Many people who work in the Civil Service are revolting. Quite literally in the verbal meaning of the word, and, as many have long argued, very decidedly when understood as an adjective.
Civil Servants have been in revolt this week at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, which currently wants to ensure that only biological women can use female toilets and changing rooms, to comply with last April’s Supreme Court ruling which decreed that ‘man’ or ‘woman’ in the Equality Act should refer to biological sex. Activists in Angela Rayner’s department have launched a petition, and started putting up posters and handing out leaflets, demanding that the changes be dropped because they put trans and non-binary people at ‘risk of humiliation and harassment.’
There are parts of the public sector which have long been citadels of a progressive dogma
Despite the Supreme Court’s decision, subsequently endorsed by the Equality and Human Rights Commission this year, when it brought out guidance to clarify that this means only biological women should be able to use female toilets, the Civil Service has continued to drag its feet. This was entirely foreseen, alas, because there are parts of the public sector which have long been citadels of progressive dogma.
It’s not just the overt politics that most people find detached and aggressive, it’s the mindset that underpins and sustains it. It’s the pernicious yet paradoxical mentality which that redoubtable opponent of activism in the public sector, Baroness Falkner, has referred to as ‘progressive conformity’. As the crossbench peer wrote in the Times, this is the ‘“inclusion” agenda pursued by dominant vested-interest groups and their overly subjective values, which often end up contradicting our laws.’
One contradiction in current civil service code is that while it specifies a requirement for impartiality, it simultaneously mandates the opposite. The wording of its staff directive, to ‘carry out responsibilities in a way that is fair, just and equitable and reflects the civil service commitment to equality and diversity’, will set off alarm bells in the minds of many who have heard it in previous contexts – from the Supreme Court ruling to the corrosive DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) policies that reached their grim conclusion in the Jason Arday affair.
A familiar avowal of ‘equality ‘n’ diversity’ exposes a clear progressive mentality within the civil service top brass. It also gives a green light to many in the rank-and-file who support fringe or foreign leftist causes. Consequently our lanyard public sector class have had no compunction in affixing ‘Free Gaza’ badges to their lapels, flaunting the colours of the Progress Pride flag, or in another gruesome endpoint, openly voicing anti-Jewish hatred in hospitals.
An even more formidable problem, and one which cannot be fixed by any legislation, is our culture today and the manner in which our values and mores have altered.
This is illustrated by the now widespread belief and lazy assumption that having a left-wing perspective is actually impartial and normal. Contrarily, anyone who is vaguely right-wing is deemed wicked, stupid, selfish or deluded. It’s this assumption which explains the glaring contradiction in the civil service code: those who wrote and approved that sentence couldn’t spot it because they can’t see their own partial position.
That in turn reflects a superficial postmodern culture in which the dichotomies between the left and right, between the personal and the political, have both collapsed. To have left-wing views is now to be a good person, to parade one’s compassion and fine soul. Today’s politics are less focused on improving the lot of the country and more concerned with one making oneself look good and feel better.
Our postmodern condition has likewise entailed a rejection of Enlightenment rationality and embrace instead of sentiment and subjectivity. It’s no coincidence that ultra-progressives eschew rational argument and reject objective truth. These are the children of Foucault, the philosopher who wrote that rationality and the pursuit of truth in the West had together conspired to create an oppressive ‘carceral society’. Hyper-liberals believe that men can change sex because they mistrust rationality, rebuff empiricism and deny objectivity. In their world, everything becomes ‘my truth’, every argument is reduced to feelings, grievance and intemperate outrage at having been offended.
The wording of this leaflet now doing the rounds in Angela Rayner’s department, with its appeal to the heart about ‘harassment’ and ‘bullying’, reflects the spirit of the times. Such weedy, playground language is indicative of a demographic immersed in sentiment and possessing the irrational desire to censor, ban or silence anyone who does or says horrible things.
In the end, those beholden to hyper-liberalism can never be reasoned with, because they don’t even believe in reason. This is why the ruling of the Supreme Court on sex and gender has to be obeyed and has to be enforced.
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