The Hecklers

*This essay appears in Ends Meet: Essays on Exchange published by Critical Writing in Art & Design.*

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Still from Joseph Strick’s The Hecklers (BBC, 1966)

-The device of heckling on both sides of the political fence is this: it prevents a speaker from giving, or an audience from hearing a coherent political case. And it is a po– coherent political case that I want to present to you tonight-

-Get on with it!

This heckle, from the 1966 British General Election campaign trail, was captured in a documentary by New Wave American director Joseph Strick. The Hecklers, broadcast just after the election, has no narration and no captions – so you are often unaware of who is speaking and who is being heckled. There are some faces, however, that are still recognisable today, most notably the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson and the opposition leader Edward Heath. The film, less than 40 minutes long, jumps from one meeting to the next, sometimes returning to particularly long or interesting exchanges between the politicians and the public.

In his introduction to the documentary, Strick explains that he was inspired to make The Hecklers after having seen coverage two years earlier of the 1964 election.[1] He was ‘amazed’ that people were ‘standing up in an audience and shouting at the leader of the opposition and shouting at the Prime Minister and, what’s more, being answered by them – dialogues developing between them’. He found it all the more extraordinary because there wasn’t anything like it in the United States: ‘Heckling is something that the people of Britain can well be proud of and frightened of. It’s an extremely democratic confrontation between audience and speaker, no matter who he is.’[2]

To heckle is to interrupt a public speaker (or performer) with comments, questions or taunts.[3] This particular meaning has its roots in Scotland where a ‘heckle’ – a tool used to ‘split and straighten out [hemp or flax] fibres’ – was wielded by workers who formed a formidable trade union at the turn of the nineteenth century. The workforce held ferocious debates on the shop floor and the word ‘heckle’ is thought to have developed into a description of the act of ‘firing off questions designed to tease or comb out truths’.[4]

The act of heckling – to call out and interrupt a speech or event – is often a violent one. Language can be brutal despite its promotion as an alternative to physical violence (holding ‘peace talks’ being common parlance in the most dangerous places). But the heckle’s violence can be one of great power and incisiveness. There are, of course, good heckles and bad heckles: the lazy wisecrack, the shouts of gratuitous abuse, the drunken splurge at a comedy club or the personal taunt have little to do with the real essence of the heckle. A good heckle, which might be a simple word of abuse in the right context, is the first part in a chain of events that can be summarised thus: rupture – response – phatic communion – resolution.

The rupture is probably the heckle’s primary and greatest function. It is an acute and subversive act that breaks, or disrupts, a one-way flow of information: the monologue. The heckle does not have to be complex or even articulate, but simply well timed and appropriate to the situation. It preys on weaknesses in the speaker’s argument as well as in their delivery. For example, in The Hecklers a slight hesitation by Deputy Prime Minister George Brown – after delivering some perfunctory lines – is humorously seized upon:

-Always better to do a job well than do it badly. I believe, that we can say quite honestly to the country: we have done…

-Nothing!

Some heckles in the documentary still resonate today (such as the government’s close relationship with the financial sector). In one such instance the camera is trained on two young men, sitting beside each other, who constantly call out during the Chancellor of the Exchequer James Callaghan’s speech on the economy. In response to grumbles in the audience Callaghan begins in an accusatory fashion, before one of the two men retorts cuttingly.

-There are some people who regard themselves on the Left of the movement who are no better than the Tories-

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Still from Joseph Strick’s The Hecklers (BBC, 1966)

-Lies! You sold out to the bankers!

Certain heckles are more eloquent and informed than others, and manage to engage the speaker in a conversation. At one point in Strick’s film a Conservative candidate is taken aback by a lady in the audience, her hands resting in her lap and a child by her side. The scene begins with an already frustrated and patronising quip from the candidate: ‘you’re wearing a beautiful blue shirt and all. And I thought “there’s the staunchest Tory in the room”.’ She sits determinedly and says in her working class accent: ‘I’d like the truth.’ As he tries to continue, there follows a back and forth:

- I’m sure you’ll agree with me in this, that going

back  to those dizzy dark days…

- Thirteen years and what did you do?!

- …in 1950-

- I remember!

- You do remember?

- That’s why I’m here

The heckler keeps him in check: she holds the candidate to account for his actions in office. In short, she remembers. The scene ends with the lady calling out: ‘I want to hear the truth, nothing but the truth.’ A simple request, but one so easily ignored and denied.

A good exchange relies on a certain amount of intelligence on the part of the heckler, on the speaker’s willingness to engage and on societal conventions that allow this process to take place. Without these, a heckle is just noise. The best heckle is not the one that fuels the witty comeback quip, but one that provokes a genuine deviation from the script. In his introduction to the documentary, Strick opines that ‘the more intelligent the heckler, the more obligated the speaker is, here, to answer’.

