Dear Trevor,
I don’t think I have communicated with you directly since July 2003, but your recent speech in Manchester is both a wake-up call for all concerned with race relations in Britain as well as a programme of action for those who recognise that the past few years have seen an alarming deterioration in multicultural relations in the country.
A flurry of reports has raised questions previously allowed to lie fallow. The question of ethnic minority groups voluntarily segregating themselves because of the protection and comfort that brings even after the original necessity of poverty and racism has gone; Katrina demonstrating to the world that the USA 100 years after the ending of slavery is scarcely any nearer to a free, multicultural society; the continuation of racism in sport, particularly football; the knowledge that white people have no friends among blacks and are often bitterly opposed to any immigration, fanned by the Tory press; and perhaps the worst jolt of all that the third generation of children in Britain are being increasingly educated in ghetto schools and educational underachievement will lead to economic underachievement in later life.
On the other hand were manifestations that encouraged the view that racism was lessening. An educated and prosperous minority was arising in all minority groups. In British sport such as football players, including black players, earn millions of £s per year. In the US media people such as Oprah Winfrey wield immense influence, entertainers such as Sammy Davis Jnr. captured all hearts, and black businessmen flourish. All have done well for themselves, but affected not one jot the position that the majority of black men remain at the bottom of the pile.
I have considerable admiration for you, Trevor, but I would suggest that to some extent mistakes by yourself have unwittingly contributed to the existing position.
I must first stress the importance of Wolverhampton in the field of race relations. Wolverhampton was the town which raised itself from the depths of being regarded as the racist capital of Britain in the days of Enoch Powell 1966-74 to Premier University City and Anti-War Centre from 2003 . No one has spanned this range through their own efforts and the anti-racist bodies that it created. Two above all were the jewels in our crown. The first was the Bilston Community College, the first multicultural, open access College in Britain with 30% of ethnic minority staff . This was closed by the racist Further Education Funding Council and remains closed through the efforts of the equally racist Learning & Skills Council (LSC). Although pronounced dead BCC refuses to lie down and currently the attempt of the LSC to come to a secret agreement with its auditors, Deloitte after suing them, is being challenged in Parliament and by the powerful regional newspaper, the Express and Star.
The second jewel was the Wolverhampton Race Equality Council which was the oldest in Britain founded in 1965 with a record of being continuously controlled by the town’s two main ethnic minority groups African-Caribbean and Indian. This was closed by you, Trevor, and although the WREC had fallen on hard times, it is being found almost impossible to replace it by the body set up in Wolverhampton with a brief to create A New Race Equality Agency for Wolverhampton.
Another unfortunate occurrence was the inability and unwillingness of the CRE to assess the ethnic composition of the workforces of the most powerful institutions in Britain. In my 2003 letter I asked if the CRE could furnish me with details of the ethnic breakdown of staff at the Dept for Education and Skills and the various institutions under its control, which includes the Learning and Skills Council. As I remember it, your reply was that your remit did not cover the collection of such statistics.
I raise this in connection with the relations of the WREC and the local newspaper the Express & Star. On the only occasion, to my knowledge, that WREC asked the Express & Star to supply a breakdown of the ethnicity of its employees it refused. This at a time when our survey showed that many employers were seeking the assistance of WREC to help them create better race relations within their organisations, when large firms such as Beattie’s were most willing to co-operate with WREC and firms such as the grocers Morrison’s were based in the north of England and were well used to providing such information.
I raise sharply the question of the Express and Star because it does now have ethnic minority reporters and represents the interests of the majority of people in Wolverhampton by opposing the war in Iraq (a topic to which I will return) but represents, in my view an impediment to the full flowering of multiculturalism in Wolverhampton. It basks in the self righteous claim to represent the city in all matters, especially industrial matters proudly carrying such slogans as Investment in People and Equal Opportunity Employer when the one thing that would test their right to such claims is missing - a breakdown of the ethnicity of their workforce.
