Shout Out UK, a social enterprise, has complained to the Press Standards organisation IPSO after being targeted by Hayes as part of his culture war crusade.

Tory MP Sir John Hayes has been accused by a non-partisan UK social enterprise of spreading “misinformation” about their work.

Shout Out UK (SOUK), a group which promotes media and political literacy through training programmes, was accused by Hayes in a recent Mail on Sunday article of being “a group that claims people living in rural areas are ‘as bad as the genuine believers of white supremacy’.”

The Mail article, published in December, suggested that SOUK and LGBT+ charity Stonewall were part of a “cabal of militant agitators well funded by the taxpayer”. The word ‘cabal’ has been frequently used in recent years by adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory to describe their liberal enemies, and its use suggests a conspiratorial mindset.

According to SOUK, they were not offered any right of reply to this damaging accusation before the article was published. Subsequently, a response from the group, sent to the Mail on Sunday, was never published. The group has sent a complaint about the article to the Independent Press Standards Organisation.

In their response to the Mail article, SOUK stated that “The article by Tory MP Sir John Hayes is a prime example of misinformation, written to fuel division in our society.”

“In his article, he claims to fight for free speech and against Cancel culture, a tenet that, with a little research, he’d have realised we as an organisation firmly back.”

Shout Out UK said that the quote attributed to them by Hayes was taken from their Youth Voice platform, “a place for young people to voice opinions on a number of issues, some more controversial than others.” SOUK stated that they “make it clear on our platform that ‘the articles on our website are not endorsed by or the opinions of Shout Out UK, but, exclusively the views of the author’, a disclaimer he conveniently decided to leave out, running instead with the false claim that the opinions of the young person are our own.”

Culture Wars and Conspiracy Theories

Hayes’ attack on the group seems intended to fuel a culture war which he has been a leading proponent of in recent years.

Hayes is the Chairman of the Common Sense Group, an ultra-conservative group within the Parliamentary Conservative Party formed in 2020. The new group seems to be a continuation of the Cornerstone Group, formed in 2005 which aimed to “demolish the foundations of the liberal establishment and demonstrate to the electorate the fundamental flaws on which it is based.”

Back in 2005, Cornerstone Group leader Edward Leigh MP stated that “The next Conservative leader must mount a counter-offensive in the culture wars against rampant liberalism”. This group of Tory MPs have been trying to wage a culture war against social progress for almost 20 years now, and it seems that their latest bandwagon to jump on is the ‘war on woke’. 

In a 139-page manifesto, the 60 or so MPs who have joined Common Sense lay out their vision for the culture war. In an essay called ‘What is Wokeism and how can it be defeated?’, Orpington MP Gareth Bacon states that “Britain is under attack. Not in a physical sense, but in a philosophical, ideological and historical sense.”

In a blogpost on the manifesto, University of Sussex Professor Alan Lester says that “Upon first reading it I honestly didn’t know whether to laugh at its monstrous hypocrisy or cry at the very scary prospect of its “post-liberal” agenda being realised.” However, the revolutionary aims of this group are cause for concern according to Lester:

“These MPs want to discard Britain’s uncodified liberal constitution. “Leaving the EU”, Hayes warns, “is just the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end of this process. What is required is nothing less than a complete reconfiguration of the relationship between the individual, society, the economy and the state.””

For other MPs, membership of groups like Common Sense may simply be a way for MPs to stand out from the crowd of new Tory faces in parliament and get on TV. The group regularly promotes the ‘Cultural Marxism’ conspiracy theory, an idea that can be traced back to the Nazis’ obsession with ‘Cultural Bolshevism’, which they believed was a Jewish plot to change German culture.

The repetition of racist tropes like ‘Cultural Marxism’ is a perfect example of what the Shout Out UK contributor who so offended John Hayes MP said in the article in question. The article is clearly a personal reflection of growing up on a rural area where the writer experienced frequent, often unthinking racism. The full quote which Hayes decontextualised says “In not recognising its own accepted racism, rural Britain is as bad as the genuine believers of white superiority.”

Hayes’ Hypocrisy

Hayes is the MP for the safest Tory seat in the country in the country and has a history of supporting reactionary causes such as a total ban on abortion and the return of the death penalty. He and his Common Sense group colleagues are probably not aware of the Antisemtic heritage of the ‘Cultural Marxism’ idea, and probably do not consider themselves to be bigots. Yet they are clearly aligned against groups like Stonewall and BLM who represent historically marginalised people. Instead of listening to what these groups have to say, they repeat baseless accusations that they are hostile to a British way of life narrowly defined in their terms.

And at the same time as they rail against cancel culture, they actively try to cancel funding for groups like Stonewall and Shout Out UK. As SOUK told the Mail, 

“As free speech advocates, we may not agree with the young writers’ views in the article in question. However, we stand by their right to say them. Maybe Sir Hayes should put the views he expresses in the article into practice, and join us in standing up for free speech and open debate.”

Shout Out UK founder Matteo Bergamini also told LFF that “It’s unfortunate that MPs like Hayes and newspapers like the Daily Mail still insist on propagating misinformation. Hate and distrust are not what will build back better, but will instead divide and destabilise our democracy. It is why it’s highly important to remember that this is not a blue vs. red, or a Tory vs. Labour issue. It is about the very salvation and improvement of our democracy.”

“Differences of opinion and the freedom to express those opinions are what makes democracy possible. We must be willing to work with those we disagree with to accomplish our goal of ensuring that Political and Media Literacy are embedded in every school across the country. It is why we are aggressively non-partisan and why I am so proud that we are the Secretariat to the APPG on Political Literacy that has an incredible mix of politicians from all parties, willing to work with us in giving the next generation these vital skills.”

“Propagators of misinformation know full well that if we are all both politically and media literate, scare tactics and misinformation will no longer have the desired effect. They are on borrowed time.””

Both John Hayes and the Mail on Sunday were approached for comment but did not reply before publication of this article.

John Lubbock leads on the Right-Watch project at Left Foot Forward

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