‘Political correctness’ lies are mad – and dangerous

Try speaking up for political correctness to almost any audience today and you will know what heretics felt like before the Inquisition. I have addressed three meetings on the subject in the past few days, and on each occasion I began by asking whether anyone could recall using the term as a compliment - not a single hand went up. Did they find themselves using the phrase 'political correctness gone mad', I then asked. On each occasion, the room was a sea of waving arms.

Given these powerful emotions it is unsurprising that PC so often features in our newspapers. Page three of the old Daily Telegraph used to carry prurient stories about naughty vicars getting up to no good in the vestry and the like, and in the argot of the paper's newsroom they were known as Marmalade Droppers; the conceit was that as Colonel Bufton-Tufton of Tunbridge Wells negotiated

the distance between Spode breakfast service and military moustache his hand would shake uncontrollably with emotion at one of these tales of vice and folly, and a slice of Oxford thick cut would be deposited on the newspaper. 'PC gone mad' stories are today's Marmalade Droppers.

We readers do not always pause for very long to ask whether the stories that play to our anti-PC emotions are true. We all think it is absurd that someone who is short should be described as 'vertically challenged', for example - but have you ever actually heard anyone who is short asking to be called 'vertically challenged'? In all the research I did for my book on political correctness I did not come across a single example of the phrase being used in a non-ironic way.

‘PC gone mad’ myths are more difficult to kill than Dracula

After analysing several 'PC gone mad' stories I concluded that any piece with those words in the headline needs to be approached with caution - especially at this time of year. We can all be confident that at some point before December 25 we will read a newspaper piece which states that Birmingham City Council tried to ban Christmas and rename it 'Winterval'.

The rather modest grain of truth at the heart of this hardy perennial is that around a decade ago the Council ran a promotional campaign called 'Winterval' designed to attract business to the city - in all other respects the story is, as a council spokesman put it to the Guardian, "bollocks". But PC myths are more difficult to kill than Dracula.

Many of these stories do not matter very much - in fact they have almost become part of the Christmas ritual. But here is an example of one that does. Towards the end of his time as mayor of London, Ken Livingstone set up a group to report on the representation of Muslims in the media, and they quoted a story in the Express in the run up to Christmas 2005.

One piece was headlined “Christmas is banned because it offends Muslims”

The piece was headlined "Christmas is banned because it offends Muslims" and it was based on the fact that advertisements for the switch-throwing ceremonies at street light displays in Lambeth had referred to them as "winter lights" and "celebrity lights" rather than Christmas lights. That does seem a bit silly but whether you could really say it amounted to a "banning" of Christmas is another matter.

More importantly the story contained absolutely nothing to back-up the suggestion that this was because Christmas "offends Muslims" - in fact it contained a pro-Christmas quote from the Muslim Council of Britain. Anyone who has reported on religion in Britain knows that while there may be many sources of conflict between Christians and non-Christians in post-9/11 Britain, Muslim objections to Christmas is not one of them. Most Muslims actively welcome Christmas because it marks one of the few moments when our secular society publicly celebrates a religious festival.

It is a dangerously PC thing to argue, but headlines which play to false stereotypes can do real damage.

It's a PC World: What it Means to Live in a Land Gone Politically Correct (Hodder & Stoughton, £14.99).