Worrying reports indicate the negative impact DEI and other woke initiatives are having on the British workplace and indicate that the problems this is causing in the workplace are seriously undermining productivity and prosperity. Were this only limited to large employers it would be bad enough, but the real problem is in the small to medium enterprise (SME) sector (companies under 250 employees). There, it is leading to a culture of fear where colleagues who have worked together for years are now stepping on eggshells around each other and where losing your job for saying the wrong thing is now a greater fear than losing it because your employer goes bust.
Last week I published an essay and an article in the Daily Sceptic about how management tools developed by Human Resources in the 1980s and 90s have been used to fast track controversial political ideologies into the workplace and force compliance from employees. I explored how this is creating a chilling effect on the British workplace as employees are increasingly worried about saying the wrong thing, upsetting the wrong person. The consequence is an environment of fear, resentment and paranoia, all fatal to the successful operation of any organisation. This is ultimately undermining our prosperity as a nation by hitting productivity at a time when we desperately need to be pulling together and focusing on economic growth. Headlines such as the 2019 case of Asda worker Brian Leitch who was fired for sharing a Billy Connolly joke on his private social media account contribute to this culture of fear.
Because the recent articles focused HR they primarily highlighted the corporate world of the large employer. Our society, from media to politicians, tends to focus on the large corporate world, despite only having 39% of workers. Since the articles were published I have received a great deal of feedback from SME-sized organisations.
I’ll be publishing some of the quotes I’ve received from both small business owners and employees of small businesses in a future article. But I have to report that the problems we see in our larger employers are now very much the norm in our smaller ones as well.
Indeed, recent reports by both His Majesty’s Government and the Free Speech Union have concluded that DEI is creating serious problems in our workplace and specifically causing stress, fear and job insecurity for many. Worryingly, 36% of workers report that they have seen a colleague punished or disciplined for refusing to attend training sessions in DEI, Unconscious Bias, White Supremacy and Allyship. Even more disconcerting is that 11% report that colleagues have been fired or forced out of their jobs for the same. Whilst the Free Speech Union is doing a superb job of standing up for the rights of workers across Britain, there appears to be a tsunami of cases that never get that far.
Here’s the thing. In Britain most people work in SMEs and 99% of all companies are SMEs. We are still what Napoleon called a “nation of shopkeepers”, 200 years on. SMEs tend not to have HR departments, they tend not to spend lots of money on DEI training. Since the 2020 pandemic, SMEs have borne the brunt of company economic pain, huge amounts of trade have been transferred from the SME market to the large corporates, some of the laws during lockdown even shut SMEs whilst permitting supermarkets to remain open. The ‘bonfire of red tape’ promised by the Tories post-Brexit hasn’t happened, quite the opposite, taxation is now making self-employment almost worthless. Meanwhile, Britain’s long-suffering small business owners are vilified and slandered as some sort of Monopoly Board 1920s mini evil capitalists, only interested in exploiting the labour of their colleagues.
SME owners are often quite ignorant of the nuances of employment law and they often misinterpret laws like the Equalities Act 2010. I have encountered clients where the owner thinks it is a legal requirement for her to demand that her employees state their pronouns and that if she doesn’t insist, her business will be named and shamed and she will be forced to close. Another I worked with unlawfully refused to follow the stipulations of the Equalities Act 2010 because “he didn’t want any of that woke nonsense” in his company. Another problem here is that SMEs often rely on independent HR consultancies to provide support and some of them are as ideologically captured as many HR departments in our largest employers. The confusion, sometimes deliberately spread, means that business owners will usually default on the side of caution. Unlike Civil Service departments, NHS Trusts or Blue Chip Corporates, small businesses have to be productive, they cannot afford to spend weeks on superfluous activities that are not directly contributing to the bottom line. Therefore, when they do implement new rules and policies at work, they tend to do it in the ‘my way or the highway’ approach. Even if they don’t agree with them, they do this from fear.
The response from employees is reciprocal fear. Relationships that took years to build are shattered as the trust melts away.
