The TV series “Normal People” portrayed coming-of-age in modern Ireland as adventurous and liberating.
But Woke “diversity” policies have made real-life “normal” people victims of a repressive “social justice” culture in which the worst thing anyone can be is white, indigenous Irish, heterosexual, fully aware of one’s own gender, able-bodied, of sound mind and not wearing “disadvantage” like a badge of honour.
While it is understandable and reasonable that State bodies such as the Garda need to set in place quotas in order to police society, an aggressive promotion of “diversity” in job and intern ads seems to be counterproductive. The potential for alienation from society and a resulting Far Right backlash – even anarchy – is enormous. A cursory glance at the proliferation of social media “Patriot” pages reveals a growing resentment at the collusion between the State and industry to deprive the “majority” of the right to earn a living, an education or even a voice.
A series of advertisements recently placed by the media corporation News UK and Ireland are illustrative. Their ads for paid internships at the Irish Sun and News Ireland Commercial (one for future journalists and one for future ad sales reps) stated that the aim of the exercise is “to promote diversity”. This gives the very strong impression that, unless a candidate is from an ethic minority, disabled or some other “protected” / “disadvantaged” sector of society, they need not apply.
The parent company, News UK and Ireland, also posted an ad on LinkedIn for a “Breaking News and Live Blog Editor”, which further emphasised the diversity policy but sandwiched the message in an oddly-worded statement that appeared to pre-empt any challenges: “We champion diversity and inclusion, we strive to maximise and encourage every individual’s potential and ensure everyone feels valued. We support this through our Diversity Board, D&I strategy & training, creating more diverse content and our intern and apprenticeship programmes. We also have 8 employee-led networks; Cultural Diversity, News is Out, GenZ, Sustainability Champions, News for Parents, Women in Tech, News UK Christian Fellowship and we are awaiting the launch of our Women’s Steering Group.”
Perhaps it is no coincidence that News UK and Ireland recently made a submission to the Future of Media Commission in which it appealed for public funding. The company, which along with the Irish Sun publishes the Irish editions of The Times and Sunday Times and also owns Wireless (“the largest operator of local radio in Ireland”), wrote: “We believe this Commission should…be cognisant of the need for a policy and regulatory environment which supports a sustainable, plural and diverse media.”
Another ad, posted by parent company News UK on media jobs platform Cision UK, offered positions as apprentice Broadcast / Digital Journalists in the London offices of The Times and Sunday Times, with the following caveat under the heading “Equal Opportunities”: “We are a diverse team and strive to maximise and encourage every individual’s potential… We oppose all forms of discrimination in the workplace. We thrive when we champion diversity and inclusion. We make better decisions, we’re stronger and happier, and it’s the right thing to do.”
The last sentence removes all lingering doubt that the ad is a pre-emptive strike against any attempt to query the policy.
Professor Tim Crook, President of the Chartered Institute of Journalists (UK), supports diversity policies and says the wording should not discourage candidates who do not belong to minorities or protected categories. He told Gript: “My position and that of the CIoJ is that anything that can be done to promote and achieve fairness, equality of opportunity, and more equal representation on the basis of merit for ethnic communities and women in the workplace should be supported. The challenge, of course, is to achieve that without discrimination, unfairness and the impact of prejudice.
“We think there is social and political consensus behind these values and worthy attempts have been made to enact these in terms of law.
“The phrase ‘encourage greater diversity in media’ should be a signal to encourage qualified people from ethnic communities to apply for the internships who would not otherwise think they had a chance to be accepted or that a career in popular journalism was something that might be an aspiration for them.
“It should not be intended or indeed interpreted as a signal for people who do not have an ethnic community background to think they should not apply and would not have an equal chance of being recruited if also qualified.”
However, the tsunami of diversity policies in recent years leaves job-hunters in no doubt that the most sought-after candidates belong to “minorities”.
A survey by recruitment consultancy Robert Walters of 7,500 professionals in leading Irish and UK firms found that diversity initiatives doubled during the Lockdown, and active participation in diversity & inclusion initiatives had grown by +10% in Lockdown – with more than a third of professionals now participating in employer-led working groups.
Citing remote working and last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests as catalysts for this new passion for diversity at work, they noted that “15% of respondents who previously had not been actively involved in D&I initiatives stated that this was something they now intended to get involved with following the resurgence of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement in Summer 2020.”
Louise Campbell, MD of Robert Walters Ireland, said: “Our findings indicate that remote working has had the potential to further marginalise under-represented and minority professionals who didn’t feel the same level of connectivity to the workplace pre-lockdown.”
However, she added: “Our year-on-year findings indicate that there is still some way to go to close the diversity & inclusion gap. As the option to return to the office draws closer, employers must not take their foot off the pedal in regard to inclusion.”
If anything, they will be putting the pedal to the ground, given that the same study declared that “minority groups have been the most negatively impacted” by the pandemic.
Campbell cited a report from the National Economic & Social Council which found that “migrant-background families have a lower level of income than Irish-born families and so were more likely to feel the financial effects of the Covid-19 lockdown more strongly. In addition, non-Irish nationals are over-represented in sectors severely affected by Covid-19 – such as accommodation and food – and so will have been at higher risk of unemployment.”
Also citing the pandemic and Black Lives Matter as a signal to boost diversity in the workplace was Tomás Sercovich, CEO of the delightfully unWoke-sounding “BITCI” (Business in the Community Ireland), who recently said: “The global pandemic and movements such as #BlackLivesMatter have shone a spotlight on the major inequality in our society. Companies have a fundamental role to play and know that they have to do more”.
