"Whiteness: A Problem of Our Time": Nurse Sues NHS For Racist Class Saying Bible & Whites Are Racist

foreign [Music] now what do you do if your career scores because you've been accused of racism or having the wrong political views well that's something which more and more people are facing but some of them are fighting back Amy Gallagher who's a nurse and psychotherapist he's one such person and she joins me today thank you very much for coming in Amy thanks for having me Peter um now you are in the middle are you not of a legal battle that's correct um before we go into the story can you just tell me what that entails actually the legal battle um so I've brought initiated Court proceedings against the tower stock and Portman NHS trust that was served to them at the end of March the charges that we're bringing against them are religious discrimination racial discrimination discrimination on the base of philosophical belief harassment and victimization we're in the process of negot we're waiting for their defense we're in the process of negotiating with their lawyers um yeah and that is external and internal complaints still investigation still going on right now so it's very much live yeah and so you you are crowdfunding for this one yeah I started crowdfunding um yes it's going to cost an awful lot of money I'm trying I'm getting some expert witnesses to testify against some of these ideas and trying to I want this case to be as impactful as possible but to do that does just cost quite a lot of money yeah can you sort of I mean a lot of people a lot of our viewers would not have heard of your case I know it's been reported in the national press but can you sort of tell us you know if really you know go into some detail and tell us you know from the very word go what what actually happened to you yeah so just to explain so I'm a mental health nurse I work in the NHS and I was training to become a psychotherapist I'd already done two years at the Tavistock and Portman and graduated with a postgraduate diploma and then to finalize that to become a qualified psychotherapist I needed to do two more years so I enrolled for the final two years um in the Academic Year of 2020 and it was very quickly into that Academic Year that I started to have issues with some of the things that they were teaching so it started with um a lecture that I had to attend titled race and racism um and it was extraordinarily political it really had nothing to do with psychology or Psychotherapy you know there are psychological studies about race and racism and et cetera none of that was mentioned it was all about Black lives matter and Meghan Markle and um the the critical race theorists were being quoted right not psychologists and Christianity was being mentioned quite negatively on a couple of occasions within the lecture so it felt very it had an agenda really and was not relevant to the training so at the end of that lecture I I you know I mentioned in the question and answer the section I said you know it feels that this is quite politically biased and I'm curious about why you're singling out Christianity in this lecture and the lecture said well Christianity is is responsible for racism because it's European um yes just just like that yes and and there seemed to be the idea that I was in the wrong for even questioning you know um so I I started to be quite concerned about you know the political Bend of the course and then not long after that lecture I was sent a a lecture called whiteness a problem for our time this was advertised as being a policy seminar and it was a celebratory lecture of the Hundred Years of the Tavistock and it was being highly publicized on their website and it was being sent to me I looked on the website it was essentially critical race Theory so it was saying things like whiteness and racism of the same thing and they put on the level on the website that it's the job of white people to tackle racism specifically white people and the lectures I watched it um and it was just an hour of ideology no reference to psychological research no debate no other side to the to what they were teaching it was it was just um oh white people this white peoples are I mean if you go onto my crowdfund um start GoFundMe stand up to work I've created a video that shows some of the things they were saying but it was you know white ignorance White Privilege white fragility white people don't understand the world white people this white people that um racist in other words racist very racist yeah and and it's not saying there is this thing called critical race Theory and it says this and you can disagree with it or you can agree with it it's not a debate it's this is the this is the teaching you know so I responded to that and said you know in an email that responding to their email I said well I you know this is actually an ideology um and I personally don't think being white is a problem and it shouldn't be seen as a problem I said we need to be aware that there's different viewpoints as clinicians we could be treating patients who don't like these views and don't view the world in this way um and I encouraged you know a debate essentially were you in a lecture with lots of people no no this is all online because it was the pandemic right yeah yeah but you actually brought points up on the spot did you yes yes other people around so I I did there wasn't there wasn't any reaction for other students but I got I essentially got called into a meeting after that by the course lead um and the the meeting was thrown is we need to talk about how you responded you know essentially reprimanding me um and in this meeting she essentially said well you know if you don't agree with these ideas the course might not be right for you um she said you know we're an anti-racist organization I said well I'm also anti-racist I'm Against Racism and my understanding of that is not judging a person by the color of their skin treating people equally not having Prejudice towards anyone she says well we see that as discredited and outdated at the Tavistock discredited in other words what Martin Luther King said is yeah is discredited they don't say how it's been discriminated or by whom they've just decided that there's discredited yeah that they don't care about any kind of evidence for their assertions that's um so I said you know this this lecture what is the problem for our time is