In the 1990’s “political correctness” in the United Kingdom loomed large on the landscape. Decades on from homosexuality being legalised and at the other end of a century in which women had got the vote, society as a whole was expected to follow a new code of conduct that would not tolerate racism, homophobia or sexism.
It was an environment into which many, including this correspondent, grew into from adolescence and accepted as normal yet it was clear there were some in society struggling to adapt. Much like certain people now remark “health and safety” before rolling their eyes, there were many that either resented the new vocabulary or were too entrenched in a bygone era. Hence the oft used phrase “political correctness gone mad”.
There was a lot of fun parodying this group. Steve Coogan’s Alan Partridge and Ricky Gervais as David Brent presented us with characters who were used to a status quo but were being asked to modernise and, in the case of Partridge, couldn’t keep up. It was enjoyable to watch, a bit like seeing your elders trying to cope with an I-Phone and there was always the reassurance that while they were awkward and perhaps didn’t understand the nuances of a diverse society, they would get there in the end.
Unfortunately, however, there was clearly a group that engaged with political correctness in a wholly different way. They doffed their caps to it, kept their opinions to a minimum and presumably seethed behind closed doors. In the era before social media, this element in British society wasn’t being represented in a proportionate way because, in the mainstream press, their views were unpalatable.
Perhaps the majority of people in Britain regarded the far right, for instance, as being a tiny number of the population, a sick and twisted legacy of the early 80’s that would eventually die out. But were we complacent, not realising that one doesn’t need to wear Nazi regalia to harbour those views or have those prejudices?
It was still there as the 1999 London nail bombings showed. David Copeland orchestrated three separate and deadly attacks against the capital’s lesbian and gay, Bangladeshi and black communities. Maybe the public didn’t read too much into these from a societal standpoint as Copeland was a lone wolf terrorist, yet he was inspired by and a member of the British National Party (BNP) and the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement.
Go back a year to the summer of 1998. To the dismay of a generation of football fans who had hoped the ignominious hooliganism of the 1980’s was no more, England fans were involved in mass skirmishes at the World Cup in France. England were playing Tunisia in Marseille, a city with a sizeable North African population. The English fans felt the need to drink excessively and get tribal which led to images back in Britain evoking memories of what many thought was a bygone era.
Fast forward to 2001. Burnley, a town in Lancashire which had recently recorded a relatively high number of votes for the BNP in the general election, became the battleground of riots between the Asian and white communities. Similar happened in other northern urban areas like Oldham, Bradford and Leeds. This is not to say in the Asian communities there were some who were totally innocent. There were allegations of drug dealing and other criminality on their side yet the far right fuelled the flames and attempted to not only politicise the issue but use the riots to further their cause.
What this revealed was that while we were supposedly living in a liberal “politically correct” society, there were deep rooted flaws in it. There were some who didn’t identify with the notion, others who rejected it and, crucially, a group who would willingly dismantle it.
Only months after the riots in Northern England, the world was rocked by the events and fall out of 9/11. When further terrorist attacks occurred in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005, Muslims around the world were demonised by non-Muslims despite the fact the attacks were carried out by extremists they did not recognise nor support. Both Sunnis and Shias were lumped together and there was a distrust in some quarters which the far right continually used to their advantage, perpetuating myths and hatred. Yet still in the mainstream, there was a sense that these racist views were held by a tiny minority.
The revelation that Britain’s society was not the tolerant and progressive place we would have it be, came in waves and over a number of years. Moving on from the mid-noughties, a range of important things happened. In 2008 the global credit crisis led to a coalition government in the United Kingdom by 2010, dominated by a centre right party for the first time in over a decade.
Meanwhile, the English Defence League (EDL) was founded in 2009. An Islamophobic movement looking every bit from the outside like those hooligans in Marseille. Added to that was the rise of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) under Nigel Farage.
Ironically, as xenophobia was on the rise, the Equality Act came into law in 2010, one of the last contributions from the outgoing Labour administration. This act would supposedly protect individuals from discrimination in the workplace.
With the death of Al Qaeda leader in hiding and the architect of 9/11, Osama Bin Laden in 2011, one hoped we might move on from the era of Jihadists and the far right’s scaremongering. Yet in the same year came the Arab spring which dragged many countries in the Arab world like Libya and Syria into meltdown. From this anarchy emerged so-called Islamic State, an army of brutal murderers who gained territories in Iraq, Syria and Libya while inspiring terrorist attacks around the globe in Australia, Egypt, France, Tunisia and Yemen amongst others.
Against this backdrop, thousands of people from war zones like Syria were heading towards Europe thus starting a continent-wide debate about border control which, once again, the far right exploited.
