I have seen the (so far unpublished) 26-point programme and it is dominated by gender equality and a smattering of projects on LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) issues… but not one single mention of race, faith or disabilities.

Hardly any wonder, then, that some people feel justified in saying “I told you so” when they warned way back in 2006 of a ‘hierarchy of equality’ developing when all equalities strands were merged together and the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) was set up.

The new equalities priorities aren’t the responsibility of the EHRC – they don’t do very much since they’ve had three-quarters of their funding chopped since 2010 – but is produced by the Government Equalities Office, or GEO.

Although the GEO has itself faced cuts they haven’t been anything like as severe as those meted out on the EHRC. And, since the GEO is better resourced, one would have hoped they might take up a bit of slack from the EHRC, especially as both are funded out of the same government pot. Any such hope was clearly in vain.

The complete absence of any GEO measure to tackle race inequality underlines the extent to which race remains firmly off the governments’ agenda.

I had hoped that the Lib Dem equalities ministers, Jo Swinson and Don Foster, might have flagged up the absence of race, especially after BAME party activists had been so frank with them in private meetings this year. But it looks like our energy and passion has not borne fruit on this occasion. In one ear and out the other.

The GEO document talks about broadening aspiration and choices for young girls, women in enterprise, helping parents with children back to work, childcare as a business opportunity, gender equality in employment practices, older women in the economy, body confidence and women in sport. It also calls for further investigation into barriers facing LGBT groups.

But not a dickeybird on barriers facing people of colour, or any other measure or aspiration to help those held back by racism.

The only sentence in the GEO report that impacts on BAME groups is this line: “reducing the compliance burden associated with the Public Sector Equality Duty.” In other words scrap it.

We’ve only recently had a huge, ultimately successful, fight to save the ‘general duty’ – an aspiration to work towards the elimination of discrimination after ministers planned to axe this mission statement.

Now the GEO want to ditch another part of Britain’s equalities laws, the Public Sector Equality Duty, which in many ways is even more important than the general duty. Speaks volumes about the priority ministers give to equalities. If it isn’t their pet subject then they’re just not interested.

Just a few weeks ago the coalition were forced to back down on the general duty after the House of Lords rejected the plan twice. I confidently predict that if ministers try to scrap the Public Sector Equality Duty there will be an even bigger rebellion, and a higher profile public campaign to save it. All of which will simply reinforce a public impression of how seriously, or not, the government takes equalities.

Judging by the GEO work programme you only count if you are a woman or are gay or lesbian. I’m all for action to address inequality in both these areas but not at the exclusion of other equalities subjects like race, faith, disabilities and human rights.

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

Over 100 delegates gathered on Saturday for the party’s first race equality conference which saw the launch of a 56-page report containing 30 recommendations for tackling racism in schools and the jobs market.

The report was the work of a race equality taskforce which was established by party leader Nick Clegg who also wrote a foreword.

Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats and the Social Liberal Forum, who joined forces to host the conference on Saturday 1st June, declared the event a success. You can see live Twitter reactions from delegates on hashtag #ldraceconf

The taskforce, led by former EMLD chair Baroness Meral Hussien-Ece, have spent a year taking evidence from experts, suggests measures to close the GCSE achievement gap between Black and white children and a schools ombudsman to make exclusions fairer.

On employment, the taskforce recommends that the private sector should monitor and publish equalities information just as public authorities do, and that national and local government should make better use of their purchasing power to force companies to improve diversity before getting public contracts.

You can view the report here and below:

In his keynote speech, Cable said: “I found this report very helpful. It is really admirable. I hope the party will take it seriously.”

He acknowledged that race equality had” slipped off the political agenda”, adding: “I think this report was good in highlighting some of the concrete realities. In the schools we have a five percent exclusion rate but for black African Caribbean’s it is 11 percent and for African Caribbean boys its’ almost double that.

“The impact of unemployment has been disproportionately felt by ethnic minorities. Public sector is far ahead of the private sector in taking race equality seriously so there is a differential impact felt through that.”

He said that government were already doing some things recommended by the taskforce like using equalities in procurement of public contracts with businesses but that it was sometimes a “tickbox exercise” and there was an argument for going further.

Cable admitted that government do not currently have any specific policies to tackle the pay differentials between similarly qualified BAME workers compared to white workers, saying: “There is an issue around pay, which is quite subtle, but an important one.”

The race equality taskforce report was covered by The Guardian who played up the areas of possible policy differences with the coalition. The paper commented:

“The panel, set up by the deputy prime minister to find effective measures to tackle discrimination, condemned plans in the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act to reduce employers’ liability for workplace discrimination and employment tribunals’ power to address the issue. The taskforce called for firms seeking government contracts to be obliged to promote race equality, and for targets for schools to recruit black or ethnic minority teachers.”

However the Lib Dem Voice blog for grassroots members saw past the sensational spin:

“While these bombshells will grab the headlines, there is food for thought throughout the report. Recommendation 25, for example, addresses the lack of progress in access to private sector employment for BAME applicants. This is a challenge. Bidding for public sector contracts as a small business already represents a minefield of boxes to tick. So how do we establish this policy without compounding the unfairness to small business? Answers on a postcard please.”

Some of those answers were in the report itself, which suggested that this change should apply to bigger businesses. Cable noted evidence that private sector employers are many more times likely to discriminate against BAME people and said more action to tackle this problem was needed.

In a statement on the eve of the EMLD/SLF conference, Clegg commented: “The Lib Dems have a proud history of fighting against racism and discrimination in all areas of life. I welcome this report which raises important questions about how we can continue to tackle discrimination on the grounds of race and improve social mobility for people from ethnic minority backgrounds, helping us to build a fairer society.

“I’d like to give my personal thanks to all of those who worked on this report for shining a light on issues that are too often ignored, or else deemed too sensitive or difficult to grapple with.”

Former London region chair Jonathan Fryer, a Euro candidate, wrote a blog about the event which noted:

“A great deal of work still needs to be done. Although many of us living in London may be lulled into the comfortable feeling that we live in a happy, secure rainbow nation the facts often speak otherwise.”

Speakers at the EMLD-SLF conference, which was held at Amnesty International’s London headquarters, included ex-Charlton Athletic player Paul Mortimer from Show Racism the Red Card, Dr Rob Berkeley director of the Runnymede Trust, and senior police officer Leroy Logan.

A full list of speakers can be found here.

Launching the taskforce report, Baroness Hussein-Ece said: “We have made huge strides but it should not rely on luck. All too often it is still a question of who your parents are and where you come from rather than what abilities you have, and this is something that is still hugely discriminatory.”

“Too often they come from homes where parents are not good at navigating the system, perhaps their families don’t have the sharpest elbows, and face disadvantages because of their race.

“It means doing things differently. People say we should treat everyone the same, well this often discriminates against one section of society.”

Educationalist Professor Gus John told the conference: “Because of what you profess you have a particular responsibility to guard, uphold and advance an agenda that’s about equality and social justice.

“We struggle to put race on the political agenda in this country, and to this day it is not central to the concerns of politicians.

“Decade after decade certain things remain constant; the number of people excluded from school, the ethnic disproportionality, the number of those stopped and searched by the police.”

Lester Holloway, EMLD secretary, is a member of the race equality taskforce. He chaired a plenary on race and employment with Brake, Kelly-Marie Blundell, Janice Turner and Dr Berkeley. He said: “This is the first time a piece of work like this has been done within the Lib Dems and I really hope that we always have a process of policy formulation within the party on race equality.”

The conference also saw an education workshop with EMLD vice-chair Ruwan Uduwerage-Perera, Euro candidate Anuja Prashar and SLF director Dr Prateek Buch.

A full set of pictures of the event are available on EMLD’s Flickr here.

Chairing a plenary on employment with (l-r) Kelly-Marie Blundell, Dr Rob Berkeley, Tom Brake MP and Janice Turner

EMLD chair Issan Ghazni with SLF co-chair Gareth Epps

Leroy Logan

Professor Gus John, Baroness Meral Hussein-Ece and Paul Mortimer from Show Racism the Red Card

Duwayne Brooks, Gareth Epps and TUC’s Wilf Sullivan

Ruwan Uduwerage-Perera, Dr Prateek Buch and Anuja Prashar

“In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, “Too late.” There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect.”

This speech by Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jnr in 1967 is defined by the phrase “the fierce urgency of now”, later borrowed by Barack Obama in 2008. The message is crystal clear; failure to act now to do what is right could mean we are judged and defined forever for our lack of action. The message goes hand-in-hand with another from the great man.

“Cowardice asks the question – is it safe? Expediency asks the question – is it politic? Vanity asks the question – is it popular? But conscience asks the question – is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right.”

50 years ago Dr King did what is right over the Montgomery bus boycott and was sent to jail. One month later, on 23^rd June 1963, he led 125,000 people on a freedom march in Detroit and in August of the same year he delivered his iconic “I Have A Dream” speech at the Washington monument before 250,000 people.

Where others procrastinated, asking themselves whether it was safe, popular or politically expedient to stand up for the civil rights of African Americans, he led from the front and his legacy now lives on forever. Had Dr King not stood up and navigated the tightrope between being uncompromising in his demands for justice yet persuasive to the wider public and politicians we have to ask where civil rights would be today. Many would argue that the combination of bottom-up and top-down saved America from a race war despite his assassination.

If he were alive today I have no doubt he would continue to do as he did during his life; chart the progress made, instil confidence and resilience in his audience while being forthright at the continuing racial and social injustice in America, Britain and across the globe. He would still castigate the “anaemia of deeds” of politicians and would repeat his call for all of us to be dissatisfied with the status quo.

To quote another of his speeches:

“Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anaemia of deeds.

“Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort and the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice.

“Let us be dissatisfied until those that live on the outskirts of hope are brought into the metropolis of daily security. Let us be dissatisfied until slums are cast into the junk heaps of history, and every family is living in a decent sanitary home.

“Let us be dissatisfied until the dark yesterdays of segregated schools will be transformed into bright tomorrows of quality, integrated education. Let us be dissatisfied until integration is not seen as a problem but as an opportunity to participate in the beauty of diversity.

“Let us be dissatisfied until men and women, however black they may be, will be judged on the basis of the content of their character and not on the basis of the colour of their skin. Let us be dissatisfied.

“Let us be dissatisfied until every state capitol houses a governor who will do justly, who will love mercy and who will walk humbly with his God.

“Let us be dissatisfied until from every city hall, justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

“Let us be dissatisfied until that day when the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid. Let us be dissatisfied.”

There is every reason to be dissatisfied with race equality in Britain today where everyone has an equal right to a job but yet African and Caribbean men are twice as likely to be unemployed as their white counterparts.

There are a higher proportion of British-born Black and Asian students in universities than ever before yet they are so chronically under-represented in the Russell Group of old red brick institutions – particularly Oxford and Cambridge.

