Royal Society of Literature V Social Media

How the fight for freedom of expression is far from won.

Is the Royal Society of Literature heading towards the same turbulence the Society of Authors has been navigating the past few years with regards to freedom of speech? Snippets of the inner turmoil has been leaking like a sieve recently. While much of this turmoil is about the direction the RSL is taking, a little bit of digging proves the disquiet regarding its reluctance to champion freedom of speech is no recent thing.

The great Carmen Calill, founder of Virago publishing house who died in October 2022, famously resigned her SoA membership over its failure – refusal – to support Kate Clanchy MBE over the Twitter storm that erupted over her book, Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me. What was less known, until December 2022 when Marina Warner wrote about it, was that Carmen wanted to resign her membership with the RSL over the very same thing. Marina wrote, ‘I was president of the Royal Society of Literature at the time and, with the support of several fellows, tried to persuade the RSL to hold a public event to discuss the effects of social media on writers and their work. We failed. Carmen wanted to resign from the RSL as well. I regret, now that she has died, that I persuaded her to desist. But I didn’t relish the prospect of a dogfight on Twitter, and I had only a few months of my term left. I know that not saying anything is tantamount to acquiescence (silence is consent). I was a coward. So I want to put her stance on the record now.’

Since then it appears things have gone from bad to worse at the RSL. Much of the disquiet has been aimed at its director Molly Rosenberg, widely blamed for the ousting of the RSL’s annual Review magazine editor Maggie Fergusson over an article ‘about the Palestine Literature Festival,’ an allegation denied under the veil of Maggie leaving by ‘mutual consent.’ The RSL also denies that this particular article was the reason for binning the whole magazine, which by all accounts was ready for publication. What cannot be denied is that the issues within the RSL regarding freedom of expression run much deeper than it is willing to publicly admit. It took them a whole week to speak out on the attempted murder of Sir Salman Rushdie, and some fellows who attended its AGM in November have spoken out that discussion on this matter was closed down by the leadership. You can read more about it here.

While many of the recent news articles discussing the RSL’s inner turmoil have mentioned fellows resigning, few names have actually been stated publicly. Kate Clanchy resigned from the RSL in August 2023 and has given me a copy of her resignation letter to publish here.  As Kate’s resignation letter shows, the RSL gives every appearance of prioritising potential Twitter/X backlash over supporting and championing authors. For such a distinguished charity that’s raison d’être is to celebrate and support writing of all kinds, it is especially heart-breaking that this no longer seems to mean celebrating and supporting all authors.

Before I go on to Kate’s resignation letter, I would like to notify those of my subscribers who have kindly made pledges that I will be turning on that facility shortly. If you made a pledge but have now changed your mind, then please do whatever’s needed to retract it! For those who don’t subscribe, please be assured that I will continue making my content free to everyone. For those who wish to support me and want to pledge, then great. For those who don’t, no worries at all.

Kate Clanchy’s resignation letter with certain names redacted:

1^st August 2023

Dear Molly Rosenberg, Chair, Vice Chairs, and Council of the Royal Society of Literature,  

I am writing to resign my fellowship of the Royal Society of Literature and explain why.

My fellowship was awarded in 2010 after I had won the V S. Pritchett Prize. I had never expected such a distinction and I valued it very much. In 2018 I was awarded one of your first ‘Literature Matters’ awards for my project to make a ‘Dictionary of Precious Words’ with the students at my local comprehensive school. Molly Rosenberg was particularly interested. She visited the school twice and spent considerable time with the young poets. She saw and admired the length, depth and integrity of my wider poetry project, then ten years old, and the archives of our books, interviews, films, accounts and consents. She shared a workshop in the library with a group of self-selected, long-time committed poets and attended a reading involving the entire school and saw the diversity of both. Later Molly asked me to bring some of the young poets (names redacted)  to read at an RSL event in London. From there the RSL planned an event to distribute my students’ anthology, England Poems from a School, to every MP on National Poetry Day 2019. We were only stopped by parliament itself being prorogued.

The RSL was therefore in an excellent position to defend my teaching practice when it was attacked online in August 2021. You knew you hadn’t witnessed ‘neon-lit white savioury fuckery’ or children being done ‘unimaginable harm’ as (Person X) was alleging on twitter. Molly Rosenberg, in particular, was one of the few people who had the personal experience and authority to help the young poets when they wrote in the Bookseller that they were ‘disempowered and distressed’ by the false stories being told about them. She offered none, I thought perhaps because I had not asked.

(readacted) But others were asking. I learned that the then president of the RSL, Dame Marina Warner, had asked the Society to speak up for me and Sir Philip Pullman, and had been strongly rebuffed, and rebuffed again when she tried to organise an event discussing the impact of social media on writers. Later, at her funeral, I was told that Dame Carmen Callil hadn’t just resigned from the Society of Authors in defence of me and Sir Philip but had wanted, because of the actions above, to resign from the RSL too. At that point I started to think I should resign from the society myself.

I reflected though, that times change and that writers have always disputed amongst themselves. Perhaps I was an egg worth breaking as the Society’s omelette was remade. I reminded myself that I believe in the ideals of inclusion you now so vigorously promulgate. That was what the poems in the library meant for me, and what my memoir and the England anthology meant to say to the world: that the practice of literature and the attainment of excellence could be open to all.

This summer though, (Person X) was elected as a fellow. (Person X) does not have literary works in print.  Rather, they are  known for their social media campaigns, particularly against me and Sir Philip and (readacted). The public decision to value the latter over the former and award a fellowship is of course for you as a Council. My reaction was personal: I was reminded that last June, in response to a newspaper article which mentioned that I was grieving my mother, (Person X)  placed a tweet about me and Sir Philip: ‘thinking of running a competition to describe the weepy lady writer and her ineffectual white knight’. When their followers responded with sexual remarks and analogies to vomit and cheese (redated) tweeted ‘yowzah’ and many emojis of applause. I was looking at an invitation to the Summer Party, but I knew I could never enter a room where (Person X) might be.

This opened me to other personal feelings. The RSL lifted up my students as symbols, then discarded them without a word when they became less useful. But I feel to my students as I do to my own children. The RSL dishonoured and disrespected Sir Philip Pullman and Dame Marina Warner because they weren’t saying the fashionable thing, yet I feel to them as I did to my parents.  Dame Carmen Callil showed me, at the very end of her life, fierce kindness. Carmen wanted to resign for the RSL for me. At her funeral, I wept for my mother who didn’t have a funeral because of Covid. Now the RSL was honouring someone who had publicly jeered at my grief, who I felt had spat on my mother’s grave.

As I said, these are only personal feelings, not public thoughts.  But I used to tell my students in the school library to write their feelings as honestly as they could and so be guided to their thoughts. I told them that was how excellent writing was attained, through truthfulness and integrity of mind. I told them not be be afraid. My feelings now lead me to the thought that  I could never be in fellowship with (Person X) so I should take courage and resign from the society. I deeply feel that I would lack integrity to continue. I believe, as writers, you will understand.

(redacted, details of copying of letter, freedom to quote and send on to all recipients)

I thank the society very much for my years of fellowship.

Yours sincerely,

Kate Clanchy MBE