A plea for help

I am writing a book about threats to freedom of speech – real threats that is – and wonder if I should include a chapter on political correctness. I find it a hard question.

In many ways, political correctness has improved British manners. That people no longer screech about the niggers and the pakis and the yids, strikes me as all to the good. It is reasonable for a university, say, to suspend a lecturer who keeps making sexist jokes to women. His attitudes directly affect his ability to teach women students. Such speech codes are not a form McCarthyism. The organisers of the anti-communist purge in 1950s American got Hollywood actors fired for holding beliefs that had nothing to do with their ability to act. The context in which PC speech codes operate is everything. Do they enforce professional standards? Or are they a modern McCartyhism which targets ideas that are out of favour regardless of whether they are private or public vices?

Now look at this story about Brian True-May the creator of Midsomer Murders whose employers have suspended him for saying that his show is a hit because it features a village England with no black faces in it.

Clearly, they are attacking his right to speak his mind. Equally clearly, if I were black or Asian Briton, I would regard him with considerable disdain. But do his views affect his work? Anyone who knows the English countryside knows that it is overwhelming white, and if True-May had introduced black characters into the drama to please metropolitan sensibilities he would have engaged in Archers’ style tokenism. On the other hand, after reading his thoughts, it is at least arguable that he may have been operating a colour bar, and excluding ethnic minority actors from parts that might have suited them.

If this case is too complicated, do readers have examples of the politically correct enforcing an ideological conformity that is unrelated to their targets ability to perform their jobs? Or is the argument that we are living in a PC hell just tabloid bilge?

All contributions gratefully received.