In defence of prejudice

There’s always something that seems clinically compelling about a claim that we need yet more equality laws. Mary Prior KC, chair of the Criminal Bar Association and a proud working-class Potteries girl, has demanded that regional accents and social deprivation should be legally protected characteristics. At first sight it’s difficult to argue with the icy logic. If it’s unfair to do someone down because they’re female, or Catholic, or black, it can’t be all right for a lah-di-dah appointments committee in SW1 to prefer Serena to Sharon, or Simon from Surbiton over Steve from Sunderland. Or can it?

It’s actually much less obvious than it seems that discrimination must be banned if it can’t be rigidly justified in the kind of clinical argument that used to be held in university tutors’ rooms. Put bluntly, once we start looking at matters from the point of view of the man on the Clapham overground, or the woman standing at the SW1 water-cooler, it becomes clearer and clearer that prejudices have their place and that letting them operate might even have its upsides.