Last updated at 8:58 AM on 04th February 2009 BY MELANIE PHILLIPS, WRITING IN THE DAILY MAIL Sometimes you have to pinch yourself to remember that Britain has historically always been the cradle of liberty. For today we seem to be sliding inexorably into a culture of control which would have been very familiar to the Stasi or the KGB. Carol Thatcher, the daughter of former Prime Minister Lady Thatcher, now faces being banned from the BBC after reportedly referring to an unnamed tennis player as reminding her of a 'golliwog'. Carol, who was crowned Queen of the Jungle in the 2005 reality series I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!, has been a regular presenter on The One Show - a daily magazine programme on BBC One - for three years and is described as part of the family on the BBC website. But yesterday the BBC threw her out by announcing in the wake of the 'golliwog' row that it now had 'no plans' to use her again in her regular presenting slot. Row: Carol Thatcher's use of the word 'golliwog' has seen her fired from the BBC Let it be said loud and clear, racially offensive language is unacceptable. Ms Thatcher maintains, however, that she made merely a jokey remark. Her friends say that all she did was to compare the player's hairstyle to the 'Robertson's Golly' which once adorned that company's jars of jam and marmalade. But without knowing the context in which she made this remark - and the tone in which it was said - none of us can judge what to make of it. And that surely is the point. For the really disturbing thing about this episode - unlike that involving Jonathan Ross, who deeply offended millions in public, had to have an apology dragged out of him and kept his £18million job - is not so much the remark itself but the fact that Carol Thatcher made it in private. Offence: Friends of Carol Thatcher say she just compared a tennis player's hair to that of a golliwog We can't gauge whether or not this really is a hanging offence or a trivial aside of no consequence, because she made the remark after several drinks in the show's hospitality room to the presenter Adrian Chiles, who is said to have been 'outraged' by it. So outraged that it seems it is being used to hang her out to dry. But it was a remark made in the course of a private conversation - which has now been used to sack her after someone involved in that lighthearted banter passed it on to BBC executives in the form of a complaint. It is the BBC's reaction which is really shocking and offensive, together with the behaviour of the person who turned in Ms Thatcher (would they have done so if she'd had a different mother?) to the Corporation's commissars. It is hard to think of anything more despicable than snitching like this on a private conversation. People say or do all kinds of things which are perfectly acceptable in the context of drinks with friends or colleagues, but which would cause a very different impression if they occurred in public. If we were all to be treated in this way, how many of us would remain in our jobs? Is there anyone who can honestly claim never to have uttered an injudicious remark when sharing a drink with friends? This is the whole point of privacy. The very essence of a liberal society is to acknowledge the distinction between public and private, and to tolerate in private what might not be acceptable in public. To seek to enforce codes of behaviour in private relationships is totally coercive and illiberal. Yet that is precisely what has happened in the case of Carol Thatcher. By reporting her remark to the BBC hierarchy - and who knows whether or not it was distorted or taken out of context in the lodging of this complaint - her disloyal and sneaky colleagues took an axe to her right to privacy. The implications are deeply disturbing. For such behaviour means that no one can ever relax with colleagues for fear that one of them might go running to the boss to complain. It destroys the freedom to speak in private for fear that this might be used to cast you into outer darkness for having a view which falls foul of some arbitrary definition of what is acceptable. After all, no offence could possibly have been given to the unnamed tennis player or the public at large because the remark was not broadcast. This is, in fact, the second time in just a few days in which someone has found herself facing the sack for behaviour which has caused no actual offence but where charges have been laid by officious colleagues enforcing an oppressive code of behaviour. Community nurse Caroline Petrie offered to pray for an elderly patient who was being treated at home. The following day, Mrs Petrie was confronted over her offer by a nursing sister. The day after that, she was told that she was suspended while disciplinary action would be taken against her which might lead to the sack. But although the patient had turned down her offer of a prayer, she said she was not the slightest bit offended and certainly had not made a complaint. Suspended: Nurse Caroline Petrie As with Carol Thatcher, it was this nurse's colleagues who were offended that Mrs Petrie had transgressed codes of 'equality and diversity' - which apparently preclude a nurse offering the Christian solace of prayer. And it was professional colleagues, both in that NHS Trust and in the BBC, who took it upon themselves to enforce those approved attitudes from which there can be no deviation. Mr Ross's offence is that in sick language he offended the elderly. Old, white, middle-class people don't really count for much in the BBC mindset. Ms Thatcher's alleged offence involved race - which to the BBC constitutes the most heinous crime of all. Such political correctness is now the governing characteristic of public sector institutions such as the BBC and the NHS, along with an intelligentsia determined upon a draconian process of social engineering aimed at changing not just society but human nature itself. Ostensibly designed to protect disadvantaged groups, it is actually all about advertising the moral purity of those who enforce it. It's a dogma enforced with the zealotry of a secular inquisition and is profoundly totalitarian in character. Indeed, behaviour such as this has always been a key feature of police states and totalitarian regimes. The Stasi or the KGB gained much of their power over the population they tyrannised by getting people to inform on each other, using such informers to bring forward evidence of 'thought crimes' from private or overheard conversations. Such use of informers sets people against each other in a climate of permanent and corrosive suspicion. Destroying the trust which is the basis of relationships, it is thus a principal means of controlling the population. In Communist regimes, Stasi and KGB informers and apparatchiks designated dissidents, religious believers and other free spirits as enemies of the state. In politically correct Britain, BBC informers and NHS apparatchiks designate jovially gabby broadcasters and Christian nurses as enemies of society, to be summarily convicted by kangaroo courts of conformist bureaucrats and banished in opprobrium and disgust. It's all part of a wider trend. The police 'hate crime' division urges the public to inform on anyone who expresses an opinion they deem hateful to the usual range of disadvantaged groups. An energy company invites children to become 'climate cops', reporting on parents, relatives and friends who leave TV sets on and commit other examples of 'climate crime'. It is this combination of lunacy and coercion which leads one to think that the land of those great apostles of free thinking, John Milton and John Locke, is fast turning into a nightmare straight out of the pages of George Orwell or Franz Kafka. The age of the snitch: A nurse suspended for praying. Carol Thatcher sacked for a private remark. How public sector informers are creating Stasi Britain...
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