Cameron camp want to censor Channel 4 drama about the Army in Iraq

Michael Gove, MP the fresh faced (40 but looks 12) , diminutive boy genius of the Tory party, the front man and mouthpiece for the Toffs at the Top of the Tories was on Newsnight Review (again!) with Kirsty Wark tonight.

They considered the Channel 4 Drama "The Mark of Cain" by Tony Marchant, a tale of two Lancashire squaddies charged with abusing Iraqi detainees. It was filmed last summer in Tunisia and the north of England, but transmission has been delayed pending the conclusion of a six-month court martial covering similar charges and, coincidentally, involving a Lancashire regiment. and their blameless commanding officer.

This drama depicts the brutality of army life (shades of Deepcut Barracks) culminating in a vicious death. The two principal Lancastrian, childhood friends discover, when they are charged, that their superiors are able to wriggle out of blame, thanks to an unspoken system in which guilt is stratified by linguistic competence.

“It’s a class thing,” says Marchant. “People who know how to use euphemisms can get away with things. If you talk about how you want someone to be treated ‘rigorously’, that isn’t an order — which means that, if the ordure hits the Vent Axia, you can be exculpated. Further down the line, it’s, ‘We’ve got to give a bloke a kicking.’”

“Of course, you get some thugs,” Marchant says, “but I was much more interested in the people who made a journey from being an average, typical 18-year-old to doing something appalling. An argument I heard a lot is that you can improve morale: ‘We have to do this to avenge the death of our mate or popular section commander.’ If you beat up a detainee, it helps everybody feel better. You are reaffirming your bond. You don’t get involved in the mistreatment of detainees as an individual. It’s done as a group thing. Constantly, there is this schism between a view of morality over there and how we would view it over here. It wasn’t that it was morally aberrant to do unspeakable things. It was a moral obligation.”

Well poor young Michael doesn't like this. Too much like real life. It disturbs him. If it disturbs him, he doesn't want it to disturb anyone else. Simple. Ban it. He says Channel 4 shouldn't show the powerful play (which they call a "Flagship drama") on April 5th as planned .. it is not "balanced" ... in the way one imagines that say, Hamlet is unbalanced.

This is No 1 in a series of Public Service Announcements on sightings of the propaganda for Cameron and his Toofs at the Top of the Tory Party and their working class camp follower Michael Gove on Newsnight - and no doubt elsewhere on the open maw of BBC. Gove worked for the BBC4 Today programme and is a regular panelist on The Moral maze - his wife Sarah Vine writes for Rupe's Rag the Times. he is also friend of right wing hadcases Melanie Phillips and Stephen Pollard and forms the glittering centrepiece of the Notting Hill set of David Cameron, George Osborne, Edward Vaizey, Nicholas Boles and Rachel Whetstone. Is a war gaming fan along with friend and colleague David Aaronovitch and like him a supporter of Israel and critical of any Anti-Annerican or God forbid anti-semitism.

Keep you eyes open for this censorious soul.