A working-class guy hung out to dry

Sean Corby's life was turned upside down by vindictive race agitators and a craven employer

Sean Corby and wife Tracy

Sean Corby is just about the least racist person you could wish to meet. Married to a black woman and with mixed-race children, he has spent much of his life working in music and the arts alongside people of all different races and backgrounds. As an accomplished jazz trumpeter, he has played and recorded with artists such as the Jazz Jamaica All Stars and Beverley Knight. A decade ago, he founded his own multi-faith orchestra. He also once worked for a children’s charity, visiting young prisoners and spending time in tough inner-city areas, where he taught kids boxing and tried to steer them away from smoking and drugs.

In 2018, Sean, 52 and from Huddersfield, took up employment with the workplace conciliation service Acas, eventually rising to become a conciliator himself. A glance at his CV shows that much of his life has been spent in the task of bringing people together.

Sean’s life and career were progressing quite nicely. But then, in June 2021, he did something that turned everything upside down. He went on to the Acas internal communication and discussion platform and engaged in a debate around the issues of Black Lives Matter and critical race theory (the latter is the controversial concept that racism, white privilege, unconscious bias and the like are woven into the fabric of our society though our laws and institutions).

Sean didn’t follow what might be considered the ‘fashionable’ line on these topics. In a series of posts, he politely explained that, while he was fiercely opposed to racism, he felt that racial identity politics were divisive and ultimately led to segregation and separatism. He said that he agreed instead with the sentiment of Martin Luther King that humans should be judged ‘not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character’.

Sean also told colleagues that he didn’t see why it was necessary for his employer to establish a ‘race network’ that expressly excluded people of a certain skin colour. As he later said, ‘My wife and sons are black. If there was a group that only I could join because I have white skin, from which my wife and sons would be excluded because of their skin colour, I would find this abhorrent … Why should I be excluded from trying to promote race equality purely because of the colour of my skin?’

After he posted the messages, all hell let loose. Four colleagues – one of whom was the well-known veteran race activist Zita Holbourne – submitted a collective complaint. They argued that Sean’s views were ‘intimidating, racist and bullying’. He had created an ‘unsafe environment’ for black and minority ethnic workers, and they were ‘concerned about other individuals working with him’. If the posts were not removed, it would send a message that ‘Acas is not a safe place for racialised workers’.

None of the complainants had ever actually met Sean. He worked in Acas’s Leeds office; they in London. But they just knew that he was a race hater who could not be trusted around people of colour.

A senior Acas manager looked into the matter and concluded that Sean’s comments on the platform were neither racist nor objectively offensive. An internal investigation cleared him of any wrongdoing. Despite this, he was ordered to remove the posts as the four colleagues had found them offensive. Sean protested, but Acas wouldn’t relent. Rather than defend Sean’s freedom of expression, they capitulated to the race agitators – a decision that Sean described as ‘corporate cowardice’.

Sean took Acas to an employment tribunal. He alleged that in ordering him to remove the posts, the organisation had discriminated against him on the grounds of his philosophical belief. In an important decision, the tribunal ruled that his stance against critical race theory did indeed constitute a philosophical belief for the purposes of equality law. The tribunal noted Sean’s ‘overall opposition to what he describes as identity politics, which pit groups against each other based upon immutable characteristics such as race’.

But the tribunal ruled against him on the wider claim of discrimination. In its judgment, the tribunal agreed with Acas’s assertion that it was necessary to order the removal of the posts in the interests of a ‘harmonious workplace’ – though how denying the right of one side in a debate to express a perfectly legitimate view squares with promoting harmony wasn’t quite clear. The tribunal went on: ‘An employer has a duty of care to all of its employees, and where there is behaviour in the workplace that genuinely upsets a group of employees, as is the case here, it is not in our view unreasonable or unlawful for an employer to take steps to prevent that behaviour continuing.’

It is worth reading those words again. For what they amount to is what Sean has described as a ‘heckler’s veto’. Opinions that are entirely valid – mainstream even – could be suppressed in the workplace simply on the grounds that a member of staff says, ‘I am offended.’

It got worse for Sean. When he spoke about his case to a media outlet and a couple of small campaign groups, Acas sacked him. He had said nothing controversial. Neither had he disclosed any information that wasn’t already in the public domain as a result of the tribunal proceedings. But he was fired anyway. Sean is now pursuing a further claim for unfair dismissal on the grounds that Acas interfered with his right to freedom of expression and, in any case, his actions did not constitute gross misconduct.

But there is another twist. After the original tribunal dismissed his discrimination claim, Sean learned that one of three panel members, Mohammad Taj, was a close associate of Zita Holbourne – the race activist who, alongside others, had lodged the original complaint against him. The pair had campaigned together on several anti-racist initiatives and had served jointly on the TUC’s race relations committee. An image was published on Facebook showing the pair standing alongside each other while giving a clenched fist salute. Troublingly, Taj had not recused himself from the case, nor declared details of his relationship with Holbourne. Sean’s lawyers have, quite understandably, now demanded the ruling be quashed on the grounds of bias.

I recently spoke to Sean at length about his experience. It is clear that he is a fundamentally decent man who throughout his life has tried to do good. His ‘crime’ was to challenge an ideology that, as he saw it, was driving deep wedges between people. For that, his career was destroyed. ‘I’m just a working-class guy hung out to dry,’ he told me.

Anyone concerned about the pernicious growth of cancel culture in our society should follow this case closely, for it is far from over. Even better, I urge readers to send Sean a message of support at seanshoju@icloud.com. He deserves our solidarity.

---

A reminder that you can follow me on X/Twitter: @PaulEmbery