'White Lives Matter': In defence of doggerel

 Black and White who is right?

 by Brian Bamford

 'Eliot’s fondness for doggerel and light verse, in particular, was intertwined with a racist notion of blackness as a gateway to cultural disruption and linguistic play.'*

• The New YorkerDec 16, 2019

IT was announced last night that the Lancashire police have said that no criminal offence took place when a banner reading 'White Lives Matter Burnley' was towed past the football stadium during Monday night’s Premier League game between Manchester City and Burnley.  It is perfectly clear by now that the language being used here has become 'a gateway to cultural disruption and linguistic play' that is having massive consequences even as I write.

We at Northern Voices would find broad qualified agreement with what Iffy Onuora, the equalities officer of the Professional Footballers’ Association, said on Tuesday that he was hoping that the widespread condemnation of the banner would act as a catalyst for further conversations about the Black Lives Matter movement.  And he concluded:

'The words themselves aren’t offensive, it’s just the context.  It’s the rejection of the conversation we’re having at the moment.  That’s what it represents,' Onoura told the BBC.  'I guess people have the right to do it. For me it’s just proof again that these things can lead to positive things because all that’s been said in the 12 hours since the game finished has been, again, a catalyst, another conversation to have.'

Let's have conversations yes, yet I think we would add that it throws light on the two-faced hypocrisy of some people who are obsessed with skin colour.  What has happened since the flight on Monday night is that it brought forth a barrage of unbelievable humbug and virtue signalling by the most feeble minded elements on the left.

Meanwhile the police have said that after assessing all the information available surrounding the incident, the force had concluded 'that there are no criminal offences that have been disclosed at this time'.
'We will continue to work with our partners at the football club and within the local authority,' added Ch Supt Russ Procter.

I accept that the meaning of words are in their use rather than in the dictionary definition.  But the use of doggerel can be problematic. When more than a decade ago in moving a motion, I broke into some doggerel at a Trade Union Council conference; I was denouncing what are called scabs or sometimes dare I say 'blacklegs' - unskilled workers, who were being used I used rhyming slang or doggerel as 'Chancers - Bengal Lancers' to describe the strike breakers, sadly and predictably, I was challenged for 'racist' talk. 

I do worry about all this po-faced lack of humour on the British left.

*  

Sometimes doggerel has a non-critical meaning: plenty of popular comic poets (like Lewis Carroll or any limerick inventor) had no aim to make great art, just great light verse, and they succeeded brilliantly. They were masters of doggerel. But pity the earnest highbrow poet like the immortal Scotsman William McGonagall whose doggerel was so bad his audience frequently pelted him with eggs and rotting vegetables. Now his poetry was only fit for the dogs.

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