“Token blacks urgently wanted”

“No other qualifications required. Join the board of a FTSE 100 company and enjoy making millions in a congenial multicultural environment.”

No, this isn’t a real ad in the Appointments section of the Financial Times. But it will be if Legal & General has its way.

L&G is one of Britain’s biggest institutional investors that manages more than £1.2 trillion in assets, mostly on behalf of pension funds, and owns a chunk of most British blue-chip companies. That gives it hefty clout, which it’s prepared to use for blackmail purposes.

Its powers that be cast an eye over the demographics of FTSE 100 directors and issued a collective gasp: 37 out of 100 had all-white boards! There can be only one reason for that inequity: structural or institutional racism (I’m still waiting for someone to explain the difference).

They then used their formidable powers of logical reasoning to establish an ironclad link between that outrage and the inspiration behind the BLM movement:

“The horrifying killing of George Floyd and so many others has led many institutional investors to think much more seriously about structural racism and inequality,” stated the company’s communiqué.

Well, not on our watch, said L&G. The company then sent what’s effectively a blackmail note to all the FTSE 100 companies and, for good measure, to US companies in the S&P 500 register. Unless they put at least one BAME (B for preference) member on their board by 1 January, 2022, L&G will vote their boards out.

Somewhere in the background lurked the unspoken, but nonetheless real, threat that all those trillions will find other homes unless those structural/institutional racists comply. Now I do apologise for using so many acronyms, but those initials, L&G, BAME, BLM, fit together so snugly as to become both inseparable and indispensable.

If anyone still thinks that big business is inherently conservative, this latest development should dispel that misapprehension. In fact, the moneybags’ record in that department shows exactly the opposite.

The two evil regimes of modernity, Bolshevik Russia and Nazi Germany, weren’t short of financial support both internally and from abroad. Many of Russia’s richest men, such as the textile magnate Savva Morozov, pumped billions into the Bolsheviks’ coffers, while assorted German bankers and industrialists provided the same service for the Nazis.

At least, all those Krupps, Thyssens and Porsches could claim they were trying to thwart the communist threat. Many Wall Street firms funded the two satanic regimes out of unalloyed greed, which is deplorable but borderline understandable. (For details, refer to the extensively researched books by the Stanford University professor Anthony Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution and Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler.)

However, few of those sorely misguided individuals, some of whom paid for their mistakes with their freedom or lives, were ideologically committed to the causes they bankrolled.

L&G is different: the company doesn’t just trail in the wake of the BLM movement, but pushes its way to the front. Now, I seldom resort to arguments starting with the words “there ought to be a law against…”, but in this case I’ll make an exception.

L&G has a legal and moral responsibility to three groups only: their investors, shareholders and employees. The company is remiss in its duty if it adopts policies detrimental to all three, as it does in this case.

Seeing that I’m in the mood to refer people to other men’s writing, L&G’s bigwigs ought to read books by the American philosopher and sociologist Thomas Sowell, incidentally black himself.

Immune to charges of racism, Prof. Sowell exposed, reams of data in hand, the inanity of L&G-type thinking decades ago. Having read his ground-breaking research, I can assure L&G that no successful company, much less a FTSE 100 one, could afford to indulge in discriminatory practices even if its management were so inclined.

Companies compete not just for markets but also for talent. They have a vested interest, measurable in pounds and pence, in elevating to the decision-making positions those best qualified to make decisions.

Where there is no profit motive involved, shows Prof. Sowell, for example in public institutions, discrimination is more likely. Bigots there don’t pay their own money for the privilege to indulge in bigotry.

The picture of corporate life painted by L&G’s fecund minds is fake in every detail. Successful companies don’t hold back talented black executives just because they are black. If they lack BAME board members, it’s because no suitable candidates have emerged – it’s as simple as that.

In fact, L&G refutes itself with its own data. After all, if only 37 of the FTSE 100 companies have no black directors, that means the remaining 63, almost two-thirds, have them. Are they more broadminded? Or just lucky to have talented blacks on their staffs?

Cutting to the chase, L&G is calling for promoting less capable candidates, and hence stunting the more capable ones, for spurious ideological reasons. This is called reverse discrimination in Britain, affirmative action in the US and sheer idiocy in either country.

Less capable directors will make less profitable decisions, hurting their own shareholders and staffs, along with the three L&G groups I mentioned earlier, those the company has a moral and legal obligation to protect.

So yes, there ought to be a law against it. Meanwhile, until one is found and applied, I propose that the company’s name should be changed to Illegal & General.

P.S. The Dutch don’t want Britain to claim sole credit for cretinism. Ton Koopman’s Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra has just been denied government funding because of its lamentable lack of diversity. Personally, I haven’t seen many black musicians specialising in 18^th century music, but perhaps Dutch ministers boast a wider experience than mine. Actually, I’d deny Koopman any funds purely for artistic reasons, but that’s a separate argument.