Royal Navy Officers told to declare preferred pronouns, attack white privilege

This piece was written in my capacity as the Free Speech Union’s Communications Officer. The Free Speech Union exists to protect those who’ve been cancelled, harassed, sacked or penalised for exercising their legal right to free speech whether in the workplace or the public square. Please take a look at the great work the organisation does - our Twitter account is here.

Amid escalating Chinese belligerence in the disputed waters of the South China Sea, the threat to international shipping posed by piracy in the Indian Ocean, near daily incursions into British maritime waters by Russian submarines, and a sharp rise in the number of gangs involved in people smuggling across the English Channel, the British Navy’s top brass has decided to really let rip, flex its muscles, and remind the country’s enemies exactly who it is that rules the waves… by issuing new guidance to officers on preferred pronoun usage, the integration of critical race theory into leadership, and how the pathology of ‘white privilege’ can be overcome.

The Express carried news of Navy HQ’s new ‘Divisional Officers and Troop Commanders Briefing Notes’ this week, courtesy of a tip-off from the Free Speech Union.

Issued earlier this summer, the Briefing Notes urge officers to “routinely share” their chosen pronouns, suggesting this could be an “act of allyship”.

The document also advises officers to avoid saying “good morning, guys”, instead using the gender neutral ‘everyone’ or ‘team’.

Elsewhere, the document explains the importance of a concept drawn from critical race theory: ‘lived experience’, that great incontestable of the woke age, in which the engagement with day-to-day life of certain pre-identified groups is filtered through a pre-written script of systemic oppression.

Navy officers are told they need to understand how race, class, gender and other badges of victimhood impact on a person’s identity and “to recognise and appreciate the lived experience” of the oppressed guys in their team.

“Before you voice your opinion on another person,” officers in command of sailors aboard commissioned ships operating in fast-paced, high-risk environments are told, “you should stop to think about whether you have the right to speak about them from a position of no direct expertise and consider whether your behaviour is contributing to or alleviating their existing disadvantage.”

As if the image thus conjured of Blighty’s new generation of nerveless, amphibious killing machines wasn’t already enough to fill the hearts of Vladmir Putin’s inner circle with terror, the Briefing Notes go on to address the issue of ‘white privilege’, and how it impacts Navy officer themselves, the vast majority of whom are white males.

“The term ‘white privilege’ has been talked about in the context of the Black Lives Matter protests,” the document says, adding: “It refers to the idea that skin colour can affect your lived experience such that it can either give you an advantage or be a barrier to almost all areas of life.

“Therefore, if you are ‘white’, whatever situation you are in, it is almost always the case that the outcome has not been affected by your skin colour” – a statement that will no doubt one day be of great comfort to the Captain of a lone British frigate locked in a tense stand-off with a fleet of Chinese warships as they begin maneuvering themselves into an attack formation a few miles off the disputed Spratly and Paracel Islands in the South China Sea.

An anonymous serviceman told the Express: “Many service personnel are angry, confused and insulted although few will formally complain as this language has become commonplace.”

The Free Speech Union’s General Secretary Toby Young said: “The woke mind virus has infected every branch of Britain’s armed forces, including the Royal Navy. It won’t be long before the White Ensign is replaced with a Pride flag, and HMS Queen Elizabeth is renamed HMS Meghan Markle. If I was a Falkland Islander, I’d be thinking very seriously about relocating.”