Wokery and law and policy

18th February 2022

Back in the 1980s there was something called the ‘loony left’.

It was a general smear against the Labour Party – based on what were very few actual examples from a few left-wing politicians, mainly in local government.

As a political tactic, it was very successful.

But one problem for the-then governing Conservative party is that some of that party’s leaders actually believed it was true.

They believed there was actually a substantial thing called the ‘loony left’.

And this was part of the reason after 1987 leading Conservatives nodded-along with the ‘community charge’ – or ‘poll tax’ – so as to make these ‘loony left’ local authorities more ‘accountable’.

It is also why, around the same time, we ended up with the vile Section 28.

Government ministers in the late 1980s, and their political and media supporters, took seriously the ‘loony left’ political scare tactic.

And atrocious legislation and policies then followed.

The ironic thing was that the ‘community charge’ that was intended to counter ‘loony left’ councils did far more to bring down the Thatcher administration than it did to undermine any left-wing councils.

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Now, it is happening again – but CTL+F ‘loony left’ and replace with ‘wokery’.

As before, the phrase is a political tactic.

And also as before, there are government ministers (and their media and political supporters) who are taking such things seriously.

The sheer lack of proportion is well described by the Conservative former Lord Chancellor David Gauke in this New Statesman article.

As Gauke avers, it is the current government and not ‘the woke’ that “has attempted to illegally suspend parliament and threatened to break international law. Brexit was always a huge geopolitical error that weakened the West, but the UK government is implementing it in a way that creates additional tensions with our closest allies. It is also a government that appears to think the Prime Minister is above the law.”

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On the back of this facile ‘anti-wokery’ may come legislation just as illiberal and misconceived as Section 28.

It may even lead to colossal policy errors like the ‘poll tax’.

And as with the 1980s, the fundamental problem will be that right-wing populists believed in the turnip-ghosts they had conjured up to scare themselves and voters.

That is why the speech of cabinet minister Oliver Dowden against ‘wokery’ is so dangerous – including for the Conservatives themselves.

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19 thoughts on “Wokery and law and policy”

  1. Dowden’s speech was indeed atrocious – and how come a U.K. government minister goes to the Heritage Foundation in Washington to attack the Labour Party?

  2. Find-and-replace is also evident when dealing with transphobic propaganda from right-wing “Christian” groups and so-called Gender Critical Feminists.

    The arguments being deployed are simple rehashes of homophobic propaganda from the 70s and 80s. Except instead of Section 28, it’s ‘Bathroom Bills’.

    Culture War as a substitute for substantive policy.

  3. I resist a binary reading of the virtues of leftish progressivism vs stupid legislation (which is certain to come). One seems ill-conceived as a route out of oppression or inequality while the other is just what you expect from the Tories. A pox on both etc

  4. Culture wars are a useful tactic for a failing government. They create something to rage against. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a real threat or not (usually not), it’s all about whipping up a frenzy which can be triggered by a catchphrase, or in this case a single word.

    In his speech, Dowden said:

    “It goes by many names. In Britain, its adherents sometimes describe themselves as ‘social justice warriors’. They claim to be ‘woke’, awakened to the so-called truths of our societies. But wherever they are found, they pursue a common policy inimical to freedom.”

    They don’t call themselves social justice warriors, in Britain or anywhere else, at least not any more. It became a derogatory label years ago, used by people attacking PC or “woke,” usually in the form SJW. He should have checked the wiki page about social justice warrior before opening his mouth.

    His argument about wokery being anti free speech is the same as was applied to political correctness and just as flawed.

    Interestingly the full text of the speech, promised on Conservative Home, looks more like a series of bullet points. Maybe that really was the text Dowden was given and he had to improvise the gaps?

  5. The fact that Oliver Dowden Tory Party Co-Chair & a Minister of the Crown gave a speech to the Heritage Foundation at all was instructive as its a think tank started in the Reagan era specifically to combat the “liberal consensus”. It’s always been closely tied to the Republican Party and recently is especially supportive of Trump.
    On Feb 7th Kevin Roberts current President said that ‘People do not walk around in fear of the Heritage Foundation the way they did 10 years ago’ and announced that his aim is to make people fear it again. One of its major areas of focus for 2022 is helping Republican controlled states write legislation banning the teaching of ‘wokeism’, CRT, or ‘revisionist history’.
    So a Minister of a sitting UK government has deliberately and directly inserted the UK government into the politics of another nation.

  6. I’m sorry that this is slightly off-topic from the main theme of the piece, but David mentions the Community Charge/Poll Tax in the context of it being a piece of legislation that helped bring about the end of that chapter of the Conservative Project.

