Diehards

Policing's Critical Theory Spartans aren't going quietly

‘Come back with your Diversity Action Plan, or upon it!’ (apologies to Plutarch)

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Imagine, if you will, our culture war viewed through the prism of the movie ‘300.’ The enemy? The Emperor Xerxes’ marauding hordes. His is an unlikely alliance. His foot-soldiers are a mixed bunch. Within its ranks march Gen Z new-Right nationalists. Gammony Boomers, and Gen Xers who’ve simply had enough. Feminist gender realists. Gay activists. Freedom-of-Speech absolutists. This unlikely army shares a common goal: to free our institutions from the clammy hand of social justice maximalism.

Many of Xerxes’ troops, before joining the horde, were happy to debate with the Spartans of Woke. Yet compromise proved impossible. Emissaries were thrown into a pit (or a DEI seminar, take your pick), the Spartans screaming ‘EQUITY!’ or ‘FASCIST!’ or ‘BE KIND!’

Now, the Spartans of Woke gather at Thermopylae. The tides have turned. But they won’t go quietly. They have too much to lose, do they not? Their government-funded income streams. Their work-from-home, laptop class lifestyles. Their seat at the top tables at conferences and in boardrooms. Their insatiable appetite for virtue and self-regard. And, most important of all, their power. The ability to demand pronoun badges and webinar attendance, to anoint those who would lead future corporate and public sector phalanxes.

So they will fight, and fight hard. To protect the spoils of 2020, and the Summer of Floyd. To a bitter, glorious end - this is the stuff victim narratives are made of, after all. And in the front rank, shields poised and spears ready, are (of course) The Management Board of the Metropolitan-bloody-Police.

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It was the late Sir Ian Blair, a former Met Commissioner, who once observed the similarities between The Met and The BBC - currently facing its own brush with the Horde of Xerxes. Both, Sir Iain observed, were national institutions. Both, by virtue of their role, were prone to scandal. And, like the BBC, the Met was overly-defensive when it was caught bang to rights.

Then Stockwell happened, and Sir Ian discovered exactly why. With bells on. Although, to be fair, policing has bigger fish to fry than the BBC - which for all its cultural heft, soft power and ability to organise ballroom dance extravaganzas, doesn’t routinely deal with matters of life-and-death. Which the police, love them or hate them, do.

Nonetheless, I think Sir Ian had a point.

Here, though, is where the Met and BBC have since diverged. I would argue the BBC has never (yet) had a true ‘Macpherson Moment’, one where the entire Establishment gives an organisation a proper shoeing. Maybe now, it will. I doubt it, though. Since 1999, the Met’s happily worn any number of hair shirts. The latest were sewn together by Baroness Louise Casey and - most recently - Dr. Shereen Daniels.

Yes, I’ve read both.

Casey’s report, incidentally, contains much to commend it. Yet the irony’s delicious - just as the BBC faces a reckoning for indulging in decades of doctrinaire leftism, the Met is hurtling towards a future of… even more doctrinaire leftism. Notice, though, an interesting metric. The more hair shirts The Met wears… the worse it gets, both in terms of culture and performance. Let us, then, consider the old saw concerning the definition of Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Which, I would suggest, begs a question.

Has anyone - ever - considered that part of the problem is policing’s 26-year genuflection to social justice politics and Critical Theory? Which, lest we forget, is the fruit of a deeply poisoned tree. Marxism. Dodgy French intellectuals. Rancid boomer-zealots of 1968 and their fellow travellers (etc). The ganglion of human rights law, promulgated by Blairites seeking penance for accepting capitalist hegemony?

Critical Theory is a model fundamentally hostile to effectively policing a western, capitalist democracy. It’s like plugging arsenic into a life support system. It’s why the Left adore defunding narratives. It’s why they always fail on issues of law and order.

Lyotard, Foucault, Derrida - thanks, guys.

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When I began this Substack three years ago, it was (and to a certain extent remains) a generalist project. It covers any area of policing that takes my eye - from the mundane to the profound (much like policing itself). Nonetheless, thematically, the same issues reappear like farts in a spacesuit - institutional capture. Dysfunction legislative frameworks. An endless cycle of whether culture is downstream of politics, or vice versa.

In fact, I’ve probably learnt more about police governance and administrative politics in the last 3 years than I did during my 25 as a copper. However, I haven’t fallen down a rabbit-hole. I don’t see conspiracies - I see processes, trends and cock-ups. Cause-and-effect. Nor am I a Peter Hitchens-style doomster. I also try to be even-handed around issues concerning identity politics. For example I’ve been deeply critical of how policing manages sexual harassment, for UnHerd, here.

