Rarely a week passes without a rightwing commentator warning about the rise of “cancel culture” or decrying the “woke agenda”. “Wokeness” has been described as a threat to democracy, freedom of speech and – in the words of the culture secretary, Oliver Dowden – part of a wider effort to “do Britain down”. Boris Johnson’s government, cheered on by sections of the British press, is waging a “war on woke” to deal with this alleged crisis, targeting leftwing activists, anti-racists, academics and trans rights advocates.
Some have suggested ministers are stoking this culture war to distract voters from their failures in government. But this explanation underestimates the ideological reasons behind the government’s strategy, which is better understood as an attempt to shift the Overton window to the right while framing the rights of minorities as a fringe concern. The Conservatives seek a post-Brexit Britain bolstered by (among other things) an increasingly nativist and divisive populism, and a national pride in the achievements of the British empire, untrammelled by leftwing critics.
There is a long history in Britain of the right whipping up a moral panic about leftwing activists working within state institutions to promote minority issues that most “ordinary” people supposedly oppose. In the 1980s, the British media portrayed a coalition of Marxists, anti-racists, feminists and gay rights activists as the “loony left”, a trope that was embraced by editors, journalists and politicians alike, particularly during the 1987 general election.
