But What Can I Do?

The ‘woke’ brigade, as viewed through the lens of polarisation, comprise an astonishingly diverse range of individuals and groups. Judges who question government decisions on the basis of their lawfulness or unlawfulness – woke. ‘Lefty lawyers’ who defend people accused of a crime, or help asylum seekers with their claims – woke. Journalists who stray from the favoured narrative of the government and its media cheerleaders – woke. Charities and NGOs – woke. LGBTQ+ campaigners – woke. Former royals who hold hands or talk about their feelings – woke. Civil servants who submit challenging analyses to ministers – woke. Priests and bishops who speak up about poverty – woke. Footballers who stand up to, or kneel down against, racism – woke. It’s a bit like horoscopes: when you use the vast, vague definition offered by the right, you can find something in anyone that can be tarred as a little bit woke. Hilariously, the right often seek to defend their anti-woke diatribes as being rooted in a love of free speech. Yet ‘woke’, and its ally ‘snowflake’, are used in practice to try to shut down any criticism or questioning of the populist, polarising, post-truth approach. In other words they are aimed at shutting down the free speech of others! ‘Politically correct’ used to perform a similar purpose, but woke as an insult has spread its net far wider. Be proud to be woke, I say, and stand up for what it really means, namely – the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition – ‘to be aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues, especially issues of racial and social justice’. You can see why the racists, shock jocks and right-wing cheerleaders on both sides of the Atlantic find it difficult, and seek to corrupt not just the word, but the causes that brought it into being. Us is good. Them’ is ‘woke’.

The reason that populists tend to like referendums is that they play brilliantly to their binary view of the world, where it’s ‘us’ or ‘them’, ‘yes’ or ‘no’. I find myself revisiting a speech by Margaret Thatcher, from 1975, when she was arguing against the use of referendums except in very special circumstances, such as on issues over which voters were fundamentally divided but on which the major parties agreed. She maintained that without the protections and definition afforded by a constitution, referendums sacrifice parliamentary sovereignty to political expediency. In a system such as Britain’s, this would threaten minorities by trading liberal democracy for majoritarianism. ‘Perhaps the late Lord Attlee was right,’ she observed, ‘when he said that the referendum was a device of dictators and demagogues.’ Attlee, the UK’s post-war Labour prime minister, was right. Thatcher was right.

But anyone can build an argument alone. You can read and research alone. You can educate yourself alone. You can then join with others. You can win an argument with others. You can literally spread the word, build networks, as the sado-populists did, and continue to do. You can start local, and build out. You can start small, and go big. Once you feel yourself making a difference, you can develop the confidence to go wider, further, deeper in making the case for the change you believe in. You can develop a mindset that says: ‘I may not be able to change everything, but I can change something, and that is what I am going to do.’ Change-makers come in many forms. There is no template. No right or wrong way of doing it. You don’t need to ask permission. It’s up to you decide if that is what you want to be. And if you do . . . then go for it! It’s as simple as that.