“Talking out of their arse”: The Fake Tory Culture War on Education and why the ‘Anti-Woke’ message is so powerful

Following Oliver Dowden’s odd speech to the Heritage Foundation, it seems that the Conservatives’ latest attempt to distract from their utter hopelessness is to make enemies of the education system which, by way of some form of neo-McCarthyism, they feel is ‘too woke’. 

By ‘too woke’, they mean that they think that education settings do not teach a ‘balanced presentation of opposing views.’

For context: 

The story goes that the new education secretary Nadhim Zahawi committed to an investigation after becoming “concerned” by literature being shared with students at several schools in Brighton, which the Sunday Telegraph reported were being shared with children “as young as seven,” and “between the ages of three and five.”

As a result, Zahawi issued new guidance titled ‘Political impartiality in schools’ which you can read here. 

Did the Conservatives jump the gun? This page doesn’t think so. It’s no coincidence that this was released after Oliver Dowden’s speech. 

An understanding of what the Government is doing can be traced back to the Government's former race adviser Samuel Kasumu, who resigned amid a row over the Sewell Report, which Runnymede Trust described as, “deeply troubling”, “disturbing,” and as having, “no interest in genuinely discussing racism.”

Crucially, Kasumu revealed in an article in The Guardian that he, “feared there were some in government pursuing a strategy of exploiting division for electoral gain that could result in severe consequences for the country.”

On the report, The UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent “categorically [rejected] and condemned]” it and stated among other things that the “system is deliberately rigged against ethnic minorities.”

By contrast [on education], Michelle Donelan, the Conservative MP for Chippenham [and universities minister is], was, “talking out of her arse”, according to Charlotte Lydia Riley, a lecturer in 20th century British history at the University of Southampton. 

Donelan claimed that courses are “facing decolonisation” by tutors who she complained were “censoring history... like the Soviet Union.”

The interesting thing, though, for Michelle Donelan – although I'm not entirely sure if she's aware of it or remembers like I do – is that in September 2020, government guidance was changed and schools were told to stop teaching material that apparently called for the end of capitalism because it is considered an “extreme political stance”.

At the time it said: 

“Schools should not under any circumstances use resources produced by organisations that take extreme political stances on matters. Examples of extreme political stances include, but are not limited to: a publicly stated desire to abolish or overthrow democracy, capitalism, or to end free and fair elections, opposition to the right of freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of assembly or freedom of religion and conscience.”

This has now been changed [as of February 2022] to reflect the ‘Political impartiality in schools’ guidance - interestingly, it has redacted all guidance reflecting on examples of apparently ‘extreme political stances’ that seek to ‘overthrow democracy.’

But then what could be construed as an ‘extreme political stance’? 

The definition is subjective at best - presumably if Oliver Dowden’s comments are anything to go by, it is whatever may be the polar opposite of what the Conservatives believe. 

Recently, for example - away from the topic of race - there’s a growing trend among Conservative voices on the concept of climate change denial; including among the newly formed so-called ‘Net Zero Scrutiny Group’

[NATB super-forecast: In the coming months and years, you’ll probably be hearing more from these - naturally, it was set up by page favourite idiot Steve Baker]

Indeed, as noted previously, a third of Conservative members were asked [in March 2020] whether they thought human activity is driving climate change - they disagreed that it was. 

Will 'Dinosaurs and all that Rubbish' by Michael Foreman - where I first learned about the topic of environmentalism - be construed as ‘extreme’ literature - according to the Conservatives?

Is ‘Mr. Bunny’s Chocolate Factory’ by Elys Dolan [a favourite of this page] ‘extreme’ and/or Maoist - according to Oliver Dowden - because it teaches the value of solidarity among workers faced with a greedy, capitalist rabbit that forces chickens to lay chocolate eggs?

I mean, taking the knee was Marxist - wasn’t it? 

At least, according to Conservative MP for Sutton in Ashfield Lee Anderson and Conservative MP for Stoke North Jonathan Gullis. 

It’s absurd, this idea that the entire system is geared towards making people ‘woke’ - as opposed to presumably being asleep - and obviously, the concept is to dog-whistle to a marginal [often extreme Right-Wing] portion that exist in society as well in the Conservatives who genuinely believe all socially-conscious issues are a result of some Maoist plot. 

Mostly it’s just noise designed to keep back-benchers and certain sections of the media happy that carries no real world difference* 

*Famous last words

It does, however, give an insight into the ‘Conservative mind’ - which is a fascinating thing. As if we catch a glimpse into what the untethered Conservatives would get away with if they could; or what Britain might look like if it were “done” through the lens of rose-tinted nostalgia. 

Brexit was of course the lynchpin for all of this - with race and hate crimes increasing by between 15% to 25% since the referendum, as an example.

