Trevor Phillips’s recent speech regarding race in the UK has received a large amount of publicity. This is following newspaper reports that the speech was coming, with fairly accurate leaks as to its contents which could only have come from Mr Phillips himself.
The speech, entitled ‘After 7/7 Sleepwalking to segregation’, has been quite controversial, with attacks on Mr Phillips from a variety of quarters including the Muslim communities.
However the speech is merely a repetition, with some updating, of previous speeches that Mr Phillips has given [eg see English Rights Campaign item dated the 18 September 2005]. Mr Phillips is now perceived by some as being opposed to multiculturalism. This is simplistic.
What is important about the speech is that Mr Phillips is setting out the agenda the so-called Commission for Racial Equality [CRE] will adopt for the future. Given that the speech is following the recent bombings in London, then it might expected that it is response to the recent acts of terrorism. That is not the case, as Mr Phillips criticised multiculturalism more than a year ago and has been making other comments since.
But the main point is that Mr Phillips is telling us what the CRE will be doing. He makes that clear in his speech. He is not passing an opinion or engaging in a debate. Despite being an unelected quangocrat, he is dictating.
Notwithstanding Mr Phillips’s tenure of the CRE in the run up to 7/7, he does not take any responsibility for the complete failure to predict those bombings, but he is very eager to take full credit for the CRE for allegedly smoothing things over afterwards:
‘People talk a lot about the race relations industry, usually disparagingly. I am proud to say that this summer, our industry did its part in holding communities together at a time of great stress. We experienced no major conflicts...This is in no small part due to the work of the people often casually abused as race relations busybodies, working on the ground, calming, cajoling and conciliating. Many are paid, but tens of thousands are unpaid, and do it because they want our country to be a better place.
So I want to take this opportunity to say thank you to all those who worked with us in that period: the so-called race relations industry showed itself in reality to be a vital post-emergency service.’
It may well be of course that the reason why there was not widespread violence was because the English are a peaceable nation.
Mr Phillips devotes a large part of his speech sorting out New Orleans and the reasons for the humanitarian disaster there. In this speech he prefers to cite New Orleans as an example rather than the Los Angeles riots which he had cited previously.
The USA is completely differently to the UK. The USA is traditionally an immigrant country whereas the UK is traditionally an emigrant country. The USA did have widespread slavery, an issue which sparked the American civil war, and has had legally enforced segregation and discrimination up until the 1960s. Non of that applies to the UK, for which the legacy of the end of the British Empire is more important.
Mr Phillips describes the USA as being a segregated society:
‘This is a segregated society, in which the one truth that is self-evident is that people cannot and never will be equal. That is why, for all of us who care about racial equality and integration, America is not our dream, but our nightmare.’
Based on that assertion, Mr Phillips maps out a different scenario for Britain. He advocates integration. He immediately deals with the issue as to what he means by integration and rejecting assimilation:
‘There are some old-fashioned types who think of integration as just another word for assimilation. But no-one seriously believes that we should all, speak, look, dress, worship and act the same.
However, there has to be a balance struck between an ‘‘anything goes’’ multiculturalism on the one hand, which leads to deeper division and inequality; and on the other, an intolerant, repressive uniformity. We need a kind of integration that binds us together without stifling us. We need to be a nation of many colours that combine to create a single rainbow.
Yes, that does mean recognising diversity and rejecting assimilation.’
Mr Phillips is playing with words in that he is trying to differentiate the difference between integration and assimilation. Enoch Powell, in the speech quoted in the English Rights Campaign item dated the 15 July 2005 said:
‘To be integrated into a population means to become for all practical purposes indistinguishable from its other members.’
This is not what Mr Phillips means at all. He simplifies the definition of assimilation and then rejects it. The concept of assimilation, as defined by Mr Phillips, would never exist in Britain in practice. This is because Britain is a free society and how people lead their own lives is their own business. The recognition and respect for the freedom of the individual and the willingness to live and let live tempers and makes practical the concept of assimilation.
