Jacob Rees Mogg revamping Civil Service training

[achillestoes]

It’s a sad day when you see Jacob Rees Mogg doing anything and you’re happy about it, but here we are. He is calling time on Civil Service training budgets being used for ‘ridiculous’ diversity courses that open the CS up to ‘mockery’ and don’t represent value for money. He’s writing to all government departments to make it clear that staff development should be about providing workers with the training needed to do their jobs.

I don’t like JRM but if anyone thinks the general public aren’t behind him on this, they’re deluded. Most people don’t believe training in your role should amount to moral indoctrination about your privilege, or requiring you to describe yourself within the frameworks of ideologies you don’t accept.

I think on the far right of Christianity there’s a bit of an obsession about what other people do, and their ‘sins’ (whatever those might be), and people tend to forget they’ll only be called to answer for their own :)

@Namenic · I am not in the civil service, but it seems a shame that what could be quite valuable training on unconscious bias, assumptions, diversity is giving niche and uncommon examples that make people think this is ridiculous.

My company got an American guy to talk to us - he looked East Asian and started his talk with a heavy ‘stereotypical’ East Asian accent. Then after a while he switched to having a typical American accent.

If that trainer was from India, I very much doubt he addressed the unconscious bias of higher caste South Asians toward lower castes in the diaspora.I have read a number of stories on reddit where this is an issue in the US tech sector. However note that I refer to South Asians because unconscious bias/prejudice is rampant in the East Asia and the Middle East for that matter.

I worked with someone who was born in Pakistan but lived in Kuwait from 6 yrs old until he migrated to Canada in his 20s. He hated Kuwait.Pakistanis there are treated as inferiors.They are not allowed to vote or get citizenship no matter how long they live there. He related a number of stories of how horrible Pakistanis are treated there. He also explained how caste is still prevalent among Pakistanis in Pakistan though no one talks about it.

This is the problem of identity politics. Whites are those who are encouraged to learn about their unconscious biases while everyone else are deemed faultless victims.

"No, he didn't. All he did was retweet a video AfD put out about Brexit and the EU. It's not a big surprise he supports Brexit! He definitively denied any support for AfD."
It could hapopen to anyone who spent a lot of time watching AfD videos I suppose.

especailly if they also spoke at a dinner event thrown by the far-right Traditional Britain Group run by Gregory Lauder-Frost, a well known figure in British far-right politics who t argues that anyone living in the UK not of what he calls “European stock” should be offered “assisted voluntary repatriation”

And said of George Soros “one of the major funders, allegedly, of the Remain campaign, the Remoaner funder-in-chief, was one George Soros, who made £1bn when sterling crashed out of the exchange rate mechanism,

PS if I wish to impose my views on you- and control your rights to abortion or contraception- because of my religion that's still political not religious.

‘PS if I wish to impose my views on you- and control your rights to abortion or contraception- because of my religion that's still political not religious.’

That’s true.

Where is this ‘far right’ of Christianity of which you speak?

More seriously, Christianity in the UK isn’t very similar to Christianity in the US. Regular church goers are more likely to be centrist politically and there’s no big political voting pattern. Catholics are a bit more likely to be Labour voters and Anglicans more likely to be Tories, but that’s about it.

That said, religious people will often have political opinions regarding abortion or marriage, because one impacts on their definition of a human being and the other impacts on a religious sacrament.

Quite a few posters seem to think large numbers of civil servants want to get sent on these training sessions. There’s no evidence of that.
The worst thing about the training sessions is that they are heavily politicised and pressured in a particular direction, but also that they are not optional to attend.

I think perhaps you could start with some training in reading comprehension and then move on to other stuff. Would probably make the rest more effective.

I didn't say we were trained to believe that women apologise when they mean shut up, I simply said that was one example used in a host of examples of ways in which we can misinterpret people's actions because we make assumptions that people follow the same norms as ourselves.

@LordLoveADuck - I know that ethnic minorities can be racist too - I’m East Asian and know that it happens in my community. And I would say that unconscious bias is a good thing for everyone to be aware of. I agree that when taken too far it’s not helpful - eg just saying that it is white people who perpetrate it or having 10hours of talks. But I do think it can be done well and positive.

