The Racism of Scottish Theatre: Did Jackie Wylie know what she was getting into?

Obfuscation not Oppression is the name of the game

I have just returned from a holiday in Italy with my son. It was a glorious week full of sunshine, pasta and gelato, surrounded by exquisite art that has inspired and astounded millions of individuals for hundreds of years. What strikes me the most about these grand works is how they were designed to elevate the person viewing. More than once I found myself breathless, overwhelmed by the scale and beauty of what I was seeing, moved nearly to tears. It was simply magnificent. It was a gift.

But art these days? Not so much. ‘Gift’ is precisely the last thing I would associate with any of the offerings on display by our national producers. I doubt anything of note will still be ‘standing’ in another fifty years time, let alone 500 from our current iteration of theatre makers in Scotland. And why? Because our National Theatre seems disinterested in serving the public (who pay their wages). Quite the contrary, they deride and demonise them. As one example, Scotland’s National Theatre (NTS) has been requiring its white actors (only) to take ‘anti-oppression training’. They are institutionalising an apartheid

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My last post was about the transvestite who helped to stage the ideological takeover of Scotland, John Clifford. A mediocre playwright, his trans brand helped to elevate his middle aged career significantly, obfuscating the fetish undercurrent. One of the key players in his rise to stardom was none other than Jackie Wylie, the current Director of the National Theatre of Scotland who has allowed this anti-oppression program to bed in.

Let’s be honest I doubt very much Brian Cox was expected to take this training.

I would suggest that Jackie’s takeover of The Arches Theatre in 2008 is largely responsible for seeding the mess we are now in (amongst other key players who I will get to in my next post). Her leadership marked a significant shift in tone and focus from craft, making, legacy, relationship building (in real time) into the the globalist project we see across the western cultural sphere wherein identity and hierarchy rules.

I have no bones with Jackie. I think (probably) she felt what she was doing was the ‘right’ thing to do. But from her ‘lead lined echo chamber’ (as a friend so aptly put it) no criticality was applied to the activism that she allowed to seep into the very groundwater of the theatre world. And this is a problem. It’s created division and mistrust not just in the theatre sector but amongst the general public, many of who are far less likely to want to go to theatre or participate in any cultural offering that might be offered.

Why would they when what is presented is no more than an elevated struggle session wherein participants are judged before they enter the venue? As citizens we are charged twice - once with our tax monies paying for the production and secondly with the purported ‘pound of flesh’ for the guilt we are demanded to feel for (skin colour/sexual orientation/lack of climate action/political persuasion etc etc)….

You will be judged.

In today’s parlance there is much talk of ‘rights’ - and yet none of responsibility or obligation. Our National Theatre has some vague sense of virtue ‘out there’ with its sloganeering and requirements but seems to have no accountability for consequences.

UNTOPIA

’s Ewan Morrison and I spoke previous about the need for an “Office of Unintended Consequences” wherein bureaucrats and those in authority are required to pass their planned programs and legislations through a system of ‘what ifs’ in order for it to move forward. Perhaps if this had been the case Scottish Government would not have gone to court for the nearly 5000 court cases, many of which they lost, between 2016 and now. I can only imagine the financial expense that this has incurred as its most recent incursion with For Women Scotland has determined they need to hand over £250,000 of legal costs. Which is only ONE case. And is our tax dime. When vital services are being cut. And yet not one of these bureaucrats will lose a penny of their pension or their salary.

And what of this ‘anti-oppression training’? As

Alex Massie

writes so aptly in The Times “…privilege is a slippery enough concept anyway…. Who has more cultural capital in modern Scotland: the Pakistani-Scot attending Hutchesons’ Grammar or the white son of a single-mother incapacitated by infirmity in Larkhall? The answer may be one thing in one realm and quite another in a different one.”

I cannot help but think how all these identity programs over simplify the human experience. It’s as if we as human beings are being primed to think of each other algorithmically, not humanly. And humans are full of contradictions and complexity that simply cannot be predicted. Good art can represent that or serve that without needing to focus on it, instead organisations like NTS have fallen into the trap of identity policing.

Anti-Racism trainer for NTS will get you to tell the story THEY/THEM wants (her choice of pronouns) ‘BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY’.