I don’t consider myself ‘a bad faith actor.’

Yet still, I can’t help but conclude postmodernism has irrevocably poisoned policing. I wrote about my experiences with police DEI here. I also wrote on Critical Theory here. It’s a fascinating story. Imagine watching a wildlife documentary, one where sped-up footage shows ravening soldier ants devouring a huge beast. I was part of the beast. I was even fond of parts of it.

And the beast’s fate, whether we like it or not, concerns us all.

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Which brings me to The Met’s latest Great Leap Forward / Purge (take your pick),. This is a report it commissioned on Racism from Dr. Shereen Daniels, entitled ‘Thirty Patterns of Harm’ (thankfully, it doesn’t involve Sir Mark Rowley inviting you into his private pleasure room). I suppose, really, asking a seasoned DEI professional about Race is like asking the Pope to offer a view on reproductive rights, but here’s Dr Daniels in her own words:

Systemic racism is not a matter of perception. For almost fifty years, reviews of the Metropolitan Police have documented the harm experienced by Black Londoners, officers and staff. 30 Patterns of Harm turns the lens around. It examines the institution itself, showing how the Met’s systems, leadership, governance and culture produce racial harm while protecting the organisation from reform.

True accountability begins with specificity. When institutions speak in broad terms of “ethnic minorities” or “diversity,” those most harmed disappear from view. This work begins where harm is sharpest, because that is where structural change must start. Anti-Blackness is the clearest indicator of organisational dysfunction. The same systems that sustain racial harm against Black people also enable other forms of harm. Confronting this is not an act of exclusion but a necessary foundation for safety, fairness and justice for everyone.

Yes, it’s a word salad, but it’s DEI / critical theory industry standard. If offers relatively little practical advice - rather a menu of broad thematics. Nonetheless, I’m going to give Dr. Daniels the benefit of the doubt. I’m sure she believes she’s working for the greater good and is genuine in her beliefs (a gesture I suspect she wouldn’t return to her critics).

After all:

To meet this moment, the Met must shift out of its defensive posture, “but I didn’t agree with what you said on page fifty-four”, and into a position of accountable leadership: “I accept it. I will lead the change regardless.” This is not about personal agreement. It is about institutional integrity. You must begin to name what has been protected. To recognise who has been harmed. To understand that proximity to discomfort is not a threat, but a precondition for repair…

In the police, we used to call this FIFO. Fit in, or fuck off. Like Casey before her, Daniels’ argument is simple but ingenious - disagree with me and you are being defensive, QED, there can be no disagreement, because that ultimately means you’re an obstacle on the road to Shangri-La.

It assumes one must submit to, lock, stock and barrel, the critical-theory template on Race - which is deeply disputed and highly ideological. This, therefore, is the language of the absolutist. The commissar. The 15th Century Inquisitor. Except, of course, Sir Mark and Dr Daniels don’t have gulags or iron maidens. Hilariously, they do have exit packages for senior officers ‘incapable of change’ and fast-track discipline boards for fools duped into drinking with undercover journalists. Journalists, incidentally, from that paragon of unbiased and reliable reportage… The BBC.

Dr. Daniels, incidentally, is a much-respected practitioner, consulting for blue-chip companies on organisational change. The Met, of course, accepts her report in its entirety - the Mayor will have demanded it. Sir Mark Rowley is under a great deal of pressure to implement the Casey Report - in this case, by commissioning another report.

Hmmm. Is it just me, or is there a theme developing here?

I’m aware, as a middle-aged white man, discussing DEI is like a woman feeling uncomfortable taking her car to a garage. Will the mechanic patronizingly assume a woman knows little or nothing about cars? Will the mechanic, therefore, seek to gild the lily or even worse - rip her off? Her Nissan hybrid might only have a problem with a rear disc, but by the time she leaves? She’s spent thousands on marginal, or even imagined, problems.

Now, say our female motorist is otherwise extremely well-educated, savvy and successful. Nonetheless, she can’t be blamed for not knowing the workings of a hybrid EV engine, or the braking systems or gearbox (neither, dear reader, do I). The implied issue here, though, is a man might know something about cars and is - thus - less easily swindled.

The mechanic example is, incidentally, is a cornucopia of prejudice. Are all mechanics predatory, dishonest and sexist? Presumably there’s a body of lived experience to suggest too many are… else why would I have had so many female friends and acquaintances say precisely the same thing?

