HAYES IN THE HOUSE: Why we must all fight back against poisonous wokism

At the end of a year in which families faced fear and loss, with our country at greater risk than at any time since the War, the New Year’s firework display in London, supported by £1.5 million of tax-payer funding, ought to have been an opportunity to celebrate what unites us as a people.

But, inexcusably, instead the Mayor of London decided to finance the formation of the image of a clenched fist in the sky – the symbol of Black Lives Matter militants fuelled by hate and committed to defunding the police.

History will record that, when in 2020 most Britons, of all origins, combined to stay safe and protect the NHS, even during the horror of a global pandemic culture warriors continued their campaign to pull our country apart.

Yet too many people with power, perhaps too timid to do otherwise, have kowtowed to these extremists.

Perhaps militant activists remain unchallenged by much of the broadcast media because, at first glance, they seem plausible.

After all, no reasonable person wants to see others subjected to racial abuse.

However, anything more than a passing look shows how, far from promoting fairness, the culture warriors reinforce stereotypes and promote prejudices.

Certainly, they regard with contempt most of what Britons hold dear.

Take the activists who want to ‘decolonise the curriculum’ behind the campaign to tear down the statute of Cecil Rhodes from Oriel College Oxford.

It’s not just Rhodes they despise, but the whole edifice of a University embodying excellence.

In his book ‘Rhodes must fall’, Kehinde Andrews, the first professor of ‘black studies’ in the UK, writes ‘Oxford’s prestige is founded on its elite status, which is a code word for ‘whiteness.’

These extremists see race as all important; for them no other human quality really matters –even our shared common humanity is condemned as ‘racist’.

Those who refuse to be indoctrinated will be silenced by the ‘cancel culture’. This new puritanism is narrow minded, intolerant and spiteful.

The liberal establishment’s eager embrace of such militancy is an attempt to justify its own elitist seclusion from what they see as untutored mainstream sentiments.

It is not the hate-filled creed of Black Lives Matter that motives them, rather a desire for liberation from any duty to wider society.

Much of the increasingly remote establishment – from the Mayor of London to the National Trust and big corporations like Starbucks – pay lip service to intolerant woke dogma, convinced that anyone who believes in the value of traditional societal norms is either hopelessly antiquated or simply vulgar.

These are the same haughty elitists who regard those of us who voted to leave the EU as stupid and bigoted.

The new year represents a new chance for a crusade against ‘woke’ militants.

The outlandish claims made by the culture warriors would be laughable if they did not pose a sinister threat to our freedom.

Some may shrug their shoulders and say ‘you can’t stand in the way of progress’, but these are the same kind of people that claimed we would never leave the EU and then predicted we could not secure a favourable trade deal.

Eighty five years ago, some said we could do nothing to stop Nazi tyrants – ‘you can’t stop change’ they bleated.

Appeasers were wrong then and they are wrong now.

Those who oppose tyrannical ‘wokeness’ have right on their side, and with sufficient courage and resolve, patriots will prevent the imposition of their poisonous puritanism on us all.