One year since the relaunch of Clare, and three issues down the line. We have solicited, edited, designed and printed work from industry leaders, academics, students, poets, writers, artists and dead people.

Now we reign our focus right in to home – London.

Walking around London it is hard not to feel the shifting aesthetic. The colossal structures of Kingsway, northwards to the buzzing toy-town of Camden, east towards the metallic city and shanty Bricklane. Perhaps to the West End – deliciously tacky, expensive and seedy at the same time; and then south as far as Southbank – where the carnival atmosphere oozes from the musicians, book-stalls and skaters.

And that’s just the tour guide.

Out of all this, unquestionably, comes a home and an inspiration for artists. Just amble anywhere in London and the abundance of new emerging talent is clear.

But at LSE, in the centre of all this, where is the art? At a glance we seem devoid of artistic expression. All facts but no figurines. But true this is not. Neath the seams many of us are enjoying and exploring our ideas through some a medium or another.

Whilst this issue is a homage to all the wonderful of artistic London, it is also a stamp from LSE to show that we are here too. In the pages that lie ahead Clare has diverged from her well-trodden wordy path and taken to the gold-paved streets, camera, paint-brush and PVA in hand and etched a fresco of art in this here city as we know it.

Home-grown talent sprinkled throughout the issue we are also delighted to invite Daniel Yates and Julian Boys to curate and compile our music supplement. Unfold it right and bliss awaits you, get it wrong and you may just unfurl an army of viking warrior ships on the people of London.

In these unpleasant times of exam-induced stress, see Clare as a welcoming friend; coaxing you out of your unrest, providing you with a warm mug of ease and some calming words of encouragement.

1968 marked the fortieth anniversary of the year when the Lord Chamberlain relinquished his power to censor all new plays before they could be put on stage in London’s West End.  This represents a watershed moment in the history of the stage in Britain.

The origins of the idea of censorship of drama by the Crown or the state probably date back at least as far as the Elizabethan period, when the Master of the Revels vetted all new plays to be put on at court. The idea of censoring plays on political, as much as religious grounds or those of decency, can arguably be traced back to the seventeenth century. Under the Protectorate, (1650-1660) following the Civil War, drama of all kinds was banned, essentially on puritan religious grounds. Shakespeare’s Richard II -  a play in which a weak, ineffectual and self-indulgent king is deposed by one of his erstwhile courtiers, the future Henry IV – was banned in 1680 at a time when parliament was expressing increasing discontent with the monarch. It was with the Licensing Act of 1737 that the Lord Chamberlain’s powers of censorship became linked with Parliament rather than the monarch.

Among the more famous playwrights who fell foul of the Lord Chamberlain were Oscar Wilde – whose Salomé had to be written in French and put on in Paris to avoid the objection here in Britain to plays on religious subjects – and George Bernard Shaw (instrumental as a Fabian in the setting up of LSE), whose Mrs Warren’s Profession could not be performed publicly for a quarter of a century because it dealt with prostitution.

The Lord Chamberlain’s work was, in effect, carried out not by an individual but a committee of readers, who applied themselves assiduously to their task, producing reports which today make fascinating reading. For example Harold Pinter, now Nobel laureate, found his play The Caretaker described as ‘a piece of incoherence in the manner of Samuel Beckett, though it has not that author’s vein of nihilistic pessimism, and each individual sentence is comprehensible if irrelevant.’

A problem also arose within the Home Office itself – with all this exposure to subversive and obscene matter quis custodiet ipsos custodes? The patrician censors adopted a code of their own in their reports so that their (lady) typists’ minds would not be sullied. They did this by recourse to a then popular brand of biscuits  - Huntley and Palmers. Homosexuals were ‘Huntleys’ and prostitutes were ‘Palmers’

The early seventies saw a considerable increase in the prominence given to nudity and sex in new drama, and also in the use of expletives. However there were still some later attempts at censorship by private pressure groups, perhaps most notably Mary Whitehouse’s National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association, which in 1982 prosecuted Howard Brenton’s Romans in Britain. This politically-engaged history play drew parallels between the Roman invasion of Britain and the contemporary presence of British troops in Northern Ireland. The scene which Whitehouse objected to involved the rape of a male druid by two Roman soldiers. The director of the play, Michael Bogdanov, found himself charged with ‘procuring  an act of gross indecency’, an offence which could, at least in theory, have led to three years’ imprisonment. In a dramatic moment worthy of any playwright, the defence demonstrated that her solicitor, whom Whitehouse had sent to view the offending production in her stead, could not possibly say with certainty (from the relatively cheap seat which he had bought, at some distance from the stage) whether what he had seen was the actor’s thumb (as the defence maintained) or another part of his anatomy, and the charge was dropped.

