every smith
  • MS: Max Smith's blog
  • History to the Defeated
  • every smith: independent creative consultants
  • Words: Max - a brief bio
  • Sites to see

Leamington Letters #76: Grayling? Throw the book at him!

2/4/2014

9 Comments

 
Picture
Dangerous things, books.

Nazi Germany burned them. So too has Iran. Apartheid South Africa banned them and China is still doing so.

Reading exposes you to new ideas. Reading is a way out, up and forward. Illiteracy sentences you to a life of low income, misery and crime. It is no accident that, according to the National Literacy Trust, one in six of our prison population have difficulty reading and writing. 25% of young offenders have literacy skills which are below that of the average 7 year old.

So what is the rationale behind Justice Minister Chris Grayling’s ban on parcels containing books sent by family and friends to inmates?

Grayling, of course, has had access to pretty much any book he chose throughout his life. He attended the Royal Grammar School in High Wycombe, before moving to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, which – I can confirm - has a pretty decent library in its own right, and is only a gentle stroll through Clare to the University Library itself, a legal deposit library which is entitled to request a free copy of any and every book published in the UK and Ireland.

And as the first non-lawyer for more than 300 years to become Lord Chancellor, he surely knows the value of books and ‘book-learning’.

The problem is, Grayling regards reading as a privilege. He is entitled. Prisoners are not. The book ban is part of the creation of “a regime that is more Spartan unless you do the right thing”.  (By the by, as an historian, he should be aware that Sparta may have been a cruel and militaristic society, but it never banned the written word.)

To be fair, not all books are banned per se. The rubbish in the ill-stocked prison libraries will of course be available.  What will not be available is anything that you want to read or that friends recommend you read. Ricky Tomlinson has spoken movingly about being given a copy of The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists when serving a prison sentence in the 1970s. It changed his life. It changed who he was and who he has become.

Books can do that. Which is why they need to be freely available as a right to the very people who, as the statistics demonstrate, have been starved of them.

By withdrawing the opportunity for prisoners to read widely, Grayling is implicitly confirming that prisons under this government have lost even the pretence of being about rehabilitation.

The move has rightly been condemned by writers, prison reformers and everyone who believes that the majority of crime is the result of a lack of education and opportunity.

It is nasty, and peevish, and a reflection of a particular way of thinking which we have seen too often from this government.

Grayling and his privileged colleagues should be ashamed of themselves.

Today from the everysmith vault:  The megapod has been stuck in the Country genre for the last couple of days, revealing some great shows from Railroad Earth, Poco, Emmylou, Gram Parsons, NRPS, Flying Burito Brothers and Johnny Cash. Not minded to change it at the moment ….

9 Comments
Ray
2/4/2014 04:23:48

Agree absolutely. So egregious as you would say that it has united Salman Rushdie and Jeffery Archer in opposition. The Tomlinson piece in the Mirror was very moving.

Reply
Allan
2/4/2014 05:00:03

I guessed you would pick up on this. It does appear to be a singularly nasty piece of work from a singularly nasty piece of work. Who would have thought Sidney could produce such a man?

Reply
APole
2/4/2014 06:57:04

Books do furnish a cell.

Reply
MattS
2/4/2014 07:49:50

You have to ask, when has prison ever been seriously about rehabilitation? It was designed a millennium or so ago for punishment and it remains so. But we are obviously grateful to the Oxbridge Tories for reminding us of the original purpose. Bastards, all of them.

Reply
Laurie
2/4/2014 08:49:00

It would appear to have come out of nowhere. For forty years it has all been fine. And then Grayling suddenly comes up with this and is backed by Cameron, Clegg etc. It does seem to be a gratuitous and unnecessary move to add punishment on punishment to the detriment of rehabilitation. Can't explain it any other way.

Reply
CJ
2/4/2014 09:48:56

You're listening to some good stuff. Enjoy it before the likes of Grayling take that away too.

Reply
Cindy
3/4/2014 01:16:03

Great article. I wonder when the last time was that the judge had toured a prison. Or our Congressmen (in the US) have been in a school. It is easy to dictate without knowledge.

Reply
myers
3/4/2014 02:41:46

Books are the oxygen of life, Grayling should go outside, in central London and breath in the Sahara!

Reply
Charlotte Ford
3/4/2014 15:36:38

Surely the only constructive thing that imprisonment can offer is an opportunity for what used to be called self improvement, through the reading of books. Books that provide enlightenment, ideas, the notion of thought process, and that engage with inner dialogue. A moribund life can be turned around through the reading of books. Grayling is a mean-spirited and ignorant man if he seeks to with-hold books from prisoners and I wholeheartedly agree with you, Max. x

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

     Max Smith

    European writer, radical, restaurateur and Red Sox fan. 70-something husband, father, step-father. and grandfather. Resident in Warwick, England.

    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All
    Art
    Baseball
    Books
    Film
    Food + Drink
    French Letters
    Leamington Letters
    Media
    Music
    People
    Personal
    Politics
    Sport