[Objectionable words have been passwordified; they do not appear that way in the article]

My fiction was too much for the Starmer government

By Ben Sims

In the House of Lords 65 years ago this month, the 6th Earl of Craven reminisced: “It was the day that Lady Chatterley’s Lover was on sale to the public and there, at every serving counter, sat a sn1gger of youths. Every one of them had a copy of this book held up to his face with one hand while he forked nourishment into his open mouth with the other.”

Young people reading novels was scandalous then – but that was the past. Lady Chatterley’s Lover was unbanned, as were Ulysses and Fanny Hill. I grew up with the freedom to think that things said daily in the real world were worthy of written expression. Much of my teenage reading, and likely what made me a writer, seemed to me incorrigibly edgy: The Picture of Dorian Gray, Naked Lunch, The Satanic Verses. It used to be understood that, however disagreeable the content, books deserved to be read if they possessed enough literary merit.

I therefore took it as a considerable critique when my own fiction was banned this week (2 December). Under the UK’s Online Safety Act, AI filters censored and suppressed one of my short stories, published 277 years after Fanny Hill. All UK-based users would have to prove they were over 18 before reading me. My unremarkable short story, “Nothing Unmediated”, described a Nobel Laureate and Oxford fellow who, on his way to a college dinner, is assaulted by muggers. Admittedly I, a mere gay man, had no right to use the words “p00f” and “f@gg0t” in the quoted speech of criminals in fiction. This was “hate content targeting people based on… sexual orientation” (presumably the terms on which the story was hidden from unverified users).

The government had a point. Having been called both a “p00f” and a “f@gg0t” many times in real life before the age of 18, I do wonder if I could have handled encountering those words in a short story. Likewise, it would probably have been wise to shield me from another blocked category, “realistic acts of serious violence or injury to people, animals, or fictional creatures”, such as the harpooning of Moby Dick, the duel in Eugene Onegin, or the Crucifixion of Our Lord.

Many now make their entire living from Substack. Because my writing has less literary merit than Fanny Hill, I do not – but nevertheless I was given no notification or warning that my work would be censored. After profuse whining, “Nothing Unmediated” appears to be accessible again. The principle remains. Fearing a fine of 10 per cent of its revenue, Substack has, sensibly, kowtowed to Ofcom. All sane platforms will.

This is because of how the law is interpreted by Substack, the incredibly genteel publishing platform, now with 50 million users, including novelists Hanif Kureishi, Salman Rushdie, and Ottessa Moshfegh. Following my august example, these and thousands of writers may become inaccessible without age verification.

My fiction being gatekept surreptitiously for two days was hardly a Stasi-like outcome. However, AI-automation (the only way anything as huge as the Internet can be policed) means you now have to seek exemption retrospectively. You are guilty until you request and are granted your innocence.

Perhaps access to fiction might encourage young people to read. But of course, that might cause them, in Lord Craven’s words, “to indulge in a feast of mental, and probably physical, impurity”. Maybe we’re better off keeping them away from challenging literature. Can we expect children to understand something our sensible government can’t?