Most recently, in 2007 the pressure group Christian Voice attempted to sue the Director of the BBC, Mark Thompson, for showing Jerry Springer: The Opera, which they considered blasphemous. However both the original court and the appeal court ruled that the play ‘taken in context’ did not  constitute blasphemy.

It is perhaps premature to say that a situation has now been reached where all playwrights feel they have the freedom to write exactly as they wish, without fear of external interference in their work. Nevertheless, the very fact that a play such as Mark Ravenhill’s Shopping and F***ing can enjoy not only a succès d’estime but a West End run, indicates that drama has moved on a long way from the time, even as late as the mid 1960s, when plays could still be banned for blasphemy, and Edward Bond’s Early Morning was censored because of its irreverent portrayal of Queen Victoria, who had by then been dead for nearly 70 years.

If there have been no instances of censorship led by government in recent years that is not quite the end of the often troubled, and sometimes surprising relationship between the state and theatre. In the 1980s the Thatcher government banned the leader of Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams, from being broadcast on British television and radio. The BBC got round this by arranging for his words to be voiced over by an actor, Paul Loughran. When the government line softened, after the departure from office of Mrs Thatcher, Adams was allowed to speak in his own voice and the actor who had enjoyed this unlikely source of work found himself ‘resting’.  

Growing up, I recall knitting with my grandmother as she related stories of her life in Lebanon. This intergenerational narrative is very present in my work, the passing of the skill and memory from one generation to another. The durational practice of the craft is significant here, as it allowed me to share and reflect on my grandmother’s stories as we stitched together. My handmade objects provide comfort and connection with the past through the reuse of material and the recollection of the stories embroidered on them, making that which might have been passed on aurally into something physical.

My investigation is that of the limitations of a visual language within fine art, leading me to explore the fundamental elements of language that contribute to a story.  Communication is what binds us and arguably divides us.  Some express themselves best through a newspaper article, others a poem or a thesis.  My message is channelled through the visual.  I recount generational narratives in relation to my heritage.  My focus on developing inter-cultural dialogues is a vital step in offering alternative ways to see the world and initiating dialogue about the globalised world we live in. 

By reviewing history, authorship and authenticity, cultural and historical customs are drawn out and communicated. Stories are recounted which are personal and intimate, exploring identity as a woman of Lebanese origin, my family ties and the understanding of sitting between two cultures. Although these stories evoke personal revelations and questioning of my own realities, I am adamant that they refer to issues that are universal.  I use my art as a platform for expression in order to create an arena for discussion rather than an imposition of thought. If it ignites a spark of reflection in the viewer’s mind, then the work has succeeded.

My current work focuses on the recycling of found and disposable objects.  The pieces explore loss, migration and memory, with a particular focus on the Middle East, through the histories contained within aged and culturally specific objects.  This idea of the development of a generational craft work that spans time at once explores hand-me-down skills, stories and community – and by extension, the intercultural nature of British society. Putting British society to one side, I would emphasise the intercultural nature of my own identity.  When someone asks me where I’m from and I answer ‘London’, they often reply,  “Yes, but where are you really from?”  It’s this word ‘really’ that baffles me. How much more real can I get?  When I am in Lebanon I can say I am perfectly assimilated. I speak fluent Arabic and look Lebanese.  I am familiar with the culture and country, yet I am socially excluded.  Am I really entitled to Lebanese nationality, not having endured their struggle? It’s this sitting between two cultures that I embrace and try to demystify through art.  I am very much a product of my environment; the challenge here is trying to understand what environment that is.

The silence that stood between two bodies
took an eternity to settle.
When it settled, it settled like snow.
I will carry my silence this winter,
and maybe when it gets too heavy, we can stop,
and rest for a while. It is a very long season.

