The policing of 'microaggressions' in the work place must end

Newcastle University is the latest to release a list of forbidden words. 'Pet', a universal endearment much loved across the North East of England is now forbidden...

Copyright Viz Comic: Mr Sidney Smutt, a resident of Newcastle Upon Tyne

The policing of ‘microaggressions’ has to stop.

If you have ever visited the North East of England and interacted with any inhabitants of that area, the chances are, never mind your gender or age, that you will have been called ‘pet’.

If you have ever visited London or the south east, and interacted with any inhabitants then the chances are, never mind your gender or age, that you have been called ‘love or darlin’.

If you have ever visited Edinburgh or Glasgow it’s ‘hen’ or ‘hennie’. Liverpool ‘chook’. There are too many to list..

These terms of endearment are a feature of the English language in all its rich tapestry of regional diversity and can be found from the plains of the USA to the slums of Glasgow. They are especially prevalent in the British Isles where regional accents and dialects are extremely distinct. I’m typing this 20 miles south of the border in Northumberland, here it is ‘pet’ 21 miles north, ‘hen’.

This phenomenon has been studied. In fact dozens of academic studies exist studying this unique cultural diversity. These studies also tell us how these words are used. Firstly, they are not gender specific, they tend not to be age  specific. Secondly they are most prevalent in service interactions between strangers, in fact they are seen as a polite and welcoming way of interacting in such circumstances. They are also as mentioned, a feature of regional dialects and contribute to the keen sense of identity in communities. They are most commonly used by what is referred to as ‘non academics’ - i.e. those who did not attend a University, they are universal in the working class of an urban area but in rural areas their use crosses classes. They are as unique to a region as a stottie cake is to a Geordie or a deep fried haggis to an Edinburger, part of our identity, diversity as a nation and society and our heritage.

So why is my alma mata, The University of Newcastle Upon Tyne instructing its staff to avoid using ‘Pet’? 

The 13 member strong Diversity and Inclusion team (yes.. 13 of them) at the University has issued a 7 page guide with 44 words and phrases listed that should be avoided as problematic. “Avoid patronising or gendered terms, such as girls, pet, or ladies.” says the advice. Now let’s put aside why an academic institution is so keen to police the speech of its staff and students by dictating what is ‘unacceptable’. We have already established, as they would have if they had actually researched the use of ‘pet’ that it is never used as patronising and is not gender specific. Had they checked the extensive amount of research, freely available with a five minute Google search they would not have jumped to this erroneous conclusion and now be in the headlines. 

There are those who have been quick to agree Eleanor Mills in today’s Telegraph thunders that the University is “right to ban ‘pet’ - it’s so patronising”. She says she is ‘all for endearments’ but claims that it is inappropriate when used to address young women. Oddly enough she seems to like being called ‘my lover’ by red faced west country yokel types but apparently Geordies don’t qualify for this tolerance.

Now I don’t know where Ms Mills is from and I don’t know if she has ever spent any time in Newcastle or rural Northumberland. She sounds very ‘educated class’, like me she speaks with an ‘RP’ accent and RP is one of the very very few dialects in British English that doesn’t use endearments in this way. I can’t think that she has spent any time up here because if she had she would know that pet is never used exclusively to address young women, it is never used to patronise or uniquely in a sexist manner. As already described, ‘pet’ along with its equivalents is in fact part of the rich micro-diachronic variation in British English and we can evidence that from the multiple studies carried out, and indeed, anyone who actually gets off their backside and travels to the regions to speak to the ‘plebes sordida’ can confirm this. 

There’s a nasty whiff of classism here, that the working classes need to be morally corrected: what they eat, their politics, their relationships, their pastimes, their dress sense, their language must all be policed by those-who-know-what-is-in-their-best-interests. It doesn’t surprise me that a University EDI team has come out with this, and it doesn’t surprise me that Eleanor Mills has decided to chime in. The great unwashed must be tamed.

There is something else going on here though. Such glossaries of ‘verboten’ words are becoming increasingly common, chosen and promulgated by these ‘experts’ in EDI and HR departments across our green and pleasant land. The idea that language must be policed comes from the assumption that all human interactions have, at their base, a conflict about power. Gaining power over your interlocutor. If you speak to any modern academic versed in Critical Theory this is front and centre to their worldview. The idea that an employee and an employer could have a relationship and a friendship based around mutual benefit is dismissed. The only dynamic in such a relationship is exploitation, the exploitation of the worker by the employer. It takes a distinctly negative view of humanity, that humans are incapable of good intent towards one another and would only ever display good intent or generosity for gain. To manipulate. You won’t be surprised to hear that the most recent influential figure to  promulgate this cynical and warped view of humanity was Vladimir Lenin who based it on some of Nitzsche’s ideas. To Lenin, ALL relationships were about power and the prerogative was to interact with another with your metaphorical foot on their necks. 

Given how Marxist Leninism has become the basis of so much of our academic effort over the last 50 years, it’s hardly surprising that this dystopian view of humanity has eventually escaped from the Social Studies faculties and is now in society as a whole where it is coming up sharply against 2000 years of Christian thinking that people are not like that, that human relationships are not based solely on power and exploitation and that concepts like generosity and charity are virtuous and in fact should never be done for personal gain. 

When HR Departments take it upon themselves to inflict this view of the world on their employees it usually backfires. In fact we have the figures, EDI training has backfired spectacularly to the tune of 63% of those trained in it, having major issues with it. Who would have thought that telling your employees that they were incorrigible unreconstructed Sidney Smutts from the Viz, racists, bigots and homophobes to boot, who all need re educating, wouldn’t go down so well with those employees? 

