Labour’s reforms of workers’ rights have reached that sacred British institution, the pub. If the bill to that effect becomes law, customers could be ejected or even sued for speaking on contentious subjects that might hurt the brittle sensibilities of staff.
Topics like religion, women’s rights, transgender issues are protected by equality law, and it’s about time landlords and their boozy customers realised that. The Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) says that the bill has “the potential to reduce workplace inequalities”.
If liberally oiled pub crawlers can’t steer clear of their troglodyte views on female penises, at least they must keep their voices down. They can be obscene, but they can’t be overheard.
Now, every time I mention ever-increasing similarities between today’s Britain and the Soviet Union of my youth, people helpfully point out the differences. Actually, I’m well aware of those. However, the tendency is unmistakable: Britain, along with the rest of the West, is imposing tyrannical restrictions on free speech that resemble more and more those I unfortunately remember only too well.
When I broached any political subject at home, my mother always covered the telephone with a blanket. Muscovites believed, rightly or wrongly, that all phones were equipped with listening devices transmitting every word to the KGB in real time. Still, I laughed at my mother’s political hypochondria.
Her life was poisoned by fear (also by my father’s philandering, but that’s a separate story). She grew up under Stalin, and every day served up proof of how mortally dangerous speaking out of turn could be. A joker making fun of the regime could be easily sent to die of hunger and neglect in a labour camp, and Moscow wags lived a life of strict self-censorship.
I was only five when Stalin died, and my subsequent 20 years in Russia were spent under a more vegetarian regime. An injudicious word could still be all one’s career was worth, but as a rule no longer one’s life. Yet even young people were always vigilant: one never knew who of one’s nearest and dearest was a KGB snitch.
This is the sort of atmosphere our woke powers that be are successfully creating in Britain, and I cringe at the memories this evokes. Similarities with history’s worst tyranny dwarf the differences, and one can sense we’re on course to a situation where the differences will disappear and only the similarities will remain.
According to EHRC, a frank opinion expressed on, say, transgender rights constitutes harassment of pub staff, whose tender ears must be protected from such filth. The government’s definition of harassment applies at boozers just as everywhere else: harassment is “unwanted conduct that has the purpose or effect of violating the recipient’s dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment.”
That this is an example of woke tyranny is self-evident, and I’ve learned not to be too upset about this ubiquitous outrage. But what really saddens me is the absence, nay mockery, of logical rigour in that definition.
For it to have legal force, it must be objective, that is apply equally across the board. Yet one man’s verbal meat is another man’s poison, and vice versa. What you and I think offensive may well differ from him and her, and don’t even get me started on them.
Not so long ago I found myself at an unavoidable dinner party where some of my fellow guests extolled the virtues of Biden and Starmer who, respectively, worked miracles for their countries or would do so in time. I found that environment “hostile and offensive” if not quite “intimidating” and “humiliating”.
Am I entitled to report my fellow diners to EHRC? Did they overstep the legal boundary and violate my rights?
Along the same lines, I mentioned yesterday that I detest both pop music and especially what it represents. When exposed to it in a public place against my will, I find that experience consonant with the EHRC definition of harassment.
Do I have any legal recourse? Don’t answer that, I’m just being silly. People like me aren’t covered by anti-harassment laws, so any cretin pontificating publicly and loudly on the desirable wonders of women with penises is welcome to harass away.
The government magnanimously concedes that the proposed bill may be in conflict with certain core principles Britain was the first country to introduce into law. The Office for Equality and Opportunity acknowledged that “free speech is a cornerstone of British values but of course it is right that the Employment Rights Bill protects employees from workplace harassment, which is a serious issue.
“As with all cases of harassment under the Equality Act 2010, courts and tribunals will continue to be required to balance rights on the facts of a particular case, including the rights of freedom of expression.”
If I understand correctly, my right to say that Britain has to be a fundamentally Christian country if it’s to be anything must be balanced against a waitress’s right not to overhear such statements because she knows there is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet.
I can’t see offhand how a workable balance can be found. Either I have a right to say what I damn please, or the waitress has a right to sue me under the Employment Rights Bill. No third possibility comes to mind.
Good manners demand that anyone speaking in a public place keep his voice down, but even if one spoke in a whisper, one could still be overheard in a crowded pub. Should every member of staff exhibit a tag specifying not only his pronouns but also his aural acuity?
A spokesman for the British Beer and Pub Association pointed out the nuances of the proposed law to be considered: “Any legalisation must be carefully drafted to make sure it does not have unintended consequences, such as pub workers expected to decide whether private conversations between customers constitute a violation of law.”
Who told them such consequences are unintended? To paraphrase Lenin, the purpose of tyranny is to tyrannise, and the problem highlighted above doesn’t exist. If a pub worker overhears something he considers offensive, it is offensive and hence illegal. What’s there to discuss?
This isn’t supposed to be a carefully drafted law. It’s merely despotic wokery putting its foot down on the throat of supine sanity. The very fact that officials seriously discuss whether anything said in a private conversation “constitutes a violation of law” shifts Britain 1,554 miles east, which happens to be the distance between London and Moscow.
Please, chaps, NIMBY. Been there, done that.
P.S. The Australian Open, the year’s first tournament of the tennis Grand Slam, is upon us, and it sounds as if organisers have invented a new competitive category: triples, as opposed to just singles and doubles.
That’s the impression I got when hearing the public announcer introduce the players as “Novak Djokovic, blah-blah-blah. And their opponent is…” That sounded as if Novak had someone else on his side of the net, helping him out of tight spots. Since Djokovic has never given any signs he is in need of such assistance, I’m perplexed.