We use this quiet nicely.
Short days entail choosing your words carefully,
speaking less, listening more, cleaning mirrors and
unclogging the sinks. We sit avoiding the cold,
drinking herbal tea and watching steam rise from our mugs.
We take long baths, do the laundry,
and clutter our bed-stand with pills and medicine bottles.
We brush snow from our shoulders,
and learn to breath in spite of the cold, and each other.

In the winter, we begin to learn
what is simple and necessary;
Antihistamines, hot soups, staying warm in the house.
We allow winter’s silence to drift down
and gather like frost on our floors.
I think about moving often,
abandoning our home while the earth stays frozen.

To leave in the winter is unnatural.
Movement breaks its stillness and hold,
an impossible infidelity to the past, to others,
to old notions of oneself.
Leaving someone in the snow shatters
the heavy silences carried over long months,
breaking the spell to end all spells.
It is a necessary betrayal,
a declaration that things can be not only different
but better, as we open our front doors
and step out into spring.

Sitting in a Brooklyn apartment in late-August, I was trawling the Internet to find something to do upon arriving in London the following week.  I found my way to the Globe’s web site in an act of unabashed ignorance of London’s alternative theatre scene.  I’d resigned myself to something mandated in the tourist guidebook.  Browsing the listings, I ran across a midnight showing of Hamlet, advertised as an avant-garde production by a theatre company called The Factory.

Two days after arriving in London, I found myself at half-past one in the morning in the Upper Gallery at a sold-out Globe, watching a man spatter a can of baked beans across the planks and tear open a bag of flour, covering the characters in the ghostly powder before performing Ophelia’s funeral scene.  A stuffed deer lay abandoned nearby.  The crowd was roaring in laughter.  Josh Hartnett, away from Hollywood for his West End debut in Rain Man, made a brief appearance as the Captain.  During one of the acts, no two actors were allowed on the stage at the same time.  In another, the members of the troupe who’d lost the rochambeau which determines the cast on a nightly basis were made to recite the lines while their companion players mimed and acted in silent synchronisation.

I’d seen Hamlet before, and this particular mise en scène was novel, even without accounting for the raucous laughter of the late-night crowd that tends to be lacking from stagings of Shakespeare’s tragedies.

But this wasn’t typical.  In fact, nothing was.  Everything about the play was decided on the night: the cast, the props, the variable obstructions set by director Tim Carroll.  Every performance was an undulating, unpredictable reinterpretation that attested to the versatility of the source text.

One week later I went back, this time to the Hampstead Theatre.  The play was distinct from the one I’d seen a week earlier, and not just because James McAvoy was reading the Captain’s cameo from a torn-out page standing in the seat in front of me.  The cast had changed, as it always did, and the title role was inhabited by the fiery Alex Hassell, the company’s co-creative director.  And this time, the play’s final duel took the form of a raw-celery eating contest which was all the more visceral because of Horatio’s clear disgust.

The obstructions had changed as well.  Tim Carroll, the company’s internationally seasoned and acclaimed creative force who conceived of the troupe’s winning formula while directing Hamlet in Budapest, had imposed what seemed an insurmountable challenge this night: each scene would be performed in random order, selected blindly from his very own hat by audience members, and identified not by act and scene number, but merely by the scene’s first line of dialogue.  The actors didn’t miss a beat.

The performance retained its spontaneity and participatory geist, and at one point actors demanded audience members’ clothes for costume changes. But this performance was far less carnivalesque, and so managed more pathos.  After intermission, the audience simply stayed in the bar, and the players performed an act amongst them.  Hassell’s Hamlet climbed onto the counter to deliver his existential ruminations. Whereas the Globe’s audience encouraged a wacky looseness to the show, the Hampstead performance, though structurally disjointed, managed a profundity and coherence.  The contrast between the two performances highlights the success of the Factory’s bigger project and underlying ethos: experimentation.

The company started in 2006, a response to an acting industry that ‘too often withheld a sense of independence from the creative artists within it’.  Tim Evans and Alex Hassell, colleagues at the Central School of Speech and Drama, started the company to allow theatre artists: actors, writers and directors, to practice their craft and exalt their talent, free from the restraints of an industry that seemed to be sacrificing its art for business’s sake.  The Factory have uncovered the fallacious antagonism between the two forces: once word got out, the Factory’s Hamlet sold out every week of its year’s run.  The company has attracted the praise (and patronage) of Ewan McGregor, Bill Nighy, and Richard Wilson.

