A few years back, in a bric-a-brac shop in Normandy, I found a pile of old Charlie Hebdo comics. Not framed behind glass with a brass plaque. A pile. Stuffed in amongst old books, chipped crockery, yellowing postcards, all the stuff that piles up when nobody can be bothered throwing it out.
I wasn’t even looking for them.
Like most people outside France, I knew Charlie Hebdo because of the murders in Paris in 2015. The shock, the marches, the slogan.
Je Suis Charlie.
Back then the debate was all about whether you agreed with what they published. Some did, some didn’t. Wrong question, though. The real question was whether people get to question, challenge, mock and satirise without somebody turning up to shoot them for it.
Standing in that shop years later, I actually looked at the work instead of the headlines. Some of it was ballsy and crude. Some of it was genuinely clever. Some of it went straight over my head, on account of my French stretching to ordering a beer and finding the toilet.
Nothing was off limits. Politicians, journalists, social trends, the powerful, the powerless, ordinary punters. Nobody got a pass. Probably not even the cartoonists themselves.
I bought four, stuck them in cheap frames, the kind that don’t pretend to be anything else (sorry Pip!) and hung them in what’s technically the spare bedroom and occasionally my office. They make me smile every time I walk in.
Why I bought them has changed over the years. At first, just because they were colourful and quirky, reminded me of a good trip, looked good on the wall. Now I think they stand for something bigger. Not Charlie Hebdo. Not France. Not politics. Just one idea: nobody’s beyond question. Including us. That’s the bit everyone conveniently forgets.
The older I get, the more that matters. Everyone bangs on about diversity and somehow means conformity. Everyone loves debate until you actually disagree with them. Everyone tells you to find your voice, then has a face like a slapped arse the minute you actually use it.
Every tribe’s got its sacred cows. Every movement grows its own orthodoxies. Every organisation ends up with the one thing nobody’s allowed to question, usually invented by the same people who used to complain about being silenced themselves. That’s generally where it starts going to shit.
The Third Half was never meant to be a campaign or a movement, just curiosity, and honestly it still runs on curiosity and people being decent enough to talk to me for an hour. Musicians, founders, teachers, bankers, environmentalists, sportspeople, artists. People with stories, people with ideas, people who change their minds halfway through a sentence and don’t apologise for it.
Nobody turns up with all the answers, least of all me. The moment you think your side’s got a monopoly on wisdom, you stop listening. Stop listening, you stop learning. Stop learning, and progress turns into dogma, which is a rubbish thing to put on a t-shirt.
That’s the link between four old comics in cheap frames and a not-for-profit outfit in Berkshire. Not the cartoons, not the politics. The spirit. Asking the awkward questions. Laughing at ourselves. Sitting with ideas that make us squirm a bit. Checking our own assumptions before we go after everyone else’s.
Maybe that’s the real lesson on my wall. Not Je Suis Charlie. Something smaller. Less grand. Closer to what we’re actually doing here.
Je Suis TTH.
We haven’t got the answers. We’re still up for asking the questions, and having a laugh while we’re at it.
My mother-in-law has just bought me a subscription to Private Eye. I’m not entirely sure if it’s a gift or a message. Either way, the wall’s about to get busier.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Je_suis_Charlie
People. Planet. Progress.