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From durham.academia.edu <\/a><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The other day I discovered that my old alma mater, Peebles High School in the Scottish Borders, had a Wikipedia entry<\/a>.\u00a0 Near the end of it was a \u2018notable alumni\u2019 section.\u00a0 I reacted with a disgruntled \u201cOh God, him<\/em>,\u201d when I saw listed among those notable alumni \u2018Tim Luckhurst, journalist and academic\u2019.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Minutes later, I headed over to the Guardian\u2019s website to check the news headlines.\u00a0 It seemed a mighty coincidence when I started reading a story<\/a> under the headline DURHAM HEAD STEPS BACK AFTER CALLING STUDENTS \u2018PATHETIC\u2019 AT ROD LIDDLE EVENT and discovered that the head in question, the principal of Durham University\u2019s South College, was none other than Tim Luckhurst \u2013 that distinguished journalistic and academic graduate mentioned in Peebles High School\u2019s Wikipedia entry.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n During the mid-to-late 1970s, Tim was a few years ahead of me at school.\u00a0 He was a well-kent figure, lanky, curly-haired, lugubrious-faced and sloping around the place in a combat jacket and a T-shirt saying LEGALISE CANNABIS \u2013 in those permissive times at Peebles High you weren\u2019t obliged to wear a school uniform.\u00a0 To my mates and I he was known contemptuously\u00a0 as \u2018Chairman Mao\u2019.\u00a0 I think he spoke to me just once, at a careers evening being held in the school.\u00a0 I was about to go into a classroom where the affable Atholl Innes, then editor of local newspaper the Peeblesshire News, was dispensing advice to young people who were interested in becoming journalists.\u00a0 Out of that classroom emerged Tim and, to me, he declared emphatically, \u201cWell, I know what I <\/em>want to be!\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Probably Tim had already resolved to become a journalist and Atholl Innes had been preaching to the already-converted.\u00a0 But I sometimes wonder if he hadn\u2019t<\/em> made up his mind until entering that classroom and his meeting with Athol Innes had been a moment of revelation \u2013 \u201cYes, newspapers,\u201d Tim had cried, \u201cthat\u2019s the life for me!\u201d\u00a0 If the latter is the case, I can only say, \u201cAtholl\u2026\u00a0 You created a monster.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Incidentally, that Tim had to attend a lowly comprehensive school like Peebles High, up in the windy wilds of North Britain, full of horrible little oiks like myself, still rankles with the man.\u00a0 Writing for the Guardian<\/a> in 2010 he quoted Ellen Wilkinson, Secretary of State for Education in the post-war British Labour government, as saying of her childhood in non-selective schooling in Manchester: \u201cThe top few pupils were intelligent and could mop up facts like blotting paper, but we were made to wait for the rest of the huge classes\u2026\u00a0 We wanted to stretch our minds but were merely a nuisance.\u201d\u00a0 Tim noted sourly, \u201cThirty years later I experienced comparable misery at my Scottish comprehensive.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n From the Peeblesshire News<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I should point out that although it denied Tim the chance to stretch his fabulous mind and soak up facts like a sheet of super-absorbent blotting paper, Peebles High School must have done something for his education.\u00a0 In fact, it was good enough to get him into Cambridge University.\u00a0 At Cambridge, incidentally, according to one Luckhurst-bio<\/a> I\u2019ve found online, \u201c\u2026he played bass guitar in Tony Tiger and the Frosties.\u201d \u00a0I know it\u2019s wrong to judge bands by their names alone, but Tony Tiger and the Frosties sound<\/em>\u00a0like the most horrible thing to have strutted onstage on the Oxbridge music scene since the early 1970s, when a student band called the Ugly Rumours<\/a> featured one Tony Blair as their frontman.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I suspect the disdain Tim feels for his alma mater in Peebles is mutual.\u00a0 I recall several years back chatting to one of my old teachers, now a sweet little pensioner, when Tim\u2019s name somehow cropped up in the conversation. \u00a0The teacher underwent a startling metamorphosis, hands becoming clenched and claw-like, face dark and scowling, and blurted wrathfully, \u201cTim is just an ARSEHOLE!