And where Black youth unemployment is running at 54 percent, almost double the rate of white youth in the same age bracket and a similar level to youth unemployment in Greece and Spain.

We are a nation where too many Black young people, including graduates, look around them and see a lack of hope, a nation where expectations are crushed, talents are untapped and the worlds of politics, finance and the law might as well be on a distant planet.

Experts like the civil servant Joe Montgomery warned us five years ago that Britain was in serious danger of losing a whole generation of BAME talent just as many of my generation who emerged into the recession-hit life of the 1980s have never recovered from the trauma of unemployment.

The great national scandal of disproportionate unemployment for Black citizens has been largely sidelined by Britain’s mainstream media and as a result is hardly on the political agenda. Which is why the launch of the Liberal Democrat Race Equality Taskforce tomorrow morning is so important.

It is a debate that cuts across party lines. The need for this debate is urgent and the cause is right. Everyone would agree that the employment gap of 16 percent between working age BAME and white people is completely unacceptable. Yet few in politics have championed this.

Everyone would agree that the pay gap – the so-called ‘ethnic penalty’ – whereby most BAME workers earn less than their white co-workers is intolerable. Yet how often is this raised on political discussion shows? Previous studies have shown that the gap persists even between workers of the same grade and qualification and amounts to tens, even thousands of pounds, less in take-home pay in a lifetime.

The previous government promised to eliminate the employment gap by 2023 yet without specific initiatives it is hardly surprising that Britain is going even backwards, as historically happens in economic downturns where workers of colour are the first out the door.

As the taskforce report noted, BAME citizens are far more likely to encounter racism in the private sector, which was kept exempt from large sections of Equalities laws.

As public authorities shrink with government-imposed austerity cuts the sector where BAME workers are disproportionately concentrated are losing their jobs while the slowly-expanding private sector continues to discriminate at will.

We cannot tolerate this state of affairs any longer. We must be dissatisfied, enough to demand action as fervently as Dr King did 50 years ago.

Today Jim Crow would profess himself to be against racism. If asked he would welcome multiculturalism. But his everyday decisions to hire and fire staff are underpinned by conscious and unconscious prejudice. Who he feels ‘comfortable’ with. Who he feels will ‘fit in’ to the workplace culture. Inevitably it will be people who look like him. Diversity is for others. He fully supports the concept, but evidently not in his office.

Before the recession three quarters of white people of working age had a job compared to just 60 percent of African and Caribbean people. Now, the figures for white people are largely unchanged but for Black people it has fallen to just over 50 percent. Britain has become less equal.

That is why the taskforce, of which I am a member, is recommending that the private sector be brought fully underneath the umbrella of equalities laws, and that government uses its’ muscle to force firms to embrace equality by scoring this area highly when it comes to procurement, signing contracts with them. We recommend that the private sector monitor and publish equalities data as the public sector currently do.

Back in 2010 Nick Clegg said the Lib Dems were in the “last chance saloon” over the lack of BAME political representation. I would suggest that the party are sitting in the same drinking den over policies to tackle unequal racial outcomes. We have to deliver, and it is my sincere hope that the taskforce report – which is published tomorrow morning – will not sit on the leaders’ shelf but will be a torch that is paraded throughout Whitehall where mandarins will be ordered to turn it into action.

I began this blog with a quote from Dr King: “Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, “Too late.” There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect.” With the political will change can be achieved.

It is sensible to commission a taskforce to produce a report but it takes courage and commitment to truly prioritise the need to heal the scars of a society racially-divided by figures which show just how different the Black experience is from white.

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

The attackers who committed the sickening and barbaric murder in Woolwich yesterday have got what they wanted; the beheading of a British soldier, personal infamy with their faces on every front page, and inflamed community tensions.

As several mosques are attacked up and down Britain and the internet swells with anti-Islamic prejudice the hate that lies in the hearts of those two men has spread like a virus – or reawakened. If that was the plan we’ve played right into their bloody hands.

Some will fear that the threatening atmosphere that followed 9/11 and 7/7 will once again descend upon all peace-loving Muslims and, to an extent, other people of colour.

It is hard to honour the memory of the victim while the shrill noise of Islamophobia drowns out reflection and righteous anger at the horrific act spurts out in all the wrong directions.

Calling for calm requires more than simply uttering the words “I call for calm”. It demands a heartfelt appeal for sense. A hard task in difficult circumstances but one that is necessary to prevent the hate-mongers and the Right-wing seizing the agenda and the airwaves of morning talkshows.

Yesterday our politicians busied themselves with backroom crisis management but failed abysmally to lead and address the crisis of emotions sparked by this unspeakable act of murder.

Many of the lower political orders carried on with their daily appointments without stopping to comment, as if nothing had happened. An act has far-reaching reverberations and could well change Britain forever passed them by.

Meanwhile Muslim leaders were left to their own devises to state the obvious, that the overwhelming majority of Muslims utterly condemn the murder. Our political leaders should be saying that that is a given. Of course Muslims condemn this. Didn’t we hear them say just that after 9/11 and 7/7?

As long as public discourse remains stuck in the same groove as 12 years ago how can there be a rational debate about radical political Islam? How can we explore the deep anger caused by illegal Western wars conducted in Muslim nations without fearing accusations of somehow justifying the unjustifiable actions of terrorists?

The immediate aftermath of a horrific act is always the wrong time to ask these questions and the right time for the prejudiced and racist to shout loudly. The right time for free speech and the wrong time for intelligent debate.

Yet the wars waged by the West, the unreported but devastatingly bloody drone attacks, and the corrupted brand of religion it has given birth to, have to be confronted if we are not just buying time before the next atrocity.

Woolwich can never be justified, maybe it cannot be explained, but it can be explored. We may not be able to reason with the brainwashed but we can eradicate the reasons for the propaganda fed to the disenfranchised youth.

Charles Kennedy was the only British political leader to call Iraq an illegal war. It was then as still is today. Afghanistan was sold as a peace-keeping reconstruction mission but quickly became a fighting force by stealth at the behest of America. And the war being fought across the Sahal in Africa and Somalia continues to take innocent lives daily.

Vulnerable, angry men like those who committed the horror in Woolwich may find another reason to commit murder, of course. But we have to search for solutions for peace, not just here but abroad.

The international dimension of war and its’ interface with faith cannot be brushed under the carpet or driven underground for long. Facing the issues head-on is the only way.

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

The coalition has relented on plans to scrap a fundamental pillar of Britain’s equality law following a second defeat in the House of Lords.

Lib Dem equalities minister Jo Swinson performed a u-turn this morning after peers rejected proposals to axe a vision statement which spelt out the need for the equalities watchdog – the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) – to work towards the elimination of discrimination in Britain.

Campaigners, including the Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats, expressed delight at the news. The fight to preserve the ‘general duty’ had been led in the Lords by former EMLD chair Baroness Meral Husein-Ece.

17 Lib Dem peers, including former leader Lord David Steel and Baroness Floella Benjamin, defied a three-line whip, contributing to a 180-210 defeat for the government. Many more Lib Dems abstained.

Over 3,000 members of the public had lobbied parliament thanks to a campaign by the public service union PCS backed by Doreen Lawrence, the mother of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence.

The Lords vote came on the 20^th anniversary of the death of Stephen Lawrence which was marked by a special service attended by David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband.

The victory for equality campaigners was significant as the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition has rarely backed down on legislation.

But the news was tempered when it emerged that Swinson intends to oppose another important Lords amendment (36) which helps to underpin equalities laws.

Last week Swinson told the Commons that she wanted the EHRC to report on its’ own work rather than monitor the state of discrimination in society.

However privately ministers say that now they have given way to the Lords on the general duty there is nothing preventing the equalities watchdog from carrying out whatever monitoring they wish.

Ministers were also defeated for a second time caste prejudice. Peers voted to include caste alongside other forms of discrimination.

Yesterday peers remained defiant in their support for caste to be recognised as well as enabling the EHRC to do its’ job, with disability campaigner Baroness Jane Campbell of Surbiton (pictured) leading the fight to keep the duty.

She told colleagues: “The EHRC’s role as an agent of change matters to millions of people in this country, whether they are an elderly person in hospital, a woman fleeing a violent partner or a black teenager and his friend waiting for a bus.

“In a civilised society such as ours people in these vulnerable situations should feel confident that our institutions will accord them dignified and fair treatment as equal citizens.”

Baroness Hussein-Ece added: “I strongly believe that it would be extremely damaging for us as a country and society if we are seen to be rolling back on equality.

“Transparency, scrutiny and accountability remain the watchwords. Retaining the general duty is one key element of these, where we strive to become a society that values social justice and promotes greater equality.”

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

LIB DEM PEERS WHO SUPPORTED EQUALITY LAW

Lord Dominic Addington
Lord Eric Avebury
Baroness Elizabeth Barker
Baroness Floella Benjamin
Baroness Sal Brinton
Lord Tim Clement-Jones
Lord Brian Cotter
Lord Navnit Dholakia
Baroness Dee Doocey
Lord Ronnie Fearn
Lord Qurban Hussain
Baroness Meral Hussein-Ece
Lord Andrew Phillips of Sudbury
Lord Roger Roberts of Llandudno
Lord David Steel of Aikwood
Lord Paul Strasburger
Lord Martin Thomas of Gresford

The Welsh party, at their annual conference in Cardiff, supported an emergency motion which noted “with dismay” the fact that last week Lib Dem MPs had rejected an amendment by peers to retain the General Duty which sets out a vision of a society free of discrimination.

Twitter was unanimous last week that equalities minister Jo Swinson had failed to make a convincing case why the Government should abolish the General Duty, which is enshrined in Section 3 of the 2006 Equality Act.

All but four Lib Dem MPs voted with the government whip to reject a Lords motion in March to keep the General Duty despite a last minute plea by the equalities watchdog, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), to keep the duty.

MPs John Hemming, Adrian Sanders, Sarah Teather and David Ward rebelled against the government and deputy leader Simon Hughes abstained after speaking against the government line but the whips still won the day by 310 t0 244 votes. 41 Lib Dem MPs voted to scrap the General Duty and 11 were absent. Party president Tim Farron urged ministers to back down but when they did not he voted with the whip.

Today the issue goes back to the Lords with Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats leading lobbying efforts to encourage party peers to hold fast to their position that the General Duty should be preserved.

Peers will debate amendment 35 of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill tomorrow on the 20^th anniversary of the death of Stephen Lawrence in 1993.

Doreen Lawrence and the public service union PCS have been drawing attention to the fact that the General Duty has its’ origins in the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 which emerged from the Macpherson public inquiry into Stephen’s murder by a gang of racists.

