Sir Winston Churchill Surrenders to the Nazis at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival
“If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.”
Sir Winston Churchill
As he had promised, Mel Smith became the first performer at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival to openly defy Scotland’s draconian smoking ban yesterday.
The defiance was short-lived.
The comedian, who is playing Winston Churchill in the play Allegiance, ostentatiously lit and puffed on a cigar onstage while In full Winston Churchill costume at a photocall in Edinburgh’s Assembly Rooms. He ignored calls from his producer not to light up and vented his fury at the Smoking, Health and Social Care (Scotland) Act of 2005, which came into force in March.
He suggested that the audience could be warned before the show: “A third of a Romeo y Julieta will be smoked during this performance. If you find that offensive, f*** off.”
That is the good news in the global war against the New Prohibition movement. I wish that I could simply stop there and allow you to bask in the warm glow of victory.
That is not how things ended, unfortunately.
More details from sources at BBC News, the Sunday Times, and other sources below the fold.
“No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism.”
Sir Winston Churchill
Speaking today, Smith said he was “apopleptic” to find out just 30 minutes before going on stage that Edinburgh City Council had sent officials to watch the performance and that if he smoked onstage they were going to completely shut down the theatre. The authorities also indicated that they would levy fines of up to £5,000 (approximately US $9,500.00), and that the theatre would lose its entertainment licence for the Fringe Festival for good.
William Burdett Coutts, the theatre owner, said that the venue, producers and Smith could all be fined. “We have just been visited by the chief enforcement officer,” said Coutts, “who has told me if Mel Smith smokes on stage then I will (personally) be given a £1,000 fine and he will shut down the entire premises.
“He said he would also never give me a (Fringe) licence again so I’m in an extremely serious situation.”
Brian Gilbert, the show’s director, said that he would not intervene if Smith wanted to smoke. “He hates the ban,” he said. A little bit of smoke is not going to jeopardise people’s health. If you’re out on the street you get much worse from the pollution.”
Daniel Jules, Smith’s producer, said that the actor had tried using stage cigars, but they were unconvincing. “It is so much a part of the character,” said Jules.
“My rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them.”
Sir Winston Churchill
One theatre owner told performers that he would support their right to smoke. Tomek Borkowy, of the Hill Street Theatre, said the ban reminded him of the censorship he experienced while living in Poland during the Cold War. No one from Edinburgh City Council was available for comment.
Several other Fringe producers have hinted that they intend to flout the ban.
A Scottish Executive spokesman said “realistic alternatives” could be used for the purposes of theatre shows.
Smith, who is a cigar smoker off-stage, criticised the extreme nature of the new law. “It would have delighted Adolf Hitler,” he said, referring to the Nazi dictator’s dislike of second hand smoke — a concept that originated in the ideologically-motivated pseudo-science of Nazi Germany.
“Congratulations, Scotland,” said the embittered Smith.
Ironically, Winston Churchill himself warned of precisely this kind of police-state evolution in Great Britain during the 1945 general election in that country.
He predicted that a Labour victory would necessitate “some sort of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance.” He feared socialism could not function “without a political police” and gave warning that it would set out to mold people’s conduct as well as their standard of living.
Sixty one years later, restraints placed on a depiction of the British leader at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe have shown that Sir Winston was prophetic in his insight.
The reputation for artistic freedom that is worth so much to Edinburgh has been damaged. Possibly damaged beyond recovery.
Scotland is becoming accustomed to living in a restrictive police state. Before the smoking ban came land “reform” legislation that permits seizure of private property by the government. Politicians spend lavishly on self-serving public information campaigns to justify their social manipulation and control, and employ a growing army of hacks, flacks and flunkies to stand between them and the electorate they supposedly serve. Promises made during election campaigns are taken seriously by no one.
The next target of revived Puritanism in Scotland appears to be alcohol, with a movement underway to restrict the number of drinks that an individual may buy in a Pub, and to limit the way alcohol is sold in markets and stores.
The United States is becoming accustomed to the same thing, thanks to recent Supreme Court decisions on private property rights and widespread anti-smoking legislation. The same group in this nation who successfully targeted smoking has already said they are looking at alcohol, fast-food, and even vitamins as things the general public needs to be protected against.
When will these Western Ayatollahs issue handbooks for each of us, prescribing dietary dos and don’ts, along with intricate directions for mandatory daily exercise and intricate details of personal hygeine?
“‘I have never developed indigestion from eating my words.”
Sir Winston Churchill
Churchill was right.
The new Gestapo has arrived in the West in full force, zealous to protect us from ourselves. It began as a a benign, parental force. In the last few years, it has shown its true, intolerant face.
It takes great courage to stand against the new Nazis, and a willingness to sacrifice at levels unseen in our societies since the days of World War II. It is often easier to face the enemy with a foreign face than the enemy within. It remains to be seen whether this generation will allow the freedoms that an elder generation fought and died for be lost to our own indifference and timidity.
Smith, who had vowed to continue to defy the ban, and light up during his performances, backed down at the last moment after notification that the authorities were in the audience and ready to carry out their threats against the theatre.
During this morning’s performance, his Havana cigar was in his hand onstage…but remained unlit.
After the performance, the actor smoked out of the window at the theatre in a muted act of token defiance.
Sir Winston lost this round.
“Never give in–never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
Sir Winston Churchill
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Tags: cigar news, Cigar People, cigar smokers, cigar smoking, edinburgh fringe festival, great britain, prohibition, religious fundamentalism, scotland, smoking ban, smoking in public, uk, united kingdom, winston churchill
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Tom
August 8th, 2006 00:12
Sounds like Lenny Bruce, except Lenny didn’t give in and was arrested. That was about obscenity in his comedy act, but it could have been about any other “lifestyle” that one group of people would rather not have any other group of people engage in, whether or not it affects them personally. Legislated morality is not new. I don’t think I would be willing to smoke in the face of the law and go to jail for it, but it does remind me of the price of liberty. It ain’t cheap.
Jon
October 16th, 2006 21:51
At least you can still smoke in jail. For the meantime.