DEI is ongoing in the NHS, as seen in NHS Fife’s defence against Nurse Sandie Peggy’s tribunal over men accessing women’s changing rooms. NHS Scotland seems to be offering similar questionable changing room advice, and in England, Guy’s and St Thomas’ is also in the spotlight.
This week, it’s the police again. Senior leadership in several forces appear determined to embed BLM-style Critical Race Theory into workplace culture — affecting everything from public interactions to internal HR. A whistleblower has revealed that West Yorkshire Police may be using race as a recruitment criterion, potentially crossing the line into unlawful discrimination against white applicants. The force and the Home Secretary deny this but talk in the HR world is that it’s pretty close to the line. Whilst the Equality Act 2010 does allow ‘positive action’ to encourage and support the application of those with protected characteristics such as race and sex, it is not a licence to discriminate directly or indirectly. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if white applicants who have been rejected initiate claims against the force.
Police forces have a track record of ignoring their obligations under the Equality Act 2010 and failing to understand the limits of ‘positive action’. Indeed, recent developments at Thames Valley Police suggest that some leaders are beginning to realise DEI policies have caused serious internal damage. Back in August, I reported on the Employment Tribunal it lost after three white male sergeants were passed over for promotion in favour of a female officer of Asian background. The ruling was damning: the decision-makers had no real understanding of their legal duties under the Equality Act 2010, ignored internal expert advice, and were found to be operating within an institutionally racist culture. At the time, I noted how astonishing it was that the leadership not only made such a decision but then pressed ahead to a tribunal they clearly had little chance of winning — even against their own internal advice.
Following the ruling, Police and Crime Commissioner Matthew Barber ordered an urgent review, led by a former Assistant Chief Constable. Her findings, published this week and covered in the Telegraph, were no less scathing.
The review, by former assistant chief constable Kerrin Wilson, said it was “unfortunate” that Thames Valley was rolling out its equity training just as the employment tribunal had found the force guilty of positive discrimination.
Ms Wilson noted some officers expressed “strong feelings of frustration”.
“As white males they felt disadvantaged and… they had the perception that unfairness was allowed for minority groups but not for majority populations,” she wrote.
Her review revealed the tribunal’s ruling had sparked a backlash within the force from white officers who felt “overlooked and undervalued”, as well as from ethnic minority officers who believed it had set back efforts to boost diversity.
It said ethnic minority staff in the force no longer wanted to participate in special schemes to improve their chances of promotion as “the damage to their reputation is greater than the opportunity they may have been afforded”.
“A number of minoritised [sic] staff have declared openly that they will not seek promotion or specialist moves in the foreseeable future as this has left them feeling that even if they did succeed in securing promotions their efforts would not be accepted by some as genuine,” it said.
“Some staff have stated that despite being in the force for many, many years they now feel that [it] has become a hostile environment and they would not advocate for [sic] the force as an employer of choice for those from a minoritised background.”
The review also said there had been a “very strong, at times bordering on aggressive” response from white officers, who wanted their bosses to be disciplined for the positive discrimination and felt “they have no support within the force”.
It warned that internal relations could turn hostile without action. “There is a tangible feeling of being overlooked which is reflected in the wider societal discourse that is emerging around the UK and so cannot be ignored,” it said.
“If this is not addressed, this may well lead to even greater divides within the force as cultural attitudes become more hostile.”
It then goes on to quote Rory Geoheagan, a former oolice officer and adviser to Number 10, who doesn’t pull his punches:
“Police officers and staff deserve far better from their leaders than to be crudely categorised by skin colour and subjected to reductive, divisive ideologies.
“The independent review exposes this troubling practice, but it fails to identify or confront the underlying issue: the unthinking acceptance of critical race theory – a deeply political framework that has no place in an impartial police service.
“Police chiefs and their elected commissioners risk creating a serious, long-lasting fracture in public trust and confidence if they continue to prioritise the views of a few vocal stakeholders over their fundamental public duty to uphold the law impartially.”
The article publishes Thames Valley Police’s response:
“Our staff and officers represent a diverse group with a range of views on many issues – but it’s our shared values that bring us together to protect our communities.
“We are committed to learning from this employment tribunal and independent review to improve how we work together.
“We strive to be fair and courageous in how we serve our colleagues and the community.”
With almost comic timing, just as it was responding to the Tribunal’s findings, Thames Valley Police decided to roll out ‘White Privilege’ training to staff — adding insult to injury. Even the report’s author, former Assistant Chief Constable Kerrin Wilson, called the timing “unfortunate”.
But none of this surprises me. Back in August, writing for the Daily Sceptic, I reported on a whistleblower leak: TVP’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion training for new recruits. It was essentially a TED Talk by a radical American Critical Race Theory (CRT) advocate. I said then that it was no shock the leadership had racially discriminated against white officers — because CRT not only promotes a racialised worldview, it defines ‘racism’ in a way that clashes with UK law. According to CRT, only those with ‘power and privilege’ can be racist, which in a white-majority society means only (and all) white people. But the UK’s Equality Act 2010 makes clear that ‘race’ includes colour, nationality and ethnic or national origins — and prohibits all forms of racial discrimination, full stop.