Populism, the supposedly “politically correct” face of far-right nationalism was on the rise. Donald Trump squeaked to victory in the United States, not winning the popular vote but reaching the White House courtesy of the college voting system. Notoriously he had pledged to clamp down on immigration and build a wall at the Mexican border. Back in the United Kingdom, two men many had never taken seriously before, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, were instrumental in the UK referendum on European Union membership being in favour of the Vote Leave campaign. During it, Farage had sparked controversy by conflating European Union membership with higher migrant numbers, displaying a poster showing crowds of supposed migrants, none of whom were white, with the headline “Breaking Point”.
By the latter part of the second decade of the 21st century, one that at the start of the new millennium had offered so much to so many, we were looking with disbelief at a world that resembled the 1930’s.
Social media has been indicative of whatever bigotry and prejudice stayed in people’s front rooms before has now spilled out onto the internet with trolling, disgusting messages of sexism, racism and homophobia flying about the place. A new Wild West if you like and, given it cannot be efficiently policed all the time, the hatred was normalised long ago by many involved.
The problem being that there were far more than we ever envisaged who held views that we thought had been consigned to the dustbin of history. What we naively didn’t realise was that they were still prevalent and being passed on. They just hid their views in plain sight because they feared being exposed for what they are yet, simultaneously, abhorring political correctness for stopping them expressing themselves as they wished. Once social media and populist figures allowed them to scratch that itch, there was seemingly no going back.
Sexism has been rife on social media with successful women often receiving disproportionate criticism or even death threats in some extremes. Likewise, there has been homophobia. Meanwhile, shockingly, the cameras on smart phones were being used for “upskirting” to the extent that it was criminalised in 2019. That such a law had to be made is a damning indictment of British society.
Political correctness remains as an ethos yet while it was clearly implicitly rejected for decades, in recent years, it has been explicitly so. Those who “say it like it is” have been championed by the masses. Yet how does one maintain the old order without seeming like one is part of it?
It’s a deft sleight of hand for leaders or campaigners who cannot be caught verbalising what many of their followers are saying or thinking. They can imply it, infer it and use loaded rhetoric. But they cannot be fully exposed, for that might be one step too far and give their critics ammunition. Instead what becomes dangerous is what is left unsaid. Imagine the old trope of the person who remarks “I’m not a racist” as an enabling caveat to say something that portrays them in a prejudicial light. This is now manifest in figures around the world who insist they’re not bigoted, sexist or racist while scapegoating minorities or demeaning women on a frequent basis. It’s the most flimsy of disclaimers but apparently it works.
Yet this culture of, if I might, non-political correctness, has not only spawned a group in society that think their bigotry can be normalised but another, arguably younger generation who, like the United States President, think it is okay to infer. A generation, in Britain at least, who have apparently misunderstood or maybe manipulated the post-modern humour of Coogan and Gervais, who think they can say the same things as Partridge or Brent and pass it off as such. It’s been said post-modern humour means never having to say you’re sorry. Well this applies perfectly to those who will use it as a Trojan horse for their, at best, casual bigotry and, at worst, hateful views.
There is a paradox. One reason many have rejected political correctness is because they felt this was being foisted upon them by the media and politicians. Of course, both groups have had the ire of the likes of Donald Trump who is, ironically, a politician. Yet he, along with figures like Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage have developed a unique selling point which makes them appear to be different to the electorate and somehow trustworthy. Their relationship with the truth is fascinating as is their style of communication which is basic, ineloquent and repetitive. In the 1930’s, Hitler used big amplifiers, nowadays they use Twitter.
But this has been mimicked by society, parts of which have recognised how the facts can be reimagined to suit various agendas. It’s a decade since the Equalities Act yet many office environments have not moved on. They pay lip service to it but ultimately, it is the privileged white men who still have the best paid jobs as the recent BBC pay disputes demonstrated.
In the City of London, racism, sexism and homophobia still exist. Perhaps not overtly but in an insidious way. When called out for it, the truth is obscured or conveniently ignored. An alternative reality, similar to that in Donald Trump’s head, is created and repeated enough times for it to be acknowledged as fact. But, worst of all, the established order pick and choose the language of bigotry as if only they are qualified to decide what is offensive.
Therefore, was political correctness wrong? The spirit of it wasn’t yet how it was prescribed is something worth considering. People resent being told how to think and talk and, while political correctness undoubtedly pulled society forwards, it unwittingly suppressed and emboldened the toxic views we thought it was eradicating. Prejudice was merely paused to find a new voice a generation later, a casual, twisting, turning, latent set of prejudices expressed in a veiled way a lot of the time; a wolf in sheep’s clothing. At least now we have full view of the wolf, but the problem is that we might become a society that doesn’t bother to confront it.
Athon 