Equality experts believe that the vision of an equal Britain is of more than symbolic importance as it is an indicator of how committed the government is to equality and encapsulates the need for cultural change rather than just enforcing the law.

The coalition also plan to scrap the duty on the EHRC to carry out triannual reports into discrimination and equality in British society, restricting them instead to reporting on what work they are doing.

Critics suggest that ministers want to ditch the vision statement because they lack vision themselves on the issues. The EHRC’s budget has been slashed by over 70% since 2010 and the watchdog’s powers to launch investigations into public authorities suspected of discriminating has already been removed.

The coalition now plan to axe Equality Impact Assessments, an exercise which Britain’s public authorities must do to ensure that new policies do not discriminate and that access to services is not restricted from any groups in society.

Speaking in the Commons last week Labour’s shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna said: “The shadow Minister for employment relations (Ian Murray) has told me about his trip to the Liberal Democrats’ spring conference last month. He spoke at a fringe meeting on employment rights at which the Minister (Jo Swinson) tried to justify all these changes. My understanding is that people walked out of that room in disgust at the measures that she is trying to push through today.”

Other MPs said that the government have not defined what the EHRC would do better as a result of the abolition of the general duty and that this measure was a “killer blow” to the EHRC by undermining its remit.

Welsh Lib Dems, led by Kirsty Williams (pictured), piled on pressure ahead of today’s vote by supporting with a comfortably majority an emergency motion which compares the General Duty with the party’s own preamble to the constitution, which also sets out a vision of equality.

Now one of the party’s national conferences has had a chance to vote on the issue campaigners hope parliamentarians will take note of the feelings of grassroots party members.

The full motion:

Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill

Conference notes with satisfaction that in March this year a majority of Lib Dem peers supported an amendment to the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill (the Bill) to retain section 3 of the Equality Act 2006, the section known as the General Equality Duty, that gives the Equality and Human Rights Commission (the Commission) its core purpose: 

The Commission shall exercise its functions under this Part with a view to encouraging and supporting the development of a society in which- 

(a) people’s ability to achieve their potential is not limited by prejudice or discrimination, 
(b) there is respect for and protection of each individual’s human rights, 
(c) there is respect for the dignity and worth of each individual, 
(d) each individual has an equal opportunity to participate in society, and 
(e) there is mutual respect between groups based on understanding and valuing of diversity and on shared respect for equality and human rights. 

Conference notes with dismay that last Tuesday our MPs voted with the Tories to throw out the said amendment. The Bill will go back to the Lords on Monday 22 April. 

Conference believes that section 3 of the 2006 Act is entirely congruent with the preamble to our party’s constitution, and that to repeal it would be to act against all our fundamental beliefs and instincts. 

Conference further believes that our MPs had no mandate so to vote last Tuesday because: 
1. The party fully supported the 2006 Act. 
2. In our 2010 manifesto the Party reaffirmed its commitment to further advancing equality and human rights. 
3. This commitment was carried forward into the coalition agreement. 

Conference is concerned that the repeal of Section 3, together with hugely disproportionate cuts to the Commission’s resources and the current review of the Public Sector Equality Duty, are part of a concerted effort by our coalition partners to undermine the equalities movement and legislation in Britain, contrary to all Lib Dem beliefs and values. 

Section 3 is no mere symbol. It is the beacon that lights the way forward for the Commission and the equalities movement. We have to ensure that section 3 stands. Our first opportunity of ensuring that is for our peers to continue to support amendment 35, to retain section 3, when the ERR Bill comes back to the Lords on Monday 22 April, sending it back again to the Commons. 

Conference calls for Lib Dem peers to be allowed to vote with their consciences on amendment 35 of the ERR Bill. By so allowing the party will send out the signal that our commitment to equality and human rights is undiminished despite being in coalition with a party whose commitment is at best questionable.

Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats are lobbying the House of Lords ahead of a vote on an important part of Britain’s equalities laws which the government want to scrap.

Last month the Lords voted to keep the General Duty – a mission statement to work towards the elimination of discrimination – but when the measure went before the Commons last week MPs overturned the decision.

Tomorrow (Monday), peers will vote again on the measure in what has been described as a game of ping-pong between the two Houses of Parliament.

EMLD are urging the Upper House to stick with their original decision. If the Lords reaffirm their committment to the General Duty, known as Section 3 of the 2006 Equality Act – pressure will build for MPs to give in.

The public service union PCS, a large number of equalities organisations and Doreen Lawrence have also been lobbying parliamentarians over the measure which has its’ origins in the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 which emerged from the public inquiry into the death of Stephen Lawrence.

The Lords vote coincides with the 20th anniversary of Stephen’s murder at the hands of a gang of racists in Eltham, south-east London, in 1993.

EMLD argue that the General Duty provides a vision for the kind of society we wish to see as Liberal Democrats and is similar, in many ways, to our own vision statement enshrined in the preamble to the party’s constitution.

Equalities experts say that abolishing the General Duty will leave equalities laws rudderless and that the measure is not ‘red tape’ but an essential tool of modern government.

Here is the letter EMLD have sent to peers:

We are delighted that the House of Lords supported an amendment to retain Section 3 of the 2006 Equality Act, the General Duty of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), but disappointed that the Commons rejected it despite strong support from many MPs.

We hope that the Upper House once again vote in favour of the amendment when it comes before you tomorrow (Monday 22nd April).

This General Equality Duty represents the commitment not just of the EHRC to dedicate itself to the goal of achieving equality in reality but for the whole of Britain’s public services and Government. And the EHRC itself has declared that the General Duty should be retained.

Abolishing this mission statement sends out all the wrong signals about the Coalition’s commitment to tackling discrimination against all sections of society that experience prejudice, racism, sexism, homophobia, age discrimination and so on, and this has a knock-on effect on the reputation of our own party.

As Liberal Democrats we have our own mission statement in the preamble to our party’s constitution. As you know, this informs our philosophy and acts as a guide to our policies. It provides a common purpose and paints a vision for the kind of society we wish to see. Indeed most corporate enterprises also have a mission statement.

Britain’s foremost equalities experts, including Professor Sir Bob Hepple QC, are implacably opposed to the move to abolish the General Equality Duty. He said: “Its’ repeal will deprive those applying the law of interpretative principles and will leave equality law rudderless.”

Other experts say that the General Duty is not red tape but an essential tool of modern government.

We Liberal Democrats supported a strong aspirational General Duty in 2006. We are now told by the ministers that these are “too wide ranging, and creates unrealistic expectations”, and that its’ repeal would make “little difference” to the work of the EHRC. If that is the case why remove it?

There was no opposition to the Section 3 in the House of Commons when it was passed into law. Indeed Eleanor Laing said at the time: “The important thing is that we all admire the aspirational nature of the general duty within it.”

In 2011 Nick Clegg was happy to reassure Jo Swinson that he would “resist the siren calls to water down the Equality Act” by confirming that there would be “no move to dilute incredibly important protections to enshrine and bolster equality in this country under the guise of dealing with unnecessary or intrusive regulation.”

We hope that you will also heed the respondents to the government own consultation on the issue, who said by a ratio of 6:1 that the General Equality Duty should not be repealed.

The General Equality Duty came about a result of hard fought rights following the tragedy of the Stephen Lawrence case and as such it is an important part of the legacy of the fight for justice; a point Doreen Lawrence articulated when she wrote to the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister last November.

As Liberal Democrats we stand for building a fairer society. The proposal by Government before the House on is incompatible with that aspiration.

Let us keep the aspiration to work towards the elimination of discrimination contained within the General Equality Duty and in so doing let us strengthen our claims to be building a fairer society.

Please vote to uphold the Section 3 and the General Equality Duty; not just a mission statement for the EHRC but for the whole of Britain.

Issan Ghazni, Chairperson – Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats

Campaigners outraged at government plans to scrap a key feature of equality law have launched a campaign to lobby MPs.

The public service union PCS has begun a website for members of the public to directly lobby their local MPs to save Section 3 of the 2006 Equality Act which enshrined a mission statement to eliminate discrimination.

They argue that abolishing it will send a negative message to Britain’s public services that equality is no longer important.

You can visit the campaign page here www.pcs.org.uk/saves3 . You can tweet the page using #saves3. 

Last month EMLD’s former chairperson Baroness Meral Hussein-Ece led a successful effort in the Lords to overturn the government plan to axe the ‘general duty’ on Britain’s equalities watchdog, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, to work towards the elimination of discrimination.

The Lords threw out the plan to axe the power, which is enshrined in Section 3 of the 2006 Equality Act, however the government want MPs to overturn that decision in a crucial vote planned for next Tuesday, 16^th April.

Six Liberal Democrat peers voted against the government with others abstaining, and campaigners hope that Lib Dem MPs will follow the example of the Lords and also vote the plan down.

The government have included proposals to roll back equalities laws in the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill claiming it is about slashing red tape but critics point out that no-one was calling for this change.

They argue that the ‘general duty’ is a much needed mission statement that does not add to bureaucracy but instead sets out a vital goal for Britain to aspire to.

Equalities law expert Professor Sir Bob Hepple QC (pictured) has spoken out strongly against the government plan in this PCS campaign video.

The lobbying website encourages people to enter their postcode which automatically finds their local MP, and asks them to simply click a button that sends the following message to them:

“I am writing as your constituent to urge you to maintain the House of Lords amendment to stop the repeal of the general equality duty (section 3 of the Equality Act 2006) when the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill returns to the House of Commons on Tuesday 16 April. The government is seeking to repeal the general equality duty as it believes that it ‘has been a hindrance rather than a help’.

However, experts in equality and human rights, staff at the EHRC, service users and key stakeholders are vociferous in their evidence-based opposition. They have argued since the possibility was first mooted in the 2011 government consultation ‘Building a fairer Britain: Reform of the Equality and Human Rights Commission’, that to repeal the duty would be a catastrophic mistake and shows a fundamental misunderstanding about its purpose. The ratio of respondents to this government consultation that were against the repeal of section 3 was nearly 6:1.

The general duty gives effect to the purposes of the Equality Act 2006, providing a framework for the EHRC to exercise its powers. As stated by Lord Lester of Herne Hill QC, it emphasised the importance of ensuring ‘that equality becomes better understood as a fundamental human right to be enjoyed together with other human rights, civil and political, and economic and social.’ Please use this link to watch this short video featuring Professor Sir Bob Hepple, Emeritus Master and Emeritus Professor of Law, explaining why Section 3 should not be repealed and the government’s arguments do not stack up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxJZOrfRaLU Professor Sir Bob Hepple QC challenged the government’s assertion that Section 3 ‘has no specific legal function’. At a Justice conference in June 2012, Professor Hepple said ‘This overlooks the functions of section 3 in providing a link between the aims of promoting equality and human rights and good relations between groups. Its repeal will deprive those applying the law of interpretative principles and will leave equality law rudderless’.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights in its 16th Report unanimously welcomed section 3 saying that it would serve in practice as a unifying factor in the performance of the EHRC’s duties under sections 8 to 11 of the Act. There was no opposition to the section 3 in the House of Commons. Eleanor Laing said ’the important thing is that we all admire the aspirational nature of the general duty within it.’

