Nicola Miller: Human rights, DEI and rebuilding after war
We’ve just commemorated VE Day, the 80th anniversary of the Allies formal acceptance of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender which marked the end of World War II in Europe. The end of the Second World War took a little longer; formal surrender documents were signed aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945.
Sheila Hancock wrote a moving piece for The Guardian about what it was like as a small child on VE Day in London, surrounded by exhausted neighbours who were relieved the bombs would no longer fall but who otherwise were not as jubilant as some of our more jingoistic war celebrants make out.
‘It was hard to wholeheartedly rejoice in May 1945,’ she writes. ‘The grownups did some stately ballroom dancing. Holding one another in their arms! Clinging to one another. I even saw my dad kiss my mum on the forehead. Unheard of behaviour. Were they expressing relief at being near the end of an appalling few years? Or were they giving one another strength to face the inevitable struggle to dress the mental and physical wounds of war, and build the better, fairer, more peaceful world they wanted to create?’.
The human rights principles set out in 1948 by the United Nations as part of its Universal Declaration of Human Rights were established as a direct response to war atrocities. They were central to this rebuilding. The Equality Act of 2010 in Great Britain evolved from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and DEI (workplace diversity, equality, and inclusion) is a critical part of this.
You are legally protected from being discriminated against in the workplace and society as a whole via nine characteristics: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion and belief, sex, and sexual orientation. It is a much misunderstood— and frequently deliberately misrepresented — piece of legislation.
Last week, while sitting in a cafe, I overheard a conversation at a nearby table. One visibly pregnant woman was highly critical of DEI, which, she stated, was responsible for discriminating against ‘English Indigenous people’. Aside from the fact that the earliest trace of human existence in England (from preserved footprints in Norfolk mud of all places!) some 950,000 and 700,000 years ago likely came from Homo antecessor, a human species so far only found in Sierra de Atapuerca in Spain and therefore not particularly ‘English’ after all, her disdain for legislation that protects her from discrimination in the workplace was quite remarkable. It was no surprise that she declared her support for the Reform party.
Extreme right-wing parties are skilled at persuading ordinary (non-elite) people to vote against their interests. It is quite remarkable. They are a metastatic cancer, destroying us from within. Their core message? Your needs aren’t being met because someone else’s are. What was the point of fighting two World Wars in the name of freedom from fascistic nationalism only to vote for a party that wants to remove your right to protest, strip you of workers’ rights and protections against abuse by greedy, wealthy business owners, control the media so you see only what they want you to see, discriminate against gay people, women, the elderly, disabled and sick, enrich privileged members of the elite (of which Farage is one; he’s a public school boy from a wealthy family) and convince you that your suffering is caused and perpetuated by rainbow flags on public buildings, dyslexia accommodations in the workplace, trans people driving electric cars, and the 18% of people in England and Wales who, according to the 2021 census identify as non-white.
