AS FUNNY AS AN ABATTOIR
Chuck it, Parris, says Peter Hitchens:
there's no such thing as right-wing political correctness
SILLY people, the sort who take nothing seriously except themselves, think that political correctness is a joke. In fact it is about as funny as an abattoir. Those of us who have faced it head on — publishers refusing a book on unashamedly political grounds, microphones switched off in mid- speech to please a baying mob, that sort of thing — know better. Political correctness, more accurately termed 'modem liberal orthodoxy', is the fulfilment of George Orwell's most accurate and least noted prophecy, in the Newspeak chapter of Nineteen Eighty-Four, that the best way to stamp out thought is to make it impossible to say or write certain things. Then it becomes impossible to think them and con- formity is guaranteed for ever and ever.
That is the first and most important objection to Matthew Panis's attempt to manufacture a conservative mirror-image of PC. He thinks, or claims to think, that there exists some sort of Tory orthodoxy which punishes, rejects and ostracises those who fail to use a special type of language.
I don't know how Mr Parris has reached this conclusion. The most hilarious part of his essay are the words 'we on the Right'. If he is on the Right, then I must be on the Left, for I am assuredly not where he is. His portrait of the 'Politically Sound' is culled not from any real understanding of how conservative people think and talk, but, apparently, from Mr Craig Brown's parody, The Agreeable World of Wallace Arnold, which, I must hasten to inform him, is meant to be a joke. He should not be confused by the fact that Mr Arnold has an entry in Who's Who. This is also meant to be a joke.
Conservatives differ, often on the very issues where he claims we are orthodox. Some of them still revere the disastrous buffoon John Major. Some of them contin- ue to bray that Tony Blair has 'stolen all our policies'. Some loathe fox-hunting; others couldn't care less about it. Many profoundly disapprove, as I do, of Enoch Powell's squalid 'Rivers of Blood' speech. Some think, as I do, that the Kosovo war was wrong and disgraceful; others applaud it. I am still ashamed of the way a Conser- vative government treated the coalminers who bravely refused to follow Arthur Scargill. I devoted a large chunk of a recent book to attacks on Lady Thatcher. Conservatives who disagree with all these views still speak to me and treat me civilly, and I respond in kind — though, as a member of Britain's extremely small Cor- nish-Jewish minority, I might make an exception for any anti-Semites I chance to meet.
On the other hand, former friends and acquaintances on the Left, with a few shin- ing exceptions, actively disapprove of me because they believe my opinions are a character fault. We have quietly and tact- fully drifted apart because of their belief that I am now a wicked person. Occasion- ally, a shared loathing for Blairist humbug has brought us back together, but one must be careful not to stray too far into other subjects. There would be doubt, hesitation and pain.
Some, just like Mr Parris, are annoyed because I won't say 'gay'. Like most sensible people, I long ago gave up arguing about the theft of a valuable word. I won't use it because it implies an opinion on homosexu- ality which I don't hold. But that does not mean I use the Q-word, which seems to me to be a coarse and intolerant expression. Nor do I readily accept the campaigning, prescriptive expression 'homophobia'. This often gets me into trouble, and recently earned me a scorching rebuke from the mother of an 'out' homosexual. She wrote to me after I dismissed 'homophobia' as a meaningless word during a cameo appear- ance on Channel Four News. She said that my argument had insulted her son.
What she really objected to was that I did not accept the attempt to turn those with a particular sexual preference into a see your daffs have come out, Ted.' sort of persecuted racial minority with all the implications that has in terms of free will, free speech and existing sexual moral- ity. It was impossible to get this across. She was too angry and too secure in her puritan disapproval of me. Her attitude was fright- ening because she believed that I had a moral duty to shut up, and she had the moral right to silence me.
Mr Parris's supposed mirror-image of PC is nothing of the kind. No conservative seeks to impose his world view on others. If be were to do so, he would cease to be a conser- vative. The language people choose to use among themselves (even if it were as absurd- ly limited as he claims) is their own business.
PC is about imposing their language on us. By extension, it is about imposing their morals and their world view on us. If a les- bian and gay carnival committee wishes to have a 'chair' rather than a chairman, that is its business. But when city councils, parlia- mentary committees and (soon, no doubt) royal commissions must follow the same prescriptive speech code, then those of us who do not accept the whole ultra-feminist agenda are entitled to argue. When the Church of England prepares to adopt prayers which refer to 'God our Mother', ArIlicans also have good grounds for com- plaint — though they would be relaxed if this expression were used in a pagan gather- ing. If you want to measure your journeys in kilometres and your coffee in kilograms, that is your affair. But if you threaten to ruin my local butcher for selling me beef in pounds and ounces, then it is permissible and, in my view, a duty for me to resist. As for what Mr Parris calls 'the perfectly useful term "partner" ', it might be worth wonder- ing to whom and for what it is useful. I would say it was useful for a society which was dismantling the privileges and status of marriage, and for concealing the truth.
And then there are those red Aids rib- bons which you can now get in W.H. Smith. What are they for? HIV, like lung cancer, is what might be called a 'lifestyle disease'. I most certainly accept the link between tobacco and lung cancer, and assume that Mr Parris accepts the link between HIV and homosexual acts. What would he think if people began to wear, say, brown lung- cancer ribbons? Would these signal that the wearer was campaigning for more money to be spent on curing a disease which people generally developed because they had ignored unambiguous health warnings? Would they mean that he was identifying with smokers? Would they be a generalised protest against the widely held, if rather mean, belief that smokers who develop cancer aren't in much of a position to complain? Whatever their purpose, I have a feeling that Mr Parris wouldn't wear one, or seek the company of people who did. And he would not think much of any- one who compared such a ribbon with a Remembrance Day poppy. He might even think that they were unsound.
Previous page