Removal of this duty will result in uncertainty and inconsistencies and destabilise general equality principles. The European Commission issued a report in 2010 on national equality bodies in which it stated that ‘In order to fully realise their potential in promoting equal treatment for all, equality bodies should develop a vision of their role within the administrative culture and society.’ The general equality duty provides this vision and the essential ‘rudder’ described by Professor Hepple.

As a United Nations ‘A status’ accredited human rights institution, the EHRC has a duty to monitor, advise and report to government and parliament on the human rights situation in Britain. This accreditation gives the EHRC full participation rights at the UN Human Rights Council and access to other UN bodies.

However, removing the general equality duty – its foundation stone – and cutting the budget by 76% and staffing to 62% since its inception, amounts to the effective closure of the EHRC as an independent non-departmental public body. The cuts to its powers and funding, especially the removal of section 3, jeopardises its UN ‘A’ status accreditation as it undermines the purpose and effectiveness of the body. Indeed, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Nick Clegg, was happy to reassure Liberal Democrat MP and now BIS Minister, Jo Swinson MP, in 2011 that he would ‘resist the siren calls to water down the Equality Act’ by confirming that there would be ‘ be no move to dilute incredibly important protections to enshrine and bolster equality in this country under the guise of dealing with unnecessary or intrusive regulation.’

The diminution of equality provisions can do nothing but harm, particularly at this time of cuts and a heightened need for an independent equality and human rights body. I’d be grateful if you’d let me know whether you are supportive and will vote to stop the repeal. If you are going to vote for the repeal, I’d be grateful for a full response to this letter, focusing specifically on the points made by Professor Sir Bob Hepple QC in the video. I look forward to hearing from you.”

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

I took the opportunity on Saturday to question Ed Davey, the energy secretary, on the matter of prepayment meters ripping off the poorest in society and deepening fuel poverty in Britain.

Davey had come to the Lib Dem’s London region conference to speak about insulation schemes and the government’s Green Deal and talked about how these initiatives will help address fuel poverty.

They should do providing the take-up is high amongst the poorest people and is not concentrated in middle-earning households who have the time and inclination to browse through the brochures from various energy companies.

As companies and local authorities begin to market insulation offers to the public there is still much more work to be done to ensure doors in the most deprived areas are knocked on.

Yet what will make the greatest contribution to tackling fuel poverty is not insulation but tackling rip-off prepayment meters which have been foisted upon many thousands of poor people, often against their will.

Prepayment meters come with higher fuel bills thanks to exorbitant and completely unnecessary extra charges, allegedly to cover the costs of running the system but in reality it’s an additional money-spinner for fat cat energy companies and a stealth tax on those who can least afford it.

The energy utilities also employ a host of devious tricks to squeeze even more cash from the poorest such as lower power while emergency credit is running which extends the time emergency credit is in operation thereby increasing the ‘administrative’ charges, which is counter-productive to the customer but beneficial to company bosses bonuses.

While Davey spoke at the conference about what government is doing on insulation when faced with my question about perepayment meters he limited his answer to what the industry regulator Ofgem is doing. The brevity of his answer, saying only that Ofgem have been looking into this area, suggested that it wasn’t a top political priority which I found disappointing.

Ofgem have, to their credit, made it easier for prepayment customers in debt to swap supplier but that doesn’t begin to deal with the extra charge issue and, in any case, it is unlikely to have much impact as the poorest in society are least likely to exercise consumer choice to shop around for the best deal.

But the essential point is there is no justification whatsoever for treating people on prepayment meters differently than normal direct-debit paying customers by levying higher fuel costs on them, especially as most didn’t ask for the meters in the first place.

Some smaller suppliers have now entered the market offering prepayment customers switch deals where there are no additional charges so that the customer pays exactly what they would if they didn’t have a meter.

In the light of this development there is now no longer any excuse for the main energy companies to maintain any additional charges for meters. With this in mind the time is right for government ministers, led by Davey, to say to the companies loud and clear they must drop their higher charges to the poor.

I am pleased that Davey has simplified energy tariffs for everyone but this does not deal with the core issue of charging the poor more than other customers. Prepayment charges are a tax on the poor going straight into the coffers of private companies. Thatcherism in one clause. It is time this outrage was ended.

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

Acres of newsprint, hours of broadcast time and unimaginable amounts of online words have already been devoted to the controversial legacy of Margaret Thatcher, who died yesterday aged 87.

So much so that I feel like I’m back in the 1980′s already. Considering David Cameron and his generation of Conservatives are Thatcher’s children perhaps it was inevitable this decade would return to haunt us.

On hearing of Baroness Thatcher’s death I tweeted that I wasn’t going to celebrate while Thatcherism was alive and well. That said, it was somewhat uplifting to read that the Wizard of Oz Judy Garland song Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead has entered the music charts.

At least that is easier to listen to than Elvis Costello’s 2001 dirge Tramp The Dirt Down, which imagined the passing of the former Prime Minister.

The tune that best sums up Thatcher’s time, in my opinion at least, is 70′s Baby Early 80′s Child by Nightmare on Wax featuring Roots Manuva, which reflects on issues like the Sus Laws, the Brixton riots, the recession and the miners strike as well as London inner city life at the time.

This was the Thatcher I remember. Watching from my bedroom window as a National Front march filed past and seeing NF graffiti sprayed on walls everywhere. Hearing stories of police oppression and listening to the despair of working class.

I was nine in 1979 and could barely comprehend why my parents were so upset at her election, but by the time she won again in 1981 I’d reached my teens and came to see Tory rule as posh people being mean-spirited towards the poor.

The slow crushing of the miners and then the Wapping print-workers and the pitched battles of the Poll Tax seemed to represent an effort to subjugate the under-class beneath the will of the rich.

Everything I saw backed up this theory. If you weren’t a share-owning Loadsamoney yuppie you were nobody in Thatcher’s Britain. From Cardboard City in Waterloo, where seemingly hundreds of homeless slept together, to the demonisation of single parents, it was a cold hard world where the recession and despair was reserved for half of the country while the other half thrived.

As industries collapsed communities were plunged into hopelessness and unions were crushed. It felt like war had been declared on working people with the aggressors being Thatcher and her ilk.

Added to that she called Nelson Mandela a terrorist despite the widespread knowledge of the terrors of apartheid South Africa and claimed Britain was being “swamped” with immigrants, yet not a word that I can remember about the Sus Laws.

My overriding emotion when I think back to these times is one of resentment that all this happened. If you were poor you were made to feel poorer. As jobs and opportunities vanished the power transferred to the bosses class. They had the whip hand over ordinary people and could bend us to their will. We had to like it or lump it.

One of Thatcher’s lasting legacies has been an unacceptably high level of ‘structural’ unemployment that has remained ever since, even through the good times.

It’s almost as if the political classes decided that in order never to return to the days when the trades unions could bring Britain to a grinding halt over a dispute the country must maintain an under-class and unemployment in order to keep the power with the capitalists.

That, in my book, is class war. Albeit not the variety we normally associate with the phrase. That is how I shall remember Margaret Thatcher; a class warrior. We, the masses, were on the defensive, seemingly powerless to stop the juggernaut of capitalism rolling over us. And increasingly desperate as the years rolled by with no end in sight to Tory rule.

The 1980′s seared a wound on my very core against Thatcherism. I became tribal, not towards Labour particularly even though I joined them, but against Conservativism. Every Tory looked like a Thatcherite to me, their motives were viewed with deep suspicion.

If I have mellowed over the years its’ not been by much. I filter their policies and words through the prism of two essential questions: does this benefit the rich, and does this harm the poor? The answer to many of the present Tory policies is ‘yes’ and ‘yes.’ And that takes me right back to the 80′s.

So while I won’t condone those dancing on the streets after hearing of Thatcher’s death I won’t condemn them either. Because the psychological scars Thatcher inflicted upon Britain’s working class need to be healed, and if dancing them away is what does it for some people then so be it.

After the Tories were finally defeated in 1997 I tried to forget about Thatcher, but when close friends exclaimed that they felt sorry for her after watching Meryl Streep’s depiction of an old woman suffering from dementia I tried hard to suppress a welling up of anger from my gut.

How can they feel sorry for that [insert appropriate words here]? Dementia or no dementia, she deserved no sympathy in my book. But I kept such feelings firmly under wraps. It was hardly worth getting into a tizz over someone from so long ago in the past, surely?

It did make me realise that perhaps even after all these years I’d never really gotten over Thatcher. Her name still provoked strong negative emotions.

Today hearing Tony Blair condemn those who celebrated Thatcher’s death on the streets I wondered where Blair was during her rule? Anyone who lived at the sharp end of the 80′s would understand their reaction.

As far as I’m concerned she can’t be buried fast enough. The knowledge that she’s finally six feet under will hopefully allow me to recover from Thatcher. That will be the moment when I say, “okay, that’s Thatcher’s gone, now there’s really no excuse for Thatcherism!”

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

It’s been a long time since I’ve heard of gollywog dolls. The last time was in 2011 when I organised a small protest in Sutton against a shop that refused to remove the offensive dolls from public display despite repeated requests. The story was picked up by the national Guardian and you can read my own personal account of the situation in this blog piece.

This week I was reminded about golliwogs by two separate incidents. The first was a row in Beaconsfield over a local festival to celebrate Enid Blyton, author of the book Three Little Golliwogs that popularised the grotesque character in the 1940′s and 50′s. Here’s an excerpt from that book:

“Once the three bold Golliwogs, Golly, Woggie, and Nigger, decided to go for a walk to Bumble-Bee Common. Golly wasn’t quite ready so Woggie and Nigger said they would start off without him, and Golly would catch them up as soon as he could. So off went Woggie and Nigger, arm-in-arm, singing merrily their favourite song.”

That favourite song was Ten Little Nigger Boys. Blyton’s books were riddled with negative characterisations of Black people, from their exaggerated features to their sly, deceptive characters.

BBC London TV covered the story today and included interview with a local resident who expressed his disgust at Blyton’s writings including one book that featured a golliwog character being carted off to prison at the end.

Unrelated to that, on Twitter yesterday a local Sutton Conservative took to reminding me about my anti-golliwog protest two years ago and repeatedly called me a “bully” – apparently for bullying the High Street shop.

The activist Jason Hughes – who looks set to run for the council in 2014 in the Sutton South ward and who I believe is an assistant to the Tory group in the civic centre – continued to throw the allegation that I was a bully even after I pointed out that I had tried without success for over two months to get the dolls taken out of public view.

