Sadiq Khan is set to spend more than £2.5 million on a new Transport for London (TfL) diversity training programme, which aims to “embed an inclusive culture” and “reduce microaggressions” (Mail, Telegraph).
The Mayor of London is launching a four-year push to embed what is described as an “inclusive culture” across TfL, Crossrail and the Department for Transport and is advertising for a contractor to run the training and establish a suitable “framework”.
Extending to equality, diversity and inclusion programmes across the London fire service and the Metropolitan Police, the £2.77 million contract will run until 2028.
The advert on the Cabinet Office website reads: “TfL is seeking to establish a framework to deliver equality, diversity and inclusion training to staff and other organisations to help TfL address inequalities, embed an inclusive culture, and put people, customers and colleagues at the heart of decisions and changes that are made at TfL.”
In December 2020, the then government scrapped unconscious bias training across the Civil Service, following an official review which found the courses did not change behaviour or improve workplace equality.
Nevertheless, Khan has continued to press ahead with schemes aimed at boosting diversity in the workplace and reducing “microaggressions”.
It emerged earlier this year, for instance, that the policing office run by the Labour mayor is spending up to £25,000 on “anti-racism allyship” training for members of the Met scrutiny board.
The advert said the aim of the training would be to “empower all participants to actively contribute towards driving improvements to the Metropolitan Police Service in addressing racism”, and added: “It should reference the multiple intersecting forms of prejudice, including racism, misogyny, LGBT+, disability and faith.”
“Anti-racism” is a divisive term drawn from the field of Critical Race Theory that essentially suggests all white people – irrespective of social class – unwittingly benefit from a latently racist society in which they are automatically granted various forms of privilege.
As a result of their socialisation into this racialised system, white people complacently assume that their everyday forms of speech and behaviour (e.g., rolling their eyes, remarking that the most qualified person should get the job, raising their eyebrows) are entirely innocent, when in fact for “People of Colour” they are frequently experienced as deeply traumatic “racial microaggressions” that momentarily reveal a learnt (and otherwise invisible) “unconscious bias” against all non-white folk.
For Critical Race Theory it is therefore not enough for white people simply to sit in the office claiming to be ‘non-racist’ and leave it at that, because “silence about racism is violence”. Instead, they must commit to being actively ‘anti-racist’, re-educating themselves about their numerous failings, unlearning and apologising for their harmful unconscious bias, disavowing their white privilege by elevating the voices of “the oppressed” above their own and rendering them immune from criticism or contestation, and outing as ‘problematic’ any staff members – irrespective of race – who fail to chant the approved mantras with sufficiently Messianic fervour.
Regarding the Mayor’s latest, four-year push to embed an “inclusive culture” across TfL, Crossrail and the Department for Transport, a TfL spokesman said: “This training will support tens of thousands of staff across several organisations, including the Met Police, the Department of Transport and other Greater London Authority bodies for four years.
Contrary to the popular slogan that expenditure on these training initiatives is “just good business”, a recent research report from the FSU reveals that they operate, in effect, as an equity, diversity and inclusion – or EDI – tax.
According to a survey of a representative sample of UK workers undertaken on behalf of the FSU, many ambitious employees and senior managers are now leaving organisations because of the excessive time they’re expected to spend on these courses.
Our survey research also revealed that diversity training schemes prove most irksome to members of the LGBTQ+ community and ethnic minorities – which is an interesting insight given that in the world according to Critical Race Theory these groups are supposed to benefit the most from EDI initiatives, having allegedly been held back by the unconscious bias and constant micro-aggressing of their white, heteronormative oppressors-cum-colleagues.
As to what they find more “irksome” our wider case data provides a clue. Since formation in 2020, the FSU has handled over 2,700 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 training (approximately 240). 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.
Given the extent of self-censorship revealed by our research report, The EDI Tax, it would seem that many UK employees are thinking twice before contributing to workplace diversity training programmes.
Genuine diversity of thought is of course required for any organisation to succeed – but in organisations like the London Fire Brigade and the Met Police, where people’s safety is at stake, encouraging a culture of silence to creep-in risks materially affecting the quality of service on offer.
The recent report of the Inclusion at Work panel, commissioned by the former Minister for Women and Equalities, Kemi Badenoch, reaches similar conclusions regarding the efficacy of workplace diversity initiatives.
Following interviews with 100 people representing 55 organisations, the report noted a “lack of accessible, plain-language, robust data on the efficacy of D&I [Diversity & Inclusion] interventions”, as well as a lack of evidence that these interventions were effective in achieving their purported objectives.
In December 2020, the government’s Behavioural Insights Team came to a similar conclusion in its review of unconscious bias training. The Written Ministerial Statement accompanying that study noted that, “Despite a growing diversity training industry and increased adoption of unconscious bias programmes, a strong body of evidence has emerged that shows that such training has no sustained impact on behaviour and may even be counterproductive”.