\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n During the 1980s and 1990s, Tim served as press officer for the Labour Party\u2019s then-sizeable cabal of Scottish MPs, including Shadow Secretary State for Scotland Donald Dewar; stood unsuccessfully as a Labour candidate in Roxburgh and Berwickshire in a general election; and worked for the BBC.\u00a0 I\u2019d forgotten that the guy existed until February 2000, when he was announced as the new editor of my Dad\u2019s favourite newspaper, Edinburgh\u2019s venerable and respected Scotsman.\u00a0 Actually, by then, the Scotsman was a lot less respected.\u00a0 It\u2019d been acquired by the Barclay Brothers\u2019 Press Holdings Group and for several years had suffered under the crass stewardship of Andrew Neil, the Group\u2019s editor-in-chief.\u00a0 Tim lasted as Scotsman editor only until May that same year, when he was replaced by Rebecca Hardy<\/a>, whom I knew from a previous phase of my life too \u2013 but that\u2019s a story for another day.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a9 BBC \/ From the Guardian<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n In 2013, Tim and his old boss at the Scotsman, Andrew Neil, had a rammy<\/a> on twitter.\u00a0 Tim contradicted Neil on something and Neil replied, \u201cAnd I made you Editor of the The Scotsman.\u00a0 Most stupid decision ever.\u00a0 But at least I fired you six days later.\u201d\u00a0 When Tim countered with, \u201cWould you care to retract that statement, Andrew?\u00a0 It might be wise,\u201d Neil retorted, \u201cBring it on.\u00a0 And let me pay to straighten your teeth.\u201d\u00a0 For the record, I\u2019ll print what the Evening Standard said<\/a> about the row: \u201c\u2026Professor Luckhurst was not \u2018sacked after six days\u2019 from the Scotsman, as Neil claims, but resigned due to ill health after four months.\u201d \u00a0And I assume that, following the debacle<\/a> of his involvement with GB News, Andrew Neil now considers giving Tim the Scotsman\u2019s editorship only his second<\/em> most stupid decision ever.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Following the Scotsman, Tim spent seven years as political editor of the Scottish edition of the Daily Mail (which, with hindsight, was surely a good fit for him).\u00a0 Then he entered academia with a job as Professor of Journalism at the University of Kent, and then joined Durham University in 2019.\u00a0 Despite having been a one-time backroom operative with the Labour Party, his politics by this time had clearly shifted rightwards.\u00a0 However, I\u2019ll hazard a guess and say he views himself as a moderate, old-school Tory rather than a ranting, frothing, hard-right one. \u00a0From the occasional glances I\u2019ve had at his twitter feed, he seems impressed neither by Brexit nor by the antics of Boris Johnson.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n That said, his moderate Tory-ness stops at the English-Scottish border.\u00a0 One step north of that border and his moderate Tory-ness changes to rabid Unionism.\u00a0 He might once have worked for Donald Dewar, viewed as the \u2018father\u2019 of the Scottish devolution settlement and the devolved Scottish parliament, but by 2001 he was demanding<\/a> in a Guardian opinion piece that Whitehall consider abolishing the parliament, Dewar\u2019s baby: \u201cScotland needs Whitehall at least to threaten repeal.\u00a0 To demand less in the present climate would be unpatriotic.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n That article was mild, though, compared with one<\/a> he wrote for the New Statesman that same year.\u00a0 Entitled SCOTLAND RETURNS TO THE DARK AGES, he used it to blame devolution for releasing a tsunami of evils like homophobia, sectarianism, misogyny, racism and, er, the banning of fox-hunting.\u00a0 In the civilised days before devolution unleashed the Scots\u2019 inner beastliness, he wrote, such things had been \u2018diluted by the soothing balm of the British state\u2019.\u00a0 Strangely enough, that article is no longer available on the New Statesman\u2019s website.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Meanwhile, his twitter feed has been punctuated by tone-deaf pronouncements on Scotland that surely only appeal to a minority of ultra-Unionist Scots for whom 1690<\/a> is as important a year as 1707<\/a>.