Britain’s Wokest Council Tells Staff to Take White Privilege Test

A flagship Labour council is telling staff to undergo a “privilege” test as part of its efforts to combat unconscious bias against ethnic minorities.

Westminster city council is also seeking to boost recruitment of non-white “global majority” candidates for senior posts by giving them preferential treatment over equally qualified white applicants – and ensuring there is at least one ethnic minority candidate on shortlists for jobs.

All managers and staff who hire workers must undergo mandatory unconscious bias and inclusive recruitment training as part of the council’s ambition to raise the proportion of global majority employees, including senior managers, to match the 45 per cent in the borough’s resident population.

Insiders have told The Telegraph that they are offered a virtual “privilege walk”, in which staff are expected to assess their social advantage by gaining or losing points in an online quiz based on factors such as whether your parents read to you, if you drive a new car, and if you have never been stopped and searched by police.

Managers who fail to shortlist global majority candidates – so called because black, Asian and multiple ethnic people make up 85 per cent of the world’s population – have to contact Stuart Love, the council’s chief executive, to “discuss your decision making before proceeding further”, say documents seen by The Telegraph.

The approach to diversity is the brainchild of Mr Love, who has been in the role since 2018. He has previously said that his “guilt” from growing up as a white child during apartheid in South Africa has fuelled his “relentless” commitment to equality, diversity and exclusion.

Last year, he told Management Today that he embraced “wokeness” as an awareness of social injustice. “We should all be woke, but particularly in local government where we are delivering services to communities,” Mr Love said.

“When things have gone wrong here, I’ve heard people say it’s because I’m too ‘woke’ or I’m focusing on the ‘woke agenda’. But all this has done is double down on my efforts. I lean into this term because it’s been hijacked and weaponised. I am quite happy to be accused of being socially aware of injustice.”

Last month, the council was criticised for urging pubs and clubs in Soho to host “quiet nights” and offer alcohol-free activities after 6pm in an attempt to make the capital’s West End more peaceful for residents.

Mr Love said that Westminster’s recruitment policy had led to a sevenfold increase in the proportion of senior “global majority” managers, up from just five per cent. Figures from the Taxpayers’ Alliance, however, also showed it was the council with the most employees on salaries of at least £100,000, a total of 73 in 2023/24, up 13 on 2022/23.

Neil O’Brien, a Tory MP and former minister, said the documents showed that Westminster council was running “racist hiring policies on an industrial scale”. “If all this is not breaking the law, it certainly should be. It shows how far the public sector has drifted from the idea of meritocracy,” he wrote in an article for The Telegraph.

The checklist for the virtual privilege walk scores points of +5 and +10 if your parents read to you when you were young, if English is your first language, if you drive a new car or have a designer handbag, if you are confident someone could bail you out financially and if you shop at Waitrose. The highest point scores are +10 if you have never been stopped and searched by police and +15 if you are a white male.

Points are taken away if you have to take annual leave for your religious holidays, if you are in rented accommodation, if you see members of your race, ethnic group, gender or sexual orientation negatively portrayed on TV, if you have a disability or illness, if you are a carer and if you would think twice about calling the police when trouble occurs.

Participants are asked how they would use their privilege, such as contrasting the $78 billion income of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos with the $11 billion cost of ending world hunger. They are told to keep a note of their scores and share them anonymously at the end.

The council’s recruitment policy says the aim is to promote employment opportunities to “all sections of the community” and increase the number of staff from under-represented groups.

It not only aims to have at least one “global majority” candidate on shortlists, but also requires managers who do not have any such applicants to come forward for posts to contact their “recruitment lead” for further guidance.

The document is, however, also clear that “job applicants will be shortlisted and appointed on merit and selected based on objective criteria, including the required skills and experience, values and behaviours for the position”.

A Westminster council spokesman said: “Westminster city council’s recruitment policies are industry standard, entirely consistent with UK employment law and have been in place for a number of years. In keeping with many public sector and private companies, we are committed to ensuring all candidates can compete for a range of roles and we actively promote ourselves as an inclusive employer.

“This PowerPoint presentation, which we believe was available on the council’s staff intranet from 2021, does not form any part of our formal policy, training or recruitment process.”

So now we know it for sure: Labour-run Westminster council practices racist hiring policies on an industrial scale. The council says in public that if two people of equal merit apply for a job, they will always give the role to the applicant from a “global majority” background. Now we know their racial discrimination against native British people actually goes much further.

Documents from the council reveal that if no one from the “global majority” applies, managers cannot just go ahead and pick the best candidate – they have to seek “further guidance”. This is a deliberately opaque part of the process, presumably intended to lead to the production of such a candidate.

And if you do have a “global majority” candidate but don’t shortlist them (even if that’s because you think they are not up to it), you have to speak to the chief executive, Stuart Love.

Bear in mind the chief executive is a man who says he is proud to be woke and that his “relentless” commitment to equality is fuelled by “carrying a lot of guilt” about his childhood in South Africa. He has described how he “turned the air blue” on previously being told by the council’s lawyers that his ideas on race-based hiring were illegal. You can guess his likely reaction.

The council also has various pots of community grant funding that are only available to organisations led by non-white people.

If all this is not breaking the law, it certainly should be. It shows how far the public sector has drifted from the idea of meritocracy.

Sadly, while Westminster council is an extreme example, it’s not a rare one. The Royal Air Force and Army discriminated against white people, and the RAF had to pay compensation. Many of Britain’s top institutions discriminate against the white British. The BBC advertised a 12-month trainee broadcast journalist job and said it was for black, Asian and minority ethnic people only.

The Bank of England has internships open only to people from a black background – the “Black Future Leaders Sponsorship Programme”. There are similar schemes at KPMG, NatWest and Transport for London. There are racially exclusive scholarships at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, UCL, Bristol and many more.

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