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Renaming of ther John Peel Stage - article in the Daily Hate


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1 minute ago, Barry Fish said:

I used to really like him until when he died in 2004 and various journalists pointed out his past...

Back in 2004 the wider media circle and industry where still ignoring the issue...  Remember BBC Radio 1 being all boo hoo about it and the festival renaming the tent etc.  I found it then all a bit incredible.   Looking back - it was scandalous really.

Was boo hooed on here as far back as 2012

 

 

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7 minutes ago, Barry Fish said:

Only because you probably aren't looking for it...

Victims often to blame themsleves as well.  

Look 97% of women experience some sort of sexual assault but men think only a tiny portion of evil men do it. I assure you almost every man on this forum has probably done something at some point that has led to a woman feeling a bit shit about herself.  

I have no problem with the tent being renamed (but would rather it wasn't because the Daily Mail who is probably more responsible for young girls being groped more than John Peel ever was)  and if we are going to hold every person who plays Glastonbury to this standard I'll just say the future's bright, the futures female 😄 

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15 minutes ago, gigpusher said:

But is he talking about finding it frustrating at the time rather than him still wanting to shag a load of teenagers. I have no problem with whether his name is on the tent or not but I think we need to be careful about judging people of the past by standards from the present. 

I'd also much rather we tackle the crimes of the here and now in the first place. Unlike with Savile the only evidence of John Peel's crimes comes from John Peel himself. I'm not hearing from women who feel he exploited them. 

But are they the words of a changed man? The times had changed by then, and yet he doesn't strike a regretful tone at all. It's deeply creepy and I think part of the problem when actions that clearly aren't as overt as Saville etc are brushed away for being lesser offences. If the argument is that he was a changed man I don't buy it on this occasion.

For a festival like Glastonbury it seems very ill-judged not to change it.

Lovely to nickname your wife "pig" too.

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2 minutes ago, Nobby's Old Boots said:

Ugh. Why are some people making out that having sex with a 13 year old was somehow OK "back then".

Hate it when the argument goes in this direction.

I haven't seen anyone saying it was OK, but attitudes were different, and it wouldn't have been condemned in the same way it would be today, the context of the day is important when evaluating what happened. 

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1 minute ago, Neil said:

I haven't seen anyone saying it was OK, but attitudes were different, and it wouldn't have been condemned in the same way it would be today, the context of the day is important when evaluating what happened. 

Agreed, but the context of modern day is equally important in deciding how they're celebrated today.

Should all mention of him be stripped out and never spoken of again? Nope. But equally is it time that a stage named after him at a place like Glastonbury is re-evaluated? Yeah, probably.

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6 minutes ago, Barry Fish said:

Is it really 97% ?   Where did you get that number ?  That feels incredibly high...

But I accept the premises of the post that its far more wide spread and I think if we all gave it some though there is stuff we would do differently.  I know I would...    But there is a long gap between the stuff I regret and the stuff Peel has admitted to doing.

https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/97-of-women-in-the-uk/105940/ 

 

I'll be honest I think the 3% are in denial. I think every single woman in their lifetime would have multiple stories of assault and harassment. Not all are as serious as rape but unwanted sexual attention. 

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22 minutes ago, Quark said:

If you mean am I equating John Peel to Colston then no, I'm not. I'm not a monster!

I was trying to make the wider point about the principle, and whether it's appropriate for someone who did things that were "acceptable at the time" to be publicly celebrated or honoured when those things are viewed through the lens of the modern world.

The difference for me is whether there's a link between what they're being celebrated for and what their crime was. In Colston's case, he was being celebrated for things he would never have been able to do without slavery. The two are linked - in celebrating Colston's successes you unavoidably end up celebrating the "benefits" of slavery. 

Whereas with Peel, the two things aren't linked. He did great things for music, and also some morally very wrong things. But there's no stories of him, for example, sleeping with underage girls and then using his position to champion their music.

I'd still rename the tent, personally - this isn't a defence of Peel, just why I think the two are quite different things.

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1 minute ago, DeanoL said:

The difference for me is whether there's a link between what they're being celebrated for and what their crime was. In Colston's case, he was being celebrated for things he would never have been able to do without slavery. The two are linked - in celebrating Colston's successes you unavoidably end up celebrating the "benefits" of slavery. 

Whereas with Peel, the two things aren't linked. He did great things for music, and also some morally very wrong things. But there's no stories of him, for example, sleeping with underage girls and then using his position to champion their music.

I'd still rename the tent, personally - this isn't a defence of Peel, just why I think the two are quite different things.

A reasonable point. What are you doing on the internet? 😄

That is fair, but it was the best comparison I could think of.

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13 hours ago, K2SO said:

Fuck The Daily Mail

However, I do agree that it should be changed. There are plenty of other people it could be named after... Michael Eavis?

Or even for a similar reason to why it was named after John Peel, someone who pioneered new music. Maybe somebody like Steve Lamaq?

