SPECIATOR
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HOW FAR CAN YOU GO?
Some of Ann Winterton's best friends, no doubt, are Pakistanis. And others, even more certainly, are good, solid, white Cheshire Conservatives appalled at lain Duncan Smith's decision to sack her for cracking a joke about throwing Pakistanis out of train windows at the end of an otherwise unremarkable after-dinner speech at Congleton rugby club. You can almost hear them in their blazers now, brass buttons twinkling, froth of Boddingtons on their moustaches: 'Political correctness gone mad, you know. .. . What's it all coming to, when you can't even make a little joke about darkies in a private club?'
Few of us could honestly say that we have never allowed ourselves to smirk at jokes which, if taken out of context and properly analysed, are outrageous. Yet there is something rather tiresome about the parrot cry 'It's political correctness gone mad'. The phrase is becoming overused to the point at which it is reduced to a brainless protest against anything with which one happens to disagree — from the imposition of speed humps in the High Street to the BBC removing One Man and His Dog from its schedules, It is not as if the 'political correctness gone mad' brigade are exactly above taking unreasonable offence themselves. Defending his wife this week, Nicholas Winterton spoke of 'over-reaction'. Yet was it not he who, in a Commons speech in 1996, used the word 'obscenity' to describe the suggestion that MPs' carmileage allowance be cut from 74.1 pence a mile to a mere 47.2 pence a mile?
The question of liberty does not come into the case of the Congleton One. Unlike the poor Essex baker questioned by police last year after he installed a sign in his shop reading 'none of that French rubbish in here', nobody is trying to prosecute Mrs Winterton. The police are not busily interviewing Congleton's prop forwards in the hope of finding one who was sober enough last Saturday to give a witness statement, Nevertheless, Mrs Winterton's behaviour is eccentric in somebody whose job involves selling Conservative policies to the very people who were the butt of her joke. The owners of the Taste of India restaurant in Congleton, who sponsor Congleton rugby club, could be forgiven if they feel like ring ing up the local Labour party to offer help with canvassing. Electric-blanket salesmen shouldn't expect to get away with making jokes at the expense of the elderly and infirm; Gerald Ratner didn't get away with joking about crap earrings and prawn sandwiches: so why should Ann Winterton expect to get away with insulting an important part of her party's target electorate?
And yet there is a suspicion among many Conservatives that the politics of offence are heavily weighted against them; and to a certain extent they are right. The Left has always been better at playing the offence card. David Blunkett can talk of schools being 'swamped' with immigrants whereas a Tory minister would be vilified for doing so.
John Townend's 'White Bridlington' policy made his job untenable, while a left-wing don like Tom Paulin can quite happily continue in his job in spite of appearing to advocate the shooting of American Jews. It is extraordinary what views you can get away with if you carry the label 'socialist' — the most extraordinary aspect of the French presidential election was that such fear and disgust could be generated by the thought of a neo-fascist being elected to that office, when for 14 years it was held by a real servant of Vichy, Francois Mitterrand. In its leading article on the assassination of Pim Fortuyn, the Guardian was blatant about how, in its eyes, a history of left-wingery is a mitigating factor when it comes to making remarks, which, if they came from a lifelong Conservative, would have borne no defence: 'as an academic and writer, as a former Marxist who swung to another extreme, as a proud advocate of gay rights, Mr Fortuyn was no Le Pen, no strutting thug and no fool, either'.
But there is little point in Tory MPs crowing about such injustices. However unfair it might seem, they are perceived by certain sections of the public as being dumb racists, and they have to avoid appearing to match that stereotype. It is no use whining, either, that the Duke of Edinburgh can get away with joking about going slitty-eyed or a suspect electrical device looking as if it had been wired by a 'bloody Indian': he would have been forced from public life on several occasions, were the job of Queen's consort one from which it is easy to resign.
The Tories were right to oppose Mr Blunkett's proposed law against insulting religions and making racist remarks in private, It is right to stand up for the liberty of the facetious, the loose-tongued and the odd street ranter arrested for insulting persons of foreign origin. But in defending the right to free speech it is not necessarily wise to exercise that right at every opportunity.
It ought to be said, on behalf of Ann Winterton, that she recognised this from the moment the words fell from her mouth. She began to apologise to all and sundry, because she saw that the joke was not only offensive, it was unfunny. And for that she has paid the price.
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