“when the “non-compliants” are interrogated over the phone by HRS. If a reasoned argument can be provided by us as to why they should freely give the required information,”
You know how every legal person will say ‘Never Talk To The Police’ without a legal representative……Well handing this kind of data over to anyone requesting it likely means you will end up being beaten up by it at some point. The ‘Race Game Industry’ is not out to fix things, to make things better, No, it is out to wreck things. It will be used against you, it always will.
It is Neo-Marxist (Neo-Marxism is Not like Marxism in that Neo is how the struggle of man is about oppressor and oppressed as viewed as ‘Intersectionality‘ (how groups based on sex, race, culture, education, religion, criminal history, welfare, and everything else are are related to each other in the only way groups Can relate to each other, as Oppressed and Oppressor (dialectic Post Modernism)), it is totally Identity Politics, and the goal is ‘Equity’, which is taking from the oppressor and giving it to the Oppressed.
Traditional Marxism is Capitalists and Proletariat as oppressors and oppressed – and any identity can be either – in Fact they can move from one state to the other. (It is 100% about the ‘Means Of Production’ ‘Land Labour and Capital; money). Neo-Marxism is a fixed form of Intersectionality – and you are born an oppressor or oppressed and that is for ever unless you get Equity, which does NOT FIX IT, but pays back for it. It is right from the Post Modernist ‘Frankfurt School‘.
The Unions were Traditional Marxist (Trotskyite really), but have been completely captured by Neo-Marxists, and so are an entirely different animal than they were – exactly like how the Universities have been Captured by the Neo’s. It is no longer about money and pay and conditions to the Unions Now Days – it is about Oppressed and oppressor Intersetionality, and thus Equity. They are pretty twisted, like Government and education, and MSM, and Social Media, and Corporate facades, all captured.
It is ushering in the ‘Great Reset’, and it will not be good.
At the risk of repeating what a number of UnHerd btl posters have written recently, one means of fighting back is by joining the Free Speech Union.
I am a member, even though retired. FSU take up cases and challenge ridiculous and oppressive decisions by firms, broadcasters, university authorities, and so on.
By joining, we can at least contribute to doing something, rather than just wringing our hands.
Your point about identifiable individuals rather than amorphous institutions is one I made several weeks ago over on The Spectator comments on the Jess de Wahls case. Decisions aren’t made by corporate bodies, but by individuals in particular positions.
Still, the essential point is action. I am therefore looking into such organisations as Counterweight and History Reclaimed as suggested here by other posters on this page.
The Unions are often happy to do what they think is politically advantageous for the Labour Party, even if it’s at odds with the rights of the workers they represent. As long as Labour are dominated by woke activists, sadly, the Unions will be too.
Unless the government is willing to legislate to prevent employers from taking disciplinary action against workers for factors outside their competence in their role and allow them the freedom of their conscience, then I see no hope in stopping the woke’s increasing stranglehold on the work place and cultural institutions.
Many political careerists in the Labour Party will not subscribe to the woke agenda, we know this – and they know we know -but if it is helpful to them they will be the loudest cheerleaders.
I cancelled my membership of UCU in disgust at their lack of support for Prof Stock and free speech. I sent an email to head office advising them why I’d done this. I’d urge others to do the same.
That’s why the Puritans never made their revolution ‘stick’ it was said of them ‘They loved God with all their minds and hated their neighbour with all their heart’ Luther the greatest hater of all found fallow ground in the Middle classes of his day and the Woke are the same; as the Middle classes dwindle and they become more and more abhorent to the population at large, they will find themselves going extinct, it may take some time but society cannot thrive on hate.