Honestly, the Steve Lamaq (or Lauren Laverne?) tent really isn't a bad shout. I agree it should be renamed. The festival should run a poll of potential options and let the fans vote.

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I think attitudes have changed in the last couple off decades and it is time to change the name and I say that as someone who admired John Peel professionally.

Then again The Who have played twice since then and Aerosmith nearly did.  If you are to draw a line (Aerosmith pun for you all there) you have to do it consistently and not book them again.

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11 minutes ago, Neil said:

I haven't seen anyone saying it was OK, but attitudes were different, and it wouldn't have been condemned in the same way it would be today, the context of the day is important when evaluating what happened. 

So therefore it's important that he wasn't repentant about it even into the early 00s, no? Because I'm confident in saying that having sex with children would have been condemned at that point.

We are talking about whether the tent should be renamed now, so today's context IS important, moreso than the context of the past because of everything that has happened between now and then. We can't burden the progress people are trying to make by continuously saying "but it was alright back then" when plenty of people won't have felt it was OK.

Yeah minstrel shows were fine back then, no one minded. Not true.

Yeah slavery was just accepted as the norm back then, no one minded. Not true.

It can't be excused any more.

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4 minutes ago, iwalker said:

I think attitudes have changed in the last couple off decades and it is time to change the name and I say that as someone who admired John Peel professionally.

Then again The Who have played twice since then and Aerosmith nearly did.  If you are to draw a line (Aerosmith pun for you all there) you have to do it consistently and not book them again.

That is a separate conversation about separating art from the artist.

Naming a tent after someone is very different to booking a band.

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12 minutes ago, Nobby's Old Boots said:

So therefore it's important that he wasn't repentant about it even into the early 00s, no? Because I'm confident in saying that having sex with children would have been condemned at that point.

Yup, but I also think that's who he was: utterly frank about everything. By 2004, most others had realised that it was pretty important not to mention that stuff any more. Hell, most of them knew well enough to not mention it at the time. Again, doesn't excuse it, but if someone thinks for a minute that the likes of the Stones or any rockstars who have talked openly about sleeping with groupies never slept with 15-year olds then they're pretty naive.

If Peel were alive and this was being used to tear him down I might even use that a defence. But since he's dead we probably don't need a tent named after him. And honest even if there is an afterlife, and he's looking down on what's happening now, I'm pretty sure he'd probably agree!

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Wow, had no idea he was that up front about it all. Gross. That's actually really surprised me, one of those things that I just somehow didn't know about even though I've been in the tent loads over the years, listened to countless Peel sessions etc.

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20 minutes ago, Nobby's Old Boots said:

So therefore it's important that he wasn't repentant about it even into the early 00s, no? Because I'm confident in saying that having sex with children would have been condemned at that point.

We are talking about whether the tent should be renamed now, so today's context IS important, moreso than the context of the past because of everything that has happened between now and then. We can't burden the progress people are trying to make by continuously saying "but it was alright back then" when plenty of people won't have felt it was OK.

Yeah minstrel shows were fine back then, no one minded. Not true.

Yeah slavery was just accepted as the norm back then, no one minded. Not true.

It can't be excused any more.


The point I was trying to make (admittedly fairly badly when I read it back) is that immoral actions are immoral. What the "but it was accepted back then" argument tends to omit is the fact that these things were always wrong. Everyone didn't just accept that behaviour like this was OK. That's just rewriting history from a privileged position. What about the young girls who would by todays standard be called victims? They weren't called victims back then, so are we saying they weren't? The fact that society put up with it, or the systems in place weren't equipped to, or willingly chose not to challenge these actions as the "norm" does not, in my opinion, relieve the perpetrator of a moral obligation to behave in a certain way, because not everyone was doing it. And people questioning why no one came forward are the same people saying that society was accepting of this behaviour back then - well there's your answer. People like you are probably one of the reasons they don't, because they'll be told it was perfectly normal to grab a young girls bum back then (I've seen this situation and heard this first hand)

And I do believe redemption is completely possible, but there has to be an admission of wrongdoing and that actually it's not OK to hide behind the past & say it was acceptable back then.
John Peel shows no remorse at all, and that's what makes the "times have changed" argument redundant IMO

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9 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

Yup, but I also think that's who he was: utterly frank about everything. By 2004, most others had realised that it was pretty important not to mention that stuff any more. Hell, most of them knew well enough to not mention it at the time. Again, doesn't excuse it, but if someone thinks for a minute that the likes of the Stones or any rockstars who have talked openly about sleeping with groupies never slept with 15-year olds then they're pretty naive.

If Peel were alive and this was being used to tear him down I might even use that a defence. But since he's dead we probably don't need a tent named after him. And honest even if there is an afterlife, and he's looking down on what's happening now, I'm pretty sure he'd probably agree!

Agreed, but him being frank doesn't excuse his complete lack of remorse, that in itself is really troubling and makes it harder to justify naming a tent after him (or anyone really- it's a slippery slope)

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