\u00a0 I remember him expressing horror at the Scottish government punting a few million pounds towards the promotion of the Gaelic language; or retweeting a video of Ross Thomson \u2013 the demented hard-Brexiting, Boris-worshipping Tory ex-MP for Aberdeen South \u2013 professing his undying love for the United Kingdom amid a thicket of Union Jacks.\u00a0 I wonder what will happen if Scotland becomes independent.\u00a0 Poor Tim\u2019s head will probably explode like the guy\u2019s head did<\/a> at the beginning of David Cronenberg\u2019s Scanners<\/em> (1981).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But onto 2021.\u00a0 Tim landed himself in hot water when, as head of South College at Durham University, he invited his old mate and colleague Rod Liddle to give a speech at a \u2018college formal\u2019 event in early December.\u00a0 He and Liddle have known each other since 1985 and worked together on BBC Radio 4\u2019s Today<\/em><\/a> programme.\u00a0 Indeed, in 2010, Tim wrote a Guardian piece<\/a> in support of Liddle\u2019s candidacy to become editor of the Independent newspaper.\u00a0 This was a prospect that alarmed many readers of the reasonably-liberal Independent because Liddle had earned himself a reputation for being misogynistic, homophobic and racist.\u00a0 Pretty much all the things Tim once accused the Scottish parliament of being.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n From twitter.com\/sunapology<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Liddle is a \u2018columnist\u2019 \u2013 i.e., gobshite-provocateur \u2013 with the Spectator, Sun and Sunday Times and even by the standards of the gobshite-provocateurs that infest the pages of Britain\u2019s mostly right-wing press, forever seeking new ways to upset people, the charge-sheet against him is disproportionately long.\u00a0 Here\u2019s just a few of his low-points.\u00a0 He was a pig<\/a> towards Labour politician Harriet Harman.\u00a0 (\u201cSo \u2013 Harriet Harman, then.\u00a0 Would you?\u00a0 I mean after a few beers obviously, not while you were sober.\u201d\u00a0 In his Guardian puff-piece about Liddle, Tim euphemistically described this remark as \u2018not gallant\u2019.)\u00a0 He mocked another female Labour MP, Rosie Duffield, for speaking out about verbal abuse and humiliation she\u2019d received from a former partner \u2013 \u201cthe sobbing and oppressed Rosie \u2018MeToo\u2019 Duffield\u201d.\u00a0 He\u2019s complained about the Conservative party not being Islamophobic enough and suggested<\/a> that elections be held on days when \u201cMuslims are forbidden to do anything on pain of hell.\u201d\u00a0 He\u2019s raved<\/a> about \u201cblack savages\u201d.\u00a0 He\u2019s dismissed<\/a> Welsh language activists as \u201cmiserable, seaweed-munching, sheep-bothering pinch-faced hill-tribes\u201d.\u00a0 He\u2019s explained<\/a>: \u201c\u2026the one thing that stopped me from being a teacher was that I could not remotely conceive of not trying to shag the kids.\u201d\u00a0 And so on, and so forth.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When Liddle stood up at the event and launched into a speech filled with his predictably reactionary schtick \u2013 jokes about sex workers, comments about trans-women having \u2018long, dangling penises\u2019 and the charming hypothesis that British colonialism never did anyone any harm because its subjects weren\u2019t intelligent anyway \u2013 members of the student audience started walking out.\u00a0 Tim, tigerish about defending everyone\u2019s right to freedom of expression, and everyone\u2019s right to have Rod Liddle inflicted upon them, reportedly shouted at them that they were \u2018pathetic\u2019.\u00a0 There\u2019s also video footage<\/a> in circulation on twitter showing Tim arguing with students after the event.\u00a0 Meanwhile, his wife Dorothy Luckhurst, who might<\/em> have been slightly over-refreshed at the time, can be seen shouting at those students things like, \u201cI think you are an arse\u2026\u00a0 Arse, arse, arse, arse, arse\u2026!\u00a0 Arse, arse, arse, arse, arse\u2026!\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n From twitter.com\/RDuskedd<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Did Tim honestly believe that he could invite Liddle onto a university campus and there wouldn\u2019t be trouble?\u00a0 He must be a bit thick.