When I initially spoke to the shop owners I was met with incredulity and anger. I then raised the matter with the local police but in a show of defiance after an officer visited the premises the owner actually increased the number of golliwogs in the window.

It was only after I announced a protest that the shop relented and took the dolls down while releasing a statement that they were continuing to sell them under the counter.

Hughes (pictured above in my photo-montage) told me he believed in “consumer choice”, which clearly implied that he was in favour of displaying the golliwogs. I asked him to recognise that the dolls cause Black people offence and, after initially ducking the question, he agreed with me but said I should not have gone about things in the way I did.

I then asked Hughes whether he believes I should have given up, having tried and failed to get the shop to recognise that displaying the dolls caused offence. He didn’t answer that question at all, preferring instead to return, in a very childish way, to calling me a bully again. You can read the discussion below.

I only hope that Hughes, who seems like an ambitious young man, does not seek to run for parliament in a seat with a large Black population as he may have some explaining to do with Black potential voters about his attitude towards golliwogs.

He certainly seems out of step with the national Conservative party who have been turning their attention to how to appeal to BAME communities recently, as I noted in a recent blog:

Interestingly, the Conservatives have been changing tact lately. Cameron has signalled he wants more BAME MPs to add to the nine elected in 2010 and has ordered party vice-chair Alok Sharma and other ministers to come up with policies that will appeal to black and Asian communities. Tory cabinet members recently had a special briefing on the need to win over BAME voters in key marginals and nullify the negative legacy of Enoch Powell.

Returning to the subject of golliwog dolls, it is sad that in 2013 we are still arguing about them – in Beaconsfield and on Twitter – when they clearly are offensive.

The negative reaction I experienced during my protest two years ago was a real eye-opener as to the level of anger that some people felt at the idea of their beloved golliwog doll being taken away from them, their utter lack of regard for the fact that it was a grotesque representation of a Black person, or the fact that many people of my generation were hurt by being called a ‘golliwog’ at school.

Anyone who has read Blyton’s books knows golliwogs are not lovable and, aside from their malevolent characters, are actually fairly scary in appearance.

Both Beaconsfield and Hughes are living in a past where offending sections of society did not matter, a past where racism was on open display on TV shows and in the streets.

While neither the residents of Beaconsfield or Hughes would wish those aspects of the past to return they are both holding onto a potent symbol of that past.

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

It was a pretty busy day on Saturday, where I also spoke at the National Union of Journalist’s Black Members Council on the subject of bullying in the media, alongside the union’s general-secretary Michelle Stanistreet.

The NUJ, and Michelle, have been forthright in raising the issue of bullying as part of the Leveson debate, and recently launched a new booklet for journalists explaining their rights when it comes to being treated fairly.

Sadly bullying has long been endemic in the media, however we must draw that red line of where acceptable direct language in a high pressure environment stops and unacceptable bullying starts. It is essential this red line is drawn because, as the NUJ have pointed out, bullying costs people’s careers and health.

The fact that there was a culture of bullying at the News of the World is connected, in my view, to the unethical practices that led to the closure of the paper. Who dare object to phone tapping when raising your voice could mean losing your job?

As well as having the freedom to raise concerns about the unethical behaviour of others, journalists also need to feel safe refusing to cover a particular story if the story is unethical or just plain bogus.  The NUJ have argued for a Conscience Clause to cover this. Lord Leveson recommended that upholding the code of conduct should not bring disciplinary action or result in any determent to a journalists’ career.

But I fear we will need stronger protection to make a difference in this area. The best safeguard is a change in culture, and this particular recommendation is unlikely to bring that about.

It’s not just the bad behaviour of the boss that’s an issue, but the unethical story they want to cover in the first place and the impact that may have on other people or whole communities, such as people of Muslim faith, who so often find ridiculous stories written about them.

It is sad, but not surprising, that the media have largely ignored the issues of bullying raised in the Leveson inquiry, just as the media ignored what Lord Leveson had to say about discriminatory reporting of asylum seekers and immigrants.

I’ve argued that media regulation must include a right for people to complain if a whole section of society has been attacked unfairly. Most of the made-up stories in the media involve asylum, immigration and Muslims. While there must be a sanction for getting facts wrong, there must be an additional sanction for inventing the whole story. As the Tabloid Watch blog points out, Richard Desmond’s rags are the worst offenders by far.

I’ve worked a lot in the Black media, and most of it is non-unionised. That’s a form of bullying too; the fear that joining the NUJ will bring with it unfair treatment.

The standards we seek to uphold in society must be reflected in the way the media do business. As a past victim of bullying within the industry I know how debilitating it can be, and I’ve seen others bullied to the point they resign and leave.

These are the individual consequences of a management culture that is not getting the best out of anyone; that seeks to rule by fear rather than tap the creativity and talents of their staff. A management culture that wants to churn out a product on low resources to get advertising revenues rather than invest in people so the quality of that product improves.

If papers operate a military-style chain of command how can they safeguard democracy for the rest of us? For me, this style of running papers – broadsheet and tabloid – owes much to the class system. Oxbridge Commanders at the top. Bullying Lieutenants and Majors’ running desks… and foot soldiers from the lower orders ready to get blown out of the paper at a moments’ notice.

And then there’s the ranks of part-time soldiers. Freelancers and shifters who, by nature of their position, are lowly-paid and insecure and can be dropped at any minute. This is where the majority of Black, Asian and other minority ethnic journalists are concentrated.

I believe this whole situation is underpinned by the practice of not recruiting in the normal way. It is hardly surprising that an industry that feels itself to be exempt from the need to advertise vacancies also feels it has licence to treat their workers any way they want. Bringing their human resources practices in line with the rest of society does not impinge on the ‘free press’ debate. It simply makes the industry transparent.

I’ve long argued that Equalities Laws should apply to the private sector. That includes the media reporting its’ record on staff diversity.

In an era when the public are buying less and less newspapers isn’t it time the industry reappraised their practices of chewing up and spitting out talent? Instead of Hacking Off their greatest assets – their staff – newspapers should be asking their assets for ideas to halt declining readership. Perhaps valuing people inside the organisation will help the paper become more sensitive to their impact on people on the outside.

The broadcast media are not exempt. Al Jazeera’s decision to uproot their London office to the Middle East is a classic example of an unfettered autocracy where the decisions made place the least importance on the people they employ.

Clearly making the media live in the same world as the rest of society, when it comes to treating staff, doesn’t endanger free speech. Nor does giving staff the right to conscientiously object to something on grounds of ethics.

I wholeheartedly support the NUJ’s position on Leveson and only wish that the industry itself listened more to their own union.

As for the political response; politicians who support more regulation of reporting while ignoring the in-house practices are showing themselves to be popularist rather than objective legislators.

We need to address the cause as well as the symptoms, and that means the media getting its’ house in order when it comes to bullying and treatment of its’ human capital.

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

I was pleased to address the Lib Dems London regional conference on Saturday in Docklands, talking about ‘changing demographics’ in the capital.

The session was chaired by my EMLD colleague Merlene Emerson and included a presentation by the party’s research guru Tom Smithard who revealed a new study that showed the gap in support between Black and Asian voters and white voters. My role was to flesh out how the party can practically go about bridging this gap.

The first things is to go out an recruit new members from BAME communities, welcome them in, audit their skills to bring out the best in them, and find out what they are interested in contributing to the party rather than just giving them wodge’s of Focus leaflets to deliver. And be open to new ideas they bring about how to do things.

The second thing is to find out what issues they are most concerned about and design messages and policies that address these concerns. Of course everyone wants to be treated equally, and BAME voters are just as interested in and affected by ‘mainsteam’ issues such as housing, transport and the economy. However there are many issues that disproportionately affect BAME communities and we must speak to them as well as allowing BAME members to speak for themselves.

It is not hard to outflank Labour on the issues; Labour has brought into the colour-blind agenda yet continues to reap the benefits of a time when they did have something to say on these issues. While ‘race’ remains off the political agenda there is a unique window of opportunity for the Lib Dems to talk about the modern-day Sus Laws – section 60 of the Criminal Justice & Public Order Act which allows police to racially profile youth and search them without reasonable suspicion – and come up with solutions.

We must also design policies around eliminating disproportionate black unemployment. Currently 56% of black youth in London are unemployed, the same level as youth unemployment in Spain and Greece. This is one of the greatest scandals of our time and to tackle it we need a revival of the radical Liberalism of the past that challenged injustice no matter how unfashionable the issues were at the time.

As a party we need to speak to everyone in society, but if we want Black and Asian communities in London to consider the Lib Dems we must also specifically addresses the conditions they face. To not do so would be to do the same thing and expect different results, the classic definition of madness.

If we haven’t got anything to say, or don’t have the inclination to say it, then we have no right to expect support from those communities at the ballot box. To ignore specific concerns – particularly over endemic racial discrimination and unfair outcomes – is the equivalent of talking to them while looking at their feet. Yes, they’ll hear us but they won’t feel like you’re connecting with them. They won’t feel we understand them. And these perceptions are at least as valuable as anything we’ve got to say on the ‘mainstream’ London issues that affect everyone.

To put into context the question of London’s ‘Changing’ demographics; it’s wise to look at London’s ‘Changed’ demographics. Just a short five-minute walk from the Docklands conference centre was the Museum of London which evidence of Black presence in London almost since London came into existence. By the 1800’s London’s African population – including many former American slaves – was estimated at around 2%, similar to the total African-Caribbean population of Britain in the 2001 census.

Since the SS Empire Windrush landed at Tilbury Docks in 1948 and heralded the start of significant Caribbean immigration London has been enriched by the culture this generation and subsequent British-born generations. The early 1970s saw mass migration from the Indian sub-continent.

While we welcome immigrant communities as part of the fabric of London today part of the reason these communities don’t vote Liberal Democrat is because we were not standing beside them during times of strife. Granted we were a small party in the 1950s and 60s, but still big enough to say something about Enoch Powell and racial attacks. By the 1980s we had grown in size and there was no excuse whatsoever not to talk about the Sus Laws and the inner city riots. By the 1990s there was even less excuse not to talk about Stephen Lawrence’s murder. 50 years of missed opportunities. No surprise, then, that the majority of these communities have traditionally voted Labour.

So before we talk about ‘Changing’ demographic we should pause and reflect how to make up lost ground with London’s ‘Changed’ demographics, settled immigrant communities, their children and their children’s children.

Southwark have shown that having BAME councillors makes a difference to the credibility of the party among BAME communities, a subject that Simon Hughes MP touched upon during his keynote speech to the conference. But elsewhere in London we’ve run inner city councils yet haven’t done so well when it comes to BAME representation.

As a party we need to put roots down into those communities; go out and identify people – especially those with credibility in the community – who would make great councillors and recruit them. Simon Hughes suggested that every council seat should have one woman and one member of a BAME community, meaning that every ward the party wins will lead to increased diversity.