Keith Jefferson
2 years ago
Much of the discussion on this issue has been about how the woke took hold of academia a few years ago and how they have now taken hold of the public sector. Yet it has been storming though private sector industry too, to the extent that it has infected almost every workplace. Larger private sector companies, for whom the Govt or a Govt department is often a major client, must make their staff go through UBT (now also referred to as EDI in the private sector) if they want to win Govt contracts (it’s written in the terms and conditions). I personally, as a private sector employee working on a Govt contract had to go through it to work on that contract. The larger companies, in turn, make it a condition that any smaller companies acting as their suppliers also have similar policies in place – the policy must apply to the whole supply chain. This is propagating throughout the whole of industry – pretty soon it will be almost impossible to gain employment without undergoing UBT / EDI training, given that the Govt is by far the largest ultimate client in the UK economy. The private sector is mostly un-unionised, so it almost doesn’t matter what the Unions do. It seems like they have already won. I will make my own small protest by refusing to undertake the annual refresher course (they assume that the brainwashing will rinse out if you don’t undertake an annual refresher) and generally not complying with their diktats.
I presented on this topic in one of my doctorate classes earlier this week. What you describe is first and second wave managerialism (private and public sector). What we are experiencing now is third wave managerialism, the re-ordering of people’s private lives, thoughts, and identities.
Identities that enable this managerialism will be held up as virtuous, those that resist it will be painted as socially and ethically unacceptable.
Caroline Watson
2 years ago
I was a PCS rep for 30 years and a trade union side officer (before PCS destroyed the Whitley structure). I am still a member – just – because I have a right to be and I can be a thorn in their side but, since our wonderful traditional working class Geordie branch chair died a year ago; the last of the proper trade unionists, I have distanced myself completely.
I was a TUS Equality Officer, I studied employment law at post graduate level and I have an in depth knowledge of the Equality Act. I won thousands for people in personal cases which were nearly all about physical disability. In many other cases, I negotiated with management on workplace adjustments and technology to enable disabled people to stay at work. Disabled people are by far the largest‘protected characteristic’ in an ageing workforce, but the union has no interest in them whatsoever. It is all ‘identity’ and their strings are being pulled by Stonewall.
Then there is the absurd PCS hysteria over Covid. If employees are required to wear an intrusive and potentially damaging item over their faces, for goodness sake, in the workplace, the union should insist on a risk assessment and an Equality Impact Assessment. PCS has not just acquiesced over the grotesque face masks, it has begged for them, with no attempt to go through the procedures that it would usually demand. PCS is rotten to the core.
Thank you Caroline. I am old enough to remember when PCS actually stood up for employees’ rights but I cancelled my membership some years ago, for the reasons many have given above.
Julia H
2 years ago
Perhaps all union officials, both local and national, should be required by their members to declare that they have read Orwell’s 1984 within the last five years, have a basic understanding of the principles of Ingsoc, including doublethink and newspeak, and recognise, in consequence of that understanding, how thoroughly and profoundly unacceptable it is for either an employer or a trade union representative to encroach on the area of another human’s thoughts, conscience or beliefs. By all means set and enforce standards of behaviour in the workplace, but the sphere of an individual’s interior life and thoughts should be strictly off limits.
yes that’s the trouble they are trying to present CRT as a workplace ethic whereas in reality it’s a religion.
James Joyce
2 years ago
No one should ever cooperate in these studies/surveys designed to discriminate against white people. Two examples from the USA:
Some years ago when I first applied for a mortgage, there was a mountain of “fairness” paperwork that I initially refused to fill out. One particular question asked my race. I told my estate agent it was none of the government’s business, that I would not answer the question. He said “Fine, but I am required to then use my ‘best guess’ as to your race, otherwise the paperwork will not be accepted and you will not get a mortgage.
The second example is the US census. The Constitution requires a “count” of the population every ten years. It does NOT require that the country be sliced and diced by race and many other extremely intrusive questions–though asking if one is an American citizen has been deemed racist and is therefore not asked. I have no problem with the government counting me, the rest is none of their business. I refuse to cooperate in this mess and have returned the census with an obscenity scrawled across it.
I would encourage everyone to join the resistance and do likewise.
Karl Francis
2 years ago
Very powerful and important piece.
My own life experience has tought me that unions are not what they should be and worse, when it suits them, they can actually work against you.
Look how they treated Paul Embery?
Despicable.
“when the “non-compliants” are interrogated over the phone by HRS. If a reasoned argument can be provided by us as to why they should freely give the required information,”
You know how every legal person will say ‘Never Talk To The Police’ without a legal representative……Well handing this kind of data over to anyone requesting it likely means you will end up being beaten up by it at some point. The ‘Race Game Industry’ is not out to fix things, to make things better, No, it is out to wreck things. It will be used against you, it always will.