\u00a0 Or maybe he was deliberately trying to stir up a hornet\u2019s nest \u2013 which, if that was the case, he succeeded in doing.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I\u2019m actually not a fan of censorship by the left, in the form of \u2018no-platforming\u2019, \u2018cancel culture\u2019 or whatever you want to call it.\u00a0 That\u2019s because I\u2019d always assumed censorship was an instrument used by the right and there was no excuse for the left to use it too.\u00a0 But there\u2019s a time and place for debates where extreme views, offensive to many, can be aired and argued with.\u00a0 And the event at South College was clearly neither the time nor place.\u00a0 For one thing, the attendees had paid ten pounds<\/a> a head to be there and hadn\u2019t been warned in advance that the entertainment included Rod \u2018shag the kids\u2019 Liddle.\u00a0 If I\u2019d been present, I\u2019d have walked out too when Liddle started spewing his crap at me \u2013 just as I\u2019d have done in the 1980s or 1990s if I\u2019d bought a ticket for what I expected to be a mild-mannered comedy night and then Bernard Manning had lumbered on stage and started cracking jokes about \u2018darkies\u2019 and \u2018poofs\u2019 and \u2018Paddies\u2019.\u00a0 And incidentally, isn\u2019t walking out a legitimate form of expression in itself?\u00a0 Especially when, as with Liddle\u2019s audience, you don\u2019t have access to a microphone.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It\u2019s fascinating how Tim, and the whole media \/ political establishment that he\u2019s a member of, claim to be champions of free speech when there\u2019s a danger that people might stop listening to right-wing establishment opinions.\u00a0 Yet it\u2019s pretty difficult in Britain, if you interact with the media in anyway at all, not<\/em> to be assailed relentlessly by right-wing opinions.\u00a0 There\u2019s the front-page headlines of reactionary rags like the Sun, Mail and Express screaming at you daily from the newsstands.\u00a0 There\u2019s the now completely cowed and broken-backed BBC parroting the right-wing agenda of the press when it does its morning newspaper round-ups.\u00a0 There\u2019s a seemingly endless parade of right-wing pundits from Nigel Farage downwards (and Farage is pretty far down already) getting platforms on TV news channels.\u00a0 If Tim and co. are so desperate about promoting freedom of expression and making people experience views they wouldn\u2019t otherwise hear, shouldn\u2019t they be trying to expose hardcore readers of the Sun, Mail and Express to the opinions of Owen Jones, George Monbiot, Laurie Penny, John Pilger, Naomi Klein and Noam Chomsky?\u00a0 Well, they should, but I\u2019m not holding my breath.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Currently, following a storm of Liddle-related protests, Tim has been parked on the naughty step<\/a> at Durham University while his employers decide what action, if any, should be taken against him.\u00a0 But even if he\u2019s shown the door, I\u2019m sure that a lucrative future awaits him at one of Britain\u2019s countless right-wing news and \/ or opinion outlets, which will take him to its bosom as a martyr to the cause of freedom of (right-wing) speech and as a blameless victim of horrible, lefty, woke, cancel culture.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Now that his old nemesis Andrew Neil has left the building, I could even see him ending up at GB News.\u00a0 He could form a double act with Neil Oliver<\/a>, where they both whinge and gurn about the ghastliness of modern-day Scotland under the leadership of Nicola Sturgeon and how the Scots need their uncivilised natures to be \u2018diluted by the soothing balm of the British state\u2019.\u00a0 Meanwhile, Tim\u2019s better half could get a gig there as well.\u00a0 Perhaps Talking Pints with Nigel Farage<\/a><\/em>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From durham.academia.edu The other day I discovered that my old alma mater, Peebles High School in the Scottish Borders, had a Wikipedia entry.\u00a0 Near the end of it was a \u2018notable alumni\u2019 section.\u00a0 I reacted with a disgruntled \u201cOh God, him,\u201d when I saw listed among those notable alumni \u2018Tim Luckhurst, journalist and … <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bloodandporridge.co.uk\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/PHS.jpg\")
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