is this the view of this particular lecturer or is this the view of the whole trust and she said oh I think it would be the view of the whole trust that I said what that all white people are racist and she said yes I think that would be the view of the trust the Tavistock Trust and she said it's a bit like the way there's an inherent sexism in all men and I said well I don't agree with that either that doesn't really help me um and she said well we'll just have to leave it there but you know there was an idea that going forward I'd have to sort of watch what I say essentially really yes um so after you feel after this yeah I was I was so shocked I couldn't believe it I thought you know surely they would allow for a debate you know to me it's quite outrageous to even do a lecture like that whether it's just openly racist but to say then actually you can't even disagree I just couldn't believe it I you know I was paying tuition fees into this institution that was pushing ideas that I just find totally unacceptable so my first thought was I don't I don't want to continue I don't want to pay money into this institution and I don't I don't even know if I want to be part of the profession if it's going in this direction um so I had a full yeah I had to think about it and then I I put in a complaint and I just said you know this is what's been said it goes against the equalities act uh it's discriminatory towards certain groups namely white people Christians and men have all been you know singled out and uh and um so they responded to that and said well we're taking your complaint very seriously we'll look into it and then three days after I made that complaint I got a progress report sent to me about my progress in the course and they said you know you're doing really well with patients your clinical work is fine and then in the covering letter to the to the email um the course lead who's the one that pulled me into the meeting she said um you know that the progression board have noticed that your personal views aren't in keeping with the trust anti-racist thinking uh and you need to do some more learning about diversity poorly yeah you know if you're if someone's saying to you your views aren't anti-racist that implies that you're a racist of course yes it's sort of starting it yes it is what have I said I've said I've actually disagreed with racism it's a complete inversion it's it's yes yeah so I was out I just couldn't believe I couldn't believe it was happening I can't believe that's been written to me um so I you know I added that to my complaint and I said you know look I'm essentially it felt like a vowed frat you know because it's part of my progress on the course yeah um so they said okay we'll look into that as well while they was doing this so-called investigation into my complaint they continued to send me reading material that pushed the same ideas essentially so they didn't seem to be uh have any hesitation with that they sent reading material um that quoted Robin D'Angelo quite heavily who is a oh the white boy white fragility who should be that why you know Robin D'Angelo is not a clinician she's not a psychologist she's just you know a random person that just writes a load of racist stuff it has no legitimacy you know in the academic sense it's got no evidence behind it and they are using her ideas essentially as their main um go-to for race and racism and the stuff that they sent me essentially said that Christianity is responsible for racism because of its use of the words light and dark they said uh oh there's more of the same stuff white fragility white people this white people that so I just noted that I didn't say anything and then at the end of that term there was a review of the term and I was asked by the course leader what how we were finding things so far she actually asked is there anything that you don't like or anything that's annoyed you so far and I said well I actually don't like this reading material that's been sent again it's it's discriminatory I said you know this this writer Robin D'Angelo she's not a clinician none of her ideas are evidence-based they're extremely radical and they are racist and I don't know why this is being sent to me um she told me to stop speaking um oh yes yeah and a couple of days later she sent an email to me saying that she was raising a student conduct policy against me she said um for disagreeing yeah and and being skeptical about ideas like I said as you should do as a student you know you should be curious yeah you should Express a kind of uh skepticism and and try trying to understand ideas she wrote in her email that uh the way I disagreed was inappropriate she said I'd I'd cause the learning environment to become traumatic she wrote that to me in an email um she told me that I was vexatious that it was inappropriate for me to have disagreed she said it was inappropriate for me to have expressed my personal opinion now I was asked what my opinion was it doesn't make sense um and they she said there would be a investigation into me um that didn't happen basically about seven weeks later I just got a letter sent to me from the deputy director of Education and Training at the Tavistock and she just essentially said we've done an investigation into you it's completed and actually according to their own policies they're supposed to meet with me and hear my side of the story and have a mediation process they didn't do any of that they just sent a letter saying to me if you continue to speak inappropriately about race um you could be suspended from the course or it may even affect your ability to enter the profession of psychotherapy yes um they wouldn't at no point if they told me what I actually said that's inappropriate um so I so I wrote a further complaint about about that meanwhile the investigation that was going on into my complaint was completed and I got an investigation report into the complaints that I'd raised in that they essentially said that they'd realized that the view of whiteness as a system of power and privilege needs to be written into their policies more not less and they said that actually we encourage all students to interrogate whiteness um essentially I was the problem really in that I I was incapable of learning um that I was Defensive um and I needed to be helped to understand these ideas more you know and this let's be clear about this is in a kind of a