It is Neo-Marxist (Neo-Marxism is Not like Marxism in that Neo is how the struggle of man is about oppressor and oppressed as viewed as ‘Intersectionality‘ (how groups based on sex, race, culture, education, religion, criminal history, welfare, and everything else are are related to each other in the only way groups Can relate to each other, as Oppressed and Oppressor (dialectic Post Modernism)), it is totally Identity Politics, and the goal is ‘Equity’, which is taking from the oppressor and giving it to the Oppressed.
Traditional Marxism is Capitalists and Proletariat as oppressors and oppressed – and any identity can be either – in Fact they can move from one state to the other. (It is 100% about the ‘Means Of Production’ ‘Land Labour and Capital; money). Neo-Marxism is a fixed form of Intersectionality – and you are born an oppressor or oppressed and that is for ever unless you get Equity, which does NOT FIX IT, but pays back for it. It is right from the Post Modernist ‘Frankfurt School‘.
The Unions were Traditional Marxist (Trotskyite really), but have been completely captured by Neo-Marxists, and so are an entirely different animal than they were – exactly like how the Universities have been Captured by the Neo’s. It is no longer about money and pay and conditions to the Unions Now Days – it is about Oppressed and oppressor Intersetionality, and thus Equity. They are pretty twisted, like Government and education, and MSM, and Social Media, and Corporate facades, all captured.
It is ushering in the ‘Great Reset’, and it will not be good.
It is, in fact, a Neo-Marxist revolution without the bloodshed; a revolution which nobody has noticed.
At the risk of repeating what a number of UnHerd btl posters have written recently, one means of fighting back is by joining the Free Speech Union.
I am a member, even though retired. FSU take up cases and challenge ridiculous and oppressive decisions by firms, broadcasters, university authorities, and so on.
By joining, we can at least contribute to doing something, rather than just wringing our hands.
I’ve been fortunate enough to work in environments where their services aren’t required but I joined anyway, as it’s a genuinely good cause.
OK. Your interpretation, rather than what I meant.
I by no means underestimate the enemy.
So, please, be helpful here: what do you propose we do?
Thank you for the reply.
Your point about identifiable individuals rather than amorphous institutions is one I made several weeks ago over on The Spectator comments on the Jess de Wahls case. Decisions aren’t made by corporate bodies, but by individuals in particular positions.
Still, the essential point is action. I am therefore looking into such organisations as Counterweight and History Reclaimed as suggested here by other posters on this page.
It wasn’t very veiled.
Without the bloodshed. So far.
In a nutshell.
The Unions are often happy to do what they think is politically advantageous for the Labour Party, even if it’s at odds with the rights of the workers they represent. As long as Labour are dominated by woke activists, sadly, the Unions will be too.
Unless the government is willing to legislate to prevent employers from taking disciplinary action against workers for factors outside their competence in their role and allow them the freedom of their conscience, then I see no hope in stopping the woke’s increasing stranglehold on the work place and cultural institutions.
P.S. Great to see your writing for UnHerd Paul!
Many political careerists in the Labour Party will not subscribe to the woke agenda, we know this – and they know we know -but if it is helpful to them they will be the loudest cheerleaders.
Ditto!
I cancelled my membership of UCU in disgust at their lack of support for Prof Stock and free speech. I sent an email to head office advising them why I’d done this. I’d urge others to do the same.
Good idea. Falling membership is the only thing the unions fear.
Bravo.
They won’t stop collaborating with management because they are management.
It’s funny how long it takes leftists to notice that leftists hate literally everyone eventually.
That’s why the Puritans never made their revolution ‘stick’ it was said of them ‘They loved God with all their minds and hated their neighbour with all their heart’ Luther the greatest hater of all found fallow ground in the Middle classes of his day and the Woke are the same; as the Middle classes dwindle and they become more and more abhorent to the population at large, they will find themselves going extinct, it may take some time but society cannot thrive on hate.