The company went back underground after the curtains went down on Hamlet, popping up for occasional performances for those with their ear to the ground.  Eliciting attention throughout the world, Hassell and Evans have found themselves beckoned to New York for talks of a stateside run, and the company returned to Budapest to pay homage to the origins of their flagship show.  Their writing and directing studios have carried on in their new offices on Caledonian Road, and they’ve recently exhibited their success to cramped audiences at Shoreditch’s Electricity Showrooms in a brief run called “Round 1,” aimed at trying out original material under the able direction of a furrow-browed Tim Carroll.

The company are now tackling Chekhov — experimentation with The Seagull began in April, and anticipation is high to see if the troupe will relight the spark ignited by Hamlet.  To see a Factory performance is to be reminded of the potential of the medium and to witness its art practiced, despite its subversiveness, in its most traditional sense: with zeal, commitment and ardour.

Music at LSE continues to flourish. The LSE Orchestra, under the dynamic leadership of Matthew Taylor goes from strength to strength. At the recent LSE Spring Concert in St Clement Danes, the orchestra gave a vivid account of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, and a rousing performance of Matthew’s own work The Needles Overture Op. 26. (Matthew Taylor is a well-established composer/conductor;  his Symphony No 2 is being premiered by the BBC Symphony Orchestra later this year.) Meanwhile, the LSE Chamber Music Society, the LSE Jazz Society and the recent ‘LSE talent concert’ are witness to the impressive array of musical skill and proficiency existing within the student body and members of staff. Also, this term’s Thursday lunchtime concerts in the Shaw Library, co-ordinated by Nigel Rogers, have given members of the LSE community a chance to hear a number of wonderful musicians, some of international standing, including Natalie Clein, Jennifer Pike and Martino Tirimo.

The LSE Choir also flourishes. Since 2002 it has been my privilege to direct the choir, and during this time the choir has performed works including Vivaldi’s Gloria, Handel’s Messiah and Dettingen Te Deum, Haydn’s Nelson Mass, Schubert’s Mass in G, and Requiems by Mozart and Faure. We have also sung works by Bruckner, Gorecki and William Harris. Every year the choir participates in the LSE Christmas and Spring Concerts in St Clement Danes, gives lunchtime recitals in St Mary-le-Strand, and sings at events such as the LSE Carol Service and the LSE Holocaust Memorial. In 2007/8 the Choir was also involved in an exchange with the Choir of the University of St Gallen, Switzerland ; this involved concerts in London and St Gallen, and was in my opinion greatly worthwhile from an artistic, cultural and social point of view. At this point I would like to thank the Conferences and Events team for their role in supporting the activities listed above, and also the office-holders past and present of the LSE  Music Society; the current student representative for the choir, Irene Song, has done sterling work. In recent times the choir has also benefited from the expertise of Christian Spielmann, assistant conductor, and Kazunari Shiraiso and Satoko Tada, accompanists.

What, for me, are the hallmarks of the LSE Choir? Enthusiasm, vitality, a desire to be challenged artistically, a commitment to supporting one’s fellow singer, a positive attitude to the varied and of course international nature of the membership (whilst the vast majority are students, alumni and staff are  welcome and highly valued), plus an appreciation of the fact that a choir can be greater than the sum of its parts. There is, I think, a refreshing absence of ‘jockeying for position’ that can affect groups in music colleges; there is also an absence of extreme competitiveness which is perhaps inevitable in other quarters within the ‘hot-house’ confines of LSE. Above all, I would like to think that the music always comes first. As a student once said to me: ‘Choir is one place where you can express emotion openly; the rest of the week at LSE is rather more bound by rationality.’ There is a well-known saying ‘Come for the music, stay for the people’, and the social aspect of the choir (of any choir) is not unimportant.

