The proviso here is that the source for this is The Daily Telegraph, a paper keen on rolling back the state.

Should the policy of “no platform for fascists” be extended to plays about fascists, even if, or maybe because, the play does not show them in a very flattering light? Dudley council seems to think so.

Philip Ridley’s play Moonfleece has already been performed to very positive reviews in Bethnal Green’s Rich Mix, literally on the other side of the road from Brick Lane . According to the review the play “takes a darkly fantastical but psychologically acute look at the emotional origins of BNP activism in one Bethnal Green family.” The fascists don’t like the work, thinking that that it is an “insult to the indigenous white population”. OK, maybe “thinking” isn’t the best choice of verb in this context.

Sitting right in the middle of the ultra hip Hoxton / Brick Lane quarter the Rich Mix probably does not pull in the same demographic as Dudley’s Mill Theatre. That might explain why “council chiefs” in the town have refused permission for the play to be performed there saying that they “did not feel some of the issues raised within the play were suitable for a school and community setting.”

Their unstated fear seems to be that showing the play will either encourage the far right to spend a night in the theatre or provoke a confrontation outside. Yet it has already been performed in towns with ethnic and political mixes similar to Dudley’s such as Leicester, Birmingham , Doncaster and Bradford . This was the writer’s intention and it seems a pretty sensible one.

Chances are that there is more to the story than the Telegraph reports. However if we take it at face value it’s rather worrying. A response to fascism means engaging with the issues that create it in the cultural sphere too and, as Ridley understands, the art is not only to be shared with the normal theatre going crowd.

Canvassing in the last elections in the area where the play is set I first encountered the use of the word “indigenous” used as a political category by several electors. It was the way that some white people were using to define themselves against their “non-indigenous” neighbours in the flat next door. Articulating their prejudices and presenting them onstage is one of the things artists should be doing. It’s not as if well intentioned, misguided timidity has ever stopped the BNP.