Great Britain made me woke, and thats something both Labour and the Conservatives cant seem to grasp – iNews

Good morning. Stay safe, stay sane. Another woke storm is probably blowing up somewhere. In the past 10 days, we have been through several of those.

This week, The Daily Telegraph kicked up a squall with a news report of an e-learning Civil Service course that was allegedly pushing a woke agenda by asking attendees to be mindful that pub work outings and all-male interviewing panels can be discriminatory. The Cabinet has now cancelled the course.

A Bristol pub landlord decided to only sell ethical products, meaning those not indirectly linked to slavery or linked to exploitation. Oh my. That triggered some tempests. Callers to radio stations wanted to cancel the pub, some because they honestly believe the landlord is a threat to our freedoms.

Our wonderfully inventive Royal Shakespeare Company was targeted by racists who object to its Afro-futuristic Much Ado About Nothing. Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi has issued guidance to schools on impartiality after pupils in one school wrote letters criticising the PM. All in the name of free speech.

Earlier this month, Oliver Dowden, an ex-secretary of state desperately seeking attention, delivered a speech to a right-wing US think-tank, making the odious and foolish claim that woke psychodrama is weakening the West. So now we know. Vladimir Putin marched into Ukraine because Nato nations have been sapped by wokeness.

What is the response of Her Majestys Opposition to this ugly, sinister, new McCarthyism? Labour is supposedly anti-racist, pro LGBT+, defender of the poor and powerless, committed to universal human rights and equality, to redressing historical injustices all of which are being delegitimised by the ruling elite.

So are they standing up for those values? No. They quake, hide from the winds, speak without conviction. Lucy Powell, the Shadow Culture Secretary, personified the cowardice when interviewed by a Telegraph journalist in January: I wouldnt say Im woke. Im not woke. But Im not anti-woke either. Geddit? No, me neither. As the journalist Nesrine Malik observed in The Guardian on Monday: Progressive politicians still do not seem to have understood that the only way to beat the charge [of wokeness] is to own it.

As you know, I am unabashedly woke. And properly PC. In the 80s, I worked for the Inner London Education Authority which steadfastly promoted equality and fairness. Thatcherites hated what we did so they abolished the authority in 1990. Then came the years when Political Correctness was slandered by right-wing and also some left-wing politicians, academics and commentators. They warned it was a social disease that was seriously undermining, even emasculating, the US and UK. Humbug. And they knew it.

In 2018, I wrote this in my book, In Defence of Political Correctness: Within the Anglo-Saxon axis, anti-political correctness has gone mad, bad and treacherous too. Invectives, lies, hate speech, bullying, intemperance and prejudices have become the new norms. Intolerable deeds are justified through invocations of liberty. Restraint is oppression.

I could write exactly the same paragraph about the anti-woke battalions. They care about the statue of a slaver more than they care about the injustices endured by their living black fellow citizens. They defend the right to use insulting racist and sexist language and cry foul when we call them out. As with PC, these unbending nationalists simultaneously sneer at and demonise the woke.

What is it to be woke? David Merritt, the father of law graduate Jack, who was killed by a terrorist in London Bridge, defines it as the opposite of ignorant. It is to have an open mind and critical antennae. It is to understand that, though the world will never be perfectly fair to all, we all have a duty to strive to make it fairer, and stand by the many who are kept down and denied, generation after generation.

For Sam Leith, of the adamantly right-wing Spectator: [It] is to show curiosity about other people; to aspire to enlarge your range of sympathy. It is to take an interest in how the world may look from another perspective the aspiration to be woke is in line with the basic project of the Enlightenment: to question received ideas and see if your assumptions are susceptible to disproof.

We all have an obligation to examine our own life stories and inherited prejudices. Both are too often airbrushed or Photoshopped out. I cannot claim to be woke if I dont address, for example, the racism and embedded sexism and homophobia and intolerance of the cultures I was born into. I learnt to interrogate what I was taught and to have respect for gay and disabled people here, in this country.

Thank you GB, for enlightening and educating me. For making me woke.

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Great Britain made me woke, and thats something both Labour and the Conservatives cant seem to grasp - iNews