At this year’s LSE Spring Concert I was fortunate to have my own work, In Paradisum, for choir and orchestra, performed. The work, a setting of the traditional Requiem text, is dedicated to my grandparents, one of whom, Phyliss Campling (nee Webb) was a student at LSE in 1913/4.  Singers and instrumentalists performed with great conviction and no little skill and it was the kind of occasion which made me appreciate once again that a musician’s life, though sometimes tough, can be incredibly fulfilling. To quote the great Leonard Bernstein: ‘Life without music is unthinkable’.

The way in which we interact with the media has evolved; we look to printed publications for reassurance but it is on the internet where we gain much of our inspiration. On these pages lie the views of three of Britain’s most influential fashion and design bloggers. Here they give their views on the cultural centre of the universe. Ironically, this should serve only as an introduciton, after reading, do as you know best and take to your keyboard. SB

KATJA HENTSCHEL at glamcanyon

Who is your favourite British designer?

Gareth Pugh. Although I was unimpressed with his last collection and I do wonder whether or not he is a bit of a one-trick pony. I do love his creative mind and the fact that although some claim his stuff to be unwearable one does see people wear it and it works. I also think he’s a nice bloke.

Describe London style in one word?

Eclectic.

What is in your secret address book of places to visit in London?

I’m afraid I don’t have a secret address book. I think London has something for everyone, depending on who is visiting I drag them to Dalston Jazz Bar, Broadway Market, The Prince George, Brick Lane. The usual really.

What do you like most about London?

It’s always been my favourite city for all things relating to self-expression. People here are super creative and go to great lengths to express themselves through clothes, art, music and more. London really offers a non-judgmental environment to allow for such extroversion. Not every city can claim a similar attitude.

Where in London do you most like to sit and why?

The pavement outside the Cat & Mutton by Broadway Market. I go there with friends on the weekend; we order a bottle of wine and watch people walk past. It gives you that ‘aaahhh’ feling.

What would you do as Mayor of London for the day?

I would try to find ways to better occupy youths in Hackney, as an attempt to lower crime rates. There are so many ways in which to positively influence young people.

www.glamcanyon.com

photos courtesy of www.glamcanyon.com

RAVI KHANNA at joes[a]fiend

When in London where do you most like to shop?

Good Hood, they stock great brands and there is no pretense. It’s run by people who genuinely care about curating a fantastic retail store.

What one item of clothing sums up London style in the here and now?

I think the Burberry mac sums up London right now and will continue to in the future. It’s symbolises all that is good about British fashion and that even decades after it was first realsed it is as cool as it ever was.

Describe London style in one word?

Innovative.

What is in your secret address book of places to visit in London?

The Convience Store, if you can find it, they’ve just moved into a space at the St Martins Lane Hotel. They stock some of the greatest brands from around the world, including the best of British.

Where in London do you most like to sit and why?

The garden of Rochelle Canteen in Arnold Circus, the space is shared with fashion designers Giles Deacon and Luella Bartley so you get to see some of the best dressed people in London walking around. It’s a high fashion little world of its own.

www.joesafiend.co.uk

STEVE and EJ at stylesavage

When in London where do you most like to shop?

EJ: I quite like Hurwendeki and lots of the boutiques in Soho and around Carnaby Street. I prefer smaller shops to big ones, as there’s usually a greater chance of finding something really interesting.

Who is your favourite British designer?

S: There are so many exciting designers emerging on to the scene. The future for British menswear looks bright. If I had to pick my current favourite, I’d stump for Carolyn Massey. Looking back over the last few years, Kim Jones because he has been consistent in his greatness and influence.

What one item of clothing sums up London style in the here and now?

S: A pair of well-worn and much-loved Church’s brogues.

Describe London style in one word?

EJ: International.

What is in your secret address book of places to visit in London?

EJ: Our address book is never secret- in fact, we’re in the process of making a map for the blog!

What do you like most about London?

S: That it is so busy. There are so many places to go, and things to see, it is criminal to be bored in this fair city.

What would you do as Mayor of London for the day?

EJ: Give everyone the day off!

S: Ban cars and throw the biggest street party imaginable.

www.stylesavage.blogspot.com

And now, after a 35 year hiatus, Clare is back. Printed termly, Clare provides the opportunity for LSE students to be published alongside internationally recognised figures. Clare’s pages are full of original artwork, unique graphics and some of the liveliest, most engaging voices of our generation. The paper form is a heavily designed, hand-crafted book. The electronic edition, found at www.claremarketreview.com, exists in a content-generative relationship with the paper edition.

