Criticising BLM Ideology is a Protected Belief, Court Rules

You probably haven’t heard of Sean Corby, but he has just won a huge victory for free speech, writes Alka Sehgal Cuthbert in Spiked. Thanks to him, opposition to Critical Race Theory has been recognised by a U.K. court as a ‘protected belief’ under the Equality Act for the first time. Here’s an excerpt.

Earlier this year, Corby took his employer, workplace-conciliation service Acas, to an employment tribunal after bosses ordered him to remove his social-media posts criticising Black Lives Matter (BLM). Last week, the tribunal ruled in his favour, confirming that holding a view that opposes critical race theory (CRT) is a protected ‘philosophical belief’ under the Equality Act.

The verdict is undoubtedly good news. But the events that led to Corby having to defend his freedom of speech are still troubling.

His problems started in August 2021. He posted comments opposing the divisive ideology of BLM and CRT on Yammar, an internal workplace-communications platform. In particular, he argued that a better way to address racial problems was articulated by the late Martin Luther King, who famously called on us to judge people according to the content of their character rather than the colour of their skin.

Some of Corby’s colleagues took issue with his advocacy of a universalist, colourblind approach to race. Of course, people don’t have to agree with the views of those they work with. We can disagree with others while accepting their right to hold and express those views. But it seems Corby’s colleagues were incapable of such tolerance. They complained that his comments demonstrated “a deep-rooted hatred towards black and minority-ethnic people who challenge racism”. As a result, they said, they would not feel “safe” when having any personal contact with him.

At this point, you would have hoped that Acas would have told these people, politely, that what they were saying was ridiculous – that Corby’s criticisms of BLM constituted neither personal hatred nor a threat to their safety. But that’s not what the bosses did. While they dismissed the complaints, they also instructed Corby to take the posts down, because they had caused offence.

Corby could have complied and agreed to keep his head down from then on. This is what many people do in situations similar to his, and they do so for understandable reasons. But not Corby. He recognised that, in asking him to take down his posts, his employers were abandoning any pretence of impartiality. They were coming down on one side of the BLM debate. They were effectively instructing him to publicly recant his deeply held views, which he expressed in a cordial manner. He refused to comply and took his case to the tribunal with the support of the Free Speech Union.

While celebrating the ruling, Cuthbert notes “caveats” in that the ruling relies on the Equality Act’s concept of “philosophical belief”, for which courts have set a high bar. “If we’re serious about free speech we should defend people’s right to air views that do not meet this threshold,” she says.

Worth reading in full.

To my mind, a further problem with the ruling is the implication that Critical Race Theory is also a protected ‘philosophical belief’. But we wouldn’t protect the belief that all black people (or people from any other racial group) are inherently racist and ought to be permanently disfavoured in the workplace and society to overcome their ‘privilege’, so why should we protect the same racist beliefs about white people? It’s plainly invidious to have different rules about what blanket statements can be made about white people and non-white people, and the increasing acceptability of doing so breeds resentment. Opposition to Critical Race Theory isn’t really a ‘philosophical belief’ so much as a commonsense opposition to anti-white racism, and this ruling, though welcome on its own terms, ultimately reinforces the framework that gives the divisive, anti-white ideas being spewed out of American academia their legitimacy.