When I was 15 in 1978, the English, Drama and Music departments of my school, Brigshaw Comprehensive, held ‘An Evening of Dreams.’ The programme consisted of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood, a reading from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and a performance of the Everly Brothers’ All I Have To Do Is Dream. There was also to be a rendition of Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech. Originally my friend Mick Webb was nominated for this, but he persuaded the English teacher, Mrs Macaulay, that she should audition me instead. “He’s a commie,” Mick had told her, “He’ll love doing it!” I had never acted in anything apart from a school nativity play when I was maybe five or six but regardless, she sent Mick to fetch me out of a chemistry lesson and gave me a sheet of foolscap with the text in large type. There was no YouTube I could look at back then to give me a clue, but I remembered seeing a TV programme on the American civil rights movement some years before and it had made an impression on me. I gave the speech in one take, no rehearsal, getting the rhythm and cadences spot on, though the accent was probably a bit off. At this point, as I sense the CII’s Inquisitors reaching for the Ramipril, setting a stake, and heaping up wood for an auto-da-fé, I should point out that, unlike Justin Trudeau, I did not ‘black up.’
I got the part, learned it off by heart and performed it the next evening, getting one of only two standing ovations, the other being for the full cast. I also got a minor part in that year’s school musical, Oliver. At the end of the evening one teacher told me he’d seen MLK speak in the US in the sixties, and reckoned I’d got it spot on. I didn’t find it difficult. I was already a paid-up member of the Labour Party, the Anti-Nazi League and the Anti-Apartheid Movement, and everything MLK had said in that speech I believed then and still believe today: that nobody should judge anyone by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character, that anyone should be able to buy a home wherever their money can carry them, and that they should be able to get a job. But all the same, why was I cast? Surely, they could have found a talented black kid?
Well, no, actually, they couldn’t. In the 1970s, there were no black kids in Brigshaw. The school served the three nearby mining villages which were near 100% white. The only minority ethic pupils were Michael and Stella, the son and daughter of the Wong family who owned the Sincere Chinese Takeaway in nearby Kippax. I’m guessing Mr and Mrs Wong looked up the English equivalent of the Chinese word for ‘genuine’ or ‘authentic’ when they landed from Hong Kong, hence their shop’s slightly unusual name. No matter, we loved their chicken chop suey and fried noodles. Apart from the Chinese running the takeaways and Asian newsagents, the off licence owners and doctors (some of whom are still my friends and clients today, including the doctor who saved my life when I was seven), my school’s catchment area was as white as the Buckingham Palace balcony, and even now it’s not that much different. They cast me for one reason and one reason only: I was the kid in the school best able to deliver the speech.
So, let’s return then to MLK’s ‘get a job’ line. According to the Daily Telegraph, Aviva’s Chief Executive Amanda Blanc has dictated that there is to be “no non-diverse hire at Aviva without it being signed off by me and the chief people officer”. Ms Blanc has said all senior white male recruits must get the final sign-off from her as “part of a diversity drive to stamp out sexism in the financial services industry.” That translates as “If you’re a straight white neurotypical biological male, we’ll bend over backwards to find an excuse not to hire you.” Fine, so long as we’re clear. A person’s race or sexuality has never been a factor that has concerned me in the slightest when it comes to choosing my friends, hiring employees, buying goods and services, or voting in elections. I buy from ethnic minority businesses all the time, have always employed a high proportion of women, was once massively bollocked for hiring a staff member who didn’t fit my then-boss’s desired racial profile of ‘no blacks no Irish,’ and can reel off a list of gay men I greatly admire, people like David Starkey, Douglas Murray, Peter Whittle, and Andrew Doyle. Among my heroes are Muhammad Ali, MLK and Barack Obama. Even so, I would like Ms Blanc to confirm that her blanket stricture will only apply to potential employees and not extend to customers? If so, is she expecting potential customers to start self-identifying outside of their race and gender in order to take out a policy?
Norwich Useless, as AVIVA is still widely known in the financial services industry, is a major employer managing billions of pounds’ worth of assets which sells insurance policies, pensions, and investments to around fifty million of the people Ms Blanc has now declared it will do its best avoid employing. By extension, this discrimination extends to their sons, their daughters, and their broader families. Does she seriously think that her actions are going to do anything to combat racism, misogyny, or homophobia? Or might it just be the case that chip-on-the-shoulder virtue-signallers like Ms Blanc are actually the worst thing imaginable for community relations of any and all sorts, be they relations between straight and non-straight people, between the white British and all our country’s ethnic minorities, and even at the most basic level, between biological, men and women? Jordan Peterson spelled out the importance to society of men and women being able to maintain a working relationship when he famously and publicly educated Cathy Newman. Has it not occurred then to Ms Blanc, that she and those like her cause resentment and fuel the very undesirable attitudes they claim they wish to combat? Perhaps, even, that company boards, which are still largely male dominated, might start actively finding reasons not to hire women to senior positions in case they end up with another like her? Maybe she’d do better to look at all of AVIVA’s personnel practices. In the early noughties I had a friend who was a Life Inspector with AVIVA. He never dared get a significant bank loan on account of the fact that he had to re-apply for his own job every year, and so was in effect permanently on notice. Perhaps AVIVA’s board should put Ms Blanc on that deal?
Only time will tell whether more diversity, or Ms Blanc’s idea of it at least, will make AVIVA a better company. In between times though in pursuit of her agenda, perhaps Ms Blanc might do society a favour and find a job for that nice little chap Bacari-Bronze O’garro, a.k.a. Mizzy. It might keep him out of trouble, assuming of course that he shows up for work. It might even save AVIVA from paying out some burglary claims. Bacari-Bronze will be available for work as soon as he ’s finished his current 18 weeks detention in a young offenders’ institution.
Neil F. Liversidge is an Independent Financial Adviser running his own firm in Castleford, West Riding Personal Financial Solutions Ltd, www.wrpfs.com. For 39 years until 2017 he was a member of the Labour Party. A Brexiteer, he voted Conservative in 2019 and is now a member of Reform UK.
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An excellent article, exposing and demonstrating the sheer malicious hypocrisy of this corporate posturing by woke companies.
I always hire the best candidate for the job. Do you know what? If you do that, you find that “diversity” takes care of itself.