The ‘war on woke’ must not be normalised 

By Claudia Webbe MP 

The Tories’ point-blank refusal to acknowledge structural disadvantages by scapegoating ‘the whole agenda’ instead must be resisted wholesale if we want to address racial and social inequality, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE MP

THE race to replace Boris Johnson as prime minister has descended into a grotesque lurch to the right, with Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak trying their utmost to outdo each other with ever-more divisive, nonsensical and damaging policies.

The two Tory leadership contenders have both outlined tax cuts that would further enrich the wealthy at a time of immense inequality and hardship, and have rolled out Thatcherite union-bashing policies which are so draconian that they prompted threats of a general strike from union leaders.

Yet perhaps most concerning is the concerted “war on woke” that has come to define this race-to-the bottom leadership contest.

Just last week, Sunak vowed to stop “woke nonsense and left-wing agitators.” Sunak pledged to “stand up to left-wing agitators” and “protect British freedoms” if he becomes prime minister.

This warped perception of freedom includes reviewing the 2010 Equalities Act which ensures people with protected characteristics are not discriminated against and taking instead a backwards step on gendered and racial equality. Similarly, Jacob Rees-Mogg MP — when supporting Truss’s plan for cuts to Whitehall staff and pay — said that diversity roles are a “job creation scheme created by the woke for the woke.”

These culture wars have dominated the Tory leadership debate, despite YouGov polling showing just 8 per cent of Conservative Party members want “combatting the woke agenda” prioritised.

Yet when we consider the demographics of the Tory Party membership, it is hardly surprising that this “war on woke” has dominated the headlines. Our next PM will be chosen by around 200,000 people — or 0.29 per cent of the UK population — who are overwhelmingly male (71 per cent) and white (97 per cent). More than half are over 60 and their stance on the climate crisis and LGBT rights tends to differ greatly from that the public as a whole.

It is important to remember that the term woke has been intentionally misinterpreted as a stand-in for all things annoying by the right-wing press. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)” — something that we should all aspire to be.

The practical effect of this war on woke has taken shape in many forms, most revoltingly with both leaders’ pledge to accelerate the Rwanda deportation scheme. Amnesty International and the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants were amongst the charities criticising Sunak and Truss for their “cruelty and immorality” for promising more Rwanda-style deals to remove asylum-seekers from Britain, as charities claimed the pair were pandering to party members’ hard-line views.

We must not normalise this sickeningly reactionary policy. It is designed to dehumanise asylum-seekers, pit our communities against each other and distract from the many crises we face. It demonstrates that there are no depths this government is not willing to sink to in order to divide and rule our country and protect its interests.

There is no such thing as an illegal asylum-seeker. This policy will do nothing to clamp down on trafficking gangs; instead, it further penalises their victims. The policy is designed to stoke the flames of hate, and to dehumanise people fleeing unimaginable suffering. It erodes the basic human decency upon which governance should be operated. It must be abandoned, not extended by those vying to be the next Prime Minister.

The war on woke has dominated the leadership campaign from its beginning. The first televised debate, broadcast on Channel 4, saw Kemi Badenoch — the candidate endorsed by Britain First — attack Penny Mordaunt for allegedly supporting trans people’s right to self-identify.

That is the same Badenoch who, as the Conservative minister for equalities, said: “I don’t care about colonialism” and that it made no real impact on people living in colonised areas. This is not only factually inaccurate, given the millions of murders (direct and indirect), sexual abuses and extraction of natural resources inherent to imperial projects — but is typical of this government’s point-blank refusal to acknowledge structural disadvantages and the pervasive legacy of empire.

The government has cynically presented racism as an individual failing, not a systemic experience which is driven by powerful institutions.

The government’s aim to individualise racism and to claim that discrimination is no longer a societal issue is the expression of the Thatcherite dogma that “there is no such thing as society.” Yet this is a crisis that requires collective solutions. That is the mission that faces of all of us, to reject this government’s attempts to divide us up and to fight — together — for a world free of racial and class inequalities.

The government must drop its pathetic, counterproductive crusade against recognising institutional racism and outline a target-driven plan to end the shocking racial disparities that continue to plague our global society.

Despite what our government and Tory leadership candidates believe, it is simply not the case that the existence of institutional racism is up for debate.

For instance, it is beyond dispute that Covid-19 has had a disproportionate impact on African, Asian, Caribbean and other racialised communities. These inequalities are grounded in class inequalities and reflect the severe racial disparities in our economy.

The Resolution Foundation think tank estimates that black, Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi employees experience an annual pay penalty of £3.2 billion. The grim intersection of racial and class discrimination has had deadly consequences in recent years.

Discrimination is deeply ingrained in our social, political, and economic structures. The scourge of institutional racism results in unequal access to quality education, healthy food, liveable wages, and affordable housing — which are the foundations of health and wellbeing.

The war on woke has a devastating impact on policy. For instance, the government’s flagship Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill introduces longer prison sentences that are explicitly aimed to stoke divisive culture wars.

The fact that this legislation could introduce longer sentences for damaging a statue than for assaulting a woman reveals how utterly unserious this government is about tackling gendered violence.

The criminal justice system should not be reduced to political point scoring, yet the Conservative government is shamelessly using arbitrary and disproportionate prison sentences to fan the flames of division. This is the by-product of anti-woke legislation, and if the Conservative leadership contest is anything to judge by we can sadly expect more of this to come.

There is a dangerous connecting current that runs between the Policing Bill and many other initiatives taken by this government. They all reveal a deeply troubling broader political project, which is designed to divide our communities against each other and distract from the real causes of inequality and injustice.

With a Tory Party governing with an authoritarian, Thatcherite agenda that is obfuscated with the rhetoric of “levelling up” and the gleeful embrace of racist culture wars and the politics of division, it is vital that we on the left do not compromise our anti-racist and internationalist principles. It is up to all of us who believe in a better, fairer world to stand against those who wish to pit communities against each other so they can preserve an unjust economic system.

As the radical Angela Davis said, “If we don’t take seriously the ways in which racism is embedded in structures of institutions, if we assume that there must be an identifiable racist who is the perpetrator, then we won’t ever succeed in eradicating racism.”

Now is the time for us to interrogate our systems of government so that we can end the global scourge of racism, no matter what form it takes. That’s the true meaning of woke — and the fact our future prime minister, be it either Truss or Sunak, is so opposed to that basic concept of justice is a matter of grave concern.

As Fred Hampton put it, we do not fight racism with racism, but with solidarity. That is the mission that faces all of us on the left today, to reject this government’s attempts to divide us up and to fight for a world free of racial and class inequalities.

Claudia Webbe MP is the member of Parliament for Leicester East. You can follow her at www.facebook.com/claudiaforLE and twitter.com/ClaudiaWebbe