Head Strong | Finally, U.K. takes off the P.C. gloves

By Michael Smerconish

Six months ago, I redeemed credit card points to discount our family's summer vacation. I had to navigate a telephone obstacle course to make it happen. I'm convinced the airlines deliberately make it a burden to redeem their prizes, but I endured, because the destination sounded ideal.

London.

A lot has changed since we booked passage. Now, I'm just hoping my wife will still go. And I'm thinking about what awaits us overseas.

I've been eager to show our kids the sites, including Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park. It's really something to see. Grievances of every kind get aired here by the citizenry on Sunday afternoons from makeshift platforms. In 1998, I visited this spot with my father. We were taken aback by some strident anti-Semitic speakers, outright advocating the destruction of Israel. I remember thinking that some of the guys seemed dangerous, and then rationalizing that it was better for them to vent through words than actions.

Apparently, it wasn't an either/or. It appears the Brits became too accommodating. Londonistan is a pretty P.C. place. And a constant target. Maybe that's no coincidence.

My favorite example: In 2005, a woman in the United Kingdom named Mary Magilton was chastised by a police officer filling out a hit-and-run report, after she described the motorist as "fat." The officer told Magilton that description was "too offensive."

Then came U.K. financial institutions Halifax and NatWest, where they scrapped piggybanks, time-honored symbols of savings for generations of school kids, because they feared that the image would offend some Muslims.

And there was the black bodyguard who was removed from his post as protector of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall. He won a racial-discrimination suit against Scotland Yard for being "overpromoted." (An ingenious, self-undercutting argument: Because I am black, you gave me a job I couldn't handle, so when I messed up, it was your fault, and you owe me.)

Even after the attacks on a double-decker bus and three subway lines July 7, 2005, things remained P.C. in the U.K. Within days, BBC coverage dropped the words terror and terrorist from many stories and even deleted those words from past stories. Instead, articles spoke of "peacetime bomb attacks." The BBC literally purged all mention of the T-word from its coverage.

The explanation? "We recognize that the word terrorist can look like a reflection of editorial bias rather than a statement of fact."

Fast-forward two years. With the discovery of car bombs planted in the Haymarket area, and the SUV blast at Glasgow Airport last weekend, initial reports identified the suspects with the nonspecific Asian label instead of calling them Muslim extremists.

Only now, as law enforcement responds, do the gloves appear to have come off.

It's almost as if a modern form of the Chamberlain mind-set has been replaced with a reincarnation of Churchill. Our friends across the pond are moving at breakneck speed not to appease their opponents, but rather to examine the forensics, execute lightning raids, and make arrests.

Gone are the niceties, the coddling, the sensitivity training. They've arrested eight people in connection with the plot; all of whom are in the medical profession. More than 100 flights have been canceled at Heathrow as a result of stepped-up security. They've patrolled with armed vehicles and stepped up stop-and-search measures.

Investigators have used cell phone records to identify calls received from landlines. They've tracked the matching addresses and identified the people living there. They seized two suspects while they drove on a highway in northern England the night of June 30.

Perhaps there's a historical lesson in this. There was no amount of conciliation that could have thwarted a different foe 60 years ago. That strategy was tried and failed. Only when the lion was brought in from the wilderness did the threat get turned back. Not until the demons of a different age were confronted head-on was there really "peace for our time." And that peace is now threatened.

Michael Smerconish's column appears on Thursdays in the Daily News and on Sundays in Currents. Michael can be heard from 5:30 to 9 a.m. weekdays on "The Big Talker," WPHT-AM (1210). Contact him at http://www.mastalk.com.