There’s been a consistent and constant problem with the Civil Service booking ‘woke’ speakers to lecture Civil Servants. Too many of these ‘woke’ speakers as the Guido Fawkes site has often pointed out recently, are race baiters, Remainiacs, New Age nutters or worse.
Recently, according to a memo leaked to the Sunday Telegraph, there’s been an instruction from government to the Civil Service to stop booking such speakers. This memo also contained a reminder to Civil Servants to stick to the rules regarding impartiality.
The Sunday Telegraph said:
Civil servants have been banned from inviting “woke” speakers who criticise Boris Johnson’s policies to address internal events in Whitehall, a leaked memo reveals.
An “official-sensitive” email circulated across Whitehall warned that invitations should not be issued to individuals who have “spoken against key government policies”.
Officials were told to carry out “due diligence” checks on speakers, including examining their social media posts.
The move follows several controversies over speakers critical of the Government being invited to address Whitehall social or networking events.
Senior Conservatives reacted with fury when it emerged that Prof Priyamvada Gopal, a Left-wing Cambridge academic, who had made offensive remarks about Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, had been invited to deliver a lecture at the Home Office last month.
The memo distributed to officials, and leaked to The Telegraph, warns that “the relationship between civil servants, ministers and the public” was at risk of being “adversely affected” by any failures to “retain impartiality”.
From what I’ve seen and read recently I’d say that the relationship between Civil Servants, Ministers and the public has already been adversely affected. Don’t forget that in the last year not only have we seen Civil Servants hiring ultra Left or Britain and Western hating speakers to address Civil Servants, we’ve also seen Civil Servants do their utmost to hide from the public reports into on street grooming of children and young women. The trust between the public and the Civil Service has if not gone completely, is in pretty bad shape.
Personally I believe that the Government has done the correct thing in trying to rein in the overt Leftism of the Civil Service. The problem as I see it is that the Civil Service is now so arrogant that there’s a good chance that this memo might be ignored either in whole or in part. It’s one thing to tell the Civil Service something, it’s quite another for them to obey.
Fit for Purpose?
No
I agree.
However, having been a public servant for over 30 years (not in the UK), I think it is very important that civil servants are exposed to as wide a variey of viewpoints as possible, including those critical of the government of the day. I was fortunate to attend presentations by a wide variety of interest groups during my in-service training sessions and the presenters were always vigorously challenged by the trainees and, indeed, some groups declined a second invitation after having been so grilled the first time.
Of course there is a very important distinction between inviting groups to give presentations on their views and hiring them to conduct training sessions which seek to have the civil servants accept those views and, implicitly, carry the approval of senior management. A balance must be maintained and it would be wrong to let the pendulum swing in the direction of preventing civil servants from being exposed at all to the views of those who are, by one way or another, already attempting to affect government policy.
Welcome to F211. I’m very much with you in that Civil Servants should be made aware of a variety of different viewpoints as should Ministers. Knowledge of these viewpoints may not directly influence the work of Civil Servants but knowing about other viewpoints may help Civil Servants come to better more rounded decisions. Glad to hear that the trainers were challenged with intelligent questions.
The problem in the UK Civil Service is that the CS’s are not being presented with a variety or a diversity of viewpoints, the bulk of the external speakers and trainers appear to be coming from the liberal / left. I would have less issue with the matter of external trainers with challenging views coming in if they were balanced by opposing views. For example if there’s a speaker on Islamophobia’ then balance that speaker with someone with knowledge of the Islamic Rape Gang situation or balance a pro-net zero speaker with for example a representative of Net Zero Watch and so on and so on. The trouble is this is not what seems to be happening.
If they carry out that ‘due diligence’ the way they normally do, who’ll notice any difference?
It’s quite possible that this memo will be obeyed in name only and dodgy speakers will continue to be hired and their views will not be balanced by opposing ones.
The British civil service has been a disfunctional, self serving, parasitic organization for as long as I can remember. Yes Minister / Prime Minister was and still is a most accurate representation of it.
The problem is civil servants know that they will be there long after ministers are gone and replaced. It’s something that breeds a self serving view. I sometimes wonder whether it would be better if the top two or three posts in a CS dept were politically aligned with the government in power and replaced when that govt loses power. At least that way the top leadership posts would reflect the democratically elected govt.