We need to factor in new immigrant communities too. Eastern Europeans, Russians, Somalis, but must never write off established BAME communities and the 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th generations, no matter how dire the results of the latest study are for the party.

We’ve got a long way to go, but there are people here who can help. Not least Cllr Michael Bukola, the regional party’s excellent Race Champion. Local parties should invite him to address them.

We must reinvigorate the way we do pavement politics, and reinvigorate how we appeal to BAME communities. One of the ways forward is to take our practice of encouraging people from across London to head to local byelections and adapt it to target multicultural areas of London which have hitherto been a ‘black hole’ for the party. Recruiting new members in such areas could potentially plant new seeds that lead to more activism in those areas.

The Lib Dems need to do things differently. Be more proactive in recruiting members from BAME communities, more willing to change the way we operate in order to get the best out of them, and more willing to embrace the need to address issues that disproportionately affect those communities.

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

Tory Euro MP Sajjad Karim has resurrected old claims against UKIP leader Nigel Farage. It is alleged by UKIP founder Alan Sked that Farage used the n-word in a private conversation with him.

In a Facebook post Karim, who used to be a Lib Dem MEP before he defected to the Conservatives, quotes Sked who claims Farage told him: “We will never win the nigger vote. The nig-nogs will never vote for us.”

Farage told the Independent that the claim was “not true.”

Whatever the truth is this latest story raises further doubts about UKIP. Two senior figures, MEP Mike Nattrass and Jeffrey Titford, are former members of the New Britian Party, founded as a pro-Rhodesia and anti- “coloured immigration” party.

In recent years UKIP has expelled several alleged members of the British National Party they suspected of infiltration but former Labour MEP Richard Corbett has accused both UKIP and the BNP of having an “arrangement” not to stand against each other in elections.

Matthew Goodwin, writing in the Guardian last year, said that while UKIP is not an extremist party they share many policies on immigration in common with the BNP.

UKIP spokesman Christopher Monckton is on record as urging members of the extreme British Freedom Party to “come back and join” UKIP.

French Far Right leader Marine le Pen has said that she is “in touch” with UKIP.

UKIP MEP Geoffrey Bloom is alleged to be a founding member of the Europe of Freedom & Democracy (EFD), a group that has entertained le Pen and has been linked to racially-motivated attack in Stockholm.

Earlier this year UKIP MEPs were accused of supporting a financial package to some of Europe’s most extreme parties.

Farage has said in the past that UKIP “do not and will not accept members whom we know

to have extremist views.”

But the New Statesman has this to say about Farage’s party:

Links with European far-right parties

Ukip is part of the group Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD). The group includes representatives of the Danish People’s Party, the True Finns Party, the Dutch SGP and the infamous Italian Lega Nord – all of them far-right. Nigel Farage is co-President of the group along with Lega Nord’s Francesco Speroni, who described multiple murderer Anders Breivik as someone whose “ideas are in defence of western civilisation.”

Mario Borghezio, another member of the group, declared in a radio interview that Breivik had some “excellent” ideas. Farage’s reaction was to write a strongly-worded letter to Borghezio, asking him to withdraw his comments or Ukip would pull out of the EFD. Borghezio not only did not apologise, but responded with an extraordinary speech in which he raged: “Long live the Whites of Europe, long live our identity, our ethnicity, our race… our blue sky, like the eyes of our women. Blue, in a people who want to stay white.”

Nigel Farage did not withdraw from the EFD. He continues to co-preside over it, along with the leader of the Lega Nord. MEP Nikki Sinclaire, however, was expelled from Ukip for refusing to take part in the EFD because of their “extreme views”.

Links with domestic far-right parties

“Ukip has no links to the BNP,” explained Farage in 2007. The first line of any description of Ukip calls it “a libertarian, non-racist party”. What party, other than one skating close to the lines of taste and decency, needs to describe itself as “non-racist”? Farage boasted on The Andrew Marr Show(20 January 2013) that “Ukip is the only UK party to explicitly ban BNP members from joining”. What party, other than a party whose policies are attractive to such organisations, would need to do that?

Christopher Monckton, their Scotland Leader and Head of Policy Unit invited the now-defunct British Freedom Party – an amalgamation of mostly breakaway BNP members led by a former Ukip candidate until January 2013 – to join Ukip: “I would very much like them to come back and join us and we stand together.” Ukip’s excuse for this lapse? Monckton had been away on a tour of the US and was not up to speed with current policy. More recently, however, Farage refused to vote to oppose moves for the European Union to fund the BNP.

The founder of the party, Alan Sked, says it has become “extraordinarily right-wing” and is now devoted to “creating a fuss, via Islam and immigrants”.

Xenophobia

“Our traditional values have been undermined. Children are taught to be ashamed of our past. Multiculturalism has split our society. Political correctness is stifling free speech”, states the Ukip manifesto. Their “Pocket Guide to Immigration” promises to “end support for multiculturalism and promote one, common British culture”. After attracting some negative publicity, it has disappeared from here, but an archived version can be seen here (pdf).

One of their prospective MP candidates recently wrote: “A removal of multi-culturalism and assimilation of these people needs to be done to save them from the abyss of exclusion and welfare. Above all, one should not shy away of contemplating forced repatriation, or threatening it to further assimilation, as a result of their lack of economic contribution to the UK.” In fact their position on “forced repatriation” and “assimilation” is indistinguishable from the BNP’s. Except, perhaps, that Ukip’s 2005 manifesto advocates that all incoming immigrants should be “subject to health checks” for “communicable diseases”.

More recently, during BBC’s Question Time, Farage caused upset with some gross generalisations he made about Bulgarian people. He sent his trusted lieutenant and deputy chairman of the party Paul Nuttall to Bulgaria to defuse the situation. Nuttall explained that he had nothing to apologise for, since he never bashed Bulgarians, but was just noting facts. He stressed that “Brits fear all immigrants, regardless of where they would come from.”

Islamophobia

“On the question of Islamification,” said Farage during a well-received speech, “we have to do a bit more to teach our children of the values of our Judeo-Christian society.” He proceeded to note that at least 20 police forces are turning a blind eye to the operation of Sharia Law and expressed admiration for countries which say: “You’re welcome to come here and to have your children here… but if you’re coming here to take us over, you’re not welcome.”

A recent manifesto commitment to “tackle extremist Islam by banning the burqa or veiled niqab in public buildings and certain private buildings” was further explained by Farage: “I can’t go into a bank with a motorcycle helmet on. I can’t wear a balaclava going round the District and Circle line.”

Finally, Ukip peer Lord Pearson put it unequivocally. “The Muslims are breeding ten times faster than us,” he said. “I don’t know at what point they reach such a number we are no longer able to resist the rest of their demands.”

As for Farage, the comments attributed to him by Sked are appalling and racist in the extreme. Farage denies the allegation. Even so, there is plenty that the UKIP leader needs to do to get his house in order. Cutting links with the Far Right would be a good start.

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

Book now for the Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats (EMLD) and Social Liberal Forum (SLF) conference on race equality with guest speaker Vince Cable.

The conference is taking place on Saturday 1st June, 11.45am to 6pm near Shoreditch High Street station (London Overground). Tickets are £10 waged, £5 concessions.

Click here to book tickets!

The conference is called: “Race Equality: A New Lib Dem Approach.”

This conference will focus on race equality in education andemployment. It will see the launch of a new report by the Lib Dem Race Equality Taskforce on these subjects. And will discuss a progressive approach to differentiate the Lib Dems from both Labour and the Conservatives.

In addition to Vince Cable, other speakers include SLF co-chairs Gareth Epps and Naomi Smith, EMLD chair Issan Ghazni, Baroness Meral Hussein-Ece, Dr Rob Berkeley director of the Runnymede Trust, and Professor Gus John, a renowned educationalist.

Venue: Amnesty International UK, Human Rights Action Centre 25 New Inn Yard London EC2A 3EA

For more information email: jijiki7777@yahoo.co.uk

The Coalition really don’t like employees taking action against their bosses, do they? Not content with introducing a £250 fee to take out an Employment Tribunal case, the Government is set to abolish the questionnaire where bosses are currently obliged to give details of their policies.

Now I learn the business secretary Vince Cable is planning to reduce compensation payments to people who actually win their tribunal case.

This triple whammy amounts to a serious attack on workers rights. First, there is little evidence to suggest that employees take unfounded cases to the tribunal. The small minority that do hardly justifies penalising the vast majority who have a genuine case to take forward, regardless of whether they win or not.

Secondly, the questionnaire has proven invaluable to staff taking out discrimination cases. Discrimination – on grounds of race, gender, age or sexuality – is very difficult to prove but we all know that it is pretty widespread and everyone who suffers from it deserves an opportunity to seek justice. The questionnaire has helped many workers prove their case based on the answers given by their bosses. Now it is being removed in Vince’s Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill because it is unnecessary bureaucracy, apparently.

Both these measures will act as a significant deterrent to workers who have suffered a genuine injustice and may have suffered greatly at the hands of terrible employers.

On top of that reducing compensation payments to those who actually win their tribunal cases , payments which in most cases are pretty low anyway, send out all the wrong signals to workers across Britain and suggests that politicians would rather they suffer in silence or just leave quietly only for their bosses to inflict bad behaviour on their successors.

Instead of restricting opportunities for wronged workers to challenge bullying and discrimination, justice ministers should be tackling the growing scandal of the blacklisting of employers in the construction and other industries, and legislate to prevent businesses snooping into peoples’ private lives on Facebook to inform their decisions over who to hire and promote.

We hear a lot about building a stronger economy and a fairer society. Protecting workers rights does not damage the economy but eroding those rights certainly makes us a less fair society.

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

In just over two years Nick Clegg has gone from supporting an amnesty for asylum seekers to imposing £1,000 immigration bonds, a sure sign that his political compass has become seriously addled by the power of high office.

For all the positive passages of his immigration speech this morning the Deputy Prime Minister’s plan to slap a four-figure deposit on non-EU visitors from “high risk” countries is a piece of red meat designed to go down well with the carnivores of Fleet Street.

He didn’t spell out which high risk countries but it is likely that Nigeria, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh will be on the list. In other words the scheme that would target nations of colour, operated by the UK Borders Agency which already racially-profiles visitors.

Combined with Clegg’s wish to ditch the Liberal Democrat policy of ‘earned citizenship’ for asylum seekers whose claims remain unprocessed after ten years – dubbed an ‘amnesty’ at the last election – Clegg’s speech scores less than San Marino on the social-lib-o-meter.

Given the Coalition have already reduced non-EU migration by a third – a point trumpeted by Clegg and Conservative commentators today – we have to ask why the Government feels the need to crack down even harder in an area where they have already made significant progress, if that’s the word.

