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DIGBY LORD JONES THOUGHTS FOR OCTOBER...


Take a pinch of White Man Wrap him up in Black Skin Add a touch of Blue Blood And a little biddy bit of Red Indian Boy


Oh like curly Latin Kinkies Oh Lordy, Lordy mixed with yellow Chinkies yeah You know you lump it all together And you got a recipe for a get along scene Oh what a beautiful dream If it could only come true, you know you know.


What we need is a great big Melting Pot.........” 86


So starts the Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway song Melting Pot by Blue Mink with Madeleine Bell on lead vocals which was released at the very end of the Sixties and reached Number Three in the UK Charts in the first week of 1970; a plaintive call for racial harmony, reaching out through the most effective medium of the time to a generation whom the world most certainly needed to be more racially and sectorally tolerant than their mothers and fathers.


Do the words grate today? Would they be in a 21st century vocabulary? Do they make you sit up and think? Yes, on all counts. Maddie Bell (now in her mid- seventies) is still touring and Melting Pot still sends out its important message to a new generation (through her distinctive voice and style) who still cheer her before it, during it and as she leaves the stage.


And then, just a few weeks ago, a single person complained to the media watchdog Ofcom about those lyrics ...and on the strength of just one single complaint...it has been removed from radio stations’ playlists, effectively banning it through censorship.


Forgive me while I reflect on the fact that the lunatics may now really be in charge of the asylum! It’s not as if the song


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is played ten times a day on mainstream radio and on every TV show for God’s sake!


Anti-Semitic hate pours out through social media channels and little is done by Officialdom...and yet a Sixties happy cry for racial harmony gets banned because one person is evidently offended (or possibly complained because they felt someone somewhere might be offended).


Why don’t those who can and should – those in power or those capable of making decisions that affect us all in one way or another – stand up to complainants and not just give in at the first whiff of grapeshot? Vice-Chancellors at universities, boards of public bodies, big companies and, of course, politicians of every hew…they all duck, genuflect in grovelling apology and keep their heads firmly down when a loud but one-sided, often bigoted, small minority, not always in possession of all the facts, kick up a bit of a stink & make a loud noise.


What happened to common sense?What happened to someone just for once championing the quiet, but increasingly frustrated majority? (A group in our country that has so very few outlets for their frustrations that when they do get the chance to show what they feel – surely you don’t need me to observe on one of the reasons for the Brexit vote).


BUSINE SS LORD DIGBY JONE S


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