The most hilarious “row” last week was the one triggered by Bristol City Tory councillor Richard Eddy who refused, at a meeting, to refer to the Green Party chair Ani Stafford-Townsend (you would never guess her politics from her name, would you?) as chair, referring to her instead as “chairman”. Eddy, who is widely regarded as the champion of buffoonery in local politics, said his decision to use the term chairman was because he had been using the term for 24 years and “political correctness” would not stop him using it. As soon as someone uses the term “political correctness”, you have a fair idea which side of the political side divide is occupied by the complainant and you know they are losing the argument.
Eddy says that because he has always referred to the chair as chairman gives him the right to carry on so doing, even when the “chairman” is a woman. I have been using the term chair for as long as I remember, not because of some imaginary “political correctness”, but the term “chairman” is not always necessary or appropriate.
I have watched parts of the Tory Party conference in the past where speakers have referred to “Madam Chairman”. It’s quite ridiculous. What a waste of oxygen. It is almost Saudi Arabian in nature. Perhaps we should not allow women to chair meetings at all, putting in their place perhaps honorary men to do the job. We could call that person “chairman”, perhaps?
It is always people of the right and often of bigotry (casual or blatant), who invoke the myth of “political correctness”, when they are making jokes about people from Pakistan or those of Afro-Caribbean stock (“bloody correctness gone mad”), for example, or just being grossly offensive.
With Eddy, knowingly or not, he is trying to keep women in there place (see also Tyson Fury) which in his quaint, old fashioned way may not be as the chair of any kind of organisation except perhaps the Women’s Institute. Who’s the chairman of the WI, by the way?