A Deloitte survey for BITCI concluded that black people were six times, and Travellers 13 times, more likely to be jobless than settled white Irish people.
BITCI recently got the CEOs of 45 of the largest companies based in Ireland to sign up to its ELEVATE programme, which includes a pledge “to improve diversity and inclusivity in their workplace”. The signatories include AIB, Bank of Ireland, Diageo, Eir, Gas Networks Ireland, Roadstone and Sky Ireland.
Participating companies agree to provide a “diversity profile of their workforce”, to “take at least one action to improve inclusion” and to “measure the impact of their actions”.
Also commenting on the survey, Marks & Spencer’s Head of Trading & Commercial Operations – Ireland, Ken Scully, said: “We know there is a strong business case for inclusion, but it is also the right thing to do.” The phrase “the right thing to do” seems to have become a mantra for those who promote diversity as it pops up frequently in every Woke initiative from job ads to commentary.
Diversity is certainly not lacking in Irish companies and semi-state bodies. For example, stats from 2017 reveal that multiculturalism is alive and well in public transport bodies. That year, Dublin Bus had 3,550 employees from 71 different countries of origin, with employees from “ethnic minorities” making up 17% of their total staff. Bus Eireann’s 2,536 members of staff the same year included people from 33 different cultural backgrounds, while Iarnród Éireann’s 3,832 employees included workers from 23 different cultural backgrounds, and 30 different nationalities were among the 264 members of staff working for Transdev (operators of Dublin’s Luas trams).
Ireland also has a nebulous network of State-funded organisations supporting young people who are fortunate enough to fall into one of the “protected” categories covered by diversity legislation.
Indeed, a young white Irish person who is not disabled (physically or intellectually) might be tempted to self-identify as lesbian / gay / bi-sexual, as a person of the opposite gender or something in-between.
One of Dr Katherine Zappone’s last acts before she left office as Minister for Children and Youth Affairs in February 2020 was to go on a spending spree to fund various LGBT+ youth groups.
A total of €446,558 was allocated between 2019 and 2020 for the “LGBTI Capacity Building Initiatives in LGBTI+” as part of the “LGBTI+ National Youth Strategy”.
€165,686 of this had been spent in 2019 to support “specific organisations or services on a pre-funding basis over the last quarter of 2019”.
The balance, granted in 2020, included €57,917 for BeLonGTo, an LGBT+ organisation supported by former President Mary McAleese; €17,500 for Cork Gay Community Development Project; €16,000 for LGBT Ireland; €14,437 for TENI (Transgender Equality Network Ireland); €10,800 for Limerick charity GOSHH (Gender Orientation Sexual Health HIV); €5,760 for ShOUT! [sic] (an LGBT+ Youth Group in Galway); €4,200 for ShoutOut (an organisation running workshops to “explore LGBT+ terminology and scenarios where students can act as good allies and…create a welcoming environment for LGBTQ+ students”); and €3,080 for Outcomers Youth Dundalk (a club for LGBT+ youth).
It also included various sums given to youth groups around the country, each with a strong focus on LGBT issues. For example, Macra na Feirme, which received €15,200, teamed up with the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network to take part in a project called “LGBT People in Rural Ireland”. And Ferns Diocesan Youth Service in Co Wexford, which received €1,500, still boasts on its website that it was on the shortlist for the Gay and Lesbian Awards 2017, and lists several LGBT-specific projects from 2020, including an LGBTI+ workshop for secondary-school teachers in conjunction with the afore-mentioned BeLonGTo; #VoteWithPride, in which they teamed up with BeLonG To and Gay Community News Magazine for an interactive online campaign to ask election candidates about various gay-related issues; and “Call It Out”, in which they joined forces with the Transgender Equality Network and the University of Limerick “to address and tackle the harm caused by homophobia, transphobia and biphobia”; “International Coming Out Day”.
Meanwhile, Wokeism is pervading corporate culture to the extent that it is affecting productivity, with employees forced to attend re-education sessions, fill out surveys and face disciplinary action if they fail to give the “right” answers – or, rather, the “Left” (and Woke) ones.
One employee in a engineering company based in Ireland told Gript work was interrupted twice in the same day for “ethics training” and perusal of the company’s weekly newsletter “which, over the last three years or so, has become mostly Woke propaganda, with very little technic-related stuff”.
The “ethics training” consisted of “reading a set of powerpoint slides and answering a quiz” to “prove” they had understood. “Some of the ‘correct answers’ were very SJW”.
Gript saw some of the material used in these sessions. A typical theme was the dilemma faced by recruiters when choosing between two candidates: a graduate and an experienced older person older. The “correct” answer was to choose the graduate because it was ageist to choose an older person over a younger person (but apparently not ageist to discriminate against older, more experienced candidates who hadn’t gone through the Woke modern education system).
Wokism is so important in recruitment that jobs website Monster.co.uk has provided tips for writing an “inclusive” job ad, promising would-be employers: “You’ll reap the rewards of a more diverse and inclusive workplace”. To “eliminate implicit and explicit racial bias” and “increase diversity”, they say a job ad should not use phrases such as “strong English-language skills” as this “may deter qualified non-native English speakers from applying”. Likewise, a requirement that the candidate be “clean-shaven” could “exclude candidates whose faith requires them to maintain facial hair”.