His speech will no doubt play well amongst a quarter of the population hostile to immigration, as identified by Searchlight’s Fear and Hope poll based on a 5,000 sample.

The trouble is few of these voters are naturally disposed to voting Lib Dem. The Searchlight report cross-references views on immigration with the political sympathies and found, not surprisingly, just eight percent of those hostile to migration fancied the Lib Dems as opposed to 24 percent of Conservative supporters. In other words Clegg is chasing votes largely out of his reach.

Conversely his speech risks alienating large portions of the population who have relatives in the Indian sub-continent and Africa and who make up a large chunk of the electorate in several marginal Lib Dem seats. Whichever way you slice the mustard Clegg’s intervention is unlikely to benefit the party in the long term. Come the next election BAME communities will remember it while other voters will have forgotten it.

The migration bond idea is also an example of political cross-dressing as it was first floated by David Cameron in 2011 and resurrected last month by the Home Secretary Theresa May. Worse, May’s comments in the Daily Mail in favour of the scheme appear remarkably similar to Clegg’s.

The migration bond idea goes back to 2000 when Labour raised it only to drop it in a hail of criticism. Labour floated it once more in 2008 before again ditching it when the plan was condemned as unworkable and discriminatory.

Keith Vaz, the Labour chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Committee, warned then that such bonds would “antagonise settled communities in Britain and enrage our allies such as India”, comments he repeated today, while the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants said it would act as a “deterrent” to visitors.

In fact Lib Dem MP Simon Hughes told the BBC in 2008 he thought the bond plan was “clearly discriminatory”, adding: “When will the government learn that what we need are sensible policies, not tough-sounding but half-baked ideas?” Yet today he sent an email to party members praising Clegg’s speech.

In 2011 Cameron called for a “a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years” More recently speeches by Labour’s Ed Miliband and Yvette Cooper, both sought to sound tough by supporting the Government’s cap on immigration. So we are now in a position where all three major parties are fighting for a tiny space to the Right of centre.

For Clegg the opportunity to put some clear ideological water between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives has been squandered as he tried on Tory threads for size. They clearly fitted well.

The only progressive position on these issues these days is now represented by the Greens and Respect with just one MP each. No wonder the public say all major parties are the same. On this issue it is largely true.

The very fact that all three major party leaders feel the urge talk tough on immigration and speaks volumes about the pincer effect of the Daily Mail and Daily Express on one side and UKIP and Migration Watch on the other, plucking improbably large numbers from the air to increase the fear factor.

While a sizeable chunk of the population undeniably have concerns about immigration this is largely caused by the drip-drip of daily sensationalised press headlines and radio chatshow presenters stirring up hostility.

It is the responsibility of progressives in politics to challenge the myths and dog-whistles, not pander to them. Clegg said in his speech he did not want an “immigration arms race” but the satellite evidence suggests that he is building an immigration nuclear policy.

The impact of immigration on schools, jobs, housing and health is vastly exaggerated and encourages the public to scapegoat newly-arrived communities for pressures that have vastly more to do with under-funding and austerity cuts than the immigrants themselves.

There was much mention this morning of Britain being a “tolerant” nation and adopting a “zero-tolerance” approach to abuse of the immigration system, but the dictionary definition of tolerance is putting up with something you don’t like. Shame there was no mention of zero-tolerance towards racism.

At the same time Clegg talked of the “wonderful diversity and openness… great British traditions.” Not a memory the Windrush generation of Caribbean immigrants in the 1950s and 60s or the first generation of Indian and Pakistanis in the 1970s will be able to recall easily.

In the next breath Clegg said: “The Government is also looking at the access migrants have to services and benefits. Fairness isn’t just about what people put into the system.”

This is peddling an old myth that has been disproved by evidence. As Alex Massie, writing in the Spectator, pointed out on Tuesday:

“There are more than half a million Polish-born people living in the UK. Some 6,390 of them, according to this DWP report from last year, are claiming the JSA.

“And a study by academics found that immigrants were 60 percent less likely to claim state benefits or tax credits despite the huge gap between their high levels of education while being disproportionately concentrated in low-skilled professions, 28 percent less likely to live in social housing and paid 37% more in direct or indirect taxes than they received in public goods and services.Indeed the study concluded:

“In our view, there is little reason to believe that, in the longer run, immigrants… constitute a net burden to the welfare system. This is also in line with the results of the analysis on the probability of welfare claims, which shows that immigrants – even if they were identical in a large number of characteristics to natives, like age, education, number of children and disability – would still be less likely to claim benefits.”

Another old chestnut in Clegg’s speech was the myth that people are not allowed to talk about immigration. A sentiment normally spouted by people that talk about it endlessly. Clegg said: “There’s a common allegation that, among the political elite…there’s been a conspiracy of silence on immigration.” If only…

Yet beyond the actually words, there is the more vexed issue of the sub-text and the code-words – whether intended or unintended – that pepper politicians’ speeches on this issue. References to the Great British Public carry more than a hint that they refer to white Anglo-Saxons rather than the whole of our multicultural society who have just as much claim to be British.

Clegg’s speech follows a pattern of more integrationist and less multicultural political rhetoric and is one more step to the Right, creating the impression Britain is pulling up the drawbridge at the very time it needs the economic benefits migration brings.

I also found Clegg’s speech deeply illiberal because the bond will only apply to certain countries while others will not be affected. Free movement for some but not for all based on ability to pay. I doubt, for example, that white citizens of New Zealand or Australia – where the idea of the bond scheme orginated – will be forced to stump up a grand. And how would Britons like it if every country they visited for a holiday forced them to pay £1,000 for the privilege of stepping onto their soil?

Illegal immigrants, especially those smuggled in by criminal gangs, are likely to bypass the system just as they do at present. And the scheme only affects non-EU countries whereas the public are most concerned by immigration from within the EU who cannot be hit with the bond.

The people it will most hit are those travelling in for weddings and other family occasions. Often we are talking about 20 or 30 visitors at a time. Britain already asks for guarantees of accommodation and finances from their sponsors. Who is going to be able to find an extra £20,000 to pay for bonds for relatives to attend a wedding? All this will mean is smaller weddings and greater resentment towards Government.

Clegg claimed his plan would not be “entirely dependant on your ability to pay the security bond”, but the use of that word ‘entirely’ is important to note.

Permission to visit will now be based on ability to pay, the ultimate Tory philosophy. Great for Middle Eastern playboys, less good for the poor. It’s like hanging an enormous ‘no money, no entry’ banner on the white cliffs of Dover. What we need is not so much the closing of immigration loopholes as the closing of tax loopholes.

In times of economic depression the Far Right traditionally prosper, so upping the ante on these issues risks playing Russian Routlette with the chances of allowing them to capitalise on such sentiments to spread hate.

Xenophobia and fear of immigration are two sides of the same coin. Clegg may well want to mainstream the issue thereby taking a weapon out of the hands of the extremists but the nature of Britain’s press and public discourse will not allow progressive arguments to win unless there is a more concerted effort to challenge the myths and stereotypes.

Yet we heard little today that challenged the myths. As anyone who has been through customs can testify, the myth of uncontrolled borders is as preposterous as the notion that all people on benefits live million-pound houses, have flat-screen TVs and enjoy foreign holidays.

Since the early 1980s immigrants have become one of the most legislated-upon parts of our society with countless Acts of Parliament being passed over the past two decades. Indeed the bond scheme is only possible because Tony Blair’s first Home Secretary Jack Straw introduced measures in the 1999 Immigration & Asylum Act that allows the UK to require a financial security from temporary migrants, forfeited if they fail to leave the UK after the expiry of their visa.

To their credit the Liberal Democrats pledged to end the practice of detaining children of asylum seekers. Yet as the Independent pointed out this practice is still occurring. But what of the wider issue about why we need Immigration Detention Centres, prisons for asylum seekers, in the first place?

For the vast majority of detainees their only crime is to claim refuge in a country that prides itself on ‘tolerance’ and many are facing deportation because of a culture of disbelief within the Home Office’s immigration department, a system that frequently ignores or discounts evidence of persecution. And a system where some asylum seekers are so fearful of returning that they self harm while others receive broken bones courtesy of brutish heavies hired to literally throw them out of Britain.

Clegg’s speech was a closely-guarded secret before today with no advice taken from race or immigration experts in the party. The immigration working group, chaired by the former minister Andrew Stunell, was not informed and neither was the federal policy committee.

Checking the social media, many party members are outraged. Liberal Youth put out a statement that said: “Nick Clegg’s ’security bonds’ policy will stifle foreign entrepreneurship and investment in Britain. We should be encouraging people to start up businesses in here, which create jobs and economic growth. We cannot say we are being open and tolerant on immigration, whilst putting up further barriers to those who want to come into this country, to work and to get on.”

The normally loyal Stephen Tall, from Lib Dem Voice, tweeted: “I tried hard to give Nick Clegg’s immigration speech a fair hearing. But it’s lazy, lazy stuff. No attempt to tackle myths and no attempt by Nick Clegg to emphasise the positives – economic as well as cultural – that immigration offers. Cop-out liberalism.” There was also a backlash on the Alliance of Liberal Democrat Facebook group.

The best thing Clegg can do now is quietly drop the bond plan. After all, he is not exactly known for his word being his bond.

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

I wrote last December about the need to regulate against press racism so its’ disappointing to see that the issues is still being largely ignored by MPs.

Much of the raging debate surrounding regulation and Leveson is about how the cross-party deal will work, whether it will inhibit press freedom, and whether this includes bloggers. Meanwhile, as editors discuss whether they will sign up to the agreement, the Spectator has declared it won’t sign.

I have my doubts over the deal but contrary to fears that it will over-regulate it looks to me like it will hardly be any different from the current paper tiger of the discredited Press Complaints Commission.

We might get larger-sized corrections to inaccurate stories but many of today’s issues appear to be unaddressed.

Even though Leveson devoted significant attention to the way some newspapers demonised whole groups in society, particularly Muslims and asylum seekers, this appears to have been ignored by MPs and the media when it comes to discussing press regulation.

Failure of the party leaders and MPs to tackle inaccurate reporting against whole communities, as opposed to individuals, is a gaping hole in the proposals.

Roy Greenslade, writing in the Guardian, highlighted another issue missing from the discourse when he wrote:

“Representation and equality issues should be part of journalism training, and schools encouraged to explore critical thinking and education about the media; the press industry needs to encourage women to take up senior posts in the print media; and the public, academics and campaign groups should insist that any new regulator does indeed act on Leveson’s recommendation to take complaints from third parties.”

While Green MP Caroline Lucas has criticised the failure to include any guidelines about women’s representation on the new regulatory body, especially in light of the sexism often displayed by the red top tabloids, a point also made by gender equality campaigner Jackie Hunt on BBC Radio 4′s Women’s Hour.