But Mr Phillips also rejects ‘an “anything goes” multiculturalism’ on the grounds that it will lead to division and inequality. His definition of equality, as he sets out in his speech, has already been dealt with in the English Rights Campaign item dated 24 September 2005. By equality he means race quotas. He objects to ‘an “anything goes” multiculturalism’ as it will not enforce the correct quota of ethnic minorities of every organisation in the country.
Mr Phillips calls for more integration as a means of avoiding segregation. In furtherance of that end, he sets out ‘what being British is all about’:
‘First and foremost, our shared values: for example an attachment to democracy, freedom of speech, and equality, values which anyone who expects to live in Britain must respect and abide by, both notionally and in practice.
Second, we share common traditions which, whatever we do at home, we all agree to respect and observe in our everyday encounters. Central to these I would say are our common language, our good manners, our care for children.
We also cherish a tradition of poking fun at politicians, priests and do-gooders, and – though I qualify for mockery on two counts – I think that is a tradition not to be tampered with lightly. And as long as new customs do not conflict with our values, let’s embrace them as part of the fabric of our community life. They too will one day join our shared traditions, the outstanding example of course, being the Indian restaurant – now not Indian at all but almost wholly British.
Thirdly, we maintain diverse, individualistic, even eccentric lifestyles in our private lives. No-one tells us how to speak, how to dress, what we should eat or how we should worship. These are all individual choices, to be respected as long as they do not interfere with our fundamental values, or our long-cherished traditions. And unlike some other countries, we tend to embrace new additions to our lifestyle choices – whether it is new music, or new kinds of clothes.’
Of the 3 main points which supposedly define Britishness, Mr Phillips’s first point [and ‘foremost’] relates to shared values. Yet not only is it patently obvious that a very large number of the immigrant communities do not share these values [eg Muslim fundamentalists regarding freedom of speech and even democracy], but there are also large differences of opinions regarding equality. The English Rights Campaign does not share Mr Phillips’s concept of equality at all, and nor would most of the general public.
Mr Phillips’s second point relates to traditions. Most would like to agree that we do have a rather English sense of humour unique to us, and we do laugh at our politicians. But this is an aspect of Britishness and it is not enough in itself. The same can be said of the third point Mr Phillips raises.
In fact one could apply a very large part of the points Mr Phillips cites to almost any Western country. Are not the French, or Dutch, or Australians etc also believers in democracy and freedom of speech? Do they not also have good manners or care for their children? Do they not also like new kinds of clothes?
These matters are not enough to define Britishness.
What defines Britishness, or Englishness, is a shared culture - political, religious, language, customs and national character [eg the stiff upper lip]. But Mr Phillips cannot cite these as he also advocates multiculturalism and continued mass immigration.
Multiculturalism dictates that the cultures of the immigrant communities are equal and must therefore be integrated into society on the same terms as the host culture, in the name of diversity. Immigrants already have their own culture. So the combination of continued mass immigration and multiculturalism must dilute British/English culture - especially when combined with so-called anti-racism [which condemns British/English culture as racist].
[Mr Phillips has previously denied that there is any such thing as a host British/English culture! This will be examined in the near future.]
Nor does Mr Phillips cite the most important aspect of all - patriotism. A belief in one’s own country and a pride in its culture and history. This is usually reinforced by a shared history. Mr Phillips cannot cite this, as immigrants do not have a pride in British history as they are foreigners and already have their own loyalties. They may respect Britain, but that is not the same. Also Mr Phillips, as with all communists and their fellow travellers, hates this country and its history. His whole political career is based on his contempt for Britain and he has spent a large amount of time attacking British history.
Mr Phillips then sets out what he regards as Britain’s drift towards segregation, which he splits into hard and soft segregation. Hard segregation is the issue of where people live and which school or which university they go to. Soft segregation is with whom people socialise.
Mr Phillips is of the opinion that universities have ‘started to become colour-coded’ and that ‘residentially, some districts are on their way to becoming fully fledged ghettos’. He defines ghettos as being ‘places where more than two-thirds of the residents belong to a single ethnic group’.