In the pages resting ‘neath your fingertips the views of industry professionals accompany academics and LSE students, offering perspectives on three contemporary debates: Discontent; discourses on the means, purposes and dangers of activism. Madness; an exploration of increasing openness about mental health and mental illness. Infosphere; discussions of the information explosion, made possible (and even problematic) by the internet. We hope perusal of these pages brings as much joy as their conception.”

“At the moment, I’m in my house in Khan Yunis, in the south of the Gaza Strip. It’s quiet, but there is no electricity and there are some airplanes in the sky. It’s a bit tense because we don’t know what will happen. According to what we heard on the news, it seems that there are some escalations, so we don’t know what is going to happen.

Because we don’t have electricity we don’t have access to TV news, so we’re just listening to local FM radios all the time. They are reporting about what is happening in several places across the Gaza Strip. The Israelis are in the eastern villages of Khan Yunis, but so far they have not entered into the city. Of course, you can still hear the shelling and the air-strikes all the time.”

In my opinion, I don’t think this war has anything to do with Hamas, even though Israel has announced it is because of what Hamas is doing. If we look at the history, if we look at 1948 or 1967, or the first Intifada, it’s not always Hamas. Unfortunately, it is the Israeli regime and the occupation that are doing this.

With what we are seeing in the world, I don’t think anything will change with Israel as long as the American administration is acting this way, as long as the EU is acting this way, and as long as Russia is acting this way. Unfortunately, all those who support Palestine are the people; the masses who are not in power. They are the supporters of the Palestinian cause, the right to live freely and ending the Israeli occupation. As long as the EU is rewarding Israel and upgrading their relationship, the Israelis have no reason to stop what they are doing. Unfortunately, it is an arrogant state, and we are hoping that the people, the masses in Europe and America, in the Arab world and the Muslim world, will continue their revolution and change the situation in Palestine as well.

We hear about protests all over the world. Supporters from London or Europe or the Arab world will call random phone numbers in the Gaza Strip, and they are supporting people and telling them that the masses are on the street and that they are protesting in the big cities and even in small villages. This is our hope. Our hope is that our freedom will come from the people. I don’t think we have any hope in any of the governments of the world, not even Obama. He said that he will bring change, but his last statement equalised the victim and the oppressor. We were so disappointed, because he is saying he cares about the security in Sderot, but he does not care at all about the hundreds of people who are dying, the children who are dying, in Palestine. I mean, the seventeen people in Sderot who suffered from the rockets, I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s nothing compared to the F-16s that are hitting civilians, that are hitting children. And I don’t think you did not see it. Everybody saw it; everybody is a witness of this crime. Unfortunately, Obama is part of an administration, and I don’t think his administration will allow him to bring change. I don’t think the American administration is ready for any change in the Middle East, but we were hoping that the EU, or the UK after Blair, would do something. Unfortunately, they are still very shy in their statements, which is undermining the Palestinian cause and is at times dehumanising. So we are waiting for the people, but because we are struggling for our rights, our freedom, for justice, and for the peace I think we are going to win.

There was no warning at all when the attacks started. Our kids were in kindergarten and at school. It was a Saturday, so it was a day off for us but the schools were open. People were in the market, just like every day. This is why it was so bad, and killed so many people. In a second they changed the whole geography of Gaza, but no government is doing anything about it. It happened all of a sudden, there were bombings everywhere, huge sounds and huge lights. It was like an earthquake, the house was moving. My first thought was of my nephews in kindergarten. I ran down the steps and went towards the door to go and get them, but fortunately our neighbour was near the kindergarten, and he brought them back with him. It happened in a few seconds, it lasted maybe five minutes, but they hit so many places at one time. Then we heard that it was all over the Gaza Strip, so we tried to call my brother, my relatives, my friends, my colleagues. We just wanted to understand what was going on. Unfortunately the phone lines were not working, mobiles or landlines, and it took two or three hours before they worked again. It was horrific, I can’t describe it. It is the most awful thing that’s happened in our lives. I just can’t describe it, it’s heartbreaking, because people were just in the markets and in their work, the children were in kindergarten and school; and here you have this war machine that is taking over your sky and your whole life, they are hitting everywhere. Nobody is talking about this trauma, they are just talking about the Israelis in Sderot unfortunately.