The training infers that white people cannot help but look badly upon and discriminate against individuals from the ‘global majority’ (ie. black/brown skinned people). The National Theatre of Scotland is suggesting that white people do not have free will to discriminate or not discriminate. According to this training (and one’s like it) there no redemption for white people. This racism thing? It never ends. It also suggests that ‘black/brown’ people are never free of ‘oppression’. This trainer infers that ‘black/brown’ people will always be ‘under the foot of white people’. How messed up is that? How nihilist and hopeless. Do you believe that? Do you want to believe that? Is this your experience? It’s certainly not mine.

In addition, I couldn’t help but notice that there was *one* actor from the ‘global majority’ in this play. Imagine being separated out like that. And what if that ‘global majority’ actor happened to have a white mother and ‘black’ father? Would he be told his mother loved him less because of his skin? What of the white actors who have ‘black’ partners and children? Will they be told they cannot help but love their children less because their skin is not ‘white’? It’s horrific and destructive. And yet this kind of thing is happening not just in our National Theatre but in academia and schools. Divisive and nihilist to say the least. How does one form relationships when these boundaries are set in front of us against our will?

The

Scottish Union for Education

outlines the new obsession in their latest newsletter noting that this racialising of people by separating them into skin colour boxes is actually creating racism.

“As the saying goes, a stranger is just a friend you haven’t met yet. Unfortunately, young black and white kids are less likely to end up as friends when they are being educated in such a one-sidedly negative way, and when the ‘anti-racist’ education they receive pushes the idea that we have two very different races: those who are white and assumed to be privileged and those who are black and are victims. In this respect, Scotland’s educational establishment risk creating an increasingly separatist state, where the potential for integration and assimilation is undermined by the very people who claim to be concerned about racism.”

Jackie (NTS Director) has ordered a review after the Free Speech Union complained the training treated “members of one racial group less favourably than members of others”. I cannot help but think Jackie is commenting as if *this* is the first time she has heard of it. And yet I know from other people who have worked with NTS that this training has been going on at least a year and that Jackie has participated in the sessions.

The fact is that racial segregation IS happening in the Scottish arts sector and has been for some years and gained particular traction during the BLM riots of 2020.

LJ Findlay Walsh is the Director of Take Me Somewhere. She was a key player in the transition of the Arches into a space for Live Art and away from its theatre and egalitarian foundations. Project X also features quite heavily in embedding segregationist hierarchal power structures in the Scottish Performing Arts Sector.

Segregation IS illegal. Section 13(5) of the Equality Act prohibits it. Currently Don’t Divide Us, an organisation campaigning on a return to colour blind policies and speaking up against the divisive nature of the new anti racism, is supporting the healthcare worker, Carol Richardson in such a legal case. Carol was denied a position on a leadership course on the NHS purely on the basis of her (white) skin colour. The idea being that BAME staff were ‘unsafe’ otherwise. This is a common narrative and a damaging one. It denies us the opportunity to form relationships and make up our own minds about people. It denies us free will. It infantilises those who are from a ‘BAME/BIPOC’ background. And it’s simply morally and ethically corrupt.

Of course whilst all this is going on a whole infrastructure is being built (and heavily subsidised) that NEEDS racism. I have written before about the AntiRacism Industrial Complex being funded in the millions and seeping into every element of society. So whilst we call out NTS for its wholly abhorrent training, it is but a symptom of the much larger malaise. Below is a who’s who of the antiracism racket being organised on our dime by our legislators.

Tom Harlow ‘Cabaret Against Hate’ - stripper and children’s performer. Really. Wings Over Scotland has written about him here. Heroic and egalitarian he is not.

Note the kryptonite words of ‘fascism’ ‘far right’ and ‘Islamaphobia’. Like ‘trans women are women’ they act as a shield for any real seeking of understanding… or truth. Because anyone that offers criticality is met with these shields. And criticality is needed. Otherwise we further plant the seeds of our own demise. And no one (really) wants that.

Stay tuned for my next post: “Bloodletting: When Scottish Arts Embraced Deviance, The Arches and The Royal Scottish Conservatoire Contemporary Theatre Course”

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