30th November 2022
Bill Hicks did this great routine about Jesus of Nazareth coming back to see crosses everywhere:
“Lots of Christians wear crosses around their necks. You think when Jesus comes back he’s gonna want to see a fucking cross, man?
“”Ow.” Might be why he hasn’t shown up yet.
“”Man, they’re still wearing crosses. Fuck it, I’m not goin’ back, Dad. No, they totally missed the point. When they start wearing fishes, I might show up again, but… let me bury fossils with you, Dad. Fuck ’em, let’s fuck with ’em! Hand me that brontosaurus head, Dad.””
Hicks had a point.
The crucifix was a torture device, which was used to ensure the victim had an agonising death.
It has taken about two thousand years of cultural familiarisation for it to be a comforting symbol, which some even place outside schools and hospitals.
“You know, kinda like going up to Jackie Onassis with a rifle pendant on, you know. “Thinkin’ of John, Jackie. We love him. Just tryin’ to keep that memory alive, baby.””
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Perhaps the ghost of Oscar Wilde would have the similar reaction to the calls for the closed Reading Gaol to be now turned into an arts centre:
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It was, after all, where Wilde spent his time incarcerated, serving a sentence of two years’ hard labour, for gross indecency – the crime being consensual homosexual intercourse.
The campaign has the support of the local member of parliament:
🚨 Reading Gaol Update 🚨
This morning I spoke to @andrewpeach about the situation at Reading Gaol. We talked about solving the deadlock over the Gaol, and the project to transform Reading Gaol into an Arts and Heritage Hub that benefits all of Reading.
Part 1 👇 pic.twitter.com/XRMwfq1AaD
— Matt Rodda (@MattRodda) November 22, 2022
The Ministry of Justice, on the other hand, seems to have done nothing since 2014 with this prime real estate in that tent of urbanisation which geographers call the largest town in England.
BBC News tells us that the Ministry of Justice “has previously rejected the plan and said it wanted to “seek [the] best value for taxpayers”.”
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One suspects Wilde would have been generous in his support with this campaign to turn his gaol into an arts venue.
Indeed, that we even associate the prison with Wilde is down to his own writing.
He, of course, immortalised the prison in the title of one of his greatest poems, about the execution and burial of an inmate when he was there:
“People point to Reading Gaol and say, ‘That is where the artistic life leads a man.’ Well, it might lead to worse places.”
He then mentions some of those worse places:
“A man whose desire is to be something separate from himself, to be a member of Parliament, or a successful grocer, or a prominent solicitor, or a judge, or something equally tedious, invariably succeeds in being what he wants to be. That is his punishment.”
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One gets the impression that Wilde would actually quite approve of Reading Gaol being turned into an arts centre, especially with the grudging consent of the government.
(It would be a fitting counterpart to the bank note memorial for that other great figure prosecuted under and broken by the very same vile “gross indecency” offence, Alan Turing.)
Wilde would probably not even rub it in for those working at the Ministry of Justice, for he would regard their mundane civil service jobs as punishment enough.
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Reading Gaol should become a standing reminder of the wickedness of which our criminal law can be capable – against Wilde, Turing, and so many others.
And this would be as an arts venue, and not as a block of flats.
This would also certainly be “better value for taxpayers” than the prison standing idle for another eight years, located next to the touristy plush grounds of the ruined abbey in Reading.
The Ministry of Justice may well know the price that land could command for development, but they do not know that property’s value.
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“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
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“A man whose desire is to be something separate from himself, to be a member of Parliament, or a successful grocer, or a prominent solicitor, or a judge, or something equally tedious, invariably succeeds in being what he wants to be. That is his punishment.”
Now there’s insight …
How sad that Bill Hicks and many others believe that Jesus is coming back. Why would He be coming back when He has been here for nearly 2000 years already?
I wish Bill Hicks was still with us.
Yes – I agree with you !
Unless you are being ironic, I find the certainty of your view off-putting. Like Bill Hicks I find the cross repellent, not just as a remembrance but in itself. Judaism grew away from such barbarism so it has been disappointing that the following religion returned to it. Further, as a Jew I am not expected to “believe” anything, Judaism being based on orthopractice rather than orthodoxy. Neither is God defined but is sometimes male, sometimes female, sometimes neither, not concrete and wholly unknowable and to me best left as a concept, not a person.