Or is it an urban myth, devoid of provable evidence? Perhaps a legion of postmodern academics should descend on Britain’s back-street garages with their 2CVs to investigate. I can imagine there’s a shitload of public dosh to be had researching ‘Decontextualizing Automotive Misogyny through a Hegelian Dialectic.’

Anyhow, I hope you see where I’m going here. The Met’s senior officers are like the mechanically clueless who’ve wandered into Dr. Daniels’ metaphorical workshop (or as the comedian Alexei Sayle one said, ‘anyone who uses the phrase workshop outside of the context of light industry is a wanker’). They’ve unquestioningly accepted her off-the-peg solution to their battered old police car. The problem is, these senior officers haven’t got a bloody clue how the engine works - and even if they did, questioning the mechanic is FORBIDDEN.

Oh, and they’ve lost the ignition keys, too.

Which is why, a couple of years from now, Sir Mark’s successor will be back for a new engine, brakes, steering and gearbox. Which won’t work either.

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Although, there was one part of Dr. Daniels’ report I did agree on, although unsurprisingly we’d disagree on causality. It’s an interesting case study illustrating a wider point.

In s.9.6, Daniels mentions the disparity of outcomes concerning ethnic officers in police misconduct cases. I touch upon this here, where I discuss sensitive internal research suggesting the Met’s least troublesome staff, from a corruption perspective, were black, male officers of all ages. The report was squashed due to an unfortunate corollary - the most likely to get themselves in trouble were… young, female, black police support staff.

Tricky.

Anyhow:

Misconduct resolves risk, not injustice. “Let me speak to professional standards, you’ve got to be so careful when dealing with Black officers in case you are accused of racism.” This is how institutional discomfort is framed as due diligence, and racialised scrutiny is legitimised through procedural caution... Misconduct systems in the Met do not apply the same logic to all staff. What begins as informal concern for some becomes formal accusation for others. For Black officers and staff, workplace issues are more likely to be escalated into formal routes, not necessarily because the conduct is more severe, but because the perception of risk is racialised.

I will unpack this, in the real world, for Dr Daniels.

In my experience, yes, white managers were prone to (unfairly) formalise performance and misconduct matters involving minority ethnic staff. Why? Because they were scared. Not uncomfortable.

Scared.

Of what? Precisely the heavy-handed, judgemental, politicized culture Dr. Daniels advocates. In short? Sergeant Smith (white) is worried that if he gives Pc Jones (black) a bollocking, Pc Jones might make a career-threatening allegation of racism against him. Because that’s a card the system has given Pc Jones to play, should he choose to do so (which raises another interesting, asymmetric, power dynamic).

So, instead, Sgt Smith formalises the matter. Plays by the book. He’s seen other officers fall foul of seniors playing diversity-compliance top trumps. This is the soft tyranny that is the modern Met, after all. I feel genuinely sorry for Pc Jones, who would’ve happily taken his bollocking and got on with his job. But the system greatly discourages this course of action, to the point of forbidding it.

Every single HR professional - and DEI practitioner too - will absolutely have seen this in action. Just as they will have seen cliques of any description discriminate against other out-groups. This isn’t a binary issue, which sadly the DEI industry too often ignores. Because, Whiteness (etc).

This is precisely why you need staff to feed back their concerns with candour. To, yes, feel discomfort. But no! Modern DEI diktat declares this verboten. Such staff aren’t the grit in the oyster, one which might eventually produce a pearl of wisdom. Instead, they’re overly-defensive, racism-adjacent heretics.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, but surely they mean uncomfy chair, right?

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Which brings us back to the streets, where the DEI beast’s digestive system ultimately disgorges its unfortunate byproducts. The growing concern around crime committed by non-British nationals will continue to be presented as a 21st Century precursor to Kristallnacht. Uncomfortable realities about cultural trends in criminality will be studiously ignored or obfuscated, to the delight of those who exploit official squeamishness to foment unrest. The ‘lived experience’ of everyone will be celebrated, except for those of police officers - of all backgrounds - working on the less epic front-lines of an atomised society, one undergoing epochal societal, technological and economic change.

Why?

Because Policing, and the political apparatus behind it, is lost behind a shield wall. A wall of hubris, sixth-form politics and ideological purity. Meanwhile, on the streets, a different battle is being fought. One which will continue to be lost, until the Spartans are finally broken.

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