    I just wanted to point at that despite the entirely reasonable conclusion David draws, never let it be said that a government doesn’t bear a grudge or won’t seek revenge. One of the reasons that the Community Charge/Poll Tax was so unpopular was the way that it shifted the balance of taxation so aggressively. In an attempt to sweeten the bitter pill, the government came up with the idea of adding 2.5% to VaT – raising it from 15% to 17.5% – while cutting the average UK Poll Tax charge from about £300/year to about £150/year.

    When even that proved to be unpopular, the government decided to scrap the Poll Tax and revert to the property-based “Council Tax”. Well, yes, except:-
    1. Instead of asking local government to resume the work of their Rating Valuation Officers, the government decided to out-source the work to Estate Agents – a nice little earner for the private sector.
    2. The amount of Council Tax being paid worked out at significantly more than would have been expected had Domestic Rates been left alone.
    3. The government didn’t revert VaT to 15%, even though the extra 2.5% it was taking from everyone was no longer needed to prop up Local Government.

    It was a disaster from start to finish… Not necessarily a disaster as an idea, more the way it was implemented.

    But it also served as a fantastic vehicle to screw British families in to paying significantly more on property taxes and for most their purchases (thanks to VaT).

    I *think* I’m right in saying that the move to 20% VaT was at least in part attributed by our government by an EU Directive to harmonize tax rates across the bloc, so as to discourage citizens from literally “venue shopping” across borders. Of course, now we’re out of the EU and have no need to keep VaT so high, the Chancellor will of course reduce it, in order to help the economy and struggling families get back on their feet.

    Eh? What’s that? Oh, well that’s just *typical*…

    1. I *think* I’m right in saying that the move to 20% VaT was at least in part attributed by our government by an EU Directive to harmonize tax rates across the bloc, so as to discourage citizens from literally “venue shopping” across borders.

      The VAT rise to 20% in 2011 was introduced by George Osborne in the 2010 budget specifically as part of measures to reduce the deficit by raising revenue. It had nothing to do with EU tax harmonisation.

      As you say, we are now free to reduce VAT and there is no sign of it happening. It could knock 5% off our energy bills, for example. Ironically, last October the EU announced nations could decrease VAT on energy bills to reduce price increases, so had we still been members we would have been able to do this too.

      I have to ask, why do you write VaT and not VAT like everyone else, including HMRC?

    2. I believe the standard minimum EU VAT rate is 15% (Luxembourg for example at 17%, Malta 18%, Germany 19%). So going from 15% to 17.5 and then to 20% was not the fault of EU regulations.

      But member states can introduce up to two reduced rates (minimum 5% VAT) for specific things. Like for example food, books, public transport fees, medical drugs…(Luxembourg 8%, Malta 7% and 5%, Germany 7%).
      And of course there are the “old” special rates. Where for historical reasons some specific goods and services can be taxed below 5%, even 0%.

  7. See also, the ‘woke’ threat to free speech:Yes, there might be some ill-advised No Platforming, and equally ill-advised attempts at ‘cancellation’ that only serve to amplify whatever it is that’s so offensive. But all that pales in comparison to a Policing Bill that bans political protest, an Online Safety Bill that would throttle social media, the noises about banning encryption that would expose us all to scammers, and the persistence of PREVENT (a Labour party policy if I recall correctly) that requires teachers and lecturers to inform on their students.

  8. Many – by no means all, but many – of the things the ‘loony left’ said and did have stood the test of time pretty well, actually. Thatcher may have called Mandela a ‘terrorist’, but in Birmingham a primary school in Balsall Heath was named after him in 1987, when he was still a prisoner of the South African apartheid regime (and when racism was rife in the city). Who defends apartheid now?

    ‘Loony left’ policies against racism and for equality for gay and lesbian people have long since passed into the political mainstream and into law. In the 80s, the very word ‘racism’ was edgy and controversial (conservatives usually said ‘racialism’, if they talked about it at all, which they preferred not to). The ‘loony left’ promoted ‘safer sex’ education to combat the spread of HIV and AIDS. Thatcher’s Section 28 hindered such education, while the Revolutionary Communist Party, whose acolytes were later to play a central role in Vote Leave and the Johnson government, pamphleteered against safer sex on libertarian grounds.

    If there really is such a thing as ‘woke’, it might just be worth looking in to.

  9. I’ll make two comments, if I may.

    Firstly, (getting the sneers out of the way) Oliver Dowden seems to me to look like a live version of Tim Nice-But-Dim although maybe not so nice. He seems to parrot what he’s told which rather suggests that he doesn’t have a handle on his brief.

    Secondly, I think this does link to ‘culture wars’ in that there are zealots on all sides (a response further up reminds me of that) and many people feel that I have to take one side or the other.

    Clearly, I don’t.

