A woke agenda has no place on the battlefield
Forgive me, I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that the readers of this column are still in full possession of their marbles. (Is “marbles” offensive yet? I’m losing mine, so I honestly can’t remember.) Building on that expectation, I’m guessing that the majority of us are not entirely surprised that most of the leaders of the UK’S Armed Forces are white, middle-aged and – the more sensitive among you may wish to look away now – men. What with, you know, 87.2 per cent of the population still classified as white British and just under half of those being blokes. Add the fact that most of the aggression in society still resides in the male of the species and there are good reasons why the composition of the senior military is as it is.
Good reasons, alas, are no longer good enough. According to a new report, our Armed Forces have unacceptable levels of sexism, racism and bullying because they are led by a “pack of white middle-aged men”.
Crude generalisations that attribute blame to a single group on the basis of sex or colour are now illegal. Except if that group is white and masculine, in which case, go ahead, fill your boots!
According to the report’s author, Air Chief Marshal Mike Wigston, an “unacceptable level of inappropriate behaviour persists” because the leadership of the RAF, Army and Navy come from a “generation not used to having people from other diversity groups serving alongside them”. Among these frightful old soldiers, “use of language can be inappropriate and offensive”.
It goes on to highlight how “microaggressions, the brief and commonplace daily verbal or behavioural indignities, could be unintentional, but none the less communicate
hostile, derogatory, or negative prejudicial slights and insults”. Pass the smelling salts, Marjorie. Imagine how irrelevant those so-called microaggressions must seem to anyone who has experienced Helmand Province. If you have seen your best mate’s head blown off then, chances are, you’re not that worried about using the wrong pronoun for Cpl Robyn or engaging in banter that might upset Harriet Harman. Nor should you be.
The services have always had a tough, give-as-good-as-you-get culture, underpinned by strict discipline and fierce loyalty. A monstering from the Sgt Major is not “bullying”; it’s vital for building up internal armour. On the battlefield, there’s no time to take offence or fret about “behavioural indignities”. Are we seriously expecting those we pay to kill on our behalf to be held to the same standards as civilian social workers?
Political correctness, once the preserve of preposterously woke Corybynistas and the liberal establishment, is spreading its self-righteous tentacles into every institution, strangling common sense.
They’ve already nobbled the universities, the judiciary and the police; now they’re coming for our soldiers.
Only two months ago, a leaked report revealed that the Army considered that being patriotic might be a sign of extremism – a quality that would once have been considered indispensable for joining up.
Seriously, what other country in the world would try to eradicate patriotism
from its Armed Forces? Britain is in serious moral difficulty when even our top brass and senior politicians have to bow down before this warped and insidious ideology. It feels as if the thought police will not rest until James Bond is a woman of colour and white men are banished from all the top jobs and every banknote.
The announcement this week that the wartime codebreaker Alan Turing is to appear on the £50 note should have been a cause for pride and celebration. Not for the feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-perez. “So that’s still 75 per cent male and 100 per cent white,” she tweeted. “Really disappointing, Bank of England. You were meant to change your selection procedure to include diversity across the characters as part of the criteria, what went wrong?”
I applauded Criado-perez’s successful campaign to get Jane Austen on to the tenner, but this contemptuous dismissal of Turing, seemingly because he’s white and male, is appalling. Turing pitted his magnificent mind against the greatest evil in modern history – and won.
As a gay man, Turing was persecuted and took his own life after being chemically castrated. I’d call that pretty damn diverse, wouldn’t you? Even if he hadn’t been the victim of such barbarous injustice, Turing would still rank as one of the most remarkable humans in our history. Congratulations to the Bank of England for daring, in the present climate, to pick a white, middle-aged man for an honour he so richly deserved.
By contrast, are white middleaged men now to be obliged to hand over our Air Force, our Army and our Navy to younger, inexperienced BAME personnel who say “offensive” a lot and use behaviour in the plural? Just so that self-loathing lackeys can congratulate themselves on their commitment to diversity?
It’s fatuous, flatulent and fundamentally un-british nonsense. The public could not care less if the Forces are led by “a pack of white middle-aged men”, so long as they are not wasting time pandering to some fashionable agenda and weakening the military morale that sustains serving men and women as they engage in the battles that matter.
I reckon it’s time to begin the fight back against the enemy within. We must defend our armies against this monstrous regiment of liberal authoritarians.
The thought police won’t rest until white men are out of all the top jobs