Labour assured us the culture wars were over but an increase in institutional censorship shows they are anything but, writes the former chair of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, Trevor Phillips, in a terrific piece for The Times. Here’s an extract:
“Much legislation that started as a noble effort to protect minorities is being turned into a Stalinist charter for conformity. The contemporary jargon is ‘progressive overreach’.
“On Thursday, for example, Cambridgeshire county council was required to stump up £55,000 for disciplining a lesbian employee. Her crime was to react sceptically to a colleague’s claim that his dog was gender fluid; the offended colleague complained to bosses about her ‘nasty opinions’.
“In Britain there is no legal right not to be offended. But increasingly it is becoming custom and practice that you annoy others at peril of your own livelihood; and if someone can summon up a mob to complain either in person or on social media, you are toast. Those Faragiste votes in Labour-held constituencies – in total far more than the Lib Dems amassed – didn’t come out of nowhere.
“Law is being made, in effect, in the boardrooms of campaigning charities, management consultancies and human resources departments. Before we know it, rules neither debated in parliament nor written into statute are becoming the kind of custom and practice before which even courts will bend.
“Recently, I had to complete a compliance form for a large transnational company. Such online questions are now standard for contractors as well as employees. Successful completion opens the door to competition for the company’s business; failure and you may as well not bother applying for the work.
“Much to my delight, there was a module on diversity and inclusion. My enthusiasm waned when I was offered a scenario that required me to agree that certain thoughts are forbidden. The test concerned a conversation between three office workers who had learnt that a biologically male colleague had decided to present as a woman at work. The three discuss it. ‘I really don’t understand all this changing who you are stuff’; ‘You can’t just decide what you want to be. I wonder if he’ll start wearing a dress to work?’; ‘Maybe it’s just a phase’.
“The test was whether these remarks should be reported to management. The proper answer is probably ‘no’; at the very most, ‘maybe’. However, the correct response, apparently, is that they are offensive, irrespective of intent or tone, amount to harassment and could therefore trigger disciplinary action.
“There are two problems here. First, this is wrong in law. After the feminist campaigner Maya Forstater won a case against dismissal for her gender-critical views, such remarks have the status of protected speech. More importantly, the required answer is wrong morally. The requirement to sign up to corporate social codes echoes the practice of last century’s failed Soviet socialism rather than today’s capitalism. Indeed, most social progress in history has come because courageous individuals chose to put justice before tranquillity.
“Today, governments and large companies who parade their diversity credentials insist on strapping employees and suppliers to the Procrustean bed of Greek mythology: Poseidon’s bandit son would torture victims by stretching or amputating their limbs so they fitted his bed perfectly, irrespective of their size. They mostly died.
“The government’s early steps do not inspire confidence in its commitment to a defence of freedom of thought. One of its first actions was to ditch legislation requiring universities to support academics persecuted by their colleagues for unfashionable views.
“Ministers are refusing to respond to the request by my old organisation, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, to legislate that ‘sex’ should mean biological sex. And so far, the mood music on anti-Muslim prejudice has been to support vague, restrictive definitions that would inhibit investigation into the activities of grooming gangs in English towns.
“The Greek myth carries a warning for those in government who wave aside anxieties about progressive overreach. The torture only came to an end when Theseus turned up, took a look at the mayhem, and tied Procrustes to his own bed. Revolutions from above tend to consume their own children, and far too many people are growing angry at being asked to consume a diet of puritanical virtue signalling.”
Worth reading in full.
