Lib-Dem Christian Forum vice-chair Martin Turner is to take a 'side-swipe at political correctness' when he addresses the LDCF fringe meeting at the national party conference in Liverpool this weekend. Turner, who worked for evangelical youth movement Operation Mobilisation from 1988-1996 will argue that 'Political Correctness was always mad', and that it is 'totalitarianism masquerading as liberalism'. With examples including the Muslim who was thrown out of a Dutch swimming bath in case her modest 'burkini' gave offence to other swimmers, and the couple in Derby who have been told they cannot foster children because they are 'too Christian', he will claim that Britain's multiculturalism agenda is mixed up, muddle-headed, and unworkable. However, he is also expected to dispute the Archbishop of Canterbury's recent suggestion that Sharia law should be given a particular status within English jurisprudence. 

Martin Turner said today: "Our current multi-cultural agenda increasingly erodes the rights of those who have a firm faith, religion, philosophy or belief, with the drip-drip argument that 'saying something might offend someone'. Right now, a Christian couple in Derby are being told they cannot foster children, because they don't intend to explain homosexuality to their charges. In Holland the other week, a Muslim woman was ejected from a swimming bath in Zwolle because her 'Burkini' swimming costume might offend other swimmers by being too modest. Not so many years ago Birmingham City Council cancelled Christmas and celebrated Winterval for fear that someone might be offended by the Christian festival.

"In the liberal and democratic society I want to live in, people are free to say what they want to say, however they want to say it. And other people will be free to disagree with them, as forthrightly as they like. The law should only come into play when they are inciting others to break the law. Of course, people who want to be heard and believed will moderate their language — sometimes. And sometimes they will be forthright. We need that forthrightness if our culture is not to die.

"Britain's current multiculturalism agenda is mixed up, muddle-headed, and unworkable. Look around the world and you see that the multicultural societies which really work do not function according to New Labour's blueprint for banality. Parts of Britain have been multicultural in many ways in many different centuries. We have to find a way to live together and grow strong as a society, and we ignore it at our peril — even among leafy rural areas and market towns. The world is on doorstep. But we must find a way to do this that does not reduce everyone and everything to a uniform grey. Or, perhaps, I should say in the spirit of true Politically Correct compromise, a homogenous non-white, non-black mid-tone monochrome."

The meeting will be taking place in the Brunswick Suite of the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Liverpool at 8pm on Friday 7th March.