Loose Talk I

Silence and fear at the barber's

Kenneth Roy

On the day that the Lockerbie bomber, as he is usually described, was refused bail pending his long-delayed appeal, I happened to be visiting a barber’s shop near the office. Two members of the staff were discussing the judicial decision and his terminal illness. There was unanimous support for the former, no sympathy for the latter.
     'If it was left to me,’ said one of the hairdressers, a woman in her twenties, 'I'd……..'
     The rest was crude; vicious. She was, however, exercising her right to freedom of speech. The customers – the shop was fairly busy – were either blank and uncomprehending or silently acquiescent; it was difficult to tell which. But clearly no dissent was expected, otherwise why would the staff have been so relaxed about sharing their views with the rest of the room? Perhaps they were arrogant enough to assume a consensus. If they did, they assumed wrongly about at least one of their punters.
     I sat frozen to the spot. For a few seconds, I could scarcely believe the evidence of my own ears. Had she really said that? In front of customers? When I'd recovered my composure – although I was still trembling with anger – I stood up and addressed the shop. I said that I strongly objected to the sentiments expressed, and added that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi might well be completely innocent, that there was more than enough doubt to justify the appeal, and that the Scottish judicial system had behaved with shaming inhumanity in continuing to detain him in prison.
     Of course I knew I was wasting my breath. The prejudice in the back-street of this small Scottish town was too deep to be softened. But at least I had spoken up; I too had exercised my right to freedom of speech.

There is a flaw in the last two paragraphs: more than a flaw: there is a lie. It is true that I was trembling with anger. True that the views I have just stated are the views I genuinely hold. But the rest is fabrication. I did not stand up and address the shop. I stayed where I was until it was my turn. 'Next please' – the curt imperative of a woman at the back of the shop who had not taken part in the original exchange. I went over and had my hair cut. She did not speak to me and I did not speak to her. I looked in the mirror and stared reproachfully at my own reflection.
     Why had I not challenged this affront?
     Was it apathy? Surely not. I feel strongly about the case. Three of the most outstanding people I have ever met - Robert Black (Emeritus Professor of Scots Law at Edinburgh University), Jim Swire (father of one of the victims) and Tam Dalyell (the most tenacious parliamentarian of the modern era) - have all studied the evidence, Bob Black in the most scrupulous and sustained detail, and are either emphatic in declaring Megrahi innocent or have serious doubt about his guilt. We are almost certainly witnessing a tragic miscarriage of justice.
      If not apathy, then what? Why did I not speak out, if only to satisfy my own conscience? Why did I let these people away with it? There is a psychological theory that individuals, confronted with the apparent integrity of a group, in this case of seven or eight people, will conform rather than take a stand. There is a simple word to describe this theory and the word is fear. I was afraid of what might happen to me if I uttered the words in my heart; afraid of being ridiculed or humiliated; afraid of the wrath of the group. It was so much easier to say nothing, to leave without confrontation or nastiness. I must go on being a part of this community, after all.
     Then I thought of other barber's shops in other places, at other times. I thought of barber's shops in pre-war Germany, thought of myself in the back street of a small town just like this one, and of the anti-Semitism in the air, and wondered what I would have done in those extreme circumstances. I didn't like the answer I was getting from the reflection of myself in the mirror. If I could not find a word to say in support of a dying man in a Scottish prison cell, when there was no obvious risk to my physical well-being or livelihood, what were the chances that I would have defended my Jewish friends in pre-war Germany?
     'In 1942,' wrote Anne-Marie Bunting, 'a unit of ordinary, middle-aged German reserve policemen were ordered to kill all the inhabitants of a Polish village. Most of these men had never fired a shot at a human being, yet they killed with little hesitation and would go on to slaughter thousands more in cold blood...Although subject to anti-Semitic propaganda, these men were not ideologically indoctrinated to kill Jews, nor were they career Nazis, nor had they become brutalised by combat.'
     Anne-Marie Bunting discussed the case of Reserve Police Battalion 107, and its abrupt descent into barbarism, in her winning paper in the 2005 Young UK and Ireland Programme. She went on: 'I could not be certain that I would have taken a stand. I did not know whether I had instincts similar to the men of Batallion 107, nor whether I would have had the clarity of thought or strength of character to resist those instincts had I been in Germany in 1942...What were my morals? What did I value and what would I fight for?'
     It would be foolish to imagine that, in minor ways, these questions do not press down on us in the daily routine of our relatively unthreatened, relatively peaceful, democratic society. They pressed down on me in that barber's shop. I went in for a haircut. I left doubting my own moral character.
     To echo Anne-Marie Bunting: 'What do I value and what would I fight for?' Free speech, perhaps? Liberty of thought and expression? Would I value those enough to fight for them? Yes, above all things. But if I value them so much, why did I remain silent?
     I made a small protest. I did not leave a tip. How absurd. How utterly abject.

I realise now that I am capable of self-censorship, that I am willing quite voluntarily to submit to the unarticulated will of a group of seven or eight people. Am I also weak enough to submit to self-censorship forced upon me by exhortation or threat? The night before my visit to the barber's, I found an e-mail waiting for me from a person who clearly considers himself to be of some importance and influence. He wished to advise me what I should - or rather should not - write. He left what he called a 'brief marker', a slightly chilling admonition. His desire to impede my intellectual liberty, my independence of thought, would be almost flattering were it not so profoundly depressing. It appears that the hairdresser who would do unspeakable things to a dying prisoner has complete freedom of speech while this person would deprive me of mine. Orwell, thou shoudst be alive at this hour.