They burn hot and bright. Right now, it is Angus that is feeling the heat. Last week, the Sunday Herald reported that one headteacher in Kirriemuir had pulled Black Watch off the Highers syllabus because it is "offensive". Parents are angry at the decision, and have demanded an explanation.
Freedom of expression does not just mean the freedom to write or say what you please, but also the freedom to read and to hear what you choose. The decision to remove Black Watch from the classroom curtails the right of the pupils to read and study one of Scotland's most culturally significant plays. Moreover, the essays that they have already written on the play will not be assessed.
It is entirely right that prominent figures in Scottish literature have written an open letter, urging the head to reverse her decision (in signing the letter they, too, are exercising their right to free speech). This decision may just affect one school, but that is enough to set a precedent. The free speech issues have been raised and must be debated before any more books are removed from shelves and school-bags.
It is particularly important that we challenge 'offence' as the justification for such decisions. If we do not, we run the risk that 'offence' becomes ingrained as a legitimate reason for censorship. We put a veto-power in the hands of whoever says they are upset. Offence, and its sibling, indecency, are the perennial free speech battleground in British society, and often it is literature over which we fight. Think of the fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie for The Satanic Verses; think of Mary Whitehouse's crusading legal actions against plays and poems that depicted homosexuality; think of Lady Chatterley's Lover, prosecuted for obscenity.
During the Chatterley trial, the prosecutor Mervyn Griffith-Jones was criticised for asking whether the book was something "you would wish your wife or servants to read". This paternalism is often at the heart of classroom censorship - the idea that the kids are too young to comprehend the subtleties of art. Scotland had this debate in the 1990s when Edwin Morgan's Stobhill sequence of poems, which depict rape and abortion, were the target of a campaign to have them banned from schools. Down in England, 'Education for Leisure', Carol Ann Duffy's chilling poem about a frustrated young man with a knife, was pulled from the GCSE textbooks after critics said it 'glorified' knife-crime.
The United States, where even the most parochial levels of government are highly politicised, has endured many battles over what books should be read by children. Since its publication in 1900, various public libraries and parents groups have sought to suppress The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and in recent years the Harry Potter series has been attacked because it promotes witchcraft. Another book that is frequently a source of contention is Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It is often described as the first great novel of American literature, and yet it also carries 219 instances of the N word. The characters that use it are undoubtedly racist by modern standards, but the book itself-the story of an escaped slave -is far more humane than the people it describes.
In Black Watch, the contentious word is 'c**t' which the characters use routinely. C-bombs are dropped into conversation with far more regularity than the sound of actual bombs falling on the Basra military compound where the play is set. Sometimes, the word seems benign, as if the soldiers think it is synonymous with 'man' or 'person'. But this is not always the case, and often it is deployed as an insult. The c-word has a sexist history and meaning and there is no escape from that legacy.
Worse, the characters talk constantly about various sex acts with the women they have met, and use derogatory language about gay men. There is no denying that the characters are offensive. Perhaps they will corrupt the morals of our young people? Will the swearing instil negative values in those who read and watch the play?
In all these attempts to shield young eyes from bad words-whether its Huckleberry Finn, or Black Watch-there sits an implication that children cannot grasp the full meaning of the text. For primary school children, there might be some merit to that argument, but it is patronising when applied to teenagers studying for Highers. Last year, 16 and 17 year-olds in Scotland were asked to vote on the complex question of Scottish Independence. To suggest that these same citizens cannot be trusted to read about characters doing offensive things, is just bizarre.
Moreover, drawing a distinction between what a character says in a play, and the playwright's message, is surely the very essence of literature studies. In a classroom, the offensive words are not presented alone, but within a highly specific context that a teacher must explain. Indeed, I would suggest that a school is the best place to uncover that context. Those who say that the kids can always read it at home if they want are denying them the chance of a deeper understanding of the play and the issues it raises.
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