public health yes environment isn't it what the hell is any of this got to do with that yes so this is a clinical training to work as a mental health professional in the NHS the Tavistock appointment is an NHS Foundation Trust so what's the relationship with the famous Tavistock yes it is it's all one thing it's uh you know the Tavistock that we've heard about in the news it's same Institution course it's not a philosophy course where there's a disc it's a it's a training to work to treat individuals um which is just you know so insane because you will be working with individuals that have all different views so the idea that there can only be one view how can you work with the public yes it just makes no sense to me um so yeah they they put that investigation report back to me and I I appealed I appealed their all their investigation reports and in the appeal they just doubled down they said you know as white people we have a privilege that other races don't have that sort of a fact they said that um well Christianity this is Europe in the name of Christianity is responsible for the inequalities we see today in Health Services uh give no reference points for that no no evidence just that's a fact um this is quite I mean I I'm bound to ask did you get any help from any kind of bodies or associations in your field no no not the tough stock they know nobody has I've gone all the way through the complaints procedure all the way up to the CEO not a single person has you know reached out to me or helped me or even said you know you've you've got a perfectly valid point or I can see your point of view they just keep telling me that they're an anti-racist organization and then that's that that's a complete capture of the language yeah yeah it's a complete capture of the language the other people I mean what I'm interested is do you think that the your your peers you know uh on the course would they just be going along with it do you think I mean this is the point where when people are subjected to this whether it's in the private sector or public sector you know I think the often the kind of response is to just for a quiet life yes is to kind of go along yeah I think it's a bit probably I think the field of psychotherapy and psychology is quite left-leaning people that go into it are generally empathetic compassionate people who lean in that direction not the people on the right aren't those things but they are quite overly emotional yeah they're drawn to left in politics so I think it isn't there is an imbalance in that field I think politically um so I think there's that but I think it is yeah I think there are some people that don't want to speak up and there are some people that probably agree with it and then you get the odd ones like me that will say actually hang on you know what does this mean you know have you could have given you second thoughts about actually having a career in Psychotherapy yeah it did it did quite a bit it's you know I've really enjoyed my career in mental health and I I love being able to help people and I do love the profession when it's done in a genuine way the original pursuit of psychotherapy is to help somebody understand themselves and the truth about themselves it's working with individuals it's actually completely the opposite of a collectivist thinking because you're you're working with an individual you're not you're supposed to you know the ethics of of Nursing and of psychotherapy is that you're creating a non-judgmental neutral space that's what I've always been taught as a clinician this this ideology completely goes against that yeah because you're you're being told to make judgments about people before they even said anything you know I'm being told that my patients black corrosion that they're going to be feel threatened by the fact that I'm white I've got a I've got to assume that they've experienced racism and that they're a victim these are all assumptions yes because when you work with individuals as I have for many years you you see how how much people are different they really don't yeah everyone has their own unique story and it's only when you hear them speak that you have an understanding of what they think or feel yes but this this ideology is telling you to assume things about all sorts of groups of people before they've even said anything so to me that is completely against what I've been taught as a clinician well doesn't it sort of completely diligent my it's the whole profession yes it does yes yeah it's that's it it is and the ideology itself it's extremely it goes against all the things that I've been taught as a mental health professional it's hysterical it's it catastrophizes it jumps to conclusions about certain things it assumes what's going on in the other person's mind it's um it's very All or Nothing black or white thinking excuse the pun it is kind of you know there's there's baddies and there's goodies these are all psychological mechanisms that I I'm generally trying to help people move away from um and actually now that have a stock they're indulging in all of these things so it you know it's like they've embraced neuroticism essentially and they're advocating for it because you know critical race Theory and woke ideology it is negative thinking essentially it's there's a paranoia about it there's a you know that everything's oppressive everything everyone's against you and ordinarily you're trying to help people to see Nuance yeah you know to not think like that and now they're advocating that you should you should think like that and you should encourage other people to think like that I knew the people like for example the the person who said to you you know uh you know you've got problematic views basically and and and you should see this because you're white you know it's not going to fit with what what we do here those people do you think that they have themselves been captured by this or were they always there you know because I know it sounds crazy the thing that people ask us so much and it's quite a very good question really is how come so quickly yes this seems to have become endemic in all of our institutions and professionals yeah as I can see it some of these people are True Believers that's that's my experience they are with your logs but they've been emboldened by the fact that the institutions are now backing up their ideas so they probably always fought like