UK Politics

3051 readers

250 users here now

General Discussion for politics in the UK.
Please don't post to both !uk_politics@feddit.uk and !unitedkingdom@feddit.uk .
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.

Posts should be related to UK-centric politics, and should be either a link to a reputable news source for news, or a text post on this community.

Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.

If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread. (These things should be publicly discussed)

Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.

Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.

!ukpolitics@lemm.ee appears to have vanished! We can still see cached content from this link, but goodbye I guess! :'(

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

tom@feddit.uk

GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk

flamingos@feddit.uk

BBC forced to remove Miriam Margolyes' 'shocking' three-word remark from radio show - Nottinghamshire Live (www.nottinghampost.com)

submitted 2 months ago by IcePee@lemmy.beru.co to c/uk_politics@feddit.uk

12 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Kirsty's question about which character had first resonated with her as a child, saying: "Oh, Fagin. Without question. Jewish and vile. I didn't know Jews like that then sadly, I do now."

Despite laughter from the audience, the BBC decided to remove the remarks from the broadcast.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Emperor@feddit.uk 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

In 1863 a Jewish mother-of-ten called Eliza Davis wrote to berate, in the most charm-mixed-with-chutzpah of ways, the author Charles Dickens about his character Fagin in Oliver Twist.

Eliza had little more than a passing acquaintance with the novelist; she and her husband had bought his London home three years earlier. She wrote to him to request some funds for a Jewish home for convalescents adding that perhaps a donation could ameliorate some of the wrongs he had done.

“Charles Dickens, the large-hearted, whose works plead so eloquently and so nobly for the oppressed of his country… has encouraged a vile prejudice against the despised Hebrew,” she wrote. “Fagin, I fear, admits only of one interpretation but while Charles Dickens lives, the author can justify himself or atone for a great wrong.”

Fagin's back - the villain Charles Dickens tried to cancel, Jewish Chronicle

[–] IcePee@lemmy.beru.co 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for this. I never knew about this. In retrospect, Fagin was a pretty shoddy stereotype. But, in general most of Dickens' books deal in such tropes. The real question is, was Miriam wrong to say what she did? And was the BBC wrong in censoring her? While your anecdote was interesting I'm not sure it spoke to those questions specifically.

[–] Emperor@feddit.uk 6 points 2 months ago

What I find odd (and this might be the fault of whoever wrote the piece) is that the "'shocking' three word remark" that is said to have got the interview pulled isn't shocking - it's actually the other bit of her statement.