The Scandal of the Thousands Sacked for Wrongthink

High profile cancellations in the wake of the Cass Report are front and centre in the media as those whose lives were destroyed are once again in the spotlight, this time for vindication. A recent survey of U.K. employees, however, indicates that the number of British people who have lost jobs and careers for falling foul of woke workplace policies which clash with their legally held opinions and beliefs may be considerably higher than first thought.

The fallout of the Cass Report is gradually exposing the level of persecution of those who dared question the nation’s healthcare strategy for the treatment of children suffering from mental illness. Jobs and careers lost, families broken under the subsequent social and financial pressure, some people, notably Graham Linehan, lost everything. To understand the consequences of being cancelled I would recommend reading Linehan’s book Tough Crowd.

The wholesale adoption of radical ideologies that, until a matter of months ago, were the polar opposite of accepted majority or at least reasonable opinion by institutions led to the extremely rapid spread of such ideologies across employers under the flag of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

Last month, the Free Speech Union published a paper on the British workplace and its survey makes disturbing reason for anyone concerned with the assault on freedom in the U.K.:

62% of workers said they have had to conceal what they really think about the EDIC (Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Climate) training they have received
22% have been compelled to say things they don’t believe. This rises to 31% among BAME respondents
45% report that the training they have received conflicted with their personal, religious or political beliefs
31% have left a job because of their employer’s promotion of woke ideology. This rises to 43% among BAME employees and 46% among LGBT employees
36% said that they witnessed staff being penalised in some way by their current employer because of EDIC training. This includes 12% who have witnessed staff being fired for the same

Surveys like this are routinely dismissed as being flawed, but the methodology here was sound: the survey ran between January 25th and 31st 2024; 800 people were interviewed, the sample taken from Dynata consumer access panels and designed to be representative of the U.K. by working age, industry, geography and employer size. Excluded groups included: the self-employed, students (not working), homemakers, the unemployed and retirees.

In February 2024 there were an estimated 29.71 million people employed in the U.K. out of a working population of 32.9 million. 65% have taken some form of EDIC Training, so that’s 19.3 million. The 800 interviewed were from that group. so what do those percentages look like when we apply them to the 19.3 million?

Workers concealing opinions about EDIC: 62% = 12 million
Compelled to say things they don’t believe: 22% = 4.3 million
Training conflicts with beliefs:political, religious and personal: 45% = 8.7 million
Left job because of employer’s promotion of woke ideologies: 41% = 7.9 million
Witnessed staff penalised because of EDIC training: 36% = 6.9 million
Witnessed a member of staff fired for same: 12% = 2.3 million

That last point is especially concerning and needs unpacking. Now, obviously we cannot conclude that over 2.3 million people were fired. The witnesses may have got it wrong, the individual may have been fired for bullying or harassment related to a protected group or may have been fired for a completely different reason.

However, if even only one in 10 of those are correct, that’s still hundreds of thousands of people who may have lost their jobs over ‘wrongthink’. The aggression and zealousness of the trans activists is such that any dissent from their orthodoxy immediately results in accusations of transphobia. We’ve seen this in the treatment of the likes of Graham Linehan: the dedication of activists to sniffing out and silencing dissent was only matched by the speed at which most of Graham’s friends and colleagues abandoned him as too toxic to be associated with. If you apply the same behaviours to the workplace then it’s fairly safe to assume that anyone who dared question woke trans policies in the workplace has been subject to similar vigour. Certainly, we have spoken to dozens of people, especially women, who report that they have been fired for challenging things like pronoun and toilet room policies.

All the evidence suggests that HR departments have been falling over themselves to ensure that their employees comply with the tenets of radical gender theory, to the extent that some have failed in their due diligence and have fallen foul of the Equality Act 2010 in employment tribunals. The Free Speech Union has been doing a sterling job fighting on the behalf of workers’ rights and has to date taken on over 2,500 cases. The wheels of justice turn slowly: there are currently 420,000 cases in the backlog.

If you want justice, that’s over three years you have to wait before your case is heard, so its hardly surprising that 24 million are keeping silent. Who can afford to lose their job with families, debts and responsibilities?

The impact this must be having on our workplace culture is worth considering. In my essay published in the Daily Sceptic last month I discussed how totalitarian governments like that of the USSR required the population to wear a metaphorical mask in public to hide their true thoughts, opinions and beliefs. The thickness and absurdity of those masks eventually caused the whole Soviet System to collapse under its own bullshit. Humans cannot live a lie, and when they are forced to, stress, depression and mental illness all follow. The FSU survey suggests that over 18,000,000 workers are wearing masks hiding their true selves.

What impact is all this having on productivity and the economy in general? Kemi Badenoch and others have spoken out about this. Freedom of thought and expression and confidence of challenging convention at work are all core requirements of economic growth. This is why free societies prosper. It is no mistake that it was the Enlightenment and the retreat of orthodox religion in the 17th century that took Europe and then the world out of the economic stagnation of the medieval period and saw the colossal advance in technologies we have seen since 1700. Incidentally, modern humans have been around for 250,000 years or so – exactly the same as us physically and mentally, the only difference being technologies and their view of the world. When we see nations retreat into totalitarianism, like Venezuela, we see once-prosperous states slip backwards.

This report and its implications should concern us all, not just on principle for those of us who cherish freedom, but because the chilling effect this will be having on our economy is clearly having an impact on our wealth as a nation, and hence our ability to fund the social programmes that those who enforce woke ideologies themselves value.

The project to identify those who lost their jobs over this is going to be a long and tough road. However, the early indications are that this figure could be very high. The remarkable common denominator is that those who lose their jobs over these issues tend to be exemplary employees in all other respects; many seem to have years of service behind them and, due to the nature of the trans debate, many are women. It could easily prove to be a national scandal of huge proportions.

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.

Figures in this article have been corrected after identifying a mistake in the number of U.K. workers who had taken some form of EDIC training. The overall argument is unaffected.