Sometime in the last 20 years or so, the general assumption was that most people are, at heart, decent, and want what is best for their family, friends and the people with whom they interact. Jordan Peterson has discussed this at length. Most people are, at heart, committed to being good when interacting with others. We were once a high trust society and high trust societies are highly functional and productive. Then at some point in the last 20 years this was replaced by the assumption that people were bad, could not be trusted, were inevitably racist, homophobic, transphobic etc. unless they were told not to be by their betters. Doubt this? Open any newspaper on any day of the week and there will be at least one article berating the British working classes for being too fat, lazy, stupid, racist, homophobic, aggressive, intolerant etc. Prior to Brexit those who held these opinions at least had the good grace not to publicly express them. When the majority voted Brexit, they started to openly express their contempt, labelling them racists, ‘gammon’ etc. Eminent academics like A.C. Grayling showed their true opinions about those less fortunate than themselves by effectively demanding that “clever people should have more of a vote than others”. Every week there are articles in the ‘liberal’ press condemning ‘populism’ as ‘anti-democratic’, surely an oxymoronic position – unless by ‘democracy’ you mean, as they seem to, “when people vote for us”.
What has any of this got to do with the SME workplace? Well, it is really quite simple: this breakdown in trust in our society, this open contempt for the working classes contributes to the atmosphere of fear and insecurity in the SME workplace. What better way to get the proles to ‘behave themselves’ than to make them insecure about their jobs?
It is imperative that we reverse this and restore trust, tolerance, mutual respect and friendship to the British workplace, in particular to the SMEs. If we do not then our nation is heading for a very dark place indeed because the spirit of enterprise relies on trust, tolerance, mutual respect, diversity of opinion, teamwork, freedom of expression and freedom of speech to flourish. Western capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty, globally, than any other economic model. Nations only started to create the wealth necessary to support complex societies with the wealth and efficiencies created by a free market economy. The USSR and Communist system collapsed because planned economies do not work in the real world. Demand must drive an economy, and planned economies fail to meet demand. Worse, they require that their workforce be restricted in the freedom of choice of career and freedom of enterprise. Freedom of thought, expression and speech and a prosperous economy go hand in hand. You cannot separate them.
C.J. Strachan is the pseudonym of a concerned Scot who worked for 30 years as a Human Resources executive in some of the U.K.’s leading organisations. Subscribe to his Substack.
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We thought communism was defeated when the Berlin Wall came down. ——Nope, it just did a chameleon act and found some new vehicles for the communism They hijacked the environment so they could control the worlds wealth and resources, then used words like “inclusive” “liberal” “progressive” etc to hide in plain sight. Or as Saul Alinsky said “True radicals don’t flaunt their radicalism. They cut their hair, put on suits and infiltrate the system from within”. Entire establishments have now been taken over. The media, politics, policing, health, advertising, the civil service and even the church. They are prepared to use all tactics to destroy conventional culture, even siding with men deciding they are women. They are not in the least bit interested in trans rights. It is just another weapon in the Cultural Marxist wars. It is well known that children in stable families do better in all walks of life, but the Cultural Marxist is happy to see that destroyed because its stability is seen as a straightjacket that will defy the Marxist desire to control all aspects of our lives————Their assault on FAITH FLAG and FAMILY LIFE is aided by woke identity politics. To succeed the communists do a now as they always have —Divide and Rule.
Many of my comments here were aided by reading a book called “Green in Tooth and Claw” by Niall McCrae
Have not all empires been held together through the practice of Divide and Rule? Most empires were not communist. In fact we may better describe Western governments as being closer to a fascistic model than heading towards communism. Yes, the employment of cultural Marxism is in evidence everywhere by corporation and government alike to use as a tool in their quest for total control over every aspect of our lives but that doesn’t mean we are heading towards becoming a communist state. .
I work in an SME. I started noticing this around the time of Trump 1, Brexit and BLM, and of course when the scamdemic started, I was Literally Hitler.
It was around those very issues … to date, no one person has asked me why I voted Brexit. I live in hope.
On all those topics, very few people enagaged with me. Most – former friends, colleagues with whom I thought there was mutual respect, treated me like a mad uncle.
Well, why did you?
Thank you for asking. I believe it’s a step towards a one world government and from my observation is wasteful, undemocratic and tends to favour the interests of big corporations.
Thanks for the reply.
