The Free Speech Union has just published a briefing called Woke, Ltd. by Thomas Harris, the FSU’s Director of Data and Impact. It’s about the B Corps movement, which the FSU thinks is having a chilling effect on free speech in the workplace. You can read about the report in today’s Times.
The movement originated with B Lab Global, an American non-profit that was set up in 2006. It now has branches called B Labs all over the world, including the UK. Indeed, the number of B Corps in the U.K. is growing exponentially, with more in 2022 than the rest of Europe combined. To date, more than 1,900 companies operating in Britain have become B Corps.
To become a B Corp-certified company – a kite mark provided by your local B Lab, a bit like becoming a Stonewall Diversity Champion – the directors must go beyond maximising profits and commit to serving ‘people’ and the ‘planet’. In the words of B Lab Global, a B Corp is a “designation that a business is meeting high standards of verified performance, accountability and transparency on factors from employee benefits and charitable giving to supply-chain practices and input materials”.
That sounds benign and well-meaning, but certification involves a company changing its Articles of Association to include a commitment to meeting social and environmental targets, both internally and externally. For instance, the B Corps framework assesses a company against B Lab’s principles of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion – or JEDI, for short. Among other things, that means making a commitment to ‘racial justice’ and Net Zero and that, in turn, can lead to employees or customers who don’t share those values being purged – a good example being Nigel Farage’s defenestration by Coutts, a B Corp-certified company.
The FSU is concerned that the B Corps phenomenon is accelerating the adoption by British companies of contentious political ideas that originated in ‘grievance studies’ departments in American universities (gender studies, queer studies, whiteness studies), e.g. critical race theory (including the idea that all white people are privileged and it’s not enough for them to be non-racist, they must be ‘anti-racist’) and gender identity ideology. This ideology is often enforced with authoritarian zeal.
What is particularly worrying is that B Lab U.K., the British arm of this movement, is lobbying for a new Act of Parliament that would mean British businesses have to comply with this ideology and impose it on their employees and customers – even their suppliers. If U.K. law is changed whereby all British companies have to incorporate B Corps principles into their operations, the Equality Act 2010 might have to be amended to dilute workplace protections for employees’ speech rights, so that certain beliefs – such as a belief in the reality of biological sex – would lose their ‘protected’ status.
As Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg says in the Foreword to the briefing, there is no need for companies to change their ‘purpose’ so they’re focusing on ‘people’ and the ‘planet’, in addition to profit. Adam Smith’s famous words in The Wealth of Nations remain as true today as they did in 1776: “Every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is, in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.”
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Woke capitalism — the last step in the left’s ‘long march through the institutions’?
https://www.carolinajournal.com/opinion/woke-capitalism-the-last-step-in-the-lefts-long-march-through-the-institutions/
The essay linked above explains exactly what is behind the drive for corporations to trim their sails in a leftward direction.
This is why you see ESG box tickers like Nike Unilever, Bud Light etc take a temporary hit to their sales because they realise that in the long run they won’t be able to do business in the Woke Capitalist world that is being created. ———It is very difficult to keep a track of all the companies indulging in this wokery and then to not buy stuff from them, but the people have the power to eliminate these parasites by doing exactly that. Do you really need a Nike top or a jar of cream from Dove? No you don’t. But as with the climate change tyranny people are way too busy with work and family life to thoroughly investigate every issue so they end up taking what they get. Which is what Social Justice, wokery and ESG decides you can have. As someone once pointed out “All it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to remain silent”, ———–And ofcourse that applies to all of the other 926 genders as well.
Yes,people are too busy with work and family life to investigate and push back against the tide of wokeism but they could refuse to vote for any establishment party at the very least.All are fully signed up for the woke agenda. Mogg, Mcvey and Co can raise concerns but at the end of the day what they say doesn’t make a jot of difference to the direction of a corporate owned and funded party who will do exactly what Larry Fink tells them to do.
The big takeaway from this is to:
“Pull any investments you have that are managed by the “big three,” (Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street) and refuse to give your consumer dollars (and pounds) to companies espousing values you abhor.”
Never voting for establishment parties is equally as imperative and effective.
Unfortunately it appears that pretty much ALL the UK based Investment companies have signed up to the Communist ESG rubbish or this UN demand published by one such company …
“We are committed to responsible investing and are signatories to the United Nations-supported Principles for Responsible Investment.”
Never heard of B Corp until this article. ESG, Stonewall, B Corp – all coordinated, planned, directed. Part of the greater plan and 2020 revolution to destroy everything – annihilate genders which will deracinate the Church and family, trans-pans everything means fewer babies, more drugs, more profits, more compliance to the transhuman agenda. I work in a woke investment bank corp and most of the people don’t support it, but what can you do. Had run ins with smiling HR over the fags, queers and trans love but few speak out.
I am optimistic that this bullshit ends – evil usually implodes due to immorality, inconsistency, outright idiocy and illogic. But it needs to be confronted.
What needs to be tackled is the fundamental problem which is the obsession with doing good.