    My concern is that policy becomes more focused on the ‘tribe’ rather than the issue – and as the extremes of right and left become more vocal, they drown out other voices.

    I’m afraid I can’t be even vaguely optimistic about how this will end.

    1. I think the difficulty with ‘woke’ is it can mean anything to anybody and their group.

      To you, it may mean equality (and that was the original meaning, wasn’t it?), but to some people it’s that fictional world where you can’t ask for a black coffee or use the word ‘mother’.

      The really strange thing about the negative view of ‘woke’ is that the few people I know who subscribe to it have never actually come across real-life examples of what they fear, they just know it’s a danger.

      That’s how effective the culture war is, I’m afraid.

      1. Exactly this. If you do the James O’Brien thing of asking people for actual specifics, it’s very often some vaguery.

        It was the same with ‘political correctness’ — people taking it to mean anything from Health & Safety legislation to Human Rights. And if they could name a specific example it was almost always made up. ‘Winterval’ was a tabloid fabrication, for example.

      2. “Woke” simply means being alert to the inequalities and injustices others in your community deal with on a regular basis as part of their daily existence, ranging from the casual racism Alexandra Wilson experienced (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-54281111) to George Floyd being slowly asphyxiated despite posing no threat whatsoever to the guy kneeling on his throat.

        People, like Andrew Neil, who have taken it upon themselves to “re-define” the word, fall into two categories IMHO: –

        Those who want the freedom to continue to insult and belittle people who come from a different religious/sexual/racial background.

        Those in a more powerful position who want to stoke up the previous group as part of a wider strategy to deflect from the spectacular mess they’ve made of running the country.

  10. Me too. That is, two comments if I may.

    I was under the impression that a crucial factor in the role of the Poll Tax in bringing down Thatcher was the decision of the Metropolitan Police to start a riot in Trafalgar Square. If that or something similar doesn’t happen this time round we can’t depend on new stupid legislation to trigger a swing (or at least a nudge) of the pendulum.

    Since we are not in the E.U. we could abolish VAT altogether and replace it with a tax of our own devising. It could even be a progressive one — but it won’t.

  11. Thank you for highlighting the danger inherent in this development. Many people will be tempted to treat it like pub banter on ‘political correctness’ and have a laugh.
    But when this stuff comes out of the mouths of those at the top of our system, it’s quite a different matter.

    The ‘loony left’ jibes of the 1980s were, it seems to me, part of the general mentality which developed in the government against ‘the enemy within’.

    In addition to the examples you give, I would argue that this strategy – for it was by design – led to much greater centralisation and the beginning of the end of local government in Britain.
    So detailed decisions on capital spending in every local authority were effectively taken in Westminster, to avoid ‘loony left’ overspending.
    Up to the mid 1990s, EU funds for regional development were not additional to the areas eligible for them – they were centralised. Some councils found themselves abolished.
    Powers involving education, housing, transport, urban development were centrally controlled or removed altogether.
    In no other European country did this sort of thing happen.

    The danger you point out is that the ‘enemy within’ mentality is spreading to areas such as human rights, the judiciary or immigration. And including any other source of power in these islands – in parts of local government, the governments in Wales or Scotland and anything involving the term ‘Ireland’.

    Once this starts, it’s difficult to stop. With our freedoms eroded and our democracy damaged.

  12. I am not sure if it is something we can apply with equal measure to the Conservative Party in the UK, but I watched the Trump presidency with growing concern. Trump is a street fighter: the first thing he does is take any challenge down in to the gutter, where he is in his natural element.

    But the most concerning thing about Trump’s presidency was the way that he attacked the “Radical Left” and the “Socialists” and the “Do Nothing Democracts”. He was using the insults to intentionally *provoke* a reaction. So when he provoked the press as “Enemies of the People” and accused the Democrats of being “Woke Socialists”, what he’s intentionally doing is burning bridges and laying mines on any common ground. By design.

    That way, when he acts in a way that is completely unreasonable – like calling the Charlottesville marchers, “fine people” – and his other dog whistles – he knows the Democrats will react. But by stirring up his base with the vitriolic sentiment, he casts any Democratic reaction as the “Loony Left”. He deliberately antagonises Democrats to give him the power to act with impunity.

    Does it work? Well, here is a serial adulterer, who slept with a porn star and a former Playboy model at around the time that his latest wife was giving birth to his youngest child… and who curries favour with Evangelical Christians by appointing conservative justices. Here is a man who brought together the billionaires and the Proud Boys.

    So although “woke” might seem like yet another in a long line of disparaging terms, it is every bit as dangerous as those that came before. Not because it is particularly offensive, but because it is designed to provoke a reaction. It’s the reaction that gave Trump the freedom to act like a dictator.

    Brace brace indeed.

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