Where is your evidence for that unlikely proposition?
The evidence is found in the Bible if one studies the meaning of the original Greek words.
I don’t agree that “evidence” of that kind can predict the future.
But surely “evidence” is contrary to the importance of metaphor for learning about experience and development. And reduces meaning to something meaningless. Belief, thought, faith, opinions are intangible as compared to, say, scientific fact. Trying to prove the Red Sea parted to allow Moses and the Jews through is to miss the point of the story, namely the extraordinary achievement of Moses to lead the group to freedom from slavery and from Egypt to Israel. Nor need that story be literal. Its lesson (principally) concerns leadership, doggedness and freedom. To quote E M Forster in Howard’s End trying to ascertain the truth about Helen, “One could open the heart to Mr. Mansbridge and his sort without discovering its secrets to them, for they wanted everything down in black and white, and black and white was exactly what they were left with”. Surely the lesson of Christianity for you should be to embrace the tenets, not adhere to the literal.
This was meant for Geoff White not John Lambert.
I live in Reading. The gaol is a major landmark. The Banksy mural identifies it very simply as that. It needs to be an arts centre. We don’t need more flats. We need a cultural centre. We need hope
‘We need hope’ is depressingly dramatic, but true. I lived in Reading until last year. The opening of the Abbey grounds, and the events, live music and simple expansion of public space it brought were hopeful things. Reading needs more of that.
I read somewhere earlier today that our Police force has been asked to lend hundreds of cells to the prison service. One wonders if the taxpayer might be best served by using the site for a prison of some sort.
Our recently expanded police force needs somewhere to keep the increasing number of suspects they’re picking up; the queues to see Judges were growing longer before it was decided to increase arrest rates for political reasons.
With limited exceptions since 1967, buggery and gross indecency remained crimes in England until 2003.
Meanwhile, in Qatar…
Isn’t it only a cynic who knows ‘the price of everything and the value of nothing’?
As Wilde was Irish it would be intriguing, to say the least, to learn what he thought a post Brexit Uk Government should do with his old jail !
Having been partly educated by both French and German nationals it is perhaps unsurprising that he should have ended his days not in England’s green and pleasant land but in a corner of a foreign field which most certainly is not forever English.
Unlike the poor soul in Reading jail, Wilde’s final resting place is clearly marked by an enormous stone Sphinx which, with the passage of time, looks as if it has been genetically modified.
Wilde would no doubt be highly amused by his present day reference here in a British Constitutional blog.
Churchill once remarked:
“We have always found the Irish to be a bit odd. They refuse to be English . “ !
Brexit Britain is becoming stranger by the day !
It would be especially fitting for the Gaol to become a beacon for safe self-expression by the artists & creatives of Reading’s LGBTQ+ communities.
Arts centre plus a bit of housing, not a bad outcome. The taxpayer gets a measly £2.6 million, barely pay the estate agents fees. We shall eventually see what the final cost comes to.
Amusing that the past has caught up with HMG and stymied any ambitions of flogging the place off for a good bit more. So, yet another bit of heritage on the books.
That’s the trouble with having been a major player, the attic is full of all this clutter. Oscar would enjoy the irony.
I was lucky to see the exhibition put on inside the gaol in 2016 tracing both the history of the gaol and the history of persecution of homosexuality. It was extremely moving. I hope that when (if) it becomes an arts centre that some of that exhibition can have a permanent presence.
Reading Gaol is where you’re sent if you consume too much genre fiction.
“Your honour, I thought Iain M Banks was the same as Iain Banks”.
“I am unmoved. It’s Reading Gaol for you”.
In Oxford, the former prison/castle site has had a mixed use redevelopment. It now has a permanent exhibition, a hotel, apartments, and some retail. They have preserved a lot of buildings of a wide range of periods, and I think they have done very well with it. I’m a former inmate of the educational institution over the road from it.
The mixed development meant that a lot of money was generated from the commercial part of the development to fund the non-commercial. We do need to bear in mind what extent of non-commercial buildings a council can reasonably look after.
But I think Reading Gaol is on a rather smaller site, with fewer buildings to preserve, so the potential for quite such a diverse outcome is reduced. But surely someone can find some compromise that preserves some memory in a mixed development?
We do actually need many more dwellings in SE England, especially in places like Reading.