It’s a ridiculous ambition which goes against human nature, like pretty much all left wing projects
A far more realistic ambition is to avoid doing harm to others. That is all civilisation needs. A commitment from the vast majority to do their best to not be assholes.
After that each person can pursue his own prosperity as he wishes.
Attempts to do well for others are almost always fake, ruses for one’s own benefit and generally do inadvertent harm.
The idea that we should force everyone to do good is probably one of the most subversivey evil ideas of our times.
Spot on
I generally agree with that view, although I was interested to read (many years ago) ‘La Chute’ by Camus , in which he talks about the philosophical duty we all have (in his view) to do more than merely avoid harming others. But only a bit more! To see a crime taking place, to be able to prevent it, but to do nothing – is a dereliction of our duty towards others (in his view – and I think in mine); but to dedicate oneself to improving the lot of others, when usually those others are not in imminent danger in the first place, does indeed smack of sentimentality and virtue-signalling do-goodery – preconceptions, blueprints of the ‘ideal society’ (to be imposed on society regardless of the actual, physical terrain with which ordinary people are confronted) – you know, that stuff so beloved of the Guardian and the BBC… Once embarked on such a journey, one’s whole world view shifts, and people who were simply minding their own business now become monsters of indifference, to be pointed at, vilified, hounded, and portrayed as the concrete reason for Guardian Man to take his do-goodery a step further – pushing even more of the previously innocent into the ‘evil’ camp. And the process goes on and on, as we’re now seeing every day as never before. For this reason Leftism is always pernicious; but of course in its earliest stages, to young or simplistic minds, it seems to offer an obvious path to a meaningful way of living life. Finally, Leftism exerts its greatest attraction when traditional sources of spiritual guidance are absent; and which institutions are more absent today than the church, the police, the schools and universities, and the greatest of all – the nuclear family, made up of one man and one woman in that quaint old arrangement formerly known as ‘marriage’…
it needs to be confronted. Indeed. I have gone through the latest 1000 UK companies and there are a dozen whom I have used or use as suppliers. I will be writing to the CE of each as to why they will be no longer – they do not share my values and those of my company. Lets see where that takes us.
Woke is Marxism. Know the enemy.
Here’s an excellent presentation of this thesis by Dr. James Lindsay:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6rk1mYiOAw
Lindsay’s the man.
” so that certain beliefs – such as a belief in the reality of biological sex – would lose their ‘protected’ status.”
Enough of this CRAP. Biological sex is FACT. Hence the concept of “protected belief” WRT sex is complete NONSENSE.
Innit.
Things have go to the point in the breakdown of our society that my wife and I wander round the house cursing roundly. Indeed, we tell people neither of us got Covid, but we both got an extreme case of Tourette’s, which we cannot shake off.
**** ’em all. May they rot in hell.
Red-Dwarf
This item brings to mind the Red Dwarf episode when Red Dwarf is taken over by M-Corp and Dave Lister uses up his quota of social credit dollar/pounds.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5218458/
Who could have foretold that a comedy sci-fi episode would be so close to predicting today’s reality.
Many thanks to Toby and the FSU for bringing this deeply anti-human organisation to our attention. This vile outfit deserves to be outed and urgently needs public attention.
Just another bullsh*t way of introducing more controls into the matrix. It’s an Agenda 21 initiative no doubt about that, typing up loose ends and tightening the noose, towards the Marxist wet dream of communitarianism. Well worth watching them and what they do. Can we stop it? Who knows but all those joining it will be utterly indoctrinated. It needs outing as HP below says.
Another non profit or fake charity using lax tax rules to generate tax deductible cash flow. These entities provide tax receipts for anyone who donates so they are essentially being funded with the taxes you pay. Many governments will donate directly to these NGOs and fake charities. They provide 6 figure salaries to their executives. Elites have learned to pick a cause, get non profit status, write articles then watch the cash flow start. No need to slog away like the plebs. There are over 100,000 non profits and charities, many fake numbered charities, in the UK. Many operate as cult like operations that refuse debate or dissension.
They are supposed to be audited by the tax authorities and not interfere in political processes but the numbers tell you that this is impossible to control and manage. Instability in Western Countries, which allow this abuse of charity rules, is a direct result of this.
Follow the money! These types of organizations are all being funded by your taxes. Unless these rules are changed or revoked, western countries will be destroyed.
Those who believe in the B Lab ideology have a right to their beliefs but equally those who do not agree with the B Lab ideology have a right to their opinions and beliefs.
The problem is when those who support the B Lab ideology try to impose their values on others.
So this is now the new normal … “B Lab U.K., the British arm of this movement, is lobbying for a new Act of Parliament that would mean British businesses have to comply with this ideology ….”
WTF … (to coin a phrase). A US business establishes a UK branch to pressure UK businesses to subscribe to a Communist philosophy and policy and expects to be able to lobby OUR Government for a new law to be passed which will compel businesses & their employees & their suppliers & their customers to comply with it.
In a word … NO!!