Is Morrisey a racist again?

cymrococh · November 29, 2007

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/11/mozgate.html

Consider these two statements:

While, to the immigrant, entry to this country was admission to privileges and opportunities... the impact upon the existing population was very different. For reasons which they could not comprehend, and in pursuance of a decision by default, on which they were never consulted, they found themselves made strangers in their own country."

"The gates of England are flooded. The country's been thrown away."

The first is taken from the late MP Enoch Powell's notorious "Rivers of Blood" speech to the Conservative Political Centre on April 20, 1968.

The second is attributed to Morrissey, on the cover of this week's NME magazine and under the headline "Big Mouth Strikes Again.... On dear, not again". At the heart of it is an extraordinary kerfuffle over immigration between Britain's respected veteran music publication and one of pop music's most widely-loved veteran Mancunians.

The background is this:

Following their recent Love Music, Hate Racism campaign the NME planned to give away a free Morrissey single to coincide with an interview with the ex-Smith in the paper. NME journo and Guardian blog contributor Tim Jonze (a Smiths fan whose photo of himself outside Salford Lads Club appears on the blog) met the man.

During the interview, Morrissey apparently made some remarks about immigration. Jonze conducted a second - telephone - interview in which the remarks were not only repeated but expanded upon. Then the proverbial hit the fan. The Morrissey-sanctioned fan website true-to-you.net carries some eye-watering (often legal) correspondence between Morrissey's management and NME editor Conor McNicholas.

The management accuse "the eNeMEy" of a "hatchet job", resisting attempts to stop publication, and point out Morrissey's "antiracist" songs such as Irish Blood, English Heart and I Will See You In Faraway Places.

The NME editor says the paper are "not accusing Morrissey of racism," but says his comments are "unreasonably skewed towards immigration" and are "unhelpful at a time of great tensions." To further inflame or muddy the issue, writer Jonze has disowned what he says is a "rewritten" piece and asked for his name to be removed - bizarrely, the story carries the credit "Interview - Tim Jonze; Words - NME".

So what are Morrissey's comments?

A music-based interview suddenly veers from chat about the industry and Johnny Marr to ask Mozzer (who lives in Rome, an immigrant there as his Irish parents once were into the North West) if he'd consider moving back to Britain.

Morrissey:" ... [W]ith the issue of immigration, it's very difficult because although I don't have anything against people from other countries, the higher the influx into England the more the British identity disappears. If you travel to Germany, it's still absolutely Germany. If you travel to Sweden, it still has a Swedish identity. But travel to England and you have no idea where you are... If you walk through Knightsbridge you'll hear every accent apart from an English accent."

Cue NME outrage and branding of Morrissey as a "Tory."

As the paper points out, this is not the first "immigration" controversy involving Moz and NME. In the 1990s the parties fell out after Morrissey was accused of "flirting with disaster" and racist imagery after draping himself in the Union Jack onstage. Such accusations were never levelled at Noel Gallagher and the Spice Girls, although in the latest interview NME again tackle Morrissey about the "ambiguous" lyrics of the song Bengali in Platforms and the notorious line "Life is hard enough when you belong here." To which he retorts that the song is written from the viewpoint of a "protagonist", who "didn't belong here." Annoyingly, no further clarification is sought or proffered.

To further muddy the issue, unlike Powell's largely venomous, racially-slanted speech, Morrissey's follow-up interview comments consist pretty much of what you'd expect of any reader of this newspaper.

Explicitly denying that immigration is the reason he doesn't want to live in Britain, he damns this country over the cost of living and the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, admits that managed immigration "enriches" the country, says his favourite actor and singer are from Israel and Iraq, says he finds racism "very silly" and supports the Love Music Hate Racism campaign. Indeed, he wanted the slogan on the (now withdrawn by NME) free single.

Although the use of language like "the gates are flooded, anybody can have access to England" is perhaps unfortunate when taken out of context, in the context of the interview his position is remarkably similar to that adopted by all three mainstream political parties in this country - that immigration is beneficial but shouldn't be a free for all, nor should it be contrary to the retention of a firm and recognisably British national and cultural identity. Without wishing to sound like his hero Kenneth Williams, the latter is the central thrust of Morrissey's position.

In fact, as NME know full well, the singer has been hankering back to a nostalgic, almost mythical England of tea rooms and bowler hats as long ago as the Smiths. He has displayed infuriatingly Philistine tendencies in unwelcome statements like "All reggae is vile".

But while he may be old-fashioned, reactionary and remarkably, stubbornly resistant to our changing world and probably shouldn't have allowed himself to be embroiled in all this again, I am not convinced that he is anything more dangerous than his own famous description of himself as an "arcane old wardrobe".

I agree with NME that in the current climate Morrissey's comments - and certainly, the way they have been sensationalised - are "unhelpful", so why are they a) prompted in interview and b) splashed across the cover of the paper?

I'm sure NME will benefit from the extra sales. However, if Morrissey can be pilloried for expressing similar views to David Cameron, is it any wonder he prefers to live abroad?

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/11/...ian_doesnt.html

Morrissey has given an interview to the NME stirring up the whiff of racism that dogged him through the 90s. In a series of clumsy remarks on immigration, the former Smiths singer said that England's identity has been "thrown away", and that "the gates are flooded". The magazine's assertion that an Asian Morrissey fan might be offended by such inflammatory commments was given short shrift. "I don't think they're inflammatory," he argued, "they're a statement of fact."

It's not easy being an Asian indie fan. In the corner of London where I grew up, no one had heard of The Smiths. It was much cooler to be into Public Enemy, Duran Duran or anyone else, really. When you went to gigs, you were surrounded by fey white boys with long fringes, watching fey white boys with long fringes play guitars. But I fitted in: what else is indie pop but music for people who don't feel they belong? Which is one way of describing being an Asian kid in a grey outer-London suburb.

The Smiths were a simple, uncomplicated love affair: Hatful of Hollow the first record I bought, There is a Light ... a teenage anthem. I loved the bitter humour in their lyrics. Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now made me smile, not cry.

But then came Morrissey's solo career. Bengali in Platforms had a lyric I just tuned out: "Life is hard enough when you belong here ..." Well, yes, I suppose I could buy the argument that he had a particular protagonist in mind when he wrote that. That he wasn't thinking of an entire race. Still, the son of Irish immigrants should have known better. I suppose I just blanked out his appearance draped in the union flag at Finsbury Park. I dealt with it by not listening to Morrissey any more, confining myself to the Smiths records I had loved in more innocent times.

But the latest gaffe is probably one too many. The complaint that Britain is losing itself is the classic whinge of an expat - no more serious than that - but there comes a time when you can't listen to music made by someone whose views you find repugnant. Indie music is supposed to champion outsiders, not pour scorn on them. "Life is hard enough when you belong here ... " When he said he had someone in mind, I didn't know he meant me.

Des · November 29, 2007

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