Censorship in Hastings?

Hot reporter Joe Fearn expected a discussion on offensive literature to turn into heated debate, but talk of banned books with shoppers and staff in Waterstones in Priory Shopping Centre in Hastings, was warm and friendly, and there was more laughter than anything else. However, Joe also found that when he showed shoppers the book by local author Tom O’Brien (pictured above), many of them were actually in favour of a ban, because the front cover depicts a photograph of a man standing in Bottle Alley, once a well known hangout for alcoholics and the ‘down and outs’ of Hastings (right).

This attitude is somewhat surprising, since Waterstones are happy to stock the book, and the man on the cover is local author Brian Charles Harding, who wrote the popular book  My Wretched Alcoholism: This Damn Puppeteer (Amherst Publishing) which provides the inspiration for Tom O’Brien’s play, now published as the book Down Bottle Alley. Kay Green, editor of the Hastings based Circaidy Gregory Press, published Down Bottle Alley.

She told HOT, “I discovered Brian’s book at our book festival in Hastings, where we were fortunate enough to be visited by the London Irish Theatre group who performed Down Bottle Alley, a play by Tom O’Brien, directed by John Dunne, based on Brian’s book My Wretched Alcoholism: This Damn Puppeteer.”

The half-hour performance was billed as “An important piece of issue theatre about the dangers of street drinking focusing on the story of Brian who started drinking as a young man to only later become a street drinker with chronic alcohol problems.”

Brian Charles Harding in Bottle Alley, holding a copy of his book which inspired Tom O'Brien's play. Photograph by Stuart Griffiths.

Kay Green comments of this encounter: “It was a tremendous event to witness, not least because the guy who started it all, Brian Harding, sat in the audience looking like a cleaned up version of the ‘down and outs’ Hastings people are well used to seeing down Bottle Alley. Yes, the place really exists. It’s an Art-Deco tunnel sort of creation built on St Leonards seafront for… for… well, I don’t know what it was designed for but its name, as it turns out, is perfect for the two things it came to be used for. And that is where Brian Harding spent his time, in the company of other ex-merchant seamen and other non-drawing-room types, most of whom, in one way or another, arrived there after following a long road that started with child abuse.”

HOT reporter Joe Fearn was also in the audience, and later became friends with both Kay Green and playwright Tom O’Brien, the author of Down Bottle Alley who is now a regular at F-ishtales Writers group, run by Joe Fearn on Thursdays at 1 O’ Clock in the upstairs room at The Hastings Trust in Robertson Street.

Tom O’Brien offers an author’s take on the situation: “I come from a country with a great tradition in censorship. It seemed that to be considered a writer of any merit in Ireland you first had to have your books banned. Brendan Behan/Borstal Boy, James Joyce/Ulysses, Patrick Kavanagh/The Great Hunger are to name but a few of the long list of writers/books banned in Ireland at one time or another.  Although I am not sure The Great Hunger was ever officially banned; yet the Gardai seized thousands of copies and burned them anyway!

Brian Charles Harding at home with the manuscript of his book. Photograph by Stuart Griffiths

“But that was over sixty years ago,  and I live in England these days, so it was quite surprising to hear of a supposed ban on my book Down Bottle Alley – all because certain people in Hastings didn’t like the image it was allegedly portraying. From my point of view it wasn’t portraying any particular image; all it was doing was stating the way things were/are in the town. The street drinkers may no longer drink down bottle alley, but that doesn’t mean they have gone away. All it means it that they have been moved on and they drink somewhere else in the town.”

But the story is not just about Hastings – those who think so are missing the point – because there are Bottle Alleys wherever you go. It could just as easily be Bradford or Bournemouth, or any other town you care to name. When John Healy wrote The Grass Arena – his brilliant book about the street drinkers in London back in the 1980s, there was an outcry about that too. But that didn’t make it any less true.  Indeed it was a savage indictment of a system that thinks the best way to deal with the problem is to move it on; out of sight out of mind.  Is that what Hastings tactics are too? Ignore it and hope it goes away. In the meantime don’t mention Bottle Alley – in case you upset the tourists with images of the grim reality!

Oscar Wilde said that books were never obscene, just either well written or not. So why exactly are outlets refusing to stock Tom O’Brien’s Down Bottle Alley, the book of the play performed by the London Irish Theatre group at the White Rock Hotel in 2010?

Kay Green told HOT, “I’m sure Down Bottle Alley isn’t on a hit-list at the Hastings Town Hall, and in fact Waterstones’ assistant manager tells me it’s still on their system and available to order, it’s just that people are thinking in terms of what’s ‘nice’ and what will ‘sell Hastings’ and rather missing the point that books are supposed to be ABOUT STUFF. It’s a shame that a lot of retailers see Down Bottle Alley as working against Hastings. I mean, Dickens isn’t exactly the Michelin Guide to London but people go to visit the places he wrote about anyway.”

Most great literature has been banned at one time or another. Gulliver’s Travels is a famous satirical novel by Jonathan Swift, but the work has also been banned for its displays of madness, public urination and other controversial topics. The book was originally censored because of the politically sensitive references Swift makes in his novel. It was also banned in Ireland for being “wicked and obscene.” William Makepeace Thackeray said of the book that it was “horrible, shameful, blasphemous, filthy in word, filthy in thought.”

You can buy Down Bottle Alley at Waterstone’s, but you may need to ask for it at the counter!
It is also available online from the publisher, Circaidy Gregory Press

A list of some banned books can be viewed here.

Also in: Hastings People