TERRIBLE vengeance is promised from Islamist hardliners shocked at cartoon depictions of the Prophet Muhammad. While the talk is now about free speech, it was only in 1970 that The Times sacked its columnist Auberon Waugh after his observations about a Middle Eastern style of baggy trouser he referred to as the “Allah Catcher” incited an angry mob to burn down the library of the British Council in Rawalpindi.

Coincidentally, the last man to go to jail for ridiculing God in Britain was a trouser salesman. John William Gott (the surname was a bit unfortunate for a militant atheist) ran a Bradford-based mail order business.

By the late 19th century it was legal to argue for atheism. But the ancient blasphemy laws could be invoked against purveyors of flip and scurrilous insults that might incite a breach of the peace. Gott’s mistake was to go for a cheap laugh rather than a reasoned argument.

Alas, he did not have much of a gift for comedy. In the grand tradition of internecine feuding, his Freethought Socialist League directed much of its fire at a rival secularist group suspected of backsliding. By 1904 he was running two banner headlines across the front cover of his monthly magazine, The Truth Seeker. Along the top, screamed the boast “PROSECUTED FOR BLASPHEMY!” and along the bottom, an advertisement for another miraculous conception, “TROUSERS AT ABOUT THE PRICE OF STOCKINGS — SEE PAGE 12.”

Gott’s mix of crude anti-clericalism with bargain menswear caught the attention of the authorities. A nut he may have been, but one the State was determined to crack. In 1911, he was sentenced to four months in jail for publishing juvenile gibes against Christianity in Rib Ticklers. Similar punishment followed in 1916, 1917 and 1918. He was also caught mailing an obscene book, How to Prevent Pregnancy. His persistent parson-baiting secured him an appearance in the dock of the Old Bailey in 1921. There he was sentenced to nine months. The Lord Chief Justice dismissed an appeal with the observation: “It does not require a person of strong religious feelings to be outraged by a description of Jesus Christ entering Jerusalem ‘like a circus clown on the back of two donkeys’.” Already in poor health, this last spell in the clink effectively finished Gott off and he died soon after, age 56.

There were no subsequent public prosecutions for mocking Christianity. Most accepted Lord Denning’s judgment that the blasphemy laws had become a “dead letter”, although in 1977 Mary Whitehouse succeeded with a private prosecution against Gay News. But only the miscalculation of Hilary Armstrong, the Chief Whip, has truly ensured it may be some time before we return to locking up those modern day Gotts who fail to take the Prophet Muhammad seriously.

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