You're just repeating stuff that's wrong. He did not support the AfD. He retweeted an anti EU video the AfD made. Because, you know, he doesn't like the EU. Shocker. He has never said he supported nor has he shown support for the party. Indeed he has said he does not support them.

Your quote re Soros is not anti-semetic. I repeat it was Lord Dubs, who called for Johnson to sack Rees Mogg over his understanding of what Rees Mogg had said, who only a few days later retracted his complaint and fully apologised to Rees Mogg as no antisemitic remark had been made contrary to his previous accusation.

Just keeping repeating things that aren't true doesn't make them true!

PS. If I wish to impose my views on you- and control your rights to abortion or contraception- because of my religion that's still political not religious.

But your argument was that his anti abortion beliefs prove that he is extremely right wing.

He has a religious belief that abortion is wrong. It's not tied to a political ideology. Anti abortionists exist cross the political spectrum.

Yes, there are lots of left wing Catholics who think personhood begins at conception, so their approach to abortion is in terms of protection of the vulnerable. For the most part Catholics only became associated with the political right after abortion became a wedge issue.

But as far as training regarding things like hiring - I have come to the conclusion that this would be much better approached as an issue for training managers, not as a "bias" topic, but as a good management topic. Right along with how to assess the needs of a position, how to give worthwhile assessments and interview - which frankly are atrocious and often quite unfair in so many industries, and don't really bring the best people into the positions.

Being conscious of our expectations, our feelings about people with different accents, ethnicity, class, political background, are of course something to consider, but it's part of a bigger picture.

It's wrong to give the impression though that a certain kind of person being more common in a job sector is always bias - there are a number of reasons that happens not all of which can be controlled by the people doing the recruiting and hiring.

‘I didn't say we were trained to believe that women apologise when they mean shut up, I simply said that was one example used in a host of examples of ways in which we can misinterpret people's actions because we make assumptions that people follow the same norms as ourselves.’

That’s all, is it? The civil service is paying millions of pounds to external trainers to educate staff in the blindingly obvious?

Why did he address the extreme right wing Traditional Britain Group?

Note that the PPT that I posted was a random Google find not a Civil Service course (as I stated)

The Unconcious Bias course was dropped by the Civil Service more than 2 years ago and the relevant elements embedded into standard Equality & Diversity

I note that Jacobs ‘statement’ is that training must be justified to a real business need - (which is already government & Civil Service policy) and also that the course he has referred to ‘Check yo privilege’ is a Cabinet Office course.

Surely Jacob Reese Mogg realises that he is a cabinet office minister and that he is responsible if the department is not compliant to policy?

That is of course assuming that he has not just taken a name that has been used for political sound bites without checking the
content

@tommika

Having a policy isn’t the same as the policy being followed.

…. and ‘announcing’ a ‘change’ to policy won’t make a non change change get followed - especially when you’re the minister responsible for setting and enforcing the policy that you allege isn’t being complied with

…. Perhaps Jacob Rees Mogg should actually do his job, instead of publicity seeking

‘and ‘announcing’ a ‘change’ to policy won’t make a non change change get followed -’

It’s a start. I’m honestly happy for people who politicise the CS - who can’t do their ‘one job’ of maintaining its vital neutrality - to get sacked.

I'm ex Civil Service (HMRC) we used to have mandatory training days that were nothing to do with actually doing the job, everyone used to hate them.

“Why did he address the extreme right wing Traditional Britain Group?”

That’s broadly an example of conspiracist thinking - a busy MP had a speaking engagement with a group called ‘Traditional Britain’ and the conspiracist assumption is made that this ‘proves’ he’s an extreme right winger.

Doesn’t prove anything of the sort, because an MP is supposed to speak to all sorts of groups. That the group is called ‘Traditional Britain’ suggests they’re interested in listed buildings, or maybe Morris Dancing (They probably picked that name to sound harmless). According to the Wikipedia page, they managed to suck in quite a few respectable speakers before people got wise.

Conspiracy thinking - everyone who accepted a speaking engagement with this group is an extreme right winger. Cock-up theory: a lot of speakers didn’t realise just how extreme this bunch are.

