THIS is the story of an awkward bastard, who Fs and blinds and curses against the excesses of "hard-edged, dungaree-booted, crop- haired, fat, baggy-arsed" feminism.
He doesn't want to live in a multi-ethnic society, or to see homosexual lifestyles presented as normal, and his favourite gesture is a crude, two-fingered insult.
What on earth possessed Channel Four to give this obnoxious git a programme? Tune in on Wednesday and you'll be treated to an exposition of the views of George McAulay, former shipyard worker and paratrooper, who has shunned the 90s workplace to find freedom on the margins of society, raising his two sons in a tatty hut in the Trossachs. At least, that is the resume presented on Channel Four's press release for Two Fingers, a short film to be shown as part of the station's Reality Bites independent film and video series.
And if you're thinking the margins of society are too good for a guy who bemoans the oppression of the white, able-bodied male, campaigns for the return of the patriarchal society and thinks boxing teaches you how to be a good citizen, then I confess those were my thoughts too. But now, I'm not so sure.
After watching the advance video several times, some of his choicer phrases still set my teeth on edge. There is McAulay, stabbing the brains out of a freshly killed rabbit, and explaining that this is the f***ing reality of abortion. How, he asks, does not wanting to live in a multicultural society make him a racist? And why, when Jo Brand tells women to kick their husbands in the goolies if they're not New Men, can't he tell men to kick their wives in the unmentionable body parts if they don't do the dishes? A brainless oaf? Not quite.
Socrates, McAulay reminds us, was one of the original awkward bastards - executed for encouraging young men to think. And what McAulay hates most is the intellectual strait-jacket of political correctness, which "suppresses all individual dissent", as did the Nazis. In another era, he tells us, the PC brigade would be "the ones leading the Jews or the Catholics or the people with pink eyes into the gas ovens, and it would be the awkward bastards like myself who would be campaigning against it".
He may seem an unlikely campaigner for the minority underdog, but in voicing his hatred for the mind-numbing cult of political correctness, McAulay speaks for more than just the reactionary old bigots.
Sure, we have a lot to thank the feminist, anti-racist and gay rights movements for, and most of us are glad to belong to social circles where it is no longer acceptable to talk about birds, darkies or poofters.
But there is little doubt the institutions established to guard those hard-won reforms sometimes act as gatekeepers to intellectual progress. And the one which really gets up McAulay's nose is the Equal Opportunities Commission.
The so-called equal opportunities commission, corrects McAulay. The lying, hypocritical, feminist bigots who have systematically refused to oppose male oppression.
In fact, he has been railing against the EOC for years because, as Scottish chairman of the UK Men's Movement, McAulay has been campaigning tirelessly for the repeal of all equal rights legislation, which the movement believes discriminates blatantly against men ("black, lesbian, disabled, f***ing single parents preferred").
McAulay's chairmanship of the UKMM is not mentioned in Two Fingers. In fact, quite a few details are omitted from this programme, made by the Glasgow-based Sigma Films more than two years ago and originally scheduled for screening as part of Channel Four's Renegade series.
Why was it pulled? Because of a controversial scene filmed at the Glasgow offices of the Equal Opportunities Commission, where McAulay tried to get an interview with the EOC's Scottish director. After various accusations at the staff - including the charge of "Nazis'' - McAulay was threatened with the police being called and asked to leave.
The scene was thought to breach Independent Television Guidelines, and the version shown this week is expurgated.
For McAulay, the EOC's behaviour that day merely confirmed his accusations that they were not interested in listening to arguments against their policies and the film had been "PC censored".
All that remains is a disjointed clip of McAulay explaining that "this is not the hard-edged, dungaree-booted, crop-haired, fat, baggy-arsed feminist version. This is the Armani Amazon version. I think they're the bullies." The disconnected quote sits neatly with the picture presented in Two Fingers - of an obnoxious odd-ball, idiotically gibbering obscenities. No wonder McAulay hates the media.
McAulay does not live in the ramshackle hut. He has a house with a telephone and an email address, but spends as much time as possible in the Trossachs getting back to nature, because it calms his spirit.
He doesn't hate women, but he "can't stand inadequates - whether it's a man who can't cook his own dinner or a woman who can't change the wheel on her car." But, yes, he does hate feminism and the trend of single parenthood. He cares passionately about children "and the f***ed-up society we are leaving for them in future. We live in a disposable society - everything is throwaway, from razor blades to relationships, and people are more concerned with their own gratification than their obligations towards their children".
He objects strongly to my suggestion of parallels between his back-to-nature, anti-authoritarianism and the red-neck survivalists of the American West who have declared war on the federal government.
He is not opting out of society. "We all have an obligation to contribute to the state, but also to resist it when it becomes oppressive," he says. And this is where the two fingers come in; because McAulay thinks we are a "nation of cripples, unable to lift two fingers to make a defiant gesture against excessive and arrogant authority".
He likes boxing, not because he's arming up like those American anti-government militias, but because he believes "so much of accepted wisdom has not met resistance. Just as muscles need resistance to develop, so do the ideas that shape society".
And that is why we need George McAulay - not teetering on the margins of society, but right at its heart, challenging us to justify our political correctness, to explain why, in millennial Britain, equality matters.
George McAulay is a bright man. We might not like his views but, as a society, it's time we grew up enough to let him put them peacefully, and uncensored.
But hey, George. You've got to listen, too.
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28th-July-2008