Of course I think that one day we will see a peaceful Palestine. I think I will see it myself, and I think my nephews and so many other children will live in better situations and have better lives soon, because what is happening is madness. What the Israelis are doing is a crime, and criminals can’t escape all their lives. They will be caught one day, and they will be brought to justice. I think they got out of control, and I don’t think the world will allow it. If the world will allow them, then I don’t think anybody deserves to live on this earth.

My message to the people in Britain is please go on and continue your fight, because the Palestinian cause is not only a Palestinian cause, it is a Human Rights cause. We are all humans sharing this earth together, so it is your responsibility as much as it is our responsibility to stop the craziness of the Israelis. It is their duty to work to bring change with the British government. I think every nation, every people in their own country, should work to bring change within their own government.”

“Take away the right to say ‘fuck,’” said Lenny Bruce, “and you take away the right to say ‘fuck the government.’” Last December, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Andy Burnham, announced that when it comes to the Internet, “There is content that should just not be available to be viewed. That is my view. Absolutely categorical.” He proposed to start deciding what Internet users can and cannot view by introducing filters which would screen Web pages for obscene content. He was, quite literally, proposing to take away our right to say ‘fuck’.

Just days earlier, the Internet Watch Foundation, the self-regulatory, non-governmental body which regulates the Internet in the UK, had blocked the Wikipedia entry for Scorpions’ 1976 album ‘Virgin Killer.’ The page was censored because it displayed the album’s cover, which portrayed a young, naked girl. However, this reason was never provided, nor was the rest of the page accessible. The web page simply returned a 404 error, meaning that users did not even know that they were being blocked.

Perhaps most worrying of all is the ongoing case against Darryn Walker over his alleged posting of an explicit story describing the fantasized rape and murder of the pop group Girls Aloud. The worrying aspect of this case is not so much that he is being prosecuted – while grotesque fan fiction of this kind is not a new phenomenon, a case could certainly be made for him to be tried for harassing and intimidating the very real subjects of his story. What is worrying is that he is being tried under the Obscene Publications Act, the law which tried unsuccessfully to outlaw ‘Lady Chatterly’s Lover’ and the Oz ‘Schoolkids Issue’ in the 60s and 70s. If successful, the prosecution will set the precedent of making it a criminal act to simply type words that some would consider ‘obscene’. The case has met with little protest, due in no small part to the fact that there is very little political capital to be won defending Girls Aloud rape stories. But the unsavory subject matter does not reduce its importance. As Martin Niemöller might have said, “They came first for the perverts…”

Burnham has defended his plans to censor the Internet by arguing that as a father he does not feel safe leaving his young children alone to access the Internet – “Leaving your child for two hours completely unregulated on the Internet is not something you can do.” He has drawn a comparison with the success of the TV watershed in protecting children from obscene content. This is disingenuous for a number of reasons. First, Burnham’s parental decision making should not determine national law. Parents may already select which websites their children are able to view, or indeed to install the kind of filters Burnham is proposing to make mandatory for the entire country. Second, potentially the most dangerous areas of the Internet for young children are chat rooms, which would not be covered by filters that restrict content. Third, pornographic material is already marked by age limits, something Burnham is proposing should now cover all websites. But what Burnham is seeking to extend censorship to, is not images, but words. The real comparison is not with the TV watershed, but with putting policemen in public libraries.

Burnham need only look to Australia if he is seeking a lesson in the complexities of suppressing Internet content. Recent proposals there for a compulsory Internet filter have been met with widespread protests. The proposals would make Australia one of the strictest democracies in terms of Internet regulation, with at least 1,300 sites prohibited, based on a list drawn up by the state and not made public, preventing legal scrutiny. The filter would have two tiers, one which would block the sites on the government’s blacklist, the other which would be optional and would block pornography by using keywords. When Internet providers pointed out that much of the illegal material which is theoretically being targeted here, such as child pornography, is traded via peer-to-peer networks or chat programs, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy’s office said a peer-to-peer filter would be considered, despite the fact that the technology required simply does not exist.

