Naughty Words

In Orwell's last word on English society, Newspeak is an artificial language whose overriding purpose is the enforcement of political orthodoxy, and whose every word is a staccato sound expressing a single rigidly defined concept. It is therefore only natural that the CPS, where the CEO of Team Starmer once found a happy home, should take a dim view of the shades of meaning that can attach to racial epithets. Lesser philosemites than Team Starmer will be aware of the difference between the word Yid as spoken by a Jew and the same word as spoken by a paid-up practitioner of the Muskular Straight-arm Salute; just as lesser Atlanticists than Team Starmer will be aware of the difference between the word boy as applied to a male younger than oneself and the same word as applied by a white person to a black man in the southern United States. All such nuances and vagaries are beyond the perceptions of data monitoring organisations, of the Metropolitan Police and of the Contextual Prejudice Squad, who recently joined forces to prosecute a black student for referring to a black footballer as nigga, and thereby brought about a situation of outstanding natural Britishness in which the laws against racial hatred were mobilised to harass a black woman for speaking in the accepted idiom of her own community. After eighteen months of wrangling, the case has been dropped on the grounds that there is "no longer sufficient evidence to provide a reasonable prospect of conviction." although what evidence was previously available that merited more than dismissal with a snigger remains as yet unclear.