The same statement pretty much applies to any ‘western’ government, though. The bad hair day personification who used to inhabit Downing St. 10 even once stated that poor Britain cannot possibly act on its own but must really defer to the international experts (of the WHO) because only they know how to handle a deadly pandemic properly. Which is a remarkable contrast to statements he made earlier, eg, the one about taking it on the chin.
There’s a deeper problem here and the EU – in it’s present form – is just one its flowers.
Judging by the disappearing comments on the Kate cancer article, it’s swallowing the Daily Sceptic too.
The thing is, Daily Sceptic, you should know better than anyone the truth will not go away. The censorship of reasonable and non-defamatory comments we have just apparently witnessed is unconscionable.
If there is a technical explanation for it please provide it. Because otherwise I will continually at appropriate times refer back to the fact this site can no longer be trusted. Because that will simply be the TRUTH. and I will never ever be told I have to let go of that.
So do you see what you have done?
You may as well ban me now if this is unacceptable to you.
I’m proud to have been banned by the Telegraph for making similar comments (Is this comment rude or defamatory?)
And by the way, if you do ban me, I will find a way to raise this at every possible juncture whenever it is appropriate to do so and the name of this site is raised. Blatant hypocrisy will not be tolerated. You either side with truth or you don’t.
That’s the thing with the truth you see. You can’t mess with it.
Are you getting the implications of what you have done yet?
See how siding with the forces of censorship means you set yourself against the truth and then what you have done spreads like a cancer?
Can you tolerate criticism or will you make this comment “disappear” too.
Free Speech is all about defending even the speech of those you disagree with.
I just read your comment here, and so I went back to the Kate article, and I notice there are zero comments there. I did pass comment myself under that article but all comments appear to have vanished. I said nothing at all that would be considered inflammatory and I wished Kate Middleton all the best in her recovery. —-So I wonder what is going on here. I hope we get an explanation from DS and I hope this has been a technical issue.
I know. I read your comments. They were reasonable. I think all the comments were in fact (at the time I last saw them at least).
The Daily Sceptic really haven’t thought through what they have just done. It is almost worse than if it were the Telegraph, Times or Guardian because of where they have positioned themselves and the arguments they themselves make. The hypocrisy level in terms of difference between expressed views and actions, is therefore higher.
If they think I’m some inconsequential commenter who will just go away and this will have no effect on their reputation because they are bigger than me, they are sorely misguided.
I’m launching a censorship index service. If no explanations are forthcoming, this website will no longer be in the clear.
I have had no problem with DS before. I want to wait before I come to any conclusions either way. Because as you might recall from my comment on that Kate article, my old dad did say “When in doubt do nothing”——–I hope this can all be resolved and that OFCOM have not bludgeoned DS into submission.
Yes, agreed, but they need to now address it.
5 minutes ago the comment box was still appearing with the Kate article. I have just returned to it and I now see the comment box does not appear. ———-DS subscribers surely deserve an explanation for this and I hope one is forthcoming.
I’ve taken screenshots of these comments. Just in case they are so misguided as to think the truth can be made to go away without consequence or record.
Oh boy, when you take a wrong turn, things can turn bad quickly.
could you maybe write again what you commented here so we can see it coudl everyone do that?
Yes the comments started disappearing one by one, and then when they realised their core supporters aren’t the kind of people who will tolerate that without posting a new comment politely pointing out what has happened, they realised they were losing control of the situation and just shut the whole lot down. Now if they can’t come up with an explanation for what we witnessed the loss of trust will be palpable. This won’t be going away, I will now be raising it regularly. There’s nothing wrong with describing the truth of course, so why not?
Perhaps they should make a story of this along with their explanation. I’m sure they are under pressure in some way because otherwise why do it? But they need to face those forces. As RFK Jr has pointed out when asked if he is a target, “there are worse things than dying”
Though we are not talking about such an extreme outcome, the logic is the same for an anti-censorship website facing pressure from forces unknown and an inflection point. They need to think hard and stand-up like men. If there are forces baring down on them – put it all out there!
It seems DS mods have been busy doing a fair amount of ‘spring cleaning’ today, although I’ve not been looking closely at all comments sections, so not sure what would warrant such an extreme reaction from them. Was there anything especially controversial or provocative posted? The only things I’m aware of, personally, that were removed earlier was the exchange from Freddy and Dinger under the Round-Up. No idea why though. Not been keeping track elsewhere.