At this point, we are reminded of what a brave new world the Internet has led us into. No matter how much governments desire to regulate the Internet, technology stays one step ahead. Technology like Tor and Freenet already make it possible to access the Internet and transfer data anonymously, and Dr. Vint Cerf, one of the Internet’s founding fathers, has said on numerous occasions that any attempt by governments to control the Internet are doomed to failure due in part to private ownership. In 2007, he said that “it’s tempting to think that you need a United Nations-like structure to deal with it, but I believe it will be very hard to accomplish that objective for one simple reason – 99 percent of the Internet, the physical Internet, is in private sector hands, operated by the private sector.”

Cerf has, however, backed multiple stakeholder models on control, which would include customers, governments and wider society. “The Internet is used by a billion users around the world, it’s not strictly a purely governmental thing to control, and that’s why you need this multi-stakeholders structure to make sure all the prospects are respected.” Cerf is the chair of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the body which controls domain names, which Cerf describes as, “the first big expert in a global multi-stakeholders structure.” However, even ICANN reports to the U.S. Commerce Department, which has drawn criticism on a number of occasions, either for political interference in the Web’s governance, or for simply being out of touch. In 2006, Senator Ted Stevens, Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, expressed his fears that the Internet would slow down due to heavy usage, saying, “The Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes. And if you don’t understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it’s going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material…just the other day an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday. I got it Tuesday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially.”

Governments will not remain so out of touch with the Internet for long. Burnham has talked of working with Obama to regulate the English-language Internet, and a recent think tank report entitled ‘Securing Cyberspace for the 44th Presidency’ calls for “strong authentication of identity, based on robust in-person proofing and thorough verification of devices”. The British Government has been scrabbling around desperately for a justification for its much derided identity card scheme, and the Internet may well provide one – a theoretically viable means of authenticating age, and individual agency, on the Internet. Smuggled in under the paranoia which surrounds identity theft, swiping into your computer with your ID card is not a conspiracy theorist’s fantasy, it is a policy option currently being debated.

But while the nature of the Internet would suggest that someone, somewhere, will always find a way of getting around the censors, and while even Thomas Jefferson knew that “taste cannot be controlled by law,” this has not stopped plenty of countries from exercising fierce control over those who seek to take advantage of the freest of free presses. Thirteen countries were placed on Reporters Without Borders’ ‘Enemies of the Internet’ list, including China, where Obama’s inauguration speech was recently censored of any mention of communism, and Egypt, where Kareem Amer remains in prison for critically blogging about Islam and the Egyptian President.

Closer to home, LSE itself has a history with online censorship. In ‘A Blogger’s Manifesto,’ former lecturer Erik Ringmar chronicles his experiences with school authorities after he made postings on his personal blog which included salary details and were critical of the way the school is run. He was asked by his department convener to “destroy/cancel your blog entirely and shut the whole thing down until further notice”. The convener’s decision was in turn backed by Howard Davies, who argued that “the issue here is not a policy on blogging, it is whether a colleague can publicly abuse his employer and his colleagues without consequences.” That it is the message being censored, and not the medium, is beside the point. There was once a time when the press was free only to those who owned one, but the Internet has democratised publishing, and this is the situation which is now under threat.

As Ringmar himself points out in his book, LSE also has a prouder tradition which predates the Internet. Karl Popper wrote ‘The Open Society and Its Enemies’ shortly before taking up a post at the school, and in it he set out his belief that society only moves forward if it has the power to ask questions and the space to listen to dissenting voices. “It is the longing of uncounted unknown men to free themselves and their minds from the tutelage of authority and prejudice. It is their attempt to build up an open society which rejects the absolute authority to preserve, to develop, and to establish traditions, old or new, that measure up to their standards of freedom, of humaneness, and of rational criticism.”

This is the tradition that we must now protect. The Internet represents the greatest tool ever conceived for the free exchange of ideas, to challenge the tutelage of authority and prejudice whether it be in Egypt or England, at home or in the workplace. The Internet has revolutionised our access to knowledge, and power, so swiftly that it is easy to take for granted. The cases cited by Burnham and the IWF are difficult to defend – but defended they must be. We do not have to agree with everything that is published on the Internet to realise the value of the space it grants all of us. We all own our own presses, now, and as Albert Camus would put it, “A free press can be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom a press will never be anything but bad.”