Author: Ophelia Benson

Nigel Warburton asked David Edmonds and John Eidinow a very important interesting searching profound question, one that always gets my alert curious attention, though I couldn’t quite tell you why.

Nigel: How difficult is it to write collaboratively? Not many people manage to pull it off as well as you do…

Okay, I could tell you why; I was joking when I said I couldn’t. It interests me because I sometimes write collaboratively myself, so I’m always interested in how it goes for other people, how they go about it, whether they enjoy it, and if they have any useful little tips.

Julian also interviewed Edmonds and Eidinow, for TPM, Issue 35. He also asked how they managed it.

The particulars of their working relationship are also interesting, though not perhaps for philosophical reasons. How is it that they have avoided the kind of falling-out that dooms so many writing partnerships?

By plying each other with chocolate and brandy? By sending each other little prezzies – tickets to football matches, cufflinks, T shirts with FCUK on them? By taking time out to hold hands and skip lightly around the flower bed every so often? No…

‘We communicate a lot,’ says Eidinow.

Aha! What a good idea! What a really good, sound, clever idea! Why has no one ever thought of that before?

I’m joking again. You can tell that. I will have my little jokes. I’m joking because this is something I’m always trying to convince my collaborator of – that communicating a lot (or at least some, or a bit, or any) is useful for collaboration purposes, and he is always trying to convince me of the opposite, though his method is the quiet one of not doing anything while mine is the noisy one of doing something. It’s sort of like speech acts. We enact the very thing we’re either talking or not talking about – although my enactment is more of an enactment because his enactment, being non-enactment, could bear other interpretations. I, the proponent of communication, enact that proponent-hood by communicating that communication is useful, whereas he, being either a non-proponent of communication, or a proponent of non-communication (which is it, I wonder) – either enacts or doesn’t enact that non-proponent-hood or that proponent-hood of non-communication, by not communicating. Then after the passage of a few weeks or months I enact some more, only louder, and he either does or doesn’t do the opposite, only minus louder.

I’m only joking, and exaggerating, and messing around. Only I do like it when other people who write collaboratively come right out in public and say that they keep on writing collaboratively by communicating a lot, thus strongly implying that a lot of communication is useful for purposes of collaboration. This is all I’m saying. I like it when other people say it because it provides a broad hint that I’m not stark staring mad – or at least that I’m not stark staring mad simply because I think communication is useful for purposes of collaboration. There may be other reasons to think so (she said darkly) but that’s not one of them, at least not if E and E are anything to go by, and why shouldn’t they be?

Actually writing collaboratively can be quite good fun, in its way. Especially when there’s an eight hour time difference between the collaborators, which throws up all sorts of extra challenges.

Right, that’s enough autobiographical chat for one year. This isn’t one of those dear diary places, after all. Except I might tell you about the new Sculpture Park that just opened down the hill from where I live. Some time.

Agnes Poirier decided to give Ken Livingstone’s multicultural jamboree a miss after all.

The multicultural London motion at that point included Jonathan Freedland, Tariq Ramadan and myself, and therefore offered three different points of view: in a nutshell, English liberal, fundamentalist Islamist and French republican. Are you surprised that I define Tariq Ramadan as a fundamentalist Islamist? Perhaps you thought that, as an adviser to Tony Blair on multiculturalism and a visiting senior research fellow at Oxford, he represented the face of moderate Islam? Forget his reassuring manner. Read Caroline Fourest’s remarkable study of his speeches and audio cassettes in which he asks young Muslims not to mix or marry outside their religion. Or note that he thoughtfully proposed “a moratorium on the lapidation of adulterous women”. Yes, a “moratorium”.

I wonder how many people do think Tariq Ramadan is not an Islamist. Probably quite a few, unfortunately.

On the right to religious dress debate, organisers had clearly another agenda. First, I was told Salma Yaqoob from Respect and French feminist Christine Delphy would speak alongside me. I didn’t know them so I thought I’d research a little. What I found was illuminating. I read scripts of speeches they made over the last three years, which all seemed to concentrate on the veil issue. What inflammatory tone, what incendiary statements about “France’s institutionalised racism”. Having campaigned together against what they called “the ban on Islamic veils”, they seemed to focus exclusively on the French colonial past, mother of all evils. I also learnt that Christine Delphy’s association “School for everyone” had been set up with Tariq Ramadan. This was shrewd of him: as in all matters of “women things”, it’s good to have a back-up who has been a buddy of Simone de Beauvoir: it usually unsettles and quietens the liberal left…Actually, since the law was passed two years ago, the question is not an issue any more in France. Beyond the law, what is fascinating is to see how the French position on religious dress is used by Islamo-leftists, revealing all too clearly the current British malaise rather than proving the existence of a French scandal.

Multiculturalism in this case boils down to Islamism, it seems.

Last thing, at the end of the programme, there was a mention of facilities “available during the day”: a crèche (great, that’s always handy), a “female prayer room” and “a male prayer room”…And is it Ken Livingstone’s idea of multiculturalism, one that acknowledges and condones segregation? Perhaps, you now see the point of French republicanism: don’t give in to any specific religious demands. And let everybody go down the café if they want a change of scenery.

Yes, apparently it is exactly Ken Livingstone’s idea of multiculturalism, one that acknowledges and condones segregation. How depressing it is.

So where are we.

Downing Street appeared to be wavering today on allowing Catholic adoption agencies exemption from gay rights legislation, after a warning from the leader of Catholics in England and Wales that agencies may close rather than comply with the regulations…Mr Blair’s official spokesman said: “This is an issue with sensitivities on all sides…The key thing we have to remember in all of this is the interests of the children concerned and that there are arguments on both sides. This is not a straightforward black-and-white issue. This is an issue where there are sensitivities on all sides and we have to respect those but equally find a way through.”

