The fake equality that defends anything but the right to family life
WHY does a government which calls itself Conservative even have a Minister for Women and Equalities? The post was invented by the Blair creature and first held by Harriet Harman, that apostle of social and sexual revolution. But when David Cameron, posing as a Tory, became Premier in 2010, he kept it on.
Cameron was, as he privately said, the ‘heir to Blair’ and this was one way of proving it, so keeping the BBC – which polices the borders of what can be said or thought – from destroying him at election time. Since then, under various names, it has been held by several Conservatives, including the allegedly anti-woke Tory leadership campaigner Kemi Badenoch, plus Liz Truss and, of course, Miss Woke herself, the remarkable Penny Mordaunt.
The whole thing, which operates in the name of ‘gender equality’, is based on the firm belief that women ought to go out and earn wages to be fulfilled and that the raising of the next generation is a second-rate task, best farmed out to paid strangers.
This is, of course, a point of view which deserves a hearing. And boy, has it had a hearing since the new wave of American feminists got going back in the 1960s.
IT SUITS the state, because it creates millions of new taxpayers. And it suits big business, because it provides a willing new workforce. And, of course, it suits the minority of women who pursue exciting highflying careers of the Cherie Blair type, and who can afford good nannies. It is not so great for those who must work in call centres and such places, leaving their young all day in dreary childcare. And it is pretty terrible for the children themselves, in my humble opinion.
It is certainly not a conservative idea, any more than the other aspects of ‘equality’ – mostly political correctness dolled up as virtue. Conservatives are supposed to defend family life and the institution of marriage.
If a woman (or a man for that matter) prefers to stay at home to bring up and educate the young, conservatives respect them for it and, at the very least, don’t get in their way. But look at how the tax breaks and the social attitudes go, if you want to choose this way of life.
The tax and benefits system, and the attitudes of all parts of the state, will help almost any form of childcare – except the one where a parent stays at home to do it and the family has to cope on a single income. Since this form of ‘equality’ got under way, the old form of family has been badly squeezed.
You have to be rich, or grimly determined, or both, to do it. And in any case this point of view is now dismissed by millions as bigoted.
Why does nobody in politics oppose this anti-family policy, even though there are good, strong arguments against it? Here’s why.
By a beautiful piece of political conjuring, traditional ideas about the family have been falsely classified and smeared as ‘phobias’ about other ways of life. Defend traditional marriage, the type of family universally accepted as good and normal until recently, from discrimination against it, and the radicals will not bother to argue with you. They will just try to destroy you by claiming that you wish to discriminate against them. This is the message of the case of Maureen Martin, so well-described in last week’s Mail on Sunday by my colleague Mark Hookham. Mrs Martin stood in a local election on a platform including the view that ‘natural marriage between a man and a woman is the fundamental building block for a successful society, and the safest environment for raising children’.
She was interrogated by her employers, a housing association, and sacked because her opinions were judged to be ‘discrimination’ against others. This is ugly nonsense. All opinions are about choice and can be said to ‘discriminate’ against one view and in favour of another. Those who support the fashionable rainbow-flag view of these matters could just as well be said to be ‘discriminating’ against conservative Christians. But nobody is going to be sacked for that. These rules are simply a way of disguising tyranny as tolerance, punishing and silencing one point of view and supporting another.
This is a gross assault on freedom of speech. Mrs Martin has not been sent to a prison camp, so Amnesty International and the other liberal organs which claim to defend freedom will not care. But that is how the new despotism is enforced these days. It is not done with prison but with unemployment – just as terrifying and effective but far harder to campaign against.
If I thought any of the candidates for the Tory leadership had understood or cared about this issue, I might have taken some interest in it. But as far as I can see the Tory Party has more in common with the people who sacked Maureen Martin than it does with this brave and mistreated woman.