this but now the institutions they're working are calling themselves an anti-racist organization so they've got legitimacy now yeah you know and they're sort of you know coming together as a group and feeling more that they can push these ideas where before maybe not um so there's a kind of a group think happening in the institutions um I mean these ideas have always been around unfortunately in Psychology you know uh the original psychoanalyst roid and young and Klein they weren't particularly political in fact Jung actually spoke about the dangers of ideology but then it was in the sort of 1950s that the Frankfurt School and critical theory they took these ideas of psychologists and essentially fused it with Marxism essentially so you see her Marcus are talking about um you know forced Consciousness and you have a dorno talking about the the sort of the authoritarian personality type so the kind of pseudo-psychology where they're using terms like unconscious and personality types they're not they're not psychologists they're essentially Communists but they're twisting the ideas of psychology to merge it with these ideas and as I can see it that merger has not probably been reckoned with in Psychology it's always hung around so you see how it kind of goes in and out of these ideas yeah especially with critical race Theory there was oh there was a psychologist a psychoanalyst called Franz Fanon who wrote about the thought he'd be a critical race first if he was alive today if it was sort of ibrahamex candy type but he he spoke about this idea of black skin white masks the idea of acting like you're white and the whiteness is is being educated and it's really racist stuff actually you know that we see today with you see like the way that quasi-quarting was treated where he was told that he was superficially black yeah okay you know he's acting white which is extremacist thing to say about black people if they're educated they're acting white this comes back to some of these ideas that we saw in Psychology and psycho psych analysis in the sort of 1900s so really they're carrying on a kind of tradition yeah in a sense intensifying it yes it's it was always there it was always like a sort of Niche I would explain that they had this offshoot of kind of marxist psychoanalysis that was but now that's become the mainstream which is essentially what they're doing is they're sort of marks this literary analysis of patients they're saying this patient has got false consciousness this is a Marxist idea it's not it's not Clinical Psychology um and yeah it's terrifying because this is now like I said it's it's become the inversion of what it should be it's encouraging pathology it's encouraging neuroticism and um that is now coming more mainstream yeah yeah were you I mean you sound politically you know pretty well informed I mean were you interested in politics before you I mean have you been political in any way so I so so a little bit more cultural more interesting culture than politics I would say but before before I was trying to be a nurse so I did a degree in English literature which I found essentially to be a degree in critical theory but that's what that's what it is now but I loved literature but I was being asked to do Marxist critiques of books at no point at my degree it was I told why it is that I'm doing that yeah yeah why are we you know why are we looking it through this lens what's the why why not any other lens you know yeah and so I was very dissatisfied with that and dissatisfied with Academia in general um I mean I did quite well at it but I felt that I was writing things Etc I didn't believe in I was yeah yeah and so I decided to go into nursing because it was just so radically different from Academia I thought well it's not political it's just helping people it's working with people you can get away from all those theories and ideas and then as I've gone along I've found that these ideas that I tried to get away from have crept in to the NHS and into nursing and I remember when I was nursing and the black lives matter protests I was being told to speak to my patients about that but you know if you've got a black or an Asian patient you need to speak to them about the black lives matter protests well that to me is you're going in with an agenda if you do that and actually it's extremely offensive to assume that somebody because they're black would be affected by black lives matter they might not care about it they might not agree with it and they might think well I haven't come to talk to you about that you know why are you raising that with me so I started noticing it coming in nursing and then it wasn't until this training caught this this final two years at the Tavistock well I mean even I was shocked you know I just thought wow it's gotten really bad it's you know and so now I'm you know I tried to get away from my these ideas but actually it's come through following you around yes this uh it's still Beggars believe that this is the NHS which you know is in what appears to be permanent Christ yes um and yet you know it's becoming more clear isn't it by the day that it it sort of spends a lot of time and possibly money as well on kind of work your work agenda yes yeah very much so um and and not just the NHS we're seeing these ideas come from the Civil Service in primary schools secondary schools yeah I mean there was a recent thing in the news about Westminster University essentially doing racial segregation in the name of progress um this is happening because we've just done a program actually about this um which uh was Kevin Robinson actually talking all about indoctrination in school I I know I've sort of already alluded to this but I mean did did you get anyone coming uh approaching you reaching out to you sort of saying I'm with you or people in your position you should say uh I don't want to say my name but I agree with you uh from from the NHS or from or were you very much on your own I was very much on my home with it for the whole of the two years since I've gone in the press and I've set out my crowdfund I've got lots of people contacting me your Healthcare professionals saying well done somebody needed to do this I've had pre I've had some people who were who trained with me saying you know well done I'm with you so I have had some support since not while I was on the training course itself but I have had a lot of