The Guardian cartoonist behind the controversial image of former BBC chairman Richard Sharp has realised what he drew was 'antisemitic'.
Martin Rowson drew a cartoon that depicted Sharp with “outsized, grotesque” characteristics that echoed traditional Jewish stereotypes in April.
After complaints about the contents of the image, which also included a pig’s head, a depiction of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as a puppet and Johnson sitting on a pile of money, the left-wing newspaper removed the drawing from its website and apologised to the Jewish community and Sharp.
Now writing in the paper on Wednesday, Rowson said drawing the cartoon was ‘a mistake’. His work has not appeared in the newspaper since.
He wrote: “After drawing a cartoon including antisemitic tropes, I am trying to respond in the best way I can: to apologise, to learn and to be vigilant.
“This mistake – though “car crash” comes closest in my mind to describe the jagged intermeshing of accident, chaos, loss of control, damage and huge hurt to blameless bystanders – happened within a context I’m very conscious of.”
Rowson added: "I had drawn an antisemitic cartoon, yet I had not been aware I was doing so."
He stressed that when he saw the cartoon “for what it was”, he was “consumed with deep, devouring shame.”
The cartoonist went on to recall several Holocaust related moments which he had kept thinking about since the cartoon was published.
katharine viner guardian
Guardian editor-in-chief Katharine Viner met the Board of Deputies (Photo: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
Explaining one, he said: “Since that Saturday, I keep remembering my late colleague Simon Hoggart’s story about travelling out of London with Alan Coren to record an episode of the News Quiz; how when they boarded the train Coren, who was Jewish, went into a kind of psychic shock.
“He’d been triggered, somewhere in his subconscious, by the role trains played in transporting millions of European Jews to their murder.”
Rowson also recalled a scene in Claude Lanzmann’s 1985 documentary on the Shoah.
He explained: “I also keep remembering one of the most chilling scenes in Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah, where a historian displays the receipts for block-booking excursion tickets for the Nazis’ victims’ journeys to the death camps.
“I also keep thinking of the suitcase packed and ready by the front door in preparation for immediate flight.”
Rowson, who works for The Guardian as a freelancer, had previously acknowledged and apologised that he had not taken enough care over the cartoon.
The Board of Deputies, who had a crunch meeting with Guardian Editor Katharine Viner over the drawing, said of Rowson’s apology: "We have seen the thoughtful piece which Martin Rowson has written regarding his cartoon in April which depicted Richard Sharp.
“We hope that other cartoonists and satirists will internalise it, and that this is not something which the Jewish community will have to experience again."