The irony is that we’re discussing whether it’s necessary to train people against bias, while a fine example of bias is being displayed before us. Having anti-abortion views doesn’t make someone an extreme right winger. And if you think it does, you’re displaying a (possibly unconscious) bias that doesn’t fit with the facts.

It used to be that when people said “the far right” they meant people with what we might term “views that are not worthy of respect in a democratic society”. People who wanted to beat up people who were a different race to them, or put people in prison for “crimes” like homosexuality or gender non-conformity.

Now anyone with views that are not hard left is being told they are the far right. It’s meaningless. I believe (like most centrist people) in sensible and cost-effective government. I believe in having a police force that works. I believe people should follow the laws we make. These aren’t ‘far right’ positions.

Maybe the traditionalist people are right wing, maybe they’re far right, I don’t know. But JRM himself appears to be a right wing democrat, ie a Tory, like about 14m voters in 2019.

14m people aren’t the “far right” in any way.

Left, right, centre & extreme are all relative.

On the American scale the Conservative party are raging commies

Why are you worried about CRT? CRT is specific to the United States, it was developed in a law school in the US as an approach to understand the US legal system as it pertains to slavery and the status of non whites in the US. It's not touchy feely wokey woo stuff. Slavery and racism is embedded in our laws and history from the constitution to the Civil War and Reconstruction and some of our most important Supreme Court rulings. It simply is not possible to study US history without considering these topics.

But that's not something that would be covered in workplace training in the UK, so I wonder why you bring it up. Unless you are using "CRT" as a euphemism for diversity training in general. In which case, I have to wonder why that bothers you.

@Boxowine

The answer is that the philosophical underpinnings of CRT are (to some extent) held in common with the staple tenets of modern hard left thought in the UK. The presentation I commented on above had echoes of the movement: everyone is biased towards people of their own race (proof?), this bias is unconscious (proof?), it influences how we treat people (proof?). You could see it when people were commenting on JRM’s actions on Twitter: the argument was very similar to that used in White Fragility, namely that the people saying they don’t do this, or don’t recognise these biases in themselves, or don’t find this useful, are being ‘defensive’ and ‘fragile’. Because the ‘bias’ is said to be unconscious, it resists calls for proof of its existence, and the assumption that because it could exist, it must exist, defends the expenditure of huge sums of money on tackling it, rather than actual racism.

There is also significant resistance both within the CRT narrative and within its sibling cause here in the UK to the idea that the person being accused of this form of ‘racism’ can have anything to say about it. Because they are members of the ‘privileged’ group, those who have to endure this crude psychoanalysis are denied the right to comment on their own emotions or actions. This sentiment is echoed in the ‘Check Yo’ Privilege’ course that JRM finds to be so wasteful of time and money.

I find some of these ideas similar to the trajectory of the extreme trans rights movement, which has consciously linked itself with the anti-racism movement in order to reframe female oppression by males in the context of the ‘privilege’ of (particularly) white women, so as to have a pre-prepared argument when women object to the removal of their rights: check your privilege, white c*s woman - by complaining about the removal of your rights you are centring yourself when you should be centring the real oppressed group: males.

So yes, I think these aspects of CRT can be damaging, particularly in a UK context.

CRT seems to have been an object of study in the UK for >10 years. If Undergrads and Postgrads have been studying it, I'd be surprised if none has a post within the CS nor policy-making influence, depending upon their choice of occupation.

CRT in the UK

David Gillborn, together with Paul Warmington, analyse the first ten years of CRT in the UK. Speaking in a keynote session at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), Gillborn & Warmington describe the growth of CRT in the UK, reflect on the distinctive qualities of ‘BritCrit’, and analyse the nature of the attacks that have been levelled against the approach.

A special issue of the journal ‘Race Ethnicity and Education’ brought together new writing on CRT in education from UK authors. Find out more about the 'Critical Theory in England' special issue

www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/crre/critical-race-theory/index.aspx

Critical race theory in England: impact and opposition

www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1070289X.2019.1587907?journalCode=gide20

Just what is critical race theory, and what is it doing in British sociology? From “BritCrit” to the racialized social system approach

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-4446.12801