Christmas is a time of merrymaking, festive cheer and a trip to the local pub — or at least, it used to be.
Now, it may be time to say goodbye to your favourite festive sing-alongs, including Baby It’s Cold Outside, Do They Know It’s Christmas? and even Jingle Bells.
Thanks to the Employment Rights Act, which became law last week, pubgoers may soon be deprived of these seasonal classics over concerns about “offensive” lyrics, as landlords attempt to mitigate the legal risks posed by Clause 20 of the Employment Rights Bill (now Act).
Employer liability has been expanded, requiring businesses to take “all reasonable steps” to protect employees from third-party, non-sexual harassment, related to a “protected characteristic”. While the “banter ban” is not limited to Christmas, it threatens to fundamentally change the way we celebrate.
As if businesses — particularly those in the hospitality sector — did not already face enough challenges, they will now be expected to police customers’ private conversations or the recitation of “offensive” Christmas lyrics. Unsurprisingly, many businesses will seek costly legal advice to avoid litigation. Expect a banter bouncer in every pub, a code of conduct on every wall, and don’t forget to present proof of your equality, diversity and inclusion training before ordering a festive tipple.
The Free Speech Union has long warned about the damage a banter ban would inflict on customer-facing businesses, especially in hospitality. Lord Young of Acton, founder and general secretary of the Free Speech Union, has said the banter ban would inevitably lead to the “policing of harmless fun in pubs, bars and restaurants, giving scolds and finger-waggers another pretext to stop people enjoying themselves”.
He added: “The Government didn’t listen, insisting we were being alarmist, but a ban on Christmas music and carol singing will be the least of it. Prepare to live in a country in which every hospitality venue is a micro-managed ‘safe space’, overseen by lanyard-wearing banter bouncers. Welcome to Starmer’s Britain.”
In recent years, a number of Christmas classics have already fallen victim to the woke brigade — and even Jingle Bells has not been spared.
Baby It’s Cold Outside, originally written in 1944, was “cancelled” in the wake of the #MeToo movement and later rewritten in 2019 by John Legend to emphasise the importance of consent.
Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas? has been criticised for allegedly perpetuating “damaging stereotypes of Africa”. Musician Fuse ODG, a long-time critic of the project, has argued that initiatives like this “stifle Africa’s economic growth, tourism and investment, ultimately destroying its dignity, pride and identity”.
Even Jingle Bells, a seemingly harmless 160-year-old festive classic, has been accused of having racist origins after an academic noted that it was first performed in blackface during a minstrel show in Boston in September 1857.
After the year we have all endured, most people could do with a drink at their local and a festive sing-along. Instead, our puritanical Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, and his Employment Rights Act look set to become the Grinch who stole Christmas.
Read more in The Telegraph.