Be strong: bogeyman the offence hates truth

Theatre and film director Sean Mathias fears the policing of language will force all to work from text books

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IN 1895 Oscar Wilde wrote a character in The Importance of Being Earnest named Cecily, who uttered these words: "When I see a spade I call it a spade." To which another character responded: "I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade." At that time the phrase was a term referring to speaking truths, calling things out as they ought to be called.

But by the end of the Twenties a spade had become a derogatory slur against African Americans. Just a decade later "stay woke" was a lyric in a song inspired by the wrongly-accused Scottsboro Boys. It was a term advising African Americans to be alert towards pending trouble, particularly any sort of racial or social injustice.

Now woke has a whole new and other meaning and mostly serves to polarise the Left and Right. the school yard where I grew up in Wales this little ditty was thrown around like an old rugby ball: "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me". Such bravado appealed to the child terrified of being in a punch-up. Could words, with their often devilish ferocity, really protect? Or do we use words to conceal fear?

"Words word words" wrote William Shakespeare, spoken by his Hamlet, who suspected everyone at court of using words to lie and manipulate. In our age of enlightenment is there really an "awakening" taking place, or are we all using words as political weaponry to censor one another? 

By the mid-Seventies, inspired by a group of dazzling older friends, I was marching in my first gay pride. I felt a mixture of excitement and humiliation as we chanted through the streets like wild animals released from the jungle, gawped at, though often cheered.