yourself into a hotel in Morecambe tonight, you might care instead to read two fine pieces about BBC bias by ex-BBC high-flyers:

David Keighley - Radio 4’s Mark Mardell wears his EU flag on his sleeve

Scott Gronmark - The BBC and the EU: a bromance made in left-liberal heaven 

Just before the expert folk fiddler struck up I was listening to Uncle Laurie on Thinking Allowed sniggering at ordinary folk and their love of traditional weddings. 

As ever he began it with a personal anecdote. He'd been dragged to Nice to attend his pal Keith's wedding. Oh, it was all too much for Uncle Laurie, and Keith's bride Julie was "tedious". Laurie called poor Julie "tedious" twice. 

My first thought on hearing that was, 'I hope she's not listening. That's a horrible thing to say about someone, especially on Radio 4 and by a Radio 4 presenter'. I then looked up Laurie on Wikipedia. He's been married three times and divorced three times. 

Capitalism, class, posh people. Sociology. Laurie sniggering at women wanting to wear white. Thinking Allowed. Radio 4.

And then the folk fiddler began playing, like at a wedding. 

The second half of Thinking Allowed discussed 'Migrant women in Britain' and how they've been "in the vanguard of a social revolution in women's contribution to the economy in the second half of the 20th century. In factories and hospitals, care homes and universities they've played a lasting role in British society, in spite of recurrent discrimination".

For some reason, the folk fiddler made me click off the iPlayer just as that bit was about to begin.

And now it's getting dark. The blackbirds are sounding alarm calls. The folk fiddler is probably reading a history of Manx folk music. And so to bed.

Uncle Laurie explains why Karl Marx didn't surf

After leaving work at 4 o'clock today, I switched on the radio and heard a cheery fellow confiding with us, telling us a happy childhood story about surfing. 

For about five seconds I relaxed into it. Then I recognised the voice.

It was Laurie Taylor, which meant that I was listening to Thinking Allowed, Radio 4's sociology programme.

My mood changed. 

I really, truly, honestly did think at that point, "How the hell is he going to make something Marxist out of surfing?"

Well, believe it or not, he did.

Uncle Laurie usually starts of editions of Thinking Allowed in this beguiling way but then introduces a sudden political note and, on that pivot, suddenly swerves into full blown Marxist sociology.

Today provided a classic example of that: One minute we were enjoying a nice story about a young Uncle Laurie loving the feel of the surf around his toes, the next minute we were hearing about how surfing has historically been a tool of American imperialism and colonialism. 

Some academic was on, giving - as ever - some interesting vignettes on the subject at hand but then spoiling it all by fitting them all into the rigid straightjacket of far-left sociological thinking.

Twas ever so on Thinking Allowed. 

I don't surf myself. (Morecambe Bay is tidal, but it's not that tidal). Now I'll console myself by thinking that all those fit, active men who surf our the shores of this sceptred isle are nothing but bourgeois reactionary running-dogs of Yankee imperialism. 

This is not a joke: The book that was the subject of this section is called Empire in Waves: A Political History of Surfing.

Who needs satire.

An excuse to sneer at Laurie Taylor's 'Thinking Allowed'...

Today, as you may have noticed, was St George's Day. 

True story. A chap at work turned up in blue trousers, a white shirt and a red tie to mark the day. I admired his patriotic spirit, and I didn't have the heart to tell him that he ought to have been wearing merely the white shirt and red tie. (That said, I don't think the ladies at work would have been too happy to see him turn up trouserless. He's not their type.)

I myself am, of course, entirely au fait with the story of St George, England's patron saint. I've known the legend of St George rescuing the damsel from the dragon (Smaug) by showing it the head of the gorgon since I fell out of my cot, drunk, at the age of six. (I am part Scots by the way.)

Back to the BBC though.

Radio 4 has done all of us English folk proud today. 

Justin Webb dressed up as a knight to present Today, and Sarah Montague came dressed as a damsel. Tony Blair appeared as the dragon (by popular demand), and was duly slain (as per Sue's post).

