by Eamonn Dwyer

‘What is your name?’

‘Why do you need my name?’

‘Because I am calling the police.’

‘About what?’

‘Because you are a racist.’

Hang on a second. I, Eamonn Dwyer, white Irish liberal, am a racist? How did that happen?

It began as a complaint.

I was caught short at Waterloo; it was the second time in three months that I had been missold a day travelcard the previous day instead of a weekly one. My enunciation was clear and ineluctable at the counter, a fool-proof formulation I repeated every Monday in rehearsed tone of voice.

‘Hello. I would like a one week travelcard for zones one and two, starting today please.’

Perhaps the guy behind the counter didn’t hear me. Perhaps this was his idea of a prank. Perhaps he found the clarity of my request patronising and was irritated into contradiction. Either way, I had enough and decided to resolve the situation once and for all.

Returning to Brixton tube station with my receipt, I was directed to five managers shooting the shit in a glassed-off control box. A complaint from a customer didn’t warrant sitting up straight in their seats apparently. The guy who did most of the talking was especially laconic, and said it was my fault for not checking the receipt. I said this had happened several times before. Perhaps they could use it as an opportunity to speak to the member of staff and direct them to be more careful in future? The manager said he wouldn’t bother one of his staff with business like that. I should check my receipt in future. Now could I please go away?

Asking for a complaint form, I was directed to a ‘customer representative’ who had stealthed up beside me during the discussion. He gave me a card with a phone number and website detail for ‘customer feedback’. Asking his name, he told me ‘Terry Initial O’.

‘Terry O?’

‘Terry initial O.’

I wrote it down on the card.

‘Not giving me you surname then?’

He pointed to the card and said the O should come before Terry.

‘Then why didn’t you just say that?’

‘Because the way I said it is correct.’

‘No, initials can refer to surname or forename. That’s why they’re called initials.’

‘That’s the way I was taught and that’s the way I say it.’

‘Listen mate, I’ve got a first class degree in English, so I strongly suspect I’m right here’.

His expression darkened.

‘You are a racist’.

‘What?’

For the first time I realised he was black. (I know that might sound disingenuous, but living in Brixton it’s not the first thing you notice about someone.)

‘You are making all these assumptions about me. You don’t know anything about my background.’

I know he worked in a tube station. I know he didn’t know what an initial was. I surmised he wasn’t the brightest bulb in the shop from these facts and these facts alone. He could have been white and Irish and the conversation would have flowed south the same way. His being black had nothing to do with me being an intellectual snob.

I thanked him for his time (with a pinch of disingenuousness) and joined the counter to queue for the much vaunted one-week travelcard.

This is when he crept up behind me again, and asked my name. This, for the police investigation he wanted to instigate. When I wouldn’t give it over, he said he would get my face off the CCTV.

Initially, I was amused by the idea of Brixton’s finest taking time out of murder inquiries, drug busts and vice duties to look into - what? Racially motivated verbal assault? Then I remembered a story a friend told me.

He had decked a youth who attacked his girlfriend. He was arrested for common assault, but the police said they wouldn’t give him bail unless he admitted a racial motive behind his actions (the youth was black). My friend was bullied into accepting, something he still regrets, but it’s one of the unintended consequences of guidelines to counter institutional racism in the police. There is ‘an assumption to prosecute’ in racially motivated crimes, a top target for investigating officers looking to ‘duke the stats’ to prove the force is being tough on racists.

One could imagine O Terry’s outraged discussions with his lounging managers. Maybe they would find what I had said not sufficiently racist, and would spice up the allegations to make the CPS’s job a little easier. Put in the dock with six hostile witnesses against me, perhaps the CCTV tape so useful in my identification would unfortunately be wiped at camera angles which could reveal my verbal innocence. Convicted with a racially-motivated offense, I would also be banned from public transport for verbally ‘assaulting’ one of their staff, and in practical terms would have to leave London. And any trips to the US would be off the cards with my new record.

Maybe I’m being paranoid here, and all O Terry wanted to do was scare me and get back a little of the dignity I had robbed from him with a snobbish comment. I haven’t been back to the station since, in case I get muscled to the ground by staffers performing a citizen’s arrest.

The idea that you have a right to be protected from offense by what someone else has said is becoming deeply engrained in Britain’s consciousness. New Labour has passed draconian laws forbidding causing racial, religious, and ethnic offense. Worse, many of these laws consider offense to be determined by the effect it has on the offended party, not an objective judgement on what was being said. These are inverted thought crimes; crime which originate in the minds of the victim, not the transgressor.

So I guess I’m lucky to live close enough to Stockwell station. Hopefully I won’t be falsely accused while travelling there.

Names have been changed