Yes I had several posts removed before they shut the whole thing down. The thing is I entirely agree with there never being a need for “personally directed comments.” It’s always possible to word comments in a way that doesn’t do that and I am always very careful to do so. Unfortunately, because I wasn’t expecting The Daily Sceptic to be a censorship website, I didn’t keep a record of the comments I made, so I can’t now check them, and can’t fully remember all the points I made.
From now on, as I got in the habit of doing for my Telegraph comments, I will be taking a record of the comment as I post it.
I was even thinking of writing an article and submitting it here, with a record of I have said that the Telegraph have censored because the topic list was in itself interesting I think and I’m proud of the comments I made. I’m also careful to try to ensure I never say anything that is untrue or from dodgy sources. I’ve been caught out a couple of times when I failed to run proper checks and it’s embarrassing. No one want that. So in general, and as a matter of policy, I’m careful with my language.
I won’t be bothering to write the article now, since there is no point writing such an article and submitting to a publication that has just employed the same tactics. It would be utterly hypocritical to do so.
Check your emails though, just in case they offered an explanation of why they removed your comments. With me they did that and were saying it was because I needed to ”modify” my language, despite never swearing or aiming my posts at fellow posters. It was in reference to the Hamas fanclub ( so I can say ”Hamas” and ”asshole”, but never put the two words together, apparently. Same with ”black” and ”racist” ) and I got told off for saying ”scum” when referring to a scumbag terrorist-supporter on a video I shared, who wanted to ”normalize the massacres” of Jews. Just stuff like that, really. But I still stand by everything I said. These dirtbags are traitors and enemies to Western civilization and should not be allowed to live amongst decent folk if this is their true feelings towards others.
Anyway, don’t start me off! LOL You catch my drift though…Seems DS are having a crackdown, but as you say, for a site that’s all about fighting for free speech rights it does smack of double-standards. I am okay with them removing abusive comments and personal insults though. Zero tolerance for trolling behaviour and harassment.
Nothing on e-mail.
Nope nothing on email for me either.
Anyway I’m a 55 year old adult and the idea I’m going to accept any infantilising nonsense from people “telling me off for being me” when I am perfectly clear who I am and perfectly sure I’m not rude, insulting or saying anything beyond the pale, is for the birds. They can take a hike and I will be off and rarely return quicker than they can say goodbye.
Yes, I know what you mean. Did you make an email enquiry yourself though? I had to do a few before they replied to my email with their explanation. Perhaps people can bombard them with some individual emails to ask what’s going on? You can reach them here;
lockdownsceptics@gmail.com
Will has responded to me quite promptly whenever I’ve used that address, though it wasn’t Will who replied to me regarding the above issue.
Another one here very concerned that the people who formed the FSU have resorted to censorship of comments on this article. We need an explanation.
We won’t get one, because we already know, unless it was a technical glitch, it is unacceptable. I can’t say for sure for every possible comment removed, but I can for my own. They were entirely reasonable. I see this as a major turn for the worse. The cognitive dissonance during covid was extremely disturbing and this website was an oasis of sanity. If that Oasis has evaporated it will be a very sad day indeed. There are gathering totalitarian forces in this world, the sky is darkening ominously, and they are terrible in their strength.
Thanks for highlighting the other article. I’d seen the comments early on and there was nothing controversial at that point.
You could always cancel your subscription. Promote censorship, go broke (not as catchy but same result).
Hey Basic, thanks for raising this: I spotted the same trend and thought it was just me. Perhaps it’s time the DS rethought their subheader as we’re no longer allowed to ‘question everything’ here, only certain things – and definitely not a small eschatological colonialist regime in the Levant. Shame.
“definitely not a small eschatological colonialist regime in the Levant”
No downvotes so far, perhaps too subtle for bots.
DEI is, quite simply, the empowerment of bullying in the workplace by socialist fascists, supported, aided and abetted by ‘Human Remains’
This ought to go into a comment for the So much royal cancer?!?-article but commenting isn’t possible there: The ONS has ‘fixed’ the excess death problem by using a statistical model calibrated with actual death numbers from past to ‘predict’ expected death numbers for the future and determine the number of excess death by calculating the difference between modelled and real death numbers. Unsurprisingly, the outcome is Climate change!!!, ie, the modelled numbers are way too large and excess deaths thus disappear.