Mr Phillips points out that the number of residential ghettos are increasing:
‘The number of people of Pakistani heritage in what are technically called “ghetto” communities trebled during 1991-2001; 13% in Leicester live in such communities (the figure 10.8% in 1991); 13.3% in Bradford (it was 4.3% in 1991).’
Not only does Mr Phillips complain that certain districts are becoming ghettos, but he believes that schools are similarly affected:
‘A study by the Young Foundation in London’s east end, to be published as ‘‘The New East End’’ next February, shows that, despite heroic efforts by the local education authority, the choices made by parents themselves in Tower Hamlets are also entrenching segregation. There:
In primary schools in 2002, 17 schools had more than 90% Bangladeshi pupils; 9 schools had fewer than 10%.
In the 15 secondary schools, figures from Ofsted reports since 2000 show that three denominational schools (of which two are Roman Catholic) had fewer than 3% Bangladeshi pupils, whereas two schools had over 95% Bangladeshi pupils and a further three over 80%.’
Regarding soft segregation, Mr Phillips cites CRE statistics that:
‘Last year, we showed that most Britons could not name a single good friend from a different race; fewer than one in ten could name two – and even in London, which is one-third black or brown, a derisory proportion of whites had non-white friends. Just as alarmingly, we showed that young people from ethnic minorities were twice as likely to have a circle of pals exclusively from their own community, as were older ethnic minority folk.
This year we repeated the exercise.
Behaviour in white Britain has not changed a bit. Last year, 94% of white Britons said that all or most of their friends are white. This year it is 95%. Once again a majority – 55% – could not name a single non-white friend, and this was true of white Britons of all ages, classes and regions.
What the figures tell us about the behaviour of ethnic minority Britons is even bleaker. Last year, 31% of ethnic minority Britons said that most or all of their friends were from ethnic minority backgrounds; we found that this trend was stronger among the young than the old. This year the figures show a marked turn for the worse.
The 47% of ethnic minority Britons who last year said that most or all of their friends were white has now shrunk to 37%; and the proportion who have mainly or exclusively ethnic minority friends has grown from 31% to 37%. This is way beyond any statistical fluctuation.
It also remains true that younger Britons are more exclusive than older Britons. It must surely be the most worrying fact of all that younger Britons appear to be integrating less well than their parents.’
Mr Phillips recognises the scale of the dilemma when he points out that ‘within the next decade’ both Birmingham [England’s second largest city] and Leicester will become cities in which the English are a racial minority.
According to Mr Phillips, the solution to the problem of segregation is integration and an integrated society ‘has three essential features’:
• ‘Equality: everyone is treated equally, has a right to fair outcomes, and no-one should expect privileges because of what they are.
• Participation: all groups in the society should expect to share in how we make decisions, but also expect to carry the responsibilities of making the society work.
• Interaction: no-one should be trapped within their own community, and in the truly integrated society, who people work with, or the friendships they make, should not be constrained by race or ethnicity.’
Mr Phillips further states:
‘One crucial error we could make is to forget that equality is an absolute precondition for integration. A society in which most ethnic minority Britons are poorer, less well educated, less healthy and less politically engaged won’t be integrated.’
Once again, Mr Phillips’s definition of equality, as he sets out in his speech, has already been dealt with in the English Rights Campaign item dated 24 September 2005. By equality he means race quotas.
As far as immigrants being poorer, this is inevitable. Ethnic minority immigrants mostly come from the Third World which is poorer. Many are asylum seekers. Many have paid what are very large sums of money for them to organised crime rackets in order to be smuggled here. It is inevitable that statistically ethnic minorities will be poorer on average. It is wholly wrong to cite this as a barrier to integration and if it is, then it is a further reason for mass immigration to be ended.
And in order to achieve what he sees as an integrated society Mr Phillips says:
‘This autumn the Commission is setting out its plans for an ambitious new programme to encourage greater integration. It will inform everything we do, and we want the whole CRE family to play a part in this work.