An earlier example was in education. I sent an email to David Bell the Chief Inspector of Schools saying that I was `gobsmacked’ to learn that he was supporting his inspectors in removing all reference to ethnicity of staff or pupils in schools inspection. I went on, ‘If race and ethnicity has no priority for OFSTED, it is likely to have none for the schools and colleges it inspects or the outside providers that they employ.’ That was in June 2003. The inevitable happened and in March 2005 another email to teaching unions was headed `How Not to Run Teachers’ Trade Unions’. This quoted an unprecedented open discussion of three of the main teachers’ unions the NUT, NAS/Union of Women Teachers, and the AT&L which discussed all the problems facing the unions, but failed to identify multiculturalism as one of these. Yet all of these unions have equal opportunities policies which are failing ethnic minority students at a time when racism is increasing.
Later, Ruth Kelly, the new Secretary of State for Education and Skills, spoke of who she would consult in her duties. She would talk with leaders of the trade unions, but she also failed to mention talks with leaders of ethnic minority communities.
Another fault of you Manchester speech was its failure to mention the only enquiry that has ever covered all the problems of multiculturalism in Britain. This was the Parekh Report, `The Future of Multi-ethnic Britain.’ This was established by the Runnymede Trust and published in 2000. You, Trevor, were a member of it along with other distinguished anti-racists such as Herman Ouseley , Stuart Hall and Andrew Marr. It was the most comprehensive revue ever undertaken. It gave a vision for Britain - rethinking the national story, identities in transition, reducing inequalities, dealing with racisms. It dealt with issues and institutions, police and policing, education, sport, immigration and asylum, politics and representation, religion and belief. Above all it showed that there could never be equality in Britain until there was economic equality. The report understood that change would be resisted, not least by the government whose race policies were and remain inadequate.
The policies of the Parekh Report have never been implemented. The Runnymede Trust found itself without sufficient resources to publicise its findings and together with its other distinguished charitable trust, the Rowntree battled on against apathy and hostility until we have reached the dangerous position we face today. This position is that large numbers of people now play a game of pretend anti-racism. Many ethnic minority people prefer the quiet life of falling into line with Blairite policies rather than wage principled struggles which might affect their career prospects. Others feel that the institutions they work in will suffer if principled anti-racism is insisted on. Others again are disillusioned with the timescale of ethnic minority advance or the apparent strength of the Blairite opposition. Others compare the comparative ease of building united fronts in the past compared with the present. All these things contribute to the present malaise where it is often difficult to distinguish between friend and foe. But principled resistance there still is, and we ignore it at our peril.
Finally, you have not discussed the key issue dividing not only Britain but the whole world. This is the war in Iraq. You mention that you neither support government policy nor oppose it, this not being in your remit. But discussion of the war will be the only touchstone by which your proposals will be judged. The majority of the people of Britain remain opposed to the war. The actions of Blair and Bush are the complete opposite of their declared intentions. They claim that they are fighting terrorism, whereas they are the terrorists with their illegal wars on Afghanistan and Iraq and clear intention to wage continuous war against the so-called `axis of evil’. These fantasies have been ended by an Al Queda inspired resistance of the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. Principled anti-racists must ask themselves whether New Labour under Blair can be influenced in any way or whether it is a canker at the heart of the labour movement which must be destroyed. Blair now threatens the civil liberties which make us a democracy. Freedom of speech will disappear if Blair’s concept of a society threatened by terrorism is a correct one. But it is not. Terrorism in Britain would be greatly reduced if the war in Iraq were ended and our troops brought home. We cannot prevent Islamic people in Britain wishing to deliver their fellow religionists from the terrorism of the British state under Blair. The future is the very ancient one of making war on Islam or finding ways of co-existing with a rejuvenated Islamic civilisation based on principles very different from that of global capitalist imperialism. We have enough on our plate to civilise our own capitalist society which threatens to destroy us with its two perennial problems of moving through inexplicable periods of booms and slumps and creating such extremes of wealth and poverty that it threatens to invoke strife which could destroy the world.
Where stand you on such matters, friend Trevor Phillips? Will you be a real anti-racist prepared to stand up for equality and freedom for white, blacks and coloureds alike? Will you avoid the mistakes made in the US where race equality has stalled? Or will you prove to be a pretend-racist (as powerful voices within the ethnic minority communities are already suggesting), joining instead of opposing the Blairite project of New Labour which threatens us all?
DR. GEORGE BARNSBY
Email: barnsby@blueyonder.co.uk
Web: www.gbpeopleslibrary.co.uk
October 2005