There was once a New Yorker cartoon with a suit-wearing politician stuck on the wrong side of the Pearly Gates. ‘Wait, those weren’t lies,’ he pleads to St Peter. ‘That was spin!’
Now, courtesy of Cambridge’s least-qualified college head, the race activist Lord Simon Woolley, we have an exciting new variation on this theme. My statements weren’t false, they were metaphors! You may remember that in August, we said Woolley, the principal of Homerton College, was unfit for his job after he ranted at a Trafalgar Square rally that Jason Arday was murdered – or, in his words, was the victim of a ‘lynching’ and a ‘public assassination’ by people who had decided that ‘Jason doesn’t deserve to be alive.’
Woolley has given an interview to the website Byline Times – one of Britain’s most deranged Arday truther outlets – saying that these false and racially inflammatory claims were merely a ‘metaphor for a sustained attack on an individual in a public space.’
Woolley has now given an interview to the website Byline Times – one of Britain’s most deranged Arday truther outlets – saying that these false and racially inflammatory claims were merely a ‘metaphor for a sustained attack on an individual in a public space.’ Well, that argument might just work, though it’s doubtful, if the only words Woolley had used were ‘lynching’ or ‘assassination’. But when he says those two things – both of them, of course, synonyms for murder, not merely political figures of speech – were done by people who literally, in his words, believed that ‘Jason doesn’t deserve to be alive,’ there can be no other meaning than that this was a claim of deliberate killing. Perhaps Woolley genuinely believes his metaphor claim, but it is very obviously wrong.
Woolley also claims that he ‘didn’t mention race’ in his Trafalgar Square diatribe. This, too, is untrue. He actually said that from the moment Arday arrived at Cambridge, ‘the dogs of hell started on Jason Arday. Because they couldn’t handle a black man, a loving man, a decent human being, to be in a place like that.’
Woolley claims that Arday said he was ‘the most private person’ who had chosen to live a deliberately low-key life. Going on Question Time, guest-editing the Today programme, and being about to launch an autobiography for which he claimed a reported seven-figure advance is, I think, an unusual way to show a concern for your personal privacy.
Woolley also half-repeats a false claim made by Homerton on his appointment that in 2018 Woolley created and led the British government’s race disparity unit. As we pointed out in August, the unit was actually created in 2016 and led throughout by a career civil servant, Marcus Bell. Woolley’s role, starting two years later, was as the chair of its advisory group. It was never clear whether this was an Arday-style CV embellishment by Woolley or whether it was made up by the college; both have refused to answer questions on the subject, and Homerton under Woolley’s leadership has refused even to correct the record – the false statement remains on its website to this day.
Woolley’s take to Byline Times is:
‘I remember Homerton saying to me, “you’ve helped transform the political landscape of Westminster with Operation Black Vote”. We started with four black, Asian, and minority MPs, and when I left, there were 64 and soon to be a brown Prime Minister. In no small measure, we played a significant part in that. Establishing the race disparity unit with Theresa May that would be for all communities, tackling inequities, is something we can all be proud of.’
Even Byline Times felt obliged to put square brackets qualifying Woolley’s claim that he ‘played a significant part’ in the arrival of an Asian PM. Rishi Sunak – like the majority of the 64 ethnic-minority MPs – was not in fact mentored by Operation Black Vote. The reason I say this passage is only a ‘half-repetition’ of the false claim about the race disparity unit is the ‘all,’ which might mean Woolley is not claiming sole credit for its establishment by Operation Black Vote or himself.
Inevitably, too, Woolley uses being held to account for his dangerous falsehoods to push the race grievance agenda and claim that he’s the real victim. In the game of identity politics, every move is a win. As he puts it:
‘A black person such as myself could not call it out without being attacked, vilified, and invalidated.’
‘We’re not judged by the same standard… I used a well-known metaphor of public lynchingand I’m slaughtered for “not being fit” for this role. This is what we are subject to. This is why it is too often not safe [to speak out].’
You don’t have to be an academic to head a Cambridge college. You don’t have to be white; Cambridge’s first non-white college head was appointed in 1990, and Woolley was the sixth. But I think you do have to have greater care for the truth than Simon Woolley.
Comments