Aug 12, 2025 09:04 PM
(This post was last modified: Aug 13, 2025 03:30 AM by C C.)
Stop telling Britons to feel guilty about the past
https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/08/12...-the-past/
INTRO: An HMRC course on the ‘guilt of being British’ shows we are a nation gripped by self-loathing.
It has come to light that civil servants working for His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) took part in an hour-long seminar last week on the ‘guilt of being British’. The seminar offered staff the chance to explore ‘the emotional weight of colonial history’, as well as ‘the emotional complexity of being South Asian and British’.
Organised by the HMRC Race Network, the first session was held online last Wednesday morning. Following a public outcry, HMRC has now decided that further sessions on the theme will not go ahead.
Sections of the media called this a ‘victory over woke’, but this is wishful thinking. As a HMRC spokesman said, ‘This event has rightly been cancelled, with our full focus being on serving customers day in and day out’. In other words, HMRC didn’t reject the content of the seminar. It merely implied that it shouldn’t have been held during work hours.
The British-guilt seminar was hardly an aberration either. Indeed, in recent years the civil service has run many seminars, talks and training sessions for staff that are designed to make its staff feel ashamed of their own nation.
As I argue in The War Against the Past, this attempt to demonise Britain’s history plays a fundamental role in the culture war. Take activists’ efforts to ‘decolonise’ the education system... (MORE - details)
https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/08/12...-the-past/
INTRO: An HMRC course on the ‘guilt of being British’ shows we are a nation gripped by self-loathing.
It has come to light that civil servants working for His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) took part in an hour-long seminar last week on the ‘guilt of being British’. The seminar offered staff the chance to explore ‘the emotional weight of colonial history’, as well as ‘the emotional complexity of being South Asian and British’.
Organised by the HMRC Race Network, the first session was held online last Wednesday morning. Following a public outcry, HMRC has now decided that further sessions on the theme will not go ahead.
Sections of the media called this a ‘victory over woke’, but this is wishful thinking. As a HMRC spokesman said, ‘This event has rightly been cancelled, with our full focus being on serving customers day in and day out’. In other words, HMRC didn’t reject the content of the seminar. It merely implied that it shouldn’t have been held during work hours.
The British-guilt seminar was hardly an aberration either. Indeed, in recent years the civil service has run many seminars, talks and training sessions for staff that are designed to make its staff feel ashamed of their own nation.
As I argue in The War Against the Past, this attempt to demonise Britain’s history plays a fundamental role in the culture war. Take activists’ efforts to ‘decolonise’ the education system... (MORE - details)