But are there arguments on both sides? Or are there just sensitivities. There is a difference. I hope Blair knows that – but I’m not confident that he does. It’s also worth pointing out that in fact we don’t ‘have to’ respect all sensitivities just because they’re sensitivities. I hope Blair knows that too, but again, I’m not confident that he does. It sounds too like the usual community-respect-grievance-fuzz-wool for confidence. This is one reason all this kind of thing gets so…hopelessly lost in the fog: it’s because people know that all they have to do is bleat about sensitivities and respect and conscience and faith and there will be spokespeople eager to say that we have to respect those. Well we don’t. Not necessarily. It depends what they are. The people of Little Rock had ‘sensitivities’ – the white people among them, that is – about integrating the public high school there. No one ‘had to’ respect those, because they were nasty and wrong. You could multiply that example by the thousands or tens of thousands all over the planet. Everywhere you go there are ‘sensitivities’ about various outgroups and ways in which We don’t want to mix with Them and in order to avoid that dread fate we want to shut them out of various public accommodations and services so that we won’t have to, you know, mix with them and be contaminated by them. Those sensitivities do not have to be respected, and ought not to be respected, and it’s not impressive to see Blair or his spokesman saying they do. A Tory MP did a hell of a lot better than Blair did.

The Tory MP John Bercow, who has argued strongly in favour of gay equality, said: “The idea of an exemption for Catholic adoption agencies is an anathema and contradicts the concept of equality at the heart of this legislation. People choose their religion, they do not choose their orientation. I believe equality is equality is equality and it is quite incredible for the Catholic church to insist its religious views should take precedence over others’ human rights.”

Yes, it is. Perhaps this is a more straightforward black-and-white issue than Blair wants to admit.

Let’s have a look at the archbishop’s ‘argument’ then.

[T]o oblige our agencies in law to consider adoption applications from homosexual couples as potential adoptive parents would require them to act against the principles of Catholic teaching. We require our agencies to recruit and approve appropriate married and single people to meet the needs of children in local authority care for whom adoption has been identified as being in their best interest. We place significant emphasis on marriage, as it is from the personal union of a man and a woman that new life is born and it is within the loving context of such a relationship that a child can be welcomed and nurtured. Marital love involves an essential complementarity of male and female. We recognize that some children, particularly those who have suffered abuse and neglect, may well benefit from placement with a single adoptive parent. However, Catholic teaching about the foundations of family life, a teaching shared not only by other Christian Churches but also other faiths, means that Catholic adoption agencies would not be able to recruit and consider homosexual couples as potential adoptive parents.

That’s it. And frankly it seems completely worthless. A single parent is okay, though not the first choice – but a gay couple is not okay. Because…’it is from the personal union of a man and a woman that new life is born and it is within the loving context of such a relationship that a child can be welcomed and nurtured.’ Sorry, that doesn’t work. It is, of course, from the personal union of a man and a woman that new life is born, because that’s how that works, but adoption isn’t about the birth of new life, it’s about rescuing an existing life from loneliness, abandonment, neglect and unhappiness. The idea seems to be (though the archbish does a damn bad job of spelling it out) that because children are born to two parents, therefore adopted children ought to be put in a situation that mimics a two-parent situation. Well – why? Why ought they? That is not clear. And, especially after learning what we’ve been learning about life at Goldenbridge, I think the archbishop should have made it clear. I assume he didn’t because he couldn’t because there is nothing to make clear. It’s not a real reason, it’s just a ‘sensitivity’ (that is, a taboo) dressed up in religious clothes, as ‘sensitivities’ so often are.

The MCB is so dutiful and giving and conscientious, don’t you think? It assures us that, when it’s absolutely necessary, even a Muslim will in fact do her job.

A Muslim woman police officer refused to shake hands with the head of the Metropolitan Police on faith grounds…The woman’s refusal was based on her view that her faith prevented her touching a man other than her husband or a close relative…Sheikh Ibraham Mogra, of the Muslim Council of Britain, said people should not be alarmed by the officer’s beliefs and that Muslim law “was not set in concrete”. He added: “If the officer is called to a male victim who has been shot, the laws go out of the window. If she has to resuscitate that dying person, Muslim law will then change and allow her all sorts of physical contact because a life is at risk and life is so precious. Muslim law will say, ‘forget everything, save this life’.”

Ohhhhh – isn’t that generous? I’m so impressed. If a male victim is dying, then the law goes out the window. Coolerino. But so – if he’s not dying but just mangled, it doesn’t? Or if there’s uncertainty about whether he’s dying or not? Or if he’s quite all right really but trapped and in pain? Does she have to do her job only if the male victim will die if she doesn’t? Is there, like, a get-out clause for all cases short of death? Is that what everyone should be not alarmed about? Or should people instead be alarmed about the whole idea of other people taking up jobs that their religions forbid them to, you know, do?

It all reminds me of Mr Collins –

I have been so fortunate as to be distinguished by the patronage of the Right Honourable Lady Catherine de Bourgh, widow of Sir Lewis de Bourgh, whose bounty and beneficence has preferred me to the valuable rectory of this parish, where it shall be my earnest endeavour to demean myself with grateful respect towards her Ladyship, and be ever ready to perform those rites and ceremonies which are instituted by the Church of England.

And Lizzy’s reflection on him: ‘Elizabeth was chiefly struck with his extraordinary deference for Lady Catherine, and his kind intention of christening, marrying, and burying his parishioners whenever it were required.’