But then conscious in the knowledge that voters apparently no longer care about Brexit - what was Brexit all about? 

Phrases, slogans and interpretation, mainly. 

Conservative MP Laura Farris pointed towards this back in July last year - reflecting on the slogan for ‘Levelling up’. 

Farris said:

“I think one of the things about ‘levelling up’ is because it’s quite an ambiguous phrase, it can mean whatever people want it to mean.”

[NATB note: It means nothing]

Substitute ‘Levelling up’ for ‘Get Brexit Done’ or most obviously ‘Take Back Control’ - and you had 17.4 million people who voted to Leave the EU, each with a different interpretation of what that actually meant.

Though in contrast to ‘Levelling up’ or ‘Build Back Better’, it did once upon actually mean something.

The Brexit Dichotomy

For many, this page has argued before, to ‘Take Back Control’ meant regressing to the kind of country that Britain used to be before all of these complex, modern [or ‘Maoist’] issues existed - or were spoken about. 

‘Take Back Control’ provides a Rosetta Stone in understanding the nature of Brexit and fundamentally the nature of Boris Johnson as the figurehead giving people ‘back’ something that they have ‘lost’. 

Or alternatively, ‘Rosy retrospection’ and a pining for a Britain that most likely never even existed. 

Like a medium, Boris Johnson - as the figurehead for the movement - channelled the Ghosts of a Long-deceased age, hence why many ascribe [erroneously] the ‘Best Since Churchill’ tag; and with the ‘Cold War’ tensions growing in Eastern Europe, we’ll likely see more of this, too. 

‘Rosy retrospection’ in essence - concise and simplified - is the idea that everything in the past was ‘good’ and there was no ‘bad’.

Britain’s past, in some people’s eyes, was a permanent Summer where everything was less complex and everything was so much more simple - it was full of strawberries and cream, picnics in the park, trips to seaside towns and the great English countryside where doors could be left unlocked and children could be left to frolic in the streets.

By contrast, Michael de Freitas - who I wrote about a very, very long time ago and was the subject of the 2021 Adam Curtis documentary ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ - was a self-styled Black British revolutionary figure and civil rights activist in the 60s.

Although DeFreitas was somewhat of a divisive figure, even within the Black community where he was perceived as somewhat of a con-man that seduced the British Black Panther movement as ‘Michael X’ - he made a very interesting point.

His point was that - as a man from Trinidad, he was taught from an early age that England was the centre of this thing called ‘Empire’ - and yet when he arrived, he was met with such hatred and such fear and insecurity, to his sadness, that he begged the question over whether or not this ‘Empire thing’ was ever real to begin with.

What DeFreitas discovered was ‘Britain’s problem’ of conformity - insofar as, if you fall through the gaps of ‘what Britain expects of you’, then you are an alien. 

It’s not necessarily a ‘race’ problem either - as it was with DeFreitas. 

Disabilities [visible and invisible] are viewed as alien concepts. 

LGBT+ issues are viewed as alien concepts. [Indeed, the issues being spoken about by Nadhim Zahawi are a reflection of the old Thatcher ‘Section 28’ policy]

Feminism and women’s rights are alien concepts. 

Child abuse, domestic abuse, divorce, adoption, poverty and even climate change or environmentalism - are each viewed as alien concepts by these same people. 

All of these topics [and ‘too complex issues’], often societal, are challenging but they are most challenging to those in Britain [and England, especially so] who live in this fantasy of what Britain either a) used to be, and b) should be.

These issues, in some people’s minds, are to be seen but not heard; they are to exist in the fabric of society but should be unspoken. 

Like Magdalene Asylums, many of these socially-conscious [‘Maoist’/’Woke’] issues are dirty words and “whores” to the Conservative mind - it’d be far easier to simply make them disappear into grotesque Victorian sanitariums and discard them like dirty laundry to forget about.

The concept behind ‘Taking Back Control’ that forces us to examine our little, insular island’s place in the world is a dichotomy.

We are caught - seemingly - in a perpetual state of desiring to move one reluctant, grindingly slow Burmese death march forward to compete on a global stage, while at the same time we take several, vaulting leaps back into a fantastical ‘dreamland’ of seaside songs played through a yellowed and broken Wurlitzer organ by the spectre of a pianist in the rundown music hall at the end of a dilapidated pier called ‘England’. 

All consolidated by a painful grief and a yearning for what the concept of “England” ‘used to be’ in our socially un-conconscious antiquated museum of shattered dreams when we ‘had control’ and before we presumably ‘Woke’. 

This is why the Conservatives’ ‘anti-woke’ message is such a powerful, dog-whistling force - because it speaks to people that much would rather some things didn’t exist; who would prefer to remember a society that perhaps never even existed. Ignorance, as they say - to such complex issues as they actually happen; now, today - is bliss.