© British CouncilThe British Council Allied Centre, Liverpool, 1941-1946, the oldest cultural relations organization in the world.
What may have come as a shock, though, is that the document - which could be called 'How To Speak Woke-ish' - was produced by the British Council, whose purpose is to promote Britain's values and culture across the world. Not only does it have a budget of £1.2 billion a year and employ 7,000 people, but it received a Royal Charter in 1940 - and its patron is Her Majesty the Queen.
It seems this public body, like so many others, has succumbed to the anti-patriotic self-loathing that is so prevalent among the Brexit-hating metropolitan elite.
Once a vehicle for the projection of soft power, celebrating the pinnacles of British culture like the plays of Shakespeare and the music of Elgar, it has become infected by what the late philosopher Roger Scruton called 'oikophobia' - the repudiation of one's own culture and the glorification of others.
Now the British Council has published a 'diversity and inclusion' policy that says the UK's record on 'ethnic conflicts, civil disturbances and genocides' puts it on the same footing as Syria, South Sudan and Darfur.
Notably missing from its list of shameful countries is China, for that is one part of the world where the British Council does take its commitment to 'decolonisation' very seriously. It is extremely careful never to breathe a word of criticism about the Chinese Communist Party's brutal suppression of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong - that well-known victim of British colonial oppression - lest it jeopardise the £219million a year it receives from the People's Republic of China.
'Imagine the BBC, but without the talent' is how one disillusioned ex-staffer described the organisation.
What's so depressing about the British Council's fall from grace is that it was once a huge force for good in the world.
Comment: Influence comes in all sizes and packages.
Other countries have similar bodies - France's Alliance Francaise and Spain's Instituto Cervantes - but few have the cultural reach and illustrious history of the British Council.
In its heyday in the 1940s and 1950s, it was a beacon of light in a world dominated by murderous, totalitarian ideologies, whether Nazism in Germany or Communism in the Soviet Union. It sent poets such as T. S. Eliot on speaking tours and sponsored recordings of works by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Using its unrivaled resources and vast network of offices across the globe, it was able to bang the drum for values such as parliamentary democracy, limited government, free speech, religious tolerance and the rule of law at a time when they were in short supply. Even in the 1990s, it was promoting British fashion designers under the banner of Cool Britannia. I remember a party organised by the British Council in New York in 1997, which was the hottest ticket in town. But what has it done to promote the UK in 2022?
What the organisation disparagingly refers to as the 'Queen's English' is the lingua franca of the world. The Platinum Jubilee was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to remind our friends and neighbours of everything that is great about Britain. Instead, in the run-up this historic event, it published Promoting Inclusion: A Guide On Sexual Orientation that informed its employees that using the word 'straight' to refer to heterosexual people is 'offensive' because it implies that 'LGBTQIA+' people are 'bent'.
Among the thought crimes this guide instructed its employees to avoid were 'homophobia', 'transphobia' and 'biphobia'. If you do a search for 'ism' in this document, 'heterosexism' comes up seven times, and 'tourism' only twice. That pretty much says it all.
But surely an organisation that exists to celebrate the best Britain has to offer, and with such a lavish budget, still occasionally hires our world-class novelists, poets and screenwriters to wrap themselves in the Union Flag and sing the praises of the home country? That's the impression you get from the Council's 'Writers Directory' - 38 pages listing our most celebrated wordsmiths of the past half century.
I reached out to all the people in the directory I vaguely know to ask what they'd done for the Council in the past few years. Without exception they said they hadn't a clue why they'd been included.
Broadcaster Jeremy Paxton said:
"I have no idea what you're referring to. I'm on their website? It's news to me."Another said:
"I don't know how I ended up on that website. I've yearned for gigs like that but have never been asked."A third responded:
'I cannot imagine why the British Council lists me thus. I cannot remember ever doing anything for them.'So much for enlisting 'soft' power to enhance our standing in the world. Last year, the Government announced it was cutting the British Council's budget by £185million, a move that prompted howls of protest from all the usual suspects. A hundred MPs wrote a despairing letter to Boris Johnson telling him he was endangering 'global Britain'.
Perhaps it's time to put this propaganda arm of the diversity, equity and inclusion industry out of its misery. Either that, or stick the Minister for Brexit Opportunities, Jacob Rees-Mogg, in charge and tell it to start doing what it says on the tin.
About the Author:
Toby Young is the General Secretary of the Free Speech Union.
All nations which have had a strong dose of 'we're the best', 'the chosen ones', 'the kings of the world', all have within them the same germs of self-destruction, self-hatred, self-shame. It is almost like a psychopaths no-blinking contest, with some people still fervently holding onto their false patriotism as a flimsy mask for their demoniacal tendencies.
Britain got 'big', not because of any inherent racial superiority, but due to the fact that the land itself was situated as if to become 'the ruler of the sea'.... thus, it soon became the ruler of commerce... hence, it became the beacon of materialistic industrialization. In that sense, it has very little to do with the actual people themselves or their blood: even if they were to do a population swap with some remote tropical pacific island, those pacific islanders populating the British isles would probably have become the biggest materialistic empire of the world, whilst the Brits out in the Pacific would just be spearing fish for their daily sustenance. It had to be this way, for a sea-faring nation to hold the reins of materialistic superiority, because the sea in connection to the planet is a reflection of our subconscious and unconscious vital forces: we get our life forces from the vital world... and sadly, we use those life forces for mundane and materialistic foolishness'. The British Empire was an historical lesson, to teach humanity the connection between the sea and the land, the vital world and the physical world.
How ridiculous it is for the British to be 'proud of their race', when everything and all their virtues are really fruits from the spirit of the land and sea itself. The truly good-hearted Brits are those who love and respect their land, not with any false racial pride, but with simple red-indian reverence, because like all nations and races, it is only the Mother (Earth) which gives good toys to her children... and takes them away if they are ungrateful.
The concept of 'nationality' is really only a recent concept, since Napoleon... As Rudolf Steiner says, to be 'nationalist' is almost the same as being proud to be French in the 19th century. Before that time, there was little 'national' consciousness, but racial consciousness... awareness of the blood, one's roots, one's traditions and one's family. The 'Nation State' is really a big lie superimposed onto human society, all tied in with anthems, national hymns, flags, history, dates, as if to all come together to verify the complete fabricated invention. How long are a 'people' really supposed to go along with the pied-piper, and not eventually got bored of the tune, and eventually, despising the socially-imposed lie that has gone so far as to hand themselves passports, certificates, utilities bills, etc, etc, etc.
Nevertheless, such great historical national lies are useful for the 'globalists' to divide and conquer, to make the whites feel bad for being white, the blacks to feel frustrated about being black, the reds to feel ashamed of being red, the yellows to feel uncomfortable about yellow, and so on and so on, whilst they themselves create a 'United Nations' under the rainbow flag of sexual degeneration, offering humanity 'the promised land' of cyber-reality, because 'the nations' have driven the planet and the physical plane to the point of unworkability.