Cops’ £90k ‘virtue-signalling’ & ‘gender-offensive’ military ranks… wokeism has infiltrated our best-loved institutions
AS the NHS battled the worst health crisis in living memory, it found time and resources to go peak woke.
Emblazoned on its website earlier this month was an A-Z. Not adding to its information on coronavirus, but a lexicon on race and gender.
It had A for allyship, G for gender dysphoria, T for tone policing and W for white fragility.
P was for power, described as a “process where people are othered”.
Conservative MP Neil O’Brien branded it an “alphabet of woke” that is “highly divisive”, adding: “It should not be pushed by HR managers in the NHS as a sort of gospel.”
After a barrage of criticism the NHS removed the list, saying it was not intended for publication.
But the NHS is hardly alone in falling over itself to align with the new woke orthodoxy.
Woke started with good intentions. Described as being “alert to injustice in society”, the idea was born on US campuses to fight for minority groups’ civil rights. Then the ultra-wokeist lobby ratcheted up its drive to purify language and behaviour.
Now, policed by hysterical Twitter mobs, woke has become a witch-hunt to stamp out unapproved language.
Those who do not meet the exacting standards set are “cancelled” — and free speech is stifled.
On Day Two of The Sun’s dossier of wokeism, we lay bare how the insidious creed has infiltrated some of our best-loved institutions.
MOTHERHOOD
IN 2017 the British Medical Association decreed that expectant women should be referred to as “pregnant people” so as not to “upset intersex and transgender men”.
The idea was to protect the sensitivities of those born biologically female who now identify differently and become pregnant.
Earlier this year Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals Trust told its midwives to refer to chestfeeding rather than breastfeeding, to be more trans-friendly.
The trust also replaced the term “mother” with “mother or birthing parent” and said “breast milk” should be changed to “human milk”, “breast/chestmilk” or “milk from the feeding mother or parent”.
Some social media users accused the trust of “peak misogyny”.
Broadcaster and journalist Janet Street-Porter said: “Many see calling our breasts ‘chests’ another blow against womankind.”
POLICE FORCES
WOKEISM is also deep-rooted among the police.
Last year Freedom of Information requests showed 21 forces had splashed out more than £90,000 on Pride-styled shirts, pens, lanyards and stickers over a 40-month period.
Kent Police has used £6,123 of taxpayers’ cash to buy curvy grip pens, trolley coins, rainbow erasers and wristbands — including £821 on purple Alaska Frost ball pens.
The force also used £1,050 to wrap three patrol cars in rainbow livery in support of LGBT Pride.
Retired Sussex Police Detective Chief Superintendent Kevin Moore said: “Does the LGBT community really think it’s making the police more responsive to them? To me, it’s a form of virtue-signalling.”
MILITARY
EVEN our Armed Forces have succumbed to the ultra-PC orthodoxy.
When women were first allowed to serve in all combat roles in 2018, decisions about uniforms and titles were left to individual units.
But Samantha de Forges, the Ministry of Defence’s director of diversity and inclusion, has launched a review into the “gender-based” rank names riflemen, midshipmen, airmen and First Sea Lord.
The move was branded “ultra- ultra-woke” by Lord West, the former First Sea Lord. In April troops from 22 Engineer Regiment were banned from using the word “lads” fearing it would cause offence — even if no women were present.
Telly host Piers Morgan wrote on Twitter: “Anyone that easily offended should not be in the British Army.”
A soldier wrote on social media: “I’ve served on operations with lots of women. I didn’t meet one who was offended by the word ‘lads’.”
An Army spokesman said: “The MoD is determined to offer an inclusive environment for all those serving their country.”
NATIONAL TRUST
WOKE has seemingly tightened its grip on public institutions.
In 2017 the National Trust was forced to U-turn after telling volunteers at Felbrigg Hall in Norfolk who refused to wear rainbow lanyards and badges that they had to take on backroom roles.
Last September, the Trust published a controversial 115-page report which “blacklisted” 93 of its estates over their alleged links to slavery — including Chartwell in Kent, the former home of Sir Winston Churchill.
Meanwhile, Lincolnshire Fire Service droped Fireman Sam as a mascot in 2019 over fears he could put women off joining — as “fireman”, instead of “firefighter”, was not inclusive.
FIGHTBACK
THE Tories have found fertile political ground in anti-wokeism, an area where Labour is fearful of treading.
Yet even Boris Johnson emerged as an unlikely PC champion as he found himself calling, at the recent G7 summit in Cornwall, for a more “gender-neutral” society.
That may have been more to placate US President Joe Biden, than any new-found wokeist tendency.
Fightback is possible. The Royal Academy of Arts apologised this week for banning artist Jess de Wahls’ work from its gift shop over what it called her “transphobic views”. She wrote in 2019 that she did not accept “people’s unsubstantiated assertions that they are in fact the opposite sex to when they were born”. Even the BBC has tried to rein in its wokeist tendencies.
Since becoming Director-General, Tim Davie has ordered a U-turn on a decision not to sing Land Of Hope And Glory at the Last Night Of The Proms and canned comedy The Mash Report after it was criticised for being too left-wing. He told staff who campaign on social media they “should not be working at the BBC”.
WHAT’S NEXT?
SOME believe the next generation will sweep away wokeism. Chris McGovern, Chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said: “Children reject the views of their parents. I hope in 20 years there will be a reaction from this woke brainwashing.”
The paradox is that with its stifling of free speech, woke is illiberal. Our children may deliver woke the fate many believe it merits — being cancelled from the cultural landscape.