Southbank Bristol Arts

If you don't read The Jackdaw, it's time you caught up - the antidote to artbollocks and always a stimulating read. This letter may be in the next issue...

As the writer of the letter referred to by Don Kennewick (Correcting Correctness, no.76 March) I'd like to say first: I agree with him that so-called political correctness is one of the more egregious American imports; the phrase and the attitude both. It's a safe bet that you will find someone who, having taken PC on board, will also subscribe to the condemnation of making 'value judgements' at art exhibitions.
Having said that, I should protest that my letter did not actually mention xenophobia. What the Jackdaw appeared to be doing was pass on a bit of unspeak. Coined by writer Steven Poole, Unspeak is defined as a mode of speech that persuades by stealth; examples given include war on terror, ethnic cleansing, pro-life, Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Words in themselves have no intrinsic power, but they can be loaded with multiple layers of meaning, and through their use, casually, deliberately or disingenuously, can insinuate one or two 'meaning viruses' into the reader's mind. With repetition, it is likely that the reader will, without being aware of it, undergo a change of opinion.
So let's begin with 'Gypo'. It's always used pejoratively, by people who hate foreigners. There is no equivocation here. We can laughingly use such terms when we are with people we know are not Sun readers, but the ice is thinner if you're in print and addressing a multitude of unknowns; hardly there at all if the context is an item about stealing for scrap metal. Having set the tone with 'Gyppo', the Jackdaw can't easily pass off 'eytie' as easily as that, especially when it's contained in a reference to bad habits as defined by nationality. It was disingenuous of Don Kenefick to write off as harmless the mention of gypsies being associated with scrap metal; it was about 'gyppoes' being associating with stealing and destroying works of art. At this point, I should declare an interest: I write as an economic immigrant from Scotland, and in my years in England I have several times been expected to join in the laughter when someone made disparaging remarks about 'the Jock' being tight with money.
The one word missing from any list of "joke" names for foreigners is one for the English. Limey means British rather than English, and was surely never used, nor inferred, insultingly. The connecting unspoken meaning in all the names: gypo, eytie, mick, paddy, jock, kike, wog, nigger, frog, jewboy, is that they all suggest inferiority. Mr Kenefick may have put his finger on the source of it all when he referred to Hogarth. The ongoing enmity between England and France, and the deeply-rooted cultural awareness of their symbiosis going back to the days when only French was spoken at Court and Anglo-Saxon became a thing of shame, reached their zenith during the Revolution when some aspects of the republic found favour among the dissident or fashionable in England, flaming paranoia and underlying resentment to heights which the Daily Mail and the Sun are always trying to re-establish; and it's easily extended to include all foreigners, including of course the descendents of the original pre-Saxon English peoples, now living in Wales. To an outsider, it looks like an inferiority complex more than anything.
Mr Kenefick complains that no-one is condemning African gangsters and corrupt politicians. If he asks around he should find that those who condemn Britain's past role in setting up the templates for endless war in Africa, and the middle-east, are the same people who are most active in supporting today's victims and attacking their oppressors.
A last word about the PC freaks: they, like most people in this country, were probably totally unaware of Rwanda's existence until the disaster in 1993; but they would probably not have been obsessed by the unbelievably naff Black and White Minstrel Show, perversely fascinating though it was, as it had become a mere stage show before disappearing in 1992. There had been rumblings of discontent before: in 1970, the 'Woman's Hour' undercover reporter followed an embarrassing attempt by black actors to get into an audition for the show.
Finally, about thin ice: anyone who can conjure up such a phrase as 'road-kill Diana' should be allowed to walk on water for a while.
yours etc
Cliff Hanley