Carol Thatcher’s no racist: she’s just been left behind by a better Britain

Carol Thatcher has entered light-entertainment's Hall of Shame. Having referred to an unnamed tennis player at the Australian Open (believed to be Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga) as a "golliwog" in the green room of The One Show, the BBC has axed her from the programme. Last week she was a "roving reporter" on the show. This week she joins the ranks of former football manager Ron Atkinson ("nigger"), gameshow host Jim Bowen ("nig-nog") and Robert Kilroy-Silk (assorted gaffes) as one of those naff presenters who think freedom of speech is a licence to talk nonsense.

But to call Ms Thatcher a racist may be pushing it. I don't know what her track record is on race — whether she's ever denied someone a job because of the colour of their skin or whether she even has any black friends. But I doubt that she's a racist in the crudest sense of the word.

People like her live in a different world from most Londoners. She is the product of a privileged, mollycoddled environment, where many people still simply do not get all this crazy cosmopolitan stuff about equality, rights and respect.

I suspect that if Carol Thatcher does pal around with any "ethnics," one will soon emerge from obscurity and, in time-honoured fashion, will admit to having a cuddly racisit nickname — just as Prince Charles has his token polo chum "Sooty" and Prince Harry, his cuddly army mate "Paki".

When I was growing up in the East End in the Seventies and Eighties, my concerns as a black man were rather different. It wasn't uncommon for me to be called a "nigger" or a "coon" by complete strangers in the street, or be chased by skinhead Nazis and then go home to find these prejudices reinforced on television in programmes such as Love They Neighbour, Mind Your Language and the Black and White Minstrel Show.

I have been called a golliwog, spook, wog, sambo, black bastard: the racist's lexicon is limitless.

Then, while researching a book in Sheffield a few years ago, I was stunned to hear a local landlady use "nigger brown" with a straight face, as
a descriptive term. People would routinely refer to a convenience store as a "Paki shop". In London, such language today would seem not only racist and dated but also absurd, unless put in some sort of context.

And context is king in all of this.

On the whole, I'm against any form of censorship that fosters a "war on words" to satisfy some twisted PC agenda. Whether it's "nigger," "queer" or "cripple", people have the right to use whatever words they want however they want, as communication tools that make a point, any point they want to make.

If someone uses a racial epithet and it causes offence, they have to ask themselves if it was intentional or through ignorance. If it was intentional, they need to see a shrink. If it was the product of ignorance, address that as the root cause.

What's really disappointing about "Thatchergate" is that the expensive educations, privileges and opportunities count for nothing. By using a cheap, outdated and yes, largely racist word like "golliwog" Carol Thatcher betrays her lack of wit, charm and vocabulary, rather than a predilection for white supremacy.

Right-wing commentators have been quick to lambast Thatcher's sacking as "political correctness gone mad", blathering on about liberal conspiracies and bleating about her remark being made in private, as though privacy is a defence against offence. It isn't. It's merely a smokescreen, a place in which moral relativism can be stretched to breaking point.

Just because people can say what the hell they want in the privacy of their own homes or in the closed shop of a bar-room drinking circle, that doesn't make it right or acceptable to today's man on the Clapham omnibus.

No, Thatcher's remarks were anything but private. They were made in the workplace (a public arena if ever there is one), for a broadcaster funded by the public, in front of a group of journalists and some very public figures that included presenter Adrian Chiles and Leftie stand-up comedian, Jo Brand.

But while the BBC is right to take racism at its White City HQ very seriously, it should have bigger fish to fry than Carol Thatcher. In terms of senior management and editorial staff, black people are woefully underrepresented at the Beeb.

Black media professionals with serious track records complain constantly that they do not get the breaks at White City. Similarly, black viewers feel cheated by a licence fee that does not serve their tastes.

The Corporation is particularly sensitive about foul, offensive and "inappropriate" language in the wake of the Ross-Brand affair. But once again, it has displayed duplicity and muddled thinking over the matter. On the one hand, Thatcher has been dumped from The One Show, but on the other, according to BBC1 Controller Jay Hunt, she is still "welcome" to work for the Corporation.

Unlike the vitriolic Ron Atkinson, who in 2004 described former Chelsea player Marcel Desailly off-air as "a lazy, thick nigger", Carol Thatcher's outburst smacks more of a woman out of step and out of tune with modern Britain than someone informed by deep-seated racism. "Golliwog" is a leftover from Enid Blyton, from a world of Empire and conquest, where black people knew their place.

But this England is, thankfully, another country. Every Friday night I like to shoot the breeze and have a drink with friends in Brixton, an area once synonymous with racial tension but now the embodiment of something approaching racial harmony.

It would be the perfect place for a chastened Ms Thatcher to hang out, meet some real people, clear the air and learn a little about modern Britain. We won't bite. I'll even get the drinks in. Oh, and rest assured, the conversation will be strictly private. How about it Carol?

David Matthews is a broadcaster and filmmaker.