UK ambassador blasts civil servants for anti-Welsh bias from English colleagues

UK ambassador blasts civil servants for anti-Welsh bias from English colleagues

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Holly Bishop

By Holly Bishop


Published: 14/05/2024

- 16:54

One Welsh civil servant said he is often victim to "patronising" comments

A former UK ambassador has slammed English people for having a “condescending” anti-Welsh bias.

Alexandra Hall Hall, who served as ambassador to Georgia from 2013 to 2016, responded to a post from Esther McVey who announced that the Government would no longer employ trainers dedicated to DEI (Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion).


Hall Hall shared an anecdote of a DEI training she attended at the FCO [Foreign and Commonwealth Office], where a Welsh civil servant launched into a rant about how English people often made patronising comments about his nation, leaving her “gobsmacked”.

She said: “The attendees were completely stunned when a Welsh participant, who’d been sitting quietly at the back, largely ignored by everyone, suddenly erupted in anger to say how for years he’d had to listen to English people make endless condescending, unfunny, patronising swipes and jokes about his nation and people.

Welsh flag/FCO/Alexandra Hall Hall

A former UK ambassador has blasted English people for having a 'condescending' anti-Welsh bias

PA/Getty/UK Government

“We were absolutely gobsmacked. We thought we were so enlightened- would NEVER be rude about Pakistanis, or migrants, or Muslims, or Jews, or gays etc – yet had completely overlooked/failed to recognise the patronising racism existing for aeons in plain sight inside the UK.

“It was certainly a wake-up call for me. Unconscious bias and stereotyping is the worst kind of all, precisely because you don’t recognise it for what it is. Its insidious effects, even if unintentional, can be just as harmful.”

She slammed the UK for being “riddled with bias” and said the incident stressed the need for DEI courses and personnel even more so.

Hall Hall also said that the Welsh civil servant was probably not alone in his isolation, with Scots, Irish and those with regional accents probably all emphasising this “phenomenon” too.

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Her post, which currently stands at over 700 shares and 4,000 likes, struck a chord with many.

One user said: “As a proud Welshman, if I had a pound for every harmless sheep ‘joke’ I had to endure during my time in the services, it would probably more than make up for having to wait an additional 2 years for my state pension.”

Another chimed in: “I've experienced the same. While working in a very prestigious Civil Service establishment someone commented that 'it wasn't until the invention of the wheelbarrow that you lot got up off all fours'. How we all laughed. My reply was two words, seven letters in all.”

Throwing a Scottish voice into the mix, a user said: “The Scots feel exactly the same! I’m so often amazed that otherwise ‘nice’ English people feel it is ok to be derogatory of us, they will often insult/demean us with a little laugh and we are expected to take it all as a joke. It contributes to the drive for Independence, seriously.”

Hall, empathetic to their feelings, responded: “'With a little laugh' - the idea that it’s all 'Just a joke', and 'Cmon, where’s your sense of humour?'. I’m wincing at these trite efforts to wash away offensive so-called 'humour'.”

McVey

McVey said there would be no more devoted EDI jobs in Whitehall, claiming that the money is wasted on 'woke hobby horses'

PA

However, not all were in agreement with the former ambassador. One user said: “Hmm. As a Scot I remember a lot of abuse directed at the English. Moving to England there was no abuse of me as a Scot. Some banter occasionally but expected to be returned in kind. None of the 'I hate the f***ing English' I used to hear so much when in Scotland.”

A self-styled “Unionist” from Glasgow wrote: “Thank God you’re no longer in FCDO [Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office] – how you progressed in the diplomatic service is a complete mystery – anyone with your prissy, priggish, and humourless Puritanism should be nowhere near a diplomatic role. Woke, 'right-on', or PC (call it what you like) needs to be rooted out pronto.”

Last week, McVey, a Cabinet Office minister said that going forward, there would be no more devoted EDI jobs in Whitehall, claiming that the money is wasted on “woke hobby horses”.

Under the plans, new guidance would stop all external EDI spending across the Civil Service unless it is specifically signed off by ministers.

She warned that the public sector must not become a “pointless job creation scheme for the politically correct”.

Hall Hall made headlines back in 2019 when she quit as Brexit Counsellor at the UK Embassy in Washington DC just over a week before the general election in December 2019, stating that she would “prefer to do something more rewarding with my time, than peddle half-truths on behalf of a Government I do not trust”.

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