The excellent Baroness Trumpington turned up on Midweek and stuck two proud English fingers up at all of England's enemies. [Good on that woman!]. She was egged on by Libby Purvis, who came dressed as Elizabeth I.

Woman's Hour was devoted to the issue of damsels in distress. Jane Garvey admitted that the thought of being rescued by St George made her feel weak at the knee. On imagining George Clooney playing the part of St George, Jenni Murray fainted live on air.

The Archers sang folk song arrangements by Vaughan Williams and Shula recited Shakespeare and C.S. Lewis. 

This week's edition of Round Britain Quiz was between the North of England and the South of England. And rightly so.

Best of all though...

Laurie Taylor and his guests announced the inaugural Ethnography Award 'Short List' on Thinking Allowed, and instead of the usual, predictable Marxist sociological crap that the programme usually trots out (pun on 'trots' intended).....

....you know the sort of thing....

....studies on 'Transactional Transgender Relationships in Cambodia', 'The Multicultural Prison', 'Butch Women: An ethnography of lesbian cookery', 'Islam, Youth, and Modernity in Post-English Britain', 'Intersexual seafarers and transnationalism in the twenty-first century' and 'Beyond parody? Alternatives to consumption within a social network of Russian workers'....

....Laurie Taylor and his judges instead chose, to my complete surprise,....

'The Secret of a Happy Marriage in Christian England', 'Why Prison Works', 'Soft and Feminine Women: Why the BBC Favours Young and Attractive Female Presenters', 'Islam, Women, and Barbarity in Saudi Arabia and Iran', 'English seafarers and their triumphs across the centuries' and 'Beyond caring? Alternatives to BBC sociology programmes'.

Bless you Laurie!

The Indissoluble Union of 'Thinking Allowed' Participants

Toppled statue of Laurie Taylor

I was thinking aloud a while back about Radio 4 staple Thinking Allowed and the strange way it manages to by-pass the attention of bloggers about BBC bias, even though it has some of the most obvious left-wing biases of any BBC programme. 

I put that down to the fact that most right-leaning bloggers (like me) just don't listen to Thinking Allowed very often, knowing that it's not for us. 

It's a sociology programme after all, and sociology has a strong in-built left-wing bias. We know that. We accept it. We shrug our shoulders. We move on. 

Yet there is sits in the Radio 4 schedule, year in and year out. And there's no counter-balancing -ology-based programme from the Right to balance it. 

This week's edition was an absolute classic - a debate about capitalism, hosted by genial ex-(ex?)-Trotskyist Laurie Taylor, entitled The End of Capitalism; Reforming Capitalism.

It featured David Harvey, Stupendously Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography at York University, a Marxist geographer, arguing the Marxist case for abolishing capitalism, and - pitted against him - Colin Crouch, Professor Immemorial in Sociology at the University of Warwick, arguing for the reform of capitalism. Instead of abolishing it, Prof Crouch wants to radically re-shape capitalism and turn us into a full-blown social democracy. [To which, like Bartleby, the scrivener, in Herman Melville's wondrously strange story story, I'd say: "I would prefer not to".]

It was a debate then between the far-Left and the fairly-hard-Left, hosted by someone clearly comfortable positioning himself somewhere between them on the fairly-far-Left. 

Classic Thinking Allowed. 

Genial Uncle Laurie is Genial Uncle Laurie, of course, and we don't even expect him to make the effort to pose questions from a position outside of this narrow left-wing way of thinking, do we? Laurie will be Laurie, after all, and sociologists will be sociologists, and Radio 4's Thinking Allowed will be Radio 4's Thinking Allowed. 

So when Genial Uncle Laurie fails to make an effort to pose questions from a position outside of their/his narrow way of thinking, we think (do we not?) 'Oh well, that's just Laurie Taylor being Laurie Taylor!', shrug, and move on.

That right-wing, pro-capitalist thinking is entirely absent - not allowed -  is just one of those things, isn't it?

Isn't it?

Thinking Aloud

It's a curious thing, but right-leaning blogs about BBC bias tend to pass over Laurie Taylor's longstanding Thinking Allowed on Radio 4. 