At its heart will lie three aims:
• a relentless focus on greater equality;
• a drive towards more equal participation; and
• steps to promote renewed interaction between Britons of different backgrounds and different traditions.’
Furthermore:
‘We know that real commitment to equality in government, in our neighbourhoods, and in the workplace won’t happen until minorities have a voice. That is why this year we will be working with you to increase the diversity of those appointed to public bodies and positions such as health boards, school governors and cultural institutions.
We also intend to start the drive early to make political parties more inclusive in their nominations for parliamentary and council seats. Since 2001 the proportion of ethnic minority councillors in the UK has slumped. There are still only 15 ethnic minority MPs when there should be more than 50. That has to change.’
So we cannot complain that we have not been warned of coming attractions!
Mr Phillips continually assumes that only ethnic minorities can properly represent ethnic minorities. This might make him very important, but it is untrue. True representation is determined by principles and not skin colour.
It is to be noted that the Tories have not condemned this speech, despite the prospect of being told who they may appoint as candidates. One presumes that they are eager to seek Mr Phillips’s approval.
There are 2 fundamental flaws in Mr Phillips’s rationale. These flaws stem from Mr Phillips’s politically correct and communist politics.
Firstly, he has set out what he believes to be a problem of growing segregation. He believes that this problem must be solved by government action to ensure integration. To that end he has produced a series of proposals which he is going to implement via the CRE irrespective of public opinion. These proposals include some carrots such as summer camps for children and spending £2million on ‘integrated sport’. Other proposals are sticks, such as the proposals for altering school catchment areas, and the extra red tape of so-called ‘race equality impact assessment’, the enforcement of a ‘race equality duty’, the demand for information of ‘equality performance of potential partners’, ‘equality audits’, ‘and new incentives for shareholders to hold their boards to account on equality issues’.
In other words, there will be a more aggressive prosecution of the British Inquisition.
All of this is to force people to behave in such a way that is consistent with the theory of the multicultural experiment and mass immigration. Mr Phillips is not developing policies to suit the interests of the public. He intends to try to control and manipulate the public to suit the interests of the political theory.
It will not work. Communism had a whole host of theories and they did not work. Communism has collapsed throughout eastern Europe and we only have to look at Zimbabwe to see how it works out in practice.
Even in the UK, we had the theory of Keynesian economics, which advocated increasing the money supply as a means of solving unemployment. The result was inflation and higher unemployment. So the government tried to solve that by introducing public sector wage norms, private sector wage norms, going rates, price controls, wage controls, exchange rate controls, mortgage controls, beer and sandwiches at Number 10 for union barons etc in order to try and stop people reacting to the billions of extra pounds being pumped into circulation.
It all failed and ultimately we ended up with the Winter of Discontent [or the 3 day week under the Tories]. The theory was wrong and eventually Keynesian reflation economics was abandoned.
The theory of multiculturalism and mass immigration is wrong. It should be abandoned. Mr Phillips may be able to make people’s lives miserable with all his meddling, but he will fail to control the public. This is a democracy and not a totalitarian state [at least not yet]. Mr Phillips cannot control how people think and what they believe.
The second fundamental flaw in Mr Phillips’s rationale is his blind commitment to mass immigration despite its direct and predictable consequences. Mr Phillips is not so foolish that he is unable to see the inevitable attack he will face on this and he tries to fob it off in his speech:
‘I can imagine the glee in some quarters at the picture we are reporting. But those who see this as an argument against immigration should not take comfort from what I am saying. History does not support their case. The speed and scale of immigration have had little impact on the levels of integration in the past sixty years.
For example, among minority groups who seem to have found integration easiest, East African Asians arrived in a rush – over a period of months, whilst Jews took decades to get here in numbers. There are twice as many African Caribbeans as there are Bangladeshis, but their levels and ease of integration are very different.’