people now reach out to me and say yeah give me all sorts of stories about things that have happened to them and similar things and um yeah yeah so so what is what's the situation now then can you explain to us what you're going for exactly and and a sort of timeline if you've got that yeah so so I served court documents to them so what happened after that they continued to bully me essentially um I was uh I after I initiated Court proceedings and I got a bit of traction with my crowdfund one of the lecturers essentially tried to have me struck off as a nurse so my nursing is separate from my training at the Tavistock but she accused me of racial harassment she accused me of making her feel unsafe she said my Twitter account made her feel unsafe just all sorts of nonsense things the nmc were quite good that's the nursing and Midwifery Council they shut that down quite quickly and just said yeah you know nurses are entitled to disagree with ideas essentially um and then one of the other lecturers gave a speech to the students where she said she said we were going to meet in person because we were meeting over Zoom but she's decided that my because of my hate speech we should remain on Zoom for safety reasons that my hate speech could be managed better over Zoom and then they essentially suspended me they told me that I was unsafe to see one of my patients the reason they gave for that was because I knocked on a door and asked there was a loud noise going on and I knocked on the door and asked if the noise could be reduced and they said I'd left the people in the room traumatized by doing that yeah and they actually told me this was said to me by the director of the clinic she said to me try not to go into the shouldn't go into the reception area because your physical presence if someone's to see you they could be re-traumatized by the sight of you it's insane um and they haven't again this was said to me verbally they didn't follow any policies or procedures they didn't put it in writing to me they didn't follow their suspension conduct procedure um they're out of control Peter they they are deranged that they they think the arrogance they think they're above institutional procedures they think they're above the law it is like until you're in it you you can't understand what it's like it's like a I can understand fully how all the gender identity stuff happened now now that I'm in it because it is like they've got their own reality and they don't step outside of it and it's just yeah it's the complete inversion of what a Psychotherapy trading should be yeah so so therefore you know what are you going what am I going to do yes so I I want so obviously I'm I've initiated a lawsuit against them um I'm I want this to be as impactful as possible so I'm still exploring legal options with my legal team I don't want to say too much about that because but uh yeah as I said I want this to be as impactful as possible I'm essentially going to take them to court for what they've done to me but I also want to take critical race Theory to court we haven't had there's been a lot of pushback in America against Chris gross Theory there's been some significant lawsuits in America but not really here you know that we're being having this stuff pushed on to us all the time White Privilege white fragility and we've had our politicians say especially that famous speech by Cami bedok say you know this is illegal but no one's put that to the test yet and actually if there is a bit of a if there is a significant legal case I'm hoping that people will think twice before being so strongly you know pushing these ideas so strongly we've seen it with the Trans stuff you know we've had some significant legal cases with mayor Force data Allison Bailey and now we're seeing a bit of the tire turning with that we critical race Theory hasn't really had that yet yes it's sort of exactly it's the most embedded I think as well isn't it and the most touchy that's important it's the most sensitive in their eyes remember so how can people help you now you did say you're doing crowdfunding yes yes but I know you've got a you've got a uh Twitter account what's that called Stand Up to woke stand up to woke uh it could be this you know motto for this show but um um but now what you're doing what actually could be a real Landmark it could be yeah it really could um so how can people help you financially yeah you say craft where should they go then so I've got a crowd fund cool it's it's on GoFundMe stand up to work so if you just Google Amy Gallagher or stand up to work all one word is that the link to it is on my Twitter as well so I'm it's this is a big Financial Risk for me yeah um I'm getting some I'm trying to get some expert witnesses to testify against these ideas like I said I want it to be as impactful as possible but I do need money I don't have money so um yeah if anybody could donate or spread or just spread the word or just get help me in any way that would be hugely helpful have you been in touch with Toby Young's organization Free Speech Union briefly at the start yeah yeah we're um we've with working with the bad law project oh yeah Harry Miller Harry Miller so they've helped us with publicity and they've given some advice Christian legal center have also given us some advice but still at the moment financially I'm doing this on my own so which is quite anxiety broken yeah you are okay if ever there was a worthy cause I think this is it um thank you very much for that I mean what what uh what we're going to do now I want you to say because we're going to ask you a few uh a few more questions for our members you know exclusive members um so but in the meantime thank you very much um that's it for so what you're saying is this week we shall see you next time thank you hello if you're enjoying the new culture Forum Channel and you believe in our mission may I invite you to join our membership scheme at the link below or on our website newcultureforum.org dot UK our work is more important now than ever and we have great plans ahead for the future but we can't do it without your support from as 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Channel: The New Culture Forum

Views: 324,051

Keywords: New Culture Forum, Peter Whittle, So What You're Saying Is..., Culture Wars

Id: zQlG1WxfG74

Length: 34min 48sec (2088 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 23 2022