From time to time, on blogs like Biased BBC, you might see the occasional comment about it (usually from ChrisH), but these are rare events, and I myself have never written about the programme before. (I've thought about it but never done it.)

Given that on any objective analysis Thinking Allowed has just about the strongest left-wing bias of any Radio 4 programme you might expect it to be a much more regular target for criticism - a low-hanging fruit, particularly ripe for plucking by the BBC's right-leaning critics. 

Perhaps the absence of criticism on forums like this can be accounted for by the likely 'fact' that right-leaning people just don't listen to Thinking Allowed.

They've probably heard it once or twice before, perhaps many years ago, and decided (almost unconsciously) to give it a miss thereafter, having come to the quick conclusion that it's not for them.

Well, that's my experience anyhow.

But why wouldn't it be for them? The subjects are certainly interesting and wide-ranging. 

Well, all I can say is that the treatment of those subjects tends to come from a particular, staunchly left-inclined standpoint which seems so remote and wrong-headed to many right-wingers that they can hardly help but feel alienated from it. 

The reason for that, surely, is that Thinking Allowed's subject area is Sociology - and Sociology itself has a strong left-wing bias - often a strong very-left-wing bias.

Academics in the field are overwhelmingly left-wing too and some of them even have highly left-loaded (and spoof-sounding) job titles like "Lecturer in Race and Resistance Studies". (Peter Simple fans will appreciate that).

That's a problem for Sociology - as some sociologists themselves admit - and it's also a problem for Thinking Allowed perhaps.

But also perhaps not. 

After all, everyone knows that's just the way it is with Sociology.

Similarly, everyone knows that that's just the way it's also going to be with a Radio 4 series which projects Sociology to the world. 

Thus, if there's an edition of the programme which discusses the sociology of music, you would hardly be surprised if the academic being interviewed suddenly attacked the austerity programme of the present UK government (out of nowhere), or if the presenter (a Sociology professor himself) grilled that self-same academic over his failure to focus on what really matters - left-wing protest songs. Nor would anyone bat much of an eyelid if a "US lecturer in Race and Resistance Studies" (yes, really) used her opportunity to talk about British Asian pop music to denounce British racism towards "Asians".

That's just the way thing are, isn't it, in the world of Sociology? And Thinking Allowed?

That music edition was broadcast a couple of weeks ago. A week later, that genuine job title - "lecturer in Race and Resistance Studies" - was echoed by a UK scholar. She's written a book about prostitution called Prostitution in the Community: Attitudes, Action and Resistances. 

The use of 'resistances' there was meant in a different way to the use of 'Resistance' cited above but, still, that that's the way Sociology is: Full of tenured academics talking about 'Resistance' or 'resistances'.

And that's the way Thinking Allowed is too. 

If Laurie Taylor uses his Radio 4 platform to criticise private education, then we just accept it. If he enthuses over sociology students putting their subject into practice by opposing 'the cuts', then we accept that too. It's just the way things are. BBC Editorial Guidelines? They don't apply here, it seems.

Plus Laurie is so genial, so confiding, so personal. He could be blogging for us - which is disarming.

Plus his guests often tell us about research which is genuinely interesting: The music-studying, cuts-attacking, protest-song-downplaying academic said some interesting things about how we relate to pop music: the 'resistances'-obsessed prostitution academic said some interesting things about how we relate to prostitution; and even the "US lecturer in Race and Resistance Studies" introduced us to an interesting pop music phenomenon about which we might know nothing. 

They may all have misunderstood what they were describing and projected a wrong-headed interpretation onto it, but they weren't entirely not worth listening to.

Plus it really is refreshing to have a programme which is so openly intellectual, so un-dumbed down. 

Still, it's not really the programme for me.

All the jargon, all the old mutton tropes dressed up as academic lamb, the perverse-seeming angles, the lack of resonance with what seems to be how most people actually think - all the sociology - puts up a largely impenetrable partition between their reality and my reality.

To my way of thinking, anyhow.

And they are not necessarily right. Nor me necessarily wrong.