I have been in and out of TV and radio studios talking about political correctness. First it was Ann Winterton, the Tory shadow minister fired by her leader for an after-dinner "joke" at some rugby do. She told of an Englishman, a Cuban, a Japanese and a Pakistani on a train. The Cuban throws a cigar out of the window and the Japanese a Nikon camera. Why? In each case, because "they are ten a penny in my country". Then the Englishman throws the Pakistani out. Why? You can guess. If I had been Winterton, I would have made the Englishman an MP, and had the Pakistani throw him out. Why? Because ten a penny is all MPs are worth - and probably not even that, because the train would have crashed anyway. Thus Winterton would have told a funnier joke and turned it against herself.
Then Stan Boardman, a northern comedian, had fun at the expense of Asians, principally the one whose head was used as a football by Leeds United players. I met Boardman in the hospitality room at GMTV. He was truly flabbergasted that we did not see the humour. The ease with which whites assume superiority over blacks and Asians never ceases to amaze me. We are always good for a joke and a kick-around. They call it banter - which brings me to the Police Federation. At its conference, a minister mentioned getting down to "the nitty-gritty". A delegate got up and said that this was a racist term, politically incorrect. The federation spun it for all it was worth, with the Daily Mail in support.
In my 35 years in race-related activities, I had never come across this "nitty-gritty" business before. I called several race relations advisers and trainers, and a black policeman. Not one had heard of it before. The term is supposedly offensive because it referred to the debris left in the bottom of slave ships after a voyage. (If so, this origin is unknown to the editors of the OED.) I believe it was a set-up to allow the police to get back at those of us who demanded they clean up language that they passed off as canteen banter. Their favourite was to call blacks "sunshine" and follow up with a string of other abuses: nig-nog, gollywog, currant bun, coon, bongo, nigger and plain black bastard.
Much of that battle has been won, but opposition persists. In the Mail, John Mortimer, he of Rumpole of the Bailey, argued that free speech was at stake. I thought of taking every Rumpole book off my shelves, making a pile in the garden and consigning them to flames. I just could not summon up the prejudice.
