I unashamedly share this press release from the Good Law Project as the issue is so important. Liberal democracy is at risk:
For immediate release, Thursday 28 October 2021
Nadine Dorries refuses to back down on Charity Commission appointment
Good Law Project launches full legal proceedings
Good Law Project has just launched full proceedings against the Secretary of State for Culture, Nadine Dorries, over ministerial interference in the Chair of the Charity Commission hiring process.
The legal non-profit is seeking an order that the recruitment be re-run without political direction from Government, and has asked the High Court for an expedited hearing so that the case can be heard before the interim Chair's term expires on 26 December this year.
Two days before interviews began for the new chair of the Charity Commission, the Government published an article on the Gov.uk website and in the Sunday Telegraph announcing they would hire someone to “rebalance” charities away from their so-called “woke” agenda.
The article compromised the independence of the interview process - and threatens the way of life of the UK's charities.
The organisation's lawyers sent a pre-action letter to Ms Dorries asking her to hand over the list of questions that were put to interviewees, and to reply to concerns that ministerial involvement in the hiring process had breached the Charities Act 2011, which says that the Commission should not be subject to control or direction by the Government, and the Governance Code for Public Appointments, which says that all public appointments must be made transparently and on merit.
Ms Dorries claimed, in short, that her predecessor Oliver Dowden MP's demands for an “anti-woke” Chair didn't matter because they weren't repeated in the formal job specification.
She has also refused to disclose the details we asked for in order to “retain the integrity” of the interview process - which had already concluded.
It was reported earlier this week that the Government's preferred candidate for the role has been chosen, but not yet named.
Rachel Smethers, Head of Communications at Good Law Project, said:
“Both the applicants and interviewers were given an emphatic steer as to the expected outcome of the hiring process - it fatally compromised the independence of the process. If Ministers thought their words would be ignored, why did they bother publishing them?
“It's not the Charity Commission's job to ‘cancel' charities that don't line up behind the Government's agenda. We think this is unlawful - the appointment process must be re-run if it's to have any integrity”.
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The red wall is fed up with wokism.. indeed it is the biggest divide between it and the Labour Party.. witness the working class drivers pulling the insulate protesters off the road.
Do you have any idea what woke means?
It is about opposition to discrimination, inequality and racism. It is not about the environment.
Are you really saying that everyone in the red wall is in favour of inequality, discrimination and racism? If so, I do not believe you.
The Labour Party has abused the definition you cite to the point they become unelectable. Fortunately Kier Starmer is trying to navigate the party to a more electable path.
@Ben
It seems to me that the whole business of “wokenness” is an entirely fictitious matter, fettled up by illiberal forces, who wanted to set an entirely superfluous hare running to divert the electorate from what is happening before their eyes, and about which voters would not give a damn, unless they were manipulated into caring about a superfluous irrelevance.
Red Wall voters are sick of the “woke” agenda!! Can you hear yourself? I’m pretty sure they’re far more worried about inflation, empty supermarket shelves, loss of the UC uplift and job insecurity and fears of recession.
This country faces creeping Orbanisation of the State, following in the footsteps of that vile racist and antisemitic Hungarian PM, Viktor Orban, who has so stitched up the Hungarian Constitution, that his Fidesz Party is able to stay in power for ever: elections still happen, but they’re a farce. The Judiciary has been muzzled. Hungary is less of a democracy now than it was in those years of change up to 1989 under Imre Pozgay and the Communists.
The USA is sliding down the same road, with the Republicans using ‘Critical Race Theory’ as well as wokeness, to try to embed a PERMANENT Republican minority rule, which they EFFECTIVELY have now!
The 50 Republican Senators garnered 41.4 MILLION FEWER votes than the 50 Democrat Senators, because the Republicans have fixed the voting areas, so they can retain control on a minority vote., as they did when they won the House under Presidents Obama and Clinton.
Because of the insane, and antidemocratic Electoral College, they took the White House twice on a minority vote in the past 20 years, by a 500,000 popular vote minority in 2001, under Dubya, when Gore should have been President, and by 3 MILLION+ under Trump, when Hillary Clinton should have been President.
Finally, they stitched up the Judicial arm of the American Constitution, not just by placing 3 illicit, IMO, Supreme Court Justices, but by doing the same with scores, even hundreds, of lower level judicial appointments, fettering American society for a generation or more, until the Americans manage to bring in term Judicial appointments, forcing illiberal judges out of office, to allow fresh, more legitimate appointees to come forward.
The flurry of anti-citizen and anti-Human Rights legislation currently being pursued by this deeply illiberal Government will, if passed into law, turn us from citizen-subjects (as we now are) into subject-serfs, in the Neo-feudal State the Tory Party has , IMO, long worked towards.