He is open about his intention to support mass immigration and that he intends to see the continued rise in the numbers of ethnic minorities as a proportion of the total population. He cites a YouGov poll in support:
‘CRE research shows that for the first time in sixty years we are growing more relaxed about our ethnic differences. We accept that there is a need for immigration:
• in our April YouGov poll, one quarter of our respondents said there should be no arbitrary limit on the proportion of the UK’’s population which is immigrant; while
• two-thirds think a proportion of over 15% is okay.
Since the migrant and ethnic minority populations are still below 10%, we have a way to go before Britons feel threatened by pure numbers.’
This is hogwash. If Mr Phillips genuinely believes that the English people, who are bearing the brunt of mass immigration, want to see more immigrants in the country, that they want to see themselves to being reduced to a racial minority in Birmingham and Leicester and ultimately in England as a whole, then he is delusional. Even a majority of the ethnic minorities wish to see an end to so-called asylum seeking, especially as it is so widely abused.
Writing in February this year, Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch UK said:
‘After years, even decades, of being bludgeoned into silence by false insinuations of racism, people are saying what they really think about present levels of immigration. Sneering at ‘‘the tabloids’’ by the usual suspects will no longer wash.
The opinion polls say it all: 77 per cent disagree that the Government has immigration under control; 75 per cent are concerned about extra pressure on public services and a similar number believe that there are too many immigrants in Britain.
These are astonishing numbers. And it gets worse for the Government. Three quarters of the public do not believe it is being open and honest about immigration and 45 per cent say it will influence their vote at the forthcoming General Election. This explains the hints, nudges, winks and leaks that emerged over the weekend in the lead-up to yesterday’s announcement of a ‘‘five-year plan’’ for asylum and immigration.
It also explains an extraordinarily defensive article by the Prime Minister in yesterday’s Press. He claims that the reason immigration is a difficult subject is nothing to do with political correctness, nor the risk of being accused of racism.
Really? He could have fooled me. His spin doctors have been smearing my organisation, Migrationwatch, for years.’
Like Vince Cable in his recent Demos report, Mr Phillips intends to see the ethnic minorities continue to double every 20 years as a proportion of the total population. His aim is to reduce the English to being a racial minority in England in about 50 years.
The CRE’s YouGov poll did not ask their respondents if they were in favour of that!
It is plain common sense, as Enoch Powell recognised long ago, that the scale of mass immigration was bound to make integration more difficult as the immigrants would not need to interact with the host community and would create their own immigrant communities instead. People will prefer to mix with those with whom they have something in common. Even in communist Russia the government found that engineers tended to socialise with other engineers, doctors with other doctors etc. It is human nature and no amount of meddling will alter that.
The scale of mass immigration will therefore in turn create segregation and ghettos. This is inevitable especially given the complete disregard as to the compatibility of the immigrants to the host English community. The solution is to end mass immigration. If we cannot cope with the size of the immigrant communities already here, then there is no point in letting in millions more immigrants.
But Mr Phillips simply cannot contemplate such a thing. He is a bigot in the true meaning of he word in that his mind is closed [bigot: ‘a person who is intolerant of any ideas other than his own’ - Collins English Dictionary]. He is incapable of accepting the obvious and can do no other than bawl racist at those who dare to disagree with him. The vast number of opinion polls which demonstrate the anger at continued mass immigration are completely ignored. As far as Mr Phillips is concerned those opinion polls do not exist and such opinions are racist.
There is a choice of analysis. On the one hand there is that analysis of Mr Phillips that it is the people who are wrong and the theory of multiculturalism and mass immigration is correct. That what is needed therefore are new measures to force people to behave in ways consistent with the theory.
Alternatively, the theory is wrong and we need to revert to the common sense of patriotism, and an end to mass immigration and the politically correct multiculturalism that is presently accompanying that mass immigration.
Mr Phillips’s route involves a greater role for the CRE and the British Inquisition, the alternative involves the disbandment of the CRE and the British Inquisition and the rejection of political correctness.
Although that is the choice, we have no means of making it. Mr Phillips is an unelected, unaccountable quangocrat who enjoys Labour’s full support. He will impose his views on the rest of us whether we like it or not.
