I saw first hand how hyper sensitive staff looked for offence in everything
THAT an organisation devoted to the promotion of fairness should be embroiled in a vicious row about bigotry is a sad irony. The Equality and Human Rights Commission is meant to be a beacon of justice, yet its current chairman, Baroness Kishwer Falkner, finds herself accused of discrimination, partisanship and harassment.
‘Fascist’ and ‘scum’ are just two of the epithets used about her on social media. Such abuse does not reflect the true nature of Baroness Falkner’s leadership at the commission. After all, she is a long-serving, distinguished public servant with impeccable liberal credentials.
No, what the furore really demonstrates is the intransigence of militant elements of the transgender lobby, which is determined to impose its creed on civic life in Britain and is willing to use intimidation, threats and character assassination to achieve its ends.
Indeed, the game was given away by the accusers’ use of the term ‘bullying’ against her. In much of Whitehall and quangoland, this has become the default claim of disgruntled staff who want to discredit their boss or pursue their own agenda.
Thanks to their obsession with workplace rights and identity politics, many public bodies are particularly susceptible to such internal attacks – nowhere is that more true than at the Equality and Human Rights Commission where I worked as chief operating officer (COO) between 2012 and 2015. In that post, I saw at first-hand how dysfunctional and inward-looking the organisation could be.
Precisely because of its mission to champion the marginalised, it appeared to attract hyper-sensitive recruits who were often wellversed in the minutiae of procedure and constantly on the lookout for any perceived slights against themselves.
I was working at the Home Office when I was head-hunted for the COO position. A colleague warned me that the job was ‘one of the worst’ in Whitehall due to its discontented workforce and the chasm between its lofty ambition to build a country free of prejudice and the mundane reality of its sclerotic, introspective bureaucracy.
LABOUR’S Harriet Harman, the key architect of the 2010 Equality Act which helped to define the commission’s purpose, had spoken grandly of ‘ creating a new social order’ – but at times it was hard enough to get staff to carry out the most basic administrative orders, let alone change the world.
This rebellious streak is evident in the current row, with certain employees clearly of the view that they have the right to resist policies they dislike.
In fact, the turmoil was directly triggered by the fury of a cadre of radical staffers who were indignant at Baroness Falkner’s clear guidance that the 2010 Equality Act should be amended to define sex as a biological reality and therefore singlesex spaces for women and girls should be protected.
But the gender debate is now so poisonous that a commonsense approach like this is the cue for hysterical protests.
Despite all my misgivings, I took the job, partly because I felt I had the chance to do good. I soon found that many of the concerns were justified.
One problem lay in the commission’s structure, created in 2007 by forcing together three bodies with very different interests: the Disability Rights Commission, the Equal Opportunities Commission and the Commission for Racial Equality. The amalgamation had never entirely worked.
As a result, when the Tory-led Coalition came to power in 2010, the commission’s credibility was weak and there was speculation that it might be culled. The commission survived, but difficulties remained.
Too much time was taken up with frivolous complaints – Human Resources became the most important department, and the executive arm drowned in interminable disputes. More time was wasted on grand strategic visions and mission statements.
This focus on verbiage did nothing to improve the lives of ordinary Britons.
WORDS were easier to produce than deeds. I had wanted the commission to have an impact by resolving hard cases, like the disabled man in Scotland denied a bus service, or the Jewish undergraduate unable to get kosher food at his campus canteen because of the student union’s boycott of Israel, or the black London Metropolitan police officer discriminated against by management.
Today, the chaos looks worse than ever. The current ideological mutiny cannot be tolerated. Any acceptance that staff can oust their boss or enforce their own agenda would be an affront to democratic accountability.
The tail must not be allowed to wag the dog. Government should stand firm and immediately issue a clear statement of solidarity with Baroness Falkner.