Much of the discussion on this issue has been about how the woke took hold of academia a few years ago and how they have now taken hold of the public sector. Yet it has been storming though private sector industry too, to the extent that it has infected almost every workplace. Larger private sector companies, for whom the Govt or a Govt department is often a major client, must make their staff go through UBT (now also referred to as EDI in the private sector) if they want to win Govt contracts (it’s written in the terms and conditions). I personally, as a private sector employee working on a Govt contract had to go through it to work on that contract. The larger companies, in turn, make it a condition that any smaller companies acting as their suppliers also have similar policies in place – the policy must apply to the whole supply chain. This is propagating throughout the whole of industry – pretty soon it will be almost impossible to gain employment without undergoing UBT / EDI training, given that the Govt is by far the largest ultimate client in the UK economy. The private sector is mostly un-unionised, so it almost doesn’t matter what the Unions do. It seems like they have already won. I will make my own small protest by refusing to undertake the annual refresher course (they assume that the brainwashing will rinse out if you don’t undertake an annual refresher) and generally not complying with their diktats.
I presented on this topic in one of my doctorate classes earlier this week. What you describe is first and second wave managerialism (private and public sector). What we are experiencing now is third wave managerialism, the re-ordering of people’s private lives, thoughts, and identities.
Identities that enable this managerialism will be held up as virtuous, those that resist it will be painted as socially and ethically unacceptable.
I was a PCS rep for 30 years and a trade union side officer (before PCS destroyed the Whitley structure). I am still a member – just – because I have a right to be and I can be a thorn in their side but, since our wonderful traditional working class Geordie branch chair died a year ago; the last of the proper trade unionists, I have distanced myself completely.
I was a TUS Equality Officer, I studied employment law at post graduate level and I have an in depth knowledge of the Equality Act. I won thousands for people in personal cases which were nearly all about physical disability. In many other cases, I negotiated with management on workplace adjustments and technology to enable disabled people to stay at work. Disabled people are by far the largest‘protected characteristic’ in an ageing workforce, but the union has no interest in them whatsoever. It is all ‘identity’ and their strings are being pulled by Stonewall.
Then there is the absurd PCS hysteria over Covid. If employees are required to wear an intrusive and potentially damaging item over their faces, for goodness sake, in the workplace, the union should insist on a risk assessment and an Equality Impact Assessment. PCS has not just acquiesced over the grotesque face masks, it has begged for them, with no attempt to go through the procedures that it would usually demand. PCS is rotten to the core.
Thank you Caroline. I am old enough to remember when PCS actually stood up for employees’ rights but I cancelled my membership some years ago, for the reasons many have given above.
Perhaps all union officials, both local and national, should be required by their members to declare that they have read Orwell’s 1984 within the last five years, have a basic understanding of the principles of Ingsoc, including doublethink and newspeak, and recognise, in consequence of that understanding, how thoroughly and profoundly unacceptable it is for either an employer or a trade union representative to encroach on the area of another human’s thoughts, conscience or beliefs. By all means set and enforce standards of behaviour in the workplace, but the sphere of an individual’s interior life and thoughts should be strictly off limits.
yes that’s the trouble they are trying to present CRT as a workplace ethic whereas in reality it’s a religion.
No one should ever cooperate in these studies/surveys designed to discriminate against white people. Two examples from the USA:
Some years ago when I first applied for a mortgage, there was a mountain of “fairness” paperwork that I initially refused to fill out. One particular question asked my race. I told my estate agent it was none of the government’s business, that I would not answer the question. He said “Fine, but I am required to then use my ‘best guess’ as to your race, otherwise the paperwork will not be accepted and you will not get a mortgage.
The second example is the US census. The Constitution requires a “count” of the population every ten years. It does NOT require that the country be sliced and diced by race and many other extremely intrusive questions–though asking if one is an American citizen has been deemed racist and is therefore not asked. I have no problem with the government counting me, the rest is none of their business. I refuse to cooperate in this mess and have returned the census with an obscenity scrawled across it.
I would encourage everyone to join the resistance and do likewise.
Very powerful and important piece.
My own life experience has tought me that unions are not what they should be and worse, when it suits them, they can actually work against you.
Look how they treated Paul Embery?
Despicable.