Posted by Peter Ceresole on April 26, 2005 at 06:38:52 from 80.177.22.49 user PeterC.
In Reply to: Re: Buchan a bigot ??? posted by Adam Quinan on April 26, 2005 at 03:11:31:
Back when the books were written they would have been quite commonly held viws by perfectly respectable people
Yes they were- and they were what made it possible for horrible crimes to be committed by others with little reaction until it was far too late. The recently released Cabinet papers show that vividly. They didn't want to be 'swamped' by refugees because they were Jews- that's quite clear when you read the documents. In Europe generally, ghastly crimes were passed with a nod and a wink because the victims were gypsies and Jews. Only when the piles of bodies were found and the stink of them became literally impossible to ignore did people- some of them- actually confront their own complicity, however indirect, in the most dreadful crime ever committed by human beings.
Buchan's books merely reflected that attitude, maybe, but they were vile because of it. When I read them even as a small boy, after the war, I was shocked by those passages. They were one of the reasons I always disliked Buchan's books. The main reason was that Buchan, unlike AR, never dealt in real human beings, just cyphers. One of the virtues of his books is that they make us realise how widespread those feelings were. They absolutely do not absolve Buchan of being a racist and an anti-semite- which he was.
And just because decent attitudes can be labelled, by some, "politically correct", doesn't mean that they aren't right. I've seen "political correctness" at work a close range, I've seen the damage it causes and people have had to resign their positions in a local council as a result of a 'Panorama' programme I produced on the subject. But it's a great deal less damaging than the casual, ingrained racism that the perpetrators of the "political correctness" were, in an excessive and insensitive way, trying to oppose. Whenever I see that term used, I look for the bigot behind it.
One of the great virtues of AR is that although he seems to reflect the world around his stories very well, all his characters are real humans and he never slipped into sloppy stereotyping.