Alan Simpson: Banning TV shows and films is not the way to beat prejudice

The whole premise of the episode, Don't Mention the War, is the hapless Fawlty desperately trying to avoid all references of the Second World War to his paying guests and failing miserably.

The line where Fawlty says: "You started it, you invaded Poland", to the Germans is up alongside Del Boy falling through the bar in Only Fools and Horses in the annals of great comedy moments.

But in the wake of the Black Lives Matters protests, the episode was removed from the UKTV archive for being racist.

The episode was perfect for its time when it first aired in 1975. The war was only 30 years before and most of the main primetime audience had first hand experience of the conflict and still had a distrust of Germans.

That it remains funny today is a testament to the comedy genius of writers John Cleese and Connie Booth.

But within it there is also a scene where one of the guests, the Major, uses extremely derogatory language to describe the Indian and West Indies cricket teams.

It was as deeply offensive then as it is today and is the reason why the episode will now only be shown with warnings about the language at the start.

Netflix has already removed the offending racist scene from the episode and UKTV will possibly do the same. This is the right thing to do as it should be enjoyed for generations to come without causing offence. 

Censoring old TV shows and films is now becoming a cottage industry with even Oscar winning movie Gone With the Wind banned.

Some shows are simply outdated and deserve to be binned, but some which are no longer shown such as sitcom Love Thy Neighbour, should, perhaps, be viewed in a historical context rather than be simply axed.

It was a sitcom about a black couple who moved next door to white couple in suburban London.

To many today, the premise and language is totally racist and should be banned.

But the series was set in the 1970's during a time when many in the UK's largest cities were coming to terms with mass immigration from Asia and the Caribbean.

Most of the plots were being played out across the country at the time, but without the humour, so should we now watch them again in that context instead and look back and see what things were like 50 years ago and how far we have moved on. 

Alf Garnett in Till Death Do  Us Part is another notorious character who struggles to get on screens nowadays.

Garnett is a racist bigot and would not be dreamed up as a comic character today let alone get anywhere near a TV screen.

What binds Garnett, Eddie Booth in Love Thy Neighbour and Basil Fawlty is that there were many people back then who were exactly the same as them which makes them great comic characters. They were all based on someone.

Audiences laugh at them and their ludicrous beliefs and behaviour because they are funny and hard to empathise with.

Humour is sometimes the best way to highlight bigotry and prejudice and the bigger the audience laughing at it the better.

It is imortant to look and see what life was like back then and that people really did act that way even if we don't find the particular show funny, which in the case of Love Thy Neighbour, I don't.

But I recognise the arena in which it was set and in many ways it can actually be viewed as ground-breaking for its time, rather than a lazy racial stereotype seen by many today. 

Banning things, carping from the sidelines and waving a placard achieves nothing. It is important to look behind the characters and try to understand their prejudice and where it comes from. The same applies to bigots in real life. Without understanding it, we cannot hope to eradicate it. 

Cultural censorship is a disturbing trend that should concern us all as there is simply no way of knowing where it all might end. History tells us to beware of taking cultural censorship too far.

Who, after all, censors the censors?