‘Microaggressions’ the idea that language needs to be micromanaged is a dead end for society and it is extraordinary that the Chartered Institute for Personal Development (the CIPD, the self appointed boyars of the Human Resources industry in the UK) have adopted the theory so enthusiastically. The idea that normal, healthy human interactions and language must be policed by employers is a major problem. Firstly it infantalises the employee, it removes their personal responsibility for their own behaviour from them and hands it over to the HR team. Issuing lists of ‘forbidden’ words of ‘microaggressions’ that might conceivably upset someone can never be comprehensive. “But that word wasn’t on the list so it must be OK!” Furthermore, language relies on context, ‘lists’ remove context and we have seen ‘microaggression’ policies devolve into a charter of empowering bullies in the workplace. In June 2024 London City based law firm Hogan Lovells announced that it was introducing a reporting service where employees could anonymously report colleagues for ‘microaggressions’ presumably so the HR team could then intervene and ‘take corrective action’. This was reported on in the CIPD’s magazine, ‘People Management’ where they collected quotes from a variety of HR Professionals all of whom enthusiastically endorsed the idea - not one critic was asked for their opinion (incidentally, those quotes supporting the measure you won’t be at all surprised to read, all seem to benefit directly from such a measure being introduced. ‘Inclusivity Consultants’ etc.)

There’s a historical point here which may come as a surprise to these HR people, so convinced that they are right to be doing this for the employee’s own good. Here’s the thing. The Popes and Kings who initiated The Inquisition didn’t set out to burn and terrorise their own populations. The mediaeval mindset was that the afterlife was very real and for eternity and that if you sinned or committed heresy in this life your torment would be eternal. So a bit of physical pain on this side of death to persuade a heretic to reform his or her ways, was entirely morally justified because they were utterly convinced that if they did not their souls would be in torment for eternity. It was for the heretic’s own good. 

Another: East Germany was one of the most notorious surveillance states in history (although there’s a few modern state’s which may have taken that crown). The Secret Police, the STASI, developed an informant network that encompassed 1 in every 5 of the entire population. The suppression of dissent and unapproved opinions and politics was extremely intrusive and frequently resulted in imprisonment. Unlike the collapse of many totalitarian regimes, we were able to interview and study those who thought this was a good idea. Universally they were committed Marxist Leninists who genuinely believed Communism was the only civilised way for people to live. Those who didn’t understand this needed to be re educated for their own good. The STASI, the prisons and the informer networks all existed for the population’s own good. This is one of the reasons why periodically, delinquent dissidents, those who had not responded to ‘re education’ or the short sharp shock of imprisonment; those who had resisted the zersetsung - literally the decomposition of your life, the 24/7 police and state harassment and intimidation, were deported to the West. They were incorrigible and wouldn’t respond to ‘re education’.The ‘civilised’ approach was to throw them over the wall with to their fellow capitalists. They gave up on them, but only after trying very hard to ‘fix’ them.

Does any of this sound familiar? In Britain and indeed, across the west, we have developed a managerial class which has taken upon itself the mantel of moral superiority, who equates its politics to morality. Who has convinced itself that their role is to make the world a better place by ‘addressing injustices’ be they current or historical. Any dissent is by those who are obviously unenlightened and morally degenerate. These people need to be ‘re educated’. Now, for some reason which I have been unable to get an answer for, our institutions and companies seem to think that this needs to be done in the workplace as well as in the schools, academies and universities. Apparently, getting a load of city lawyers to avoid ‘microaggressions’ is a worthwhile activity, apparently it ‘addresses injustices’. Really? Does it? Or does it actually demoralise those who you are policing? Does it create an atmosphere of treading on eggshells, where everyone is terrified to speak to others? Where trust no longer exists.

Put the lawyers aside for a minute. This week Harry Miller from Fair Cop shared an anecdote in an interview this week. He mentioned that he had heard of two police officers who had been sharing a conversation in their squad car. The conversation was about DEI training, one of the officers, a Christian, said that he thought this was a waste of time and didn’t think men could become women and vice versa, or words to that effect. When they returned to the station, his colleague reported him to HR. Why? Because HR apparently periodically check the voice recordings of events in police cars to check that behaviour is appropriate. So HR dragged in the Christian officer to speak to him. He told them where to stick it and that he would sue if they disciplined him because his opinion, both Gender Realist and Christian is protected under the Equality Act. So HR stepped down. However, the issue here, as Harry rightly pointed out, that trust between employees anywhere is really important, in the police it can literally be life or death and yet, this policy is undermining that trust by creating an atmosphere of suspicion, mistrust and a culture of denouncement. 

Need I point out that during The Great Purge in the USSR in the 1930s, people would denounce their own friends, family, colleagues because they thought that if they didn’t they would be punished for not doing so, and they were right. 

Is this really the society we want to live in?

Well, Newcastle University seem to think so and they are keen to reassure people that these are ‘recommendations’ and ‘not compulsory’. Well I am sorry if I call that out as utter nonsense because we know damn fine that they don’t need to be compulsory to create an atmosphere of treading on eggshells around people, an idea that those who do use such words are moral delinquents. Repeatedly we see these ‘recommendations’ becoming mandate by default.

It is time for HR Departments to take a long, hard look at themselves and wind back this nonsense before it causes irreparable damage to our workplaces and our society. It is not their job to micromanage human relationships.