They publish the calculations for this model and they’re full of arbitrarily chosen constants with no justification, strongly suggesting someone fiddled with the base algorithm until the outcome was as desired.
Ah yes. Everything we used to call “science” is now the Post Modern kind. —Modelling. But modelling isn’t science.
They’ve specifically replaced a fairly simple algorithm for eliminating random errors from measurements with a hideously complicated one transforming a set of input values into some set of output values in a way nobody understands, not even the people who came up with it (who might have understood the part they were working on while they did but will soon have forgotten all the details — mathematics makes symbolic machine (“assembly”) code look like children’s literature wrt to being accessible to humans).
This absolutely stinks.
OT It is worrying that commenting on the royal gaslighting article has been closed and the comments already made have been completely eradicated, even from the writer’s histories. There is no reason given. If it was concern over possible libel action, then it would be useful to know otherwise the conspiracy theorists might suggest that someone in power is leaning on the editorial team, which would be quite disgraceful.
I would hate to think that the DS is complicit in the suppression of free speech.
My comment was about other possible side effects of the vaccine and didn’t even mention any royal person.
can you remember what you wrote and ‘post ‘ it here?
Oh, come on, Toby. You can’t found The Free Speech Union then shut down and disappear comments on the Royal Family/cancer article. I too am squeamish about giving offence to anyone suffering thru this and you can remove offensive speech – fine. But this? No,no,no. It’s a no-no, geddit?
Hear hear
Hear hear
Very concerning
I have emailed Toby
Planned economies don’t have any demand. They’re driven by what the planners believe to be necessary and not by what people would like to have. As no economic planner would consider an abundance of cheap trash in different colours necessary, no planned economy ever aspired to create a Black Friday! society. Communism didn’t really collapse, it’s more that Gorbachev stopped enforcing it. Honecker famously asked for a Russian military intervention to keep the GDR alive but – unlike than in 1953 – the Russians refused to intervene and hence, the GDR ended. The (West-)German SPD made an attempt to keep it alive nevertheless as it would have preferred three German states (FRG, GDR and Austria), each with its own SPD branch and own set of government offices it could occupy over two but that ultimatively faltered, presumably mainly because the other FRG parties, especially the CDU, weren’t willing to finance that.
The Equalities Act 2010, and legislation like it, does constitute woke nonsense, but highly pernicious nonsense which represents an assault on western civilization and is incompatible with individual freedom. That, after almost fourteen years of Conservative led government, this sort of legislation remains in force illustrates perfectly why the Conservative Party needs to be destroyed.
But these are not Conservatives.
I watched ‘American Fiction’ yesterday evening. Thoroughly recommend it!
CJ. I have been really impressed and enthused by your articles. I work in research and policy on people management, skills and the labour market and I know why this is happening. I also know it’s making the workplace a place of needless stress and anxiety. It is, in some part responsible in anglophone economies for the great resignation of the over 50s. I believe toxic DEI is also creating what American commentators are calling, “a crisis of competency” as merit is displaced by diversity in areas like medical education and even engineering.. Incidentally many already privileged people such as middle class and privately educated women and ethnic minorities, get preferment over the white working class through DEI. .So it’s hardly surprising they support this.
I am frankly embarrassed that the profession has embraced wholesale pay gap anaIysis in gender and soon race and allowed the perception that it’s a negative differential. As Thomas Sowell and every leading labour market economist previously, shows, disparities are not automatically discrimination. Sadly, the pandemic and zoom work have allowed people to be further cowed and atomised into compliance.HR consultants are using DEI as leverage to browbeat employers and you are right they misrepresent the legal requirements. However I think many people are resistant and looking for leaders to challenge this. It certainly won’t come from Academia, though there are some dissident voices. It needs more people like you and I. I am writing a book on all of this and I am sure you have you own projects. Perhaps we could collaborate. Meet for a coffee at least. As we are both anonymous and like me, I think you are based in Scotland. I’ll supply DS with my contact details, though I am sure you’ll be known to me and vice versa.