When the speaker chooses to engage intelligently with the heckler, the pre-planned situation is transformed into an unplanned exchange. The Hecklers shows the then Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, to be masterfully calm on stage despite numerous catcalls. His demeanour hardly changes and he seems continually aware of, and involved in, all that is happening. In one particular scene the audience gets heated about Rhodesia – the former colony had declared independence in 1965 to maintain majority white rule. Wilson’s speech is constantly interrupted by a minority who seem to be pro-Rhodesian independence and when one particularly loud shout leads to an off-camera act of restraint, elements of the audience protest before Wilson seizes the opportunity.

- Free speech! Free Speech!

- Yes, I believe in freedom of speech. If our friend had tried to talk like that in Rhodesia, not a word would have been reported!

Some heckles can, of course, be misguided or even downright malicious. In the same sequence, a member of the audience crudely questions the Prime Minister’s position on Rhodesian independence. Wilson, after a brief pause to gather his thoughts, replies emphatically to great cheers.

- Why do you support savages against civilised men?!

- My friend… we do not support savages, we just allow them to come to our meetings!

When the heckler or hecklers are in a back-and-forth with the speaker, dialogue is created. Even if the content of the exchange is negligible, the fact that a phatic communion can be established is important in a representational democracy. The term ‘phatic communion’ was coined by Polish anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski to describe speech as a means of establishing and maintaining contact with members of a social group. The act of engaging in a dialogue can be more important than what is said.

When Conservative candidate Gerald Nabarro describes the rise of wages and production as being commensurate, he holds up two fingers and raises his arm. His flicked V-sign draws laughs from the crowd, and like a teacher with a wry smile on his face he responds to the audience member’s misreading of his two-fingered gesture: ‘Don’t be vulgar sir. I know exactly what you mean.’ The audience share a warm laugh with Nabarro and there is a sense of communion between the two, stemming from a snigger and a look. A heckle without language perhaps.

Whether there is a genuine and meaningful exchange of dialogue or simply a phatic communion, the sense of the ‘carnivalesque’, as coined and used by Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin, is hard to ignore in the footage. Bakhtin describes carnival as ‘a pageant without footlights and without a division into performers and spectators. In carnival everyone is an active participant, everyone communes in the carnival act.’[5] While it is rare for there to be total communion during these political exchanges, the heckle’s mocking or satirical challenge to authority is something that should, nonetheless, be celebrated. It demonstrates that the people have a voice and can use it, regardless of whether what they say is coherent or not.

The final act in an exchange between heckler and speaker is the resolution or dismissal. They are not mutually exclusive and often the latter is more revealing of the situation. The epigram at the head of this essay comes from Quentin Hogg who, at the point that he speaks those words, has completely lost control of the hall. He looks visibly uncomfortable when confronted with the people he is meant to represent. Scuffles break out. ‘Sit down please!’ he pleads like a school teacher who has shown a moment of weakness and lost the respect of his class. A lock of hair has fallen onto his forehead, which is wet with sweat, and in desperation he resorts to cheap insults (‘cut your hair and wash your face!’ he shouts). Sometimes a simple act of disobedience exposes the vulnerability of the politician:

- I am going to have to ask you to sit down

- I won’t

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Still from Joseph Strick’s The Hecklers (BBC, 1966)

- Or leave

- I won’t do that either

Calm and cool with dissent, sporting a Beatles haircut and dark glasses, the young man stands to bait Hogg. After the politician calls for a serious discussion, the agitator retorts ‘With you? You’re bonkers!’ Hogg’s frustration leads him to call the young man with long hair a ‘little girl’. Weaknesses become evident when a politician is confronted with people who are able to speak their mind. In an earlier scene, Hogg’s frustration manifests itself in a physical attack on a placard of Harold Wilson.

- We want Wilson! We want Wilson!

- Yes, you may want Wilson,

but I doubt he would be very proud of you this afternoon.

Hogg brandishes a stick and proceeds to smash the placard being held by a Labour supporter, oblivious to the ridiculousness of his action.

***

Speech remains the most immediate form of communication even in a time of social media and the exchange of information at the speed of light. It is not only its immediacy but also its simple ability to produce a communion between people. The novelist and linguist Anthony Burgess, when writing about the development of speech by primitive man, describes it as ‘a kind of light in the darkness’.[6] The heckle, in turn, can be a flashbang. But like any kind of combustion it needs three things: heat (tempered indignation), fuel (the content of the speech) and oxygen (an environment and societal conventions that allow such exchanges to take place). When any of these are removed, the outcome is negated.

Although Joseph Strick believed that the heckle was an important tool with which to question those in power – a means of making or forcing contact between the representative and the represented in a democracy – his film ends in a cautionary way. Amid calls to ‘answer the question!’ a speaker thanks the audience on behalf of Conservative politician Ian Orr-Ewing who is seated behind him. Orr-Ewing does not want to extend his thanks: ‘I don’t,’ he mutters while shaking his head. As the catcalls get louder the speaker announces hastily: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we will now sing the Queen.’ Orr-Ewing jumps to his feet and is the first to belt out the words as they try and drown out the heckles. Strick overlays the singing of the National Anthem upon a montage of all the hecklers who have featured in his documentary – their voices now silenced by this celebration of authority.