TVP’s own inclusivity policy is supposed to reflect that law. Basic HR practice dictates that any training must align with company policy, which in turn is grounded in legal obligations. It’s risk management 101. Instead, TVP pushed ideological DEI content that bore little resemblance to its own legal framework, apparently aiming to socially engineer the force’s culture.
This raised eyebrows in HR circles, especially as many private sector organisations have already begun reigning in DEI content to ensure it’s legally sound. So, given that the tribunal had already condemned TVP for breaching the law — and that their ideological training had been publicly exposed — it’s deeply disappointing to see them doubling down by promoting the divisive and, frankly, racist concept of ‘White Privilege’ to their already demoralised staff.
C.J. Strachan is the pseudonym of a concerned Scot who worked for 30 years as a Human Resources executive in some of the UK’s leading organisations. Subscribe to his Substack page.
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They feel an inchoate injustice but are too feckless and weak to attempt to understand their feeling and so it is like manna from heaven when a ready-made explanation comes along. You shouldn’t feel superior to them and you cannot help them. If it helps then try to see it in terms of reincarnatory cycles. Maybe you are on a higher level because of more incarnations. At some point almost everyone is at the credulous level. If you had a difficult childhood you might be wise beyond your years but just remember it was all of the past lives that primed you to respond in the way that you do. This way of thinking provides a solution to the mystery of the npcs.
As it becomes more obvious that “multiculturalism” has failed (or maybe it has succeeded, depending on what you think the objectives were), those pushing it will become more desperate.
They really don’t know any different. Asking them to consider thinking a different way would blow their minds. They would have to ring in sick at work and sit at home telling their wives that their head is hurting. This is deep in the culture now. Perhaps the public figure who best embodies modern English consciousness is Gary Lineker. Just the general slackness of people these days – he is the distilled essence.
DEI. Division, Envy, Intolerance.
Discrimination, Exclusion, Inequality.
Hold accountable decades of graduate entrants fast-tracked to high-ranking police leadership positions – well-indoctrinated with theoretical knowledge acquired through Education, Education, Education, yet devoid of understanding of human nature and basic common sense.
Rinse and repeat throughout the public sector and infect the private sector through DIE and ESG legislation. Abject surrender all round.
If we’re going to become an Islamic Republic, why don’t we amputate the hands of anyone caught for stealing? That would help reduce muggings and shoplifting.
Those who are most comfortable with the dark agenda are those who will be suffering with ill health. I don’t celebrate this but I do see it as pointing the way back to true health. Look at the people around you. I guarantee you that the most unhealthy looking are those who are the most compliant and accepting.
The words wholeness, healthiness, holiness – these all come from the same stem. Keep your sanity and keep your energy levels intact. If you do that then you will have achieved a great deal. And you won’t achieve anything without being vigilant about these matters.
Undoubtedly.
Roger Scruton described Bolshevism in Russia as having lasted so long and having had such a comprehensive penetration that it was like software that eventually ossified into hardware. The system was administered by everyone to the point of rendering innovation impossible.
There is evidence that the sectarian system of governance known as diversity, a system that requires both a fixity of the characteristic of identity groups and a fixity of relationships between them, is becoming ossified in just such a way. Innovation would alter the system, making it something else entirely.
The administration of this system is seen everywhere; from the most serious, such as in the forbidding of a ‘hierarchy’ in any discussion of the ‘grooming’ gangs in the Commons, to the most trivial, such as in episodes of the TV drama Doctor Who.
Presented as a morality, one in which to obtain moral superiority requires no more than a thought-free, act-free compliance, this system is as if there were grey skies above and grey seas below unto the ending of the world.
The College of Policing’s Code of Ethics and the Police Regulations 2003 both set clear expectations that police officers must avoid both actual and perceived political bias, in order to maintain public confidence and trust in law enforcement. The visible endorsement of one side in an ongoing social and political debate risks alienating members of the public who hold differing but lawful views.
‘Risks alienating’?
I think many of us are way beyond that; I’m the daughter of a copper (he served from 1948-1982) and even I feel like waving garlic at any police officer I see, although they are rare as hen’s teeth around here. All we have are PCSOs on market day.
The College of Policing has been a complete disaster, turning out petty, officious citizen-botherers too cowed to deal with the real wrong ‘uns.
I never understood the American campaign to defund the Police. Now I think I do.
What exactly is the point of todays UK Police force? They don’t prevent or solve crimes performed on the individual person or their property, they are actively racist against White people, they are out of control in that they will it seems make up laws to prevent speech with which the individual policeman may disagree, they act like a private KGB serving their own ends, and finally it seems they don’t even know the laws that they are supposed to be the managers of.
What is the point of them?
Yes.