Standing with Salman

There is a lot going on behind the scenes at the Royal Society of Literature (RSL), as reported this week in The Times and written up in detail on the FSU website. Several current fellows of the RSL, including three former presidents, say that the organisation’s refusal to take public stands on authors Kate Clanchy and Sir Salman Rushdie has called into question its support for a writer’s right to freedom of expression. Kate Clanchy won the Orwell Prize in 2020 but suffered the ire of an online mob when activists discovered a handful of sentences that deployed what they described as ‘racial stereotypes’. Ahead of a speech in August 2022, Sir Salman was attacked on stage by an Islamist sympathiser and stabbed multiple times, in the chest, liver, hand, face and neck. The response from the RSL was best summed up by Sir Salman himself in a post on X, “Just wondering if the Royal Society of Literature is ‘impartial’ about attempted murder? (Asking for a friend.)” For our other main segment, we discuss Army Guidance that encourages soldiers to avoid Christian elements in Acts of Remembrance and says that Acts of Remembrance should be separated from Remembrance Services. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised, given the 93 diversity networks now active across the Ministry of Defence.

‘That's Debatable!’ is edited by Jason Clift.