A striking piece in the Telegraph by Leo McKinstry exposes the madness which appears to have overcome the Metropolitan Police as the result of its obsession with race and gender. The piece was triggered by a recent case in which three officers were investigated - and one of them suspended - after they were said to have made offensive anti-Muslim remarks in front of a female Asian officer during a race-awareness training course. After months of inquiry, the three were finally cleared of any wrong-doing, and the investigating officer, Tarique Ghaffur, said he ‘found it incredible that this matter was taken up’.

But there was, alas, nothing incredible about this at all given the institutional nervous breakdown in the Met over the issue of ‘diversity’ ever since it was tarred and feathered as ‘institutionally racist’ by the institutionally cretinous McPherson report. As McKinstry observes:

‘One sorry result of this neurosis about discrimination is the creation of a vast bureaucracy, which does nothing but waste resources. The Met is now awash with race units and equality action plans, all geared towards heightening the climate of grievance. So within the shambolic organisation there is a consultation, diversity and outreach unit; a diversity directorate that includes six separate diversity teams covering everything from age to sexual orientation; a diversity champion; an equal opportunities and diversity board; a positive action team; a lesbian, gay and transgender advisory group and a cultural and communities unit.

‘Today's senior London coppers might not be much use in defeating criminality, but they are superb at organising meetings and generating reports. They can talk like the most fluent pseudo-Marxist academic about "contextualised learning on race" and act like the most politically correct Blairite civil servant in demanding that "performance in respect of race and diversity be measured through a corporate measurement framework" or seeking to "facilitate the change process through the establishment of the development and organisation improvement team (DOIT)". Increasingly the Met resembles one of those extremist Left-wing councils of the 1980s.’

In those days, we all breathed a sigh of relief that at least those loony tune councillors couldn’t get control of the police. Who would ever have imagined that within twenty years, the looniest tunes would be played by the police themselves.

Posted by melanie at June 9, 2005