They’ll give you your anti-woke scalps, along with your “blue” passport, so long as you dutifully tug your forelock and bow respectfully to your new 1% Barons, with ALL the rights, and NONE of the duties, being exempt from taxation, indeed, being granted feudal ‘fee farms’ over Government revenue (think the PPE and Test & Trace fiascos), while we 99% serfs will have ALL the duties, and NONE of the rights, paying for everything that WAS free at the point of delivery, and effectively funding the 1% with our taxation.
Some ‘sunlit uplands’ prospect!!
Good post Andrew
These populist governments remind me of the Leninist “Dictatorship of the Proleteriate” where a small elite actually interpreted what that will was. Dissent was treason.
I have no idea where the term ‘woke’ came from personally. I don’t know whether I like it or not either.
Is it a term of derision? Highly likely – but I mean what is the opposite then? ‘Asleep’?
If that’s the case give me ‘woke’ any day of the week and wear it with pride.
In fact, lets take it back and own it – lets correct those who use it and call ourselves ‘Awake’ instead. ‘Cos that’s proper language and that’s what we are. ‘Awake’ (woke) people walk around with our heads up and eyes open.
‘Woke’ seems to be aimed at supporting this Alt Right theory of ‘cultural Marxism’ – mainly I think this idea of critical consciousness that people like Pablo Freire put forward in the ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ (as opposed to naïve consciousness) which was the equivalent of the ‘red pill’ of the ‘The Matrix’ films well before the Matrix story line was ever was conceived.
‘Woke’ is like that child-like turning of the tables you get in play ground spats – it’s no more intelligent than that.
Well of course the ruling elite want to keep us naïve don’t they? They don’t want a well-informed society capable of critiquing itself; what they want is unquestioning compliance so that they can keep their comfortable existences and pre-eminence in society. Because if we ALL studied them critically together en masse I think there would be a revolution overnight.
And they know it. Think about it.
It’s all based on fear. So the Right lies and practices agnotology at scale to save itself. Constantly.
… the working class drivers pulling the insulate protesters off the road
Surely they are angry because they want uninsulated homes because they enjoy spending much more of their incomes on fuel bills …
Errr, wait ….
Pretty sure that the DCMS is already the regulator of exempt NDPB charities and not the “independent” Charity Commissioner. This tension between the SORP, the use of restricted and unrestricted non-governmental funds and the taxation and rate position is not new. As far as I know the Charity Commssion has long accepted the principle that non governmental income can be controlled by a government department.
There’s no such thing as being ‘woke’, it’s simply a term of derision devised by the right wing to use against the expression of sentiments they don’t like but can’t argue with.
I agree with Bill. I haven’t seen a statement from the National Trust saying they have adopted a “woke” policy – or from the Labour Party for that matter. It is purely a term used by right wing Conservatives as an insult, mostly on social media.
As Richard says, if it means anything it is about not discriminating or being unfair or racist – in other words following the spirit as well as the letter of what is the law.
Absolute parallels with the crack downs on NGOs and CSOs by the likes of Orban, Putin and Modi. Authoritarianism pure and simple.
Justice & fairness are not words…..they are perspectives.
and cannot be reduce to one word/one dog whistle much though the likes of the tories and Dorries would like to do so.
I like that
May I recommend Jonathan Pie’s take on “wokeness” here (“Woke utopia”) here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5TVLEaqqdI
It nicely sums up what’s very wrong with with “wokeness” as currently practised by many (it is comedy, but bang on). The government definitely should not be prescribing charities what to do, but I think it’s fair to say that many subjects, including political parties (Labour, SNP come to mind) are shooting themselves in the foot by adopting some “woke” policies.
I agree that ‘woke’ and ‘identity politics’ go hand in hand and that it is a problem.
It is a problem because so-called progressive parties then start to pander to identity politics instead as a means by which to gain support because they have ran out of ideas or lack courage within the narrow orthodoxies that dominate politics at the moment.
To me, it is very simple.
Along with issues like the future of human life on the planet (which is already getting harder and is totally our own fault), THE issue facing us (and there maybe others I just can’t bring to mind at the moment) is wealth mal-distribution within national borders and between national countries.
Yes – rich versus poor. This issue transcends race, ethnicity – just about everything and is the key to unlocking our problems and a shared future. Wealth disparity is just going to make all extant forms of prejudice harder to deal with and we may be seeing the making now of new prejudices like ‘woke’ but the ultimate one will be against the poor themselves whose numbers will swell as the rich in society work out that they just don’t need that many people these days because of automation etc.
As the seas rise, the problem will be not global warming but that we’ve allowed top many people to be born. You’ll see.
The issue is inequality – simple as that. That is what progressives should be focussing on – the source of making capitalism work for everyone. Because if you are not rich or moderately wealthy, you will be seen as disposable.
All my life I have read science fiction and the future has always been portrayed to me as a rich versus the poor scenario and the power imbalances caused by that. Sci-fi writing has a rich heritage of describing the future accurately.
We are on a such a dystopian trajectory right now in my view.