Since its creation in 2020, the FSU has handled over 2,500 individual cases and queries relating to free speech. Of our free speech cases, 46% are in some way associated with the workplace and, among these, approximately one fifth concern EDI (Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) training (approximately 230). In practice, this means that our members are asking whether they’ll get into trouble if they refuse to do the training, or seeking our help because they’ve already got into trouble for challenging it.
We recently carried out a representative nationwide poll on EDI and climate training, and found that 62% of British workers have had to conceal what they really think about the issues covered in their training, including 22% who have been compelled to say things they don’t believe.
In some cases, EDI training extends to telling employees and professionals how they should behave outside the workplace, such as the insistence that employees should use the preferred pronouns of trans people in their private life. For instance, in 2021 the FSU wrote to Somerville College, Oxford, which was insisting that all students undertake unconscious bias training and achieve a 100% score in the end-of-course assessment. After our intervention, the insistence that the course-takers score 100% in the assessment was dropped.
We’ve also recently uncovered an example of EDI training at the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT), which immerses the reader in the language of critical social justice and would appear to make it extremely difficult for any member therapists to dissent from gender identity ideology or critical race theory.
The full RCSLT case study has just been added to our recent research briefing, the EDI Tax, but here’s a brief summary.
The RCSLT is the professional body for people working in or studying speech and language therapy in the UK. It has just under 22,000 members and recently collaborated with the UK SLT Pride Network to produce this training guide, entitled ‘Supporting LGBTQIA+ colleagues in the workplace: a guide for all’ (‘the Guide’), which is intended for all speech and language therapists, as well as support workers and students, irrespective of whether they identify as LGBTQIA+.
Tellingly, the Guide signposts readers to external organisations such as Stonewall and the LGBT Foundation, both of which have attracted controversy in the recent past on issues of gender and sexuality. In 2023, the Minister for Women and Equalities, Kemi Badenoch, told Whitehall officials to withdraw from Stonewall’s diversity scheme. The LGBT foundation, meanwhile, published research in the same year that was later criticised by researchers at the universities of Oxford, Coventry and the West of England. It was claimed the study was “one-sided”, “methodologically flawed” and peppered with terms that suggest an uncritical belief in Gender Identity Ideology.
The Guide urges its readers to go beyond what’s required by the Equality Act:
While the protections of this legislation are good, they are not sufficient. We need to work towards a world where the culture of workplaces is inclusive for everyone: workplaces where everyone is treated equitably, with the same level of respect, and the same level of dignity, irrespective of their characteristics or status. People should not need to rely on the law for that. It is a basic human right.
In our experience, this gold-plating of the Equality Act inevitably has a chilling effect on free speech and the language is misleading – the Guide is not in fact recommending “the same level of respect” for transgendered people and gender critical feminists, for instance.
Further on, the Guide provides a link to an LGBTQI+ audit tool which aims “to provide both services and individuals with a tool against which they can measure their work in supporting LGBTQIA+ colleagues, including students on placement, and LGBTQIA+ people accessing speech and language therapy”. The Guide is focused on advice relating to LGBT issues, but it also invokes other controversial concepts in critical social justice theory, including ‘anti-racism’, ‘intersectionality’ and ‘microaggressions’.
We have listed below the more troubling elements of the audit tool for individuals:
Under ‘1. General policies and publications’
- I have undertaken allyship and active bystander training. I have taken LGBTQIA+, allyship, and active bystander, anti-racism, and disability affirming training.
- If white and not disabled, I understand and feel confident about my role in anti-racism and disability affirming work and support of LGBTQIA+ people of colour and disabled people.
- I understand and feel confidence about my role in anti-racism.
Under ‘6. Active development towards allyship’
- I have attended LGBTQIA+-specific training or have some booked.
- I am aware of current news and media topics affecting the LGBTQIA+ population.
- I am aware of national or international days for LGBTQIA+ population, for example, the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia.
- I understand and feel confidence about my role in anti-racism.
It is not clear how a member of the RCSLT who does not believe in Gender Identity Ideology or Critical Race Theory might fare if they were to make their position public during the training, or even in the workplace, given that ‘active bystander’ training requires people to ‘call out’ ‘discriminatory’ behaviour, such as refusing to use the preferred gender pronouns of trans colleagues. We do know from our casework, however, that individuals who have protested at similar training from other regulators have found themselves in trouble.
