Although the Christmas decorations are not yet back in their cardboard boxes, the Environment Agency has already cemented its plans for this summer. The Agency is offering forty summer internships to help undergraduates and recent postgraduates get a foot on the first rung of the environmental corporate ladder. Clearly, a good idea…except that White people need not apply, as the positions are reserved for people of a ‘Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic background’ who are from the UK, or the Commonwealth, or the European Economic Area. So, White British people are therefore not only put at a disadvantage vis-à-vis British Ethnic Minorities, but also foreigners. But did we really expect anything different from the oh so right-on Civil Service? Of course not. Like old Turkey and ketchup sandwiches in January, it is enough to make you puke.
The Environmental Agency’s recruitment brochure titled ‘Summer Development Internship Programme 2025 – 30046’ tells us that the twelve-week scheme is designed to provide interns with ‘valuable experience complementing [their] studies and supporting [their] personal and professional growth.’ The positions are available as either full-time or part-time and come with a £24,096 pro rata salary. This is therefore not just a week’s worth of work experience for disadvantaged Black kids from Tower Hamlets, but anti-White discrimination that has consequences for people’s careers – either for the good of those selected, and the frustration of those denied a chance even of applying.
As justification, the Agency argues that what they are doing is a ‘positive action measure as listed in the Equality Act (2010), helping people overcome certain barriers and improve representation across our workforce’. But does the Equality Act really permit what is a racially divisive policy cloaked in the à la mode inanity of DEI-speak? Of course it does.
According to Government guidance on the Act found in the euphemistically titled document Positive action in the workplace, it is legal for employers to recruit exclusively on occasion from certain ethnic groups if it means enabling them to ‘overcome or minimise a disadvantage,’ meeting their needs that are ‘different from the needs of people’ not of the same ethnic background and encouraging them ‘to participate in an activity where they are disproportionately underrepresented.’ The employer can recruit selectively when only any one of ‘these conditions exists.’ The guidance does expect employers to have data that indicates disadvantage, but it does not need to have ‘sophisticated statistical data’.
Those two final statements are scandalous. If an employer thinks it is justified to deny access to its recruitment process to any ethnic group in favour of others (and I can think of no reason why it should), it ought at least to have all legal reasons to do so and the very best of statistical data to prove there is a racial disadvantage. How low is the evidential bar set, and therefore how easy it is to disfavour White people who will always be the ones singled out for this treatment? The scandal is compounded by the fact that in its recruitment document, the Environmental Agency provides no evidence at all that it has grounds to implement government guidance on so-called positive action. As the document is online, it ought to provide a link to where this evidence can be found.
What institutions and employers like the Environment Agency need to take seriously is the very sophisticated data that does exist, showing that positive action is not necessary. The Report of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities (2021) which was authored by the Commission’s Chairman, Dr Tony Sewell, concludes that though there are instances of prejudice in the UK against Non-Whites, there is no institutional racism as demonstrated by how well Black, Asian and Ethnic Minorities are doing educationally and in the job market. What is needed is what is fair: recruitment open to all suitably qualified people of whatever racial background, and people chosen purely on merit.
They also need to take seriously the message of the multi-ethnic, grassroots movement ‘Don’t Divide Us’ set up in the light of George Floyd’s death to challenge the view that Britain is structurally racist. It has the following declarations in its Mission Statement: ‘We should treat everyone as an individual worthy of respect regardless of race, religion or the colour of their skin’ (which includes White people!) and ‘Britain is a successful multi-cultural society with a positive story to tell about race relations’. For the Black, Asian and Ethnic Minority people in this movement, positive action is an insulting irrelevance.
So, Environmental Agency, just stop it. The structural disadvantage you have created for White people is fuel for the small minority of racist dickheads in Britain; it patronises Black, Asian and Ethnic Minority people who reject unfair advantages, and undermines the racial harmony that the UK has worked so hard to achieve.
Peter Harris is the author of two books, The Rage Against the Light: Why Christopher Hitchens Was Wrong (2019) and Do You Believe It? A Guide to a Reasonable Christian Faith (2020).
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But that’s their whole aim, divide and conquer, and it’s working!
…..with the unstinting cooperation of the credulous establishment party voter!
Really couldn’t face reading it, hasn’t MI5 just done the same? Perhaps play them at their own game, claim to be other than white and then point out that if you had claimed to be another gender than mere name or appearances suggest they wouldn’t expect you to show them your bits and so if not selected tell them to expect a discrimination claim. (Going in to the interview blacked up though might cause a stir.)
Frankly though why would anyone want to work for the Environment Agency unless unable to think and express themselves clearly on real environmental issues (not everything being climate emergency or carbon dioxide related), also why would anyone want to work in a politicised racially biased organisation alongside a cohort intake of probable racist bigots who chose to work in such an unrepresentative, of the UK population at large, scheme?
Has the government set a target year for ensuring there isn’t a competent person employed anywhere in the UK.
Fuel for the minority of racist dickheads in this country. Does that include the blacks who utter under their breath ” White bastard”
When they pass me by in the street , or the one’s shouting it out of their car windows ?
Or the one’s spitting at my mother in the street and giving her verbal abuse?
I couldn’t face reading it either. I feel so angry and miserable and impotent all the time, every day some new insult, some new injustice that we can’t do a darn thing about. I noticed on the similar recent MI5 internship ‘qualifications’ that ‘white other’ could apply – that is Irish or Scottish or Romany ‘Travellers’. As a white female, I have felt invisible since my 50s, but now it’s like the whole indigenous population of the UK has been ‘cancelled’.
I wonder if ‘white other’ can aldo include the x thousands who hold an Irish EU passport, despite being resident UK citizens?
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