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.
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Soon to be replaced by workers in other countries. If it can be done remotely, you don’t need a British passport for it.
This has been repeatedly raised, yet so many are ignoring it.
Or algorithms running on a server somewhere.
Even if not replaced abroad there’s plenty of cheaper UK locations than anywhere HSBC is currently based where people will be happy to take on these roles remotely.
Call centres are not renowned for length of service awards. With just natural wastage all those 1,200 jobs could be located overseas in less than five years.
I wonder how many will extract a commercial rate for premises and facilities. Or will there be yet another weak roll-over – to capital and its predations, whilst unions just ‘Tut’?
They’re laughing all the way to the bank. £300 a year to turn a room in your house into an office? How much does that extra room cost per year?
They will all be happy to do it, until they are told their pay is being frozen. When are the councils going to start claiming business rates from these people? If your home is a place of ‘work’ then the rates should be applied. Have the H&S visited all the home ‘offices’ to ensure they are ‘Covid Secure’? An injury at home when working is the responsibility of the employer!
Not only is the home COVID secure there will be insurance implications for both the homeowner and company.
There are also GDPR and other privacy concerns with people working from home, many not on a VPN, with other adults able to look over shoulders at screens and access clients personal information.
And the next step, of course, is to gradually offshore these jobs!
I’ve been involved in the outsourcing of accounts functions to India. Each one has been a disaster because management have failed to calculate how much efficiency is added through communication with people you are sat next to. In one case they brought the entire function back into the UK, and in the other two a small team was created in the UK to carry the teams in India.
However, if you get the employees in the UK to prove it can work, make them work remotely, and work out how those inefficiencies can be overcome, then …
Waiting for colleagues to get around to responding on whatever chat app they’re currently ignoring is a total nightmare vs a quick chat over the top of the desk.
I’m anti-social at the best of times but there’s no way I’d choose to work from home 100% of the time.
HSBC UK the next bank to go under. Customer Service is overlooked until its too late, there is seldom any going back. Bloody fools.
Customer service is so 20th Century and bloody fools they certainly are.
I’m pretty sure there are insurance/liability issues to working from home 100% of the time. The reason I know this is a former employer restricted our wfh for this reason.
A friend of mine who works for a large, solid multinational was concerned last summer that the next step after the home office would be an even more intense shift of these home offices to countries in the 3rd world.
This week, they got news of a major restructuring in that direction and British redundancies to come because of that.
Next step: Britain becomes the third world
When I worked for a big multinational company about ten years ago we were all offered the opportunity to become home workers if we wanted to – with laptops and mobile phones it made it much easier to do so – anyway, all you had to do was apply to work from home and that was that – you got lots of help setting up your ‘work station’ at home etc and quite a lot of people leapt at the opportunity to work from home and not have to come into the office anymore except for the odd important meeting which wasn’t very often or if they preferred they could just join-in via a conferernce call and number provided. I was tempted to work from home myself but held back for a little while to see how others found the experience – I’m glad I did really because the initial novelty of home working quickly wore off for many homeworkers who were steadily starting to regret their decision – among many things they would complain about was for example feeling they were being ‘left out of the loop’ etc when important decisions were made and they didn’t get to hear about or were the last to know, they found trouble getting assistance when they were struggling with their work, they complained of feeling isolated and had no one to talk to about their work related problems and complained that their ability to contact someone quickly about an urgent problem could be lengthy and troublesome – when they worked in the office they could usually discuss their work issues almost immediately face-to-face with someone who could usually help there and then and the problem could be resolved almost immediately rather than it taking hours, days or sometimes even weeks to resolve where homeworking was concerned … but most of all many homeworkers say that they missed the office comradery … that cohesiveness that made them feel connected with the rest of the workforce which you just cannot form working home alone.
Things may have changed today but evidently I decided back then not to work from home.
I decided that it was much healthier to (try at least) keep work and homelife as seperate as possible.
All part of the reset to benefit giant corporations