Equality is clearly off the agenda when it comes to Leveson, even if it was on Leveson’s own agenda. Let’s hope that the new body at least put in place some measures to address these issues, particularly the demonisation of whole communities.

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

Please only click on the maroon-coloured links. Any other links (adverts) have been automatically inserted, much to my disapproval!

Has George Osborne forgotten to do an Equality Impact Assessment on his budget again?

The chancellor was criticised by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) for failing to carry out the exercise to identify whether his 2010 budget discriminated against sections of society.

Today there was no sign of any Equality Impact Assessment amongst the treasury’s documents to accompany Osborne’s third budget.

Last November David Cameron pledged to scrap EIA’s however this has not yet come into force and Britain’s public authorities – including Whitehall departments – are still obliged to write them.

A few weeks ago equality ministers Jo Swinson and Don Foster told a meeting of Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) Liberal Democrat activists that EIA’s were not being axed despite the Prime Ministers’ comments.

Today the treasury’s own budget document on the impact on households does not even mention the word equality let alone an EIA, and neither does their document on ‘fairness’ in the budget.

So have the Coalition already ditched EIA’s even before they’ve been officially binned? It may appear so.

Why does this matter? Well, as the EHRC pointed out in 2010 the budget did discriminate against certain groups. That year the Fawcett Society took out a judicial review over evidence that the budget unfairly penalised women.

More recently the all-party Social Security Advisory Committee pointed out that an EIA by the Department for Work and Pensions proved that ethnic minority benefit claimants were “disproportionately sanctioned.”

This is precisely why EIAs are so important. They identify real aspects of discrimination caused by Government and public authorities and give politicians a chance to put it right.

But without information about how policies discriminate it is much easier for decision-makers to avoid taking action, or even claim there is no evidence of discrimination.

With all the evidence of disproportionate discrimination against BAME communities – not least the fact that Black youth unemployment is at 56 percent and Black people of all working ages are twice as likely to be unemployed as white people – it is imperative that the treasury carry out an EIA on the budget to assess whether new measures will increase unfairness and whether the budget does anything to address the existing unequal outcomes.

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

Please only click on the maroon-coloured links! WordPress are inserting unwanted ad links in my blog posts which are not maroon.

It was uplifting to meet a class-full of polite, inquisitive and intelligent young boys who most definitely are the future.

My thanks go to Bro Andrew Muhammad for inviting me. It was really good to catch up with other leaders involved with making this academy a success, and proof once again that quality conscious supplementary education can make a difference in areas where the school ‘system’ fails to inspire.

From Willesden I and my partner Listra Dawn Gilzene travelled to the London Sugar and Slavery gallery at the Museum of London in Docklands to watch curator Leslie Braine-Ikomi narrate his collection of paintings chronicling the depiction of Black people in 17th – 19th Century London.

It was well-attended and there followed a lively discussion afterwards. In the William Wilberforce lecture theatre, of all places!

Leslie Braine-Ikomi

Braine-Ikomi revealed that people of African descent made up an estimated two percent of the London population in the 19^th Century, a very significant number given that this was well over a century before the Windrush.

But then again, we often forget that Black people have had a notable presence in Britain since Roman times and – as Bro Andrew Muhammad knows having researched this area – the Black presence here dates back to the 1^st Century AD.

I certainly feel Black Londoners could benefit from more of an awareness of the history of the capital pre-Windrush, just as the Black communities of Bristol and Liverpool have a sense of belonging to the cities for two or three hundred years.

It was an enjoyable and educative day and I thoroughly recommend you put 20^th April in your diaries for the next session at the Museum of London. Email:mike@peoplepictures.me for more information.

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

PS: WordPress seem to be inserting unwanted advert links into my blog stories! I did not ask for this and object strongly to this intrusion. I’m trying to find out how to get rid of them (any advice, please let me know!). In the meantime I’ve highlighted my links in a maroon colour. Please don’t click on any other links! Thank you.

Say what you like about Ken Livingstone at least he had the good sense to realise that London’s multicultural city demands a progressive approach to policing.

He was determined the capital must never return to the bad old days of the Sus Laws lest the consequences of oppressive policing – civil unrest – erupt when least expected.

His successor at City Hall, Boris Johnson, has no time for such ‘politically correct’ sensitivities as witnessed by his decision to effectively disband Scotland Yard’s Operation Trident, a detective team specialising in cracking gun crime in the Black community.

The news follows an earlier move to kick out a group of independent advisers who formed a vital vein of communication between the police and the capitals’ African and Caribbean population.

Red Ken was often portrayed as a Socialist ideologue but in reality behind Boris’s buffoonery and populism lies the real ideologue only too willing to impose his Right wing dogma on a Left-of-centre city.

Operation Trident, created following demands from leading Black figures to deal more seriously with the plague of gun crime, had its’ critics but it is undeniable that the unit made a significant difference to catching gunmen.

And that means lives have been saved. This is a statement trumpeted by senior officers over years to justify the detective team which targets ‘black-on-black’ crime. And there truth in the claim. When Trident was set up there was a desperate need for a command committed to over-coming the barriers to securing convictions of criminals.

This has reaped rewards by increasing the success rate of serious criminals being jailed. By identifying fears of retaliation and increasing witness protection to break ‘walls of silence’, and by gathering intelligence of gangs and their gang ‘culture’, Trident was able to take murderers and tonnes of guns off the streets.

With the number of gun victims going down Trident is in many ways a victim of its’ own success even though the unit has come in for criticism for not being effective enough.

Needless to say this has saved lives. Conversely dismantling the detective team threatens to cost lives, Black lives. Surely anyone can see that? Not an ideologue like Boris who would rather abolish a perceived symbol of Livingstone’s legacy, an initiative supported by the ‘race relations industry’, rather than see the potential tragic human consequences of his decision.

Maybe he doesn’t care after all the inner city communities affected are highly unlikely to vote Tory. And in any case Boris, in his second and final term, is not troubled by the prospect of re-election and is delegating an increasing amount of powers to his unelected officials as he winds down at City Hall and winds-up his manoeuvres to secure a return to the Commons with the goal of seizing the Conservative Party leadership.

In the case of policing this part-time mayor has handed much of his responsibilities as elected police and crime commissioner to another notorious ideologue, the former Hammersmith and Fulham council leader Stephen Greenhalgh.

Under Boris’s watch police use of Section 60 stop and search powers – which allow cops to apprehend citizens without reasonable suspicion of them having committed a crime – has risen dramatically. Yet it is so ineffective, with arrest rates of just seven percent, it is the ultimate blunt instrument.

Section 60 is the new Sus Laws, hugely targeted against Black youth and risking taking London back to the pre-Scarman1980′s. The tactic causes immeasurable tensions against the police and strangles the very flow of intelligence needed to catch the criminals that make life dangerous for the law-abiding majority in the inner cities.

Not content with damaging community-police relations, the Boris-Greenhalgh double act are now taking a ball-and-chain to the line blue line protecting inner London has from the spectre of criminal gangs terrorising their neighbourhoods.

Granted, the conviction rate for ‘black-on-black’ gun crime has remained stubbornly below the figure for non-Trident cases and this has been a source of frustration. Indeed the Met’s team have been accused of not giving enough priority to witness protection.

But the conviction rate is still a lot higher than it was before Trident was set up, and there is no convincing argument that the dynamics of gang crime have changed sufficiently to justify scrapping it.

A small handful of figures have previously suggested that Trident should be abolished but their frustrations stem from the fact that the operation could, and should, be more successful and is not, in itself, a reason for axing it.

One obvious way of improving things is to have more Black detectives under a Black leadership, which Trident has never had, to better understand the challenges of gathering intelligence needed to charge the big players.

The old Metropolitan Police Authority kept Trident accountable and reflected many of these concerns, however since the Coalition has abolished police authorities handing all scrutiny power to one person – in London’s case the mayor – the focus on improving Trident has vanished.

Lee Jasper, one of the founders of Trident and former chair of its’ independent advisory group, wrote about the need for Trident yesterday:

The campaign for Trident was prompted by the brutal murder of Marcia Lawes, demanded that the Met, stop using registered criminally active informers, who were running amok in our communities, committing rape, robbery and murder, all with the sanction and support of the Met. I was one of the founding fathers of Trident in the late 1990’s.

It was I and a group of other activists, who challenged the Met to improve its relationship with London black communities, by tackling their tragic failure to investigate and prosecute the killers in our community.

I saw it as part of the post McPherson settlement. The police deal with racist attacks and officers and in return, we support them in tackling armed criminality. It was a mutually beneficial relationship.

People such as Cheryl Sealy, Nick Long, the late Arlene Mundle and Canon Ivelaw Bowman, all of whom demanded that the scandal of mothers left with dead bodies and no justice and the reckless use of criminally active, informers was brought to an end.

The Trident unit focused on armed criminals in the black community and attempted to stem the rise in murder and mayhem in our communities. High profile media campaigns, tackling the supply of guns, improving witness protections and an increasing level of trust in the police, were some of its distinguishing hall marks.

The detectives and the staff became specialist on this difficult area, the rate of successful prosecution went up and gradually gun shooting came down.

It worked, because we had some of the harshest critics of the police as Trident Independent advisers; they were hand picked by me and other advisers. The Met had no say in our selections and often baulked at our choices. Our relationship was sparky, tense, creatively dynamic. This worked and worked well. So much so that it become an international policing model, hailed as providing the template example working with alienated communities worldwide.

As Trident advisers, we often restrained and held back the police from reverting to type, pointing out the way in which racist stereotypes, infected operational policing decisions. We shone a bright light, over every aspect of Trident Command Unit, always providing sharply, critical analysis, and demanding more from proof from them, that things were improving and for a while, they were.

In February of last year, Mayor of London Boris Johnson and Met Commissioner Bernard Hogan Howe decided that Trident would be changed form a discreet unit, into an anti gang task force and in one fell swoop, destroyed its reputation. I along with other key former members of Trident Advisers condemned that decision.

The death of Trident is complete. The Met under political pressure from Boris have reverted back to the lazy, stereotypical, racist policing methods of the past, expanding the use of supergrasses, criminal informers and the introducing the 2013 version of the SUS law, the dreaded joint enterprise.

These are precisely the type of policing tactics, which did so much to corrode the Met reputation in the past. Racist policing is back in full effect. The Met has returned to its default setting, as that of an institutionally racist organisation having been given the all clear by Boris Johnson’s much discredited Race and Faith Report published in 2010.

As for violent crime, the black community finds itself, right back where it started. Reported violent crime is down so the official figures say. I say that is utter rubbish, killings may be down due to the improvement surgeon’s skills, but black people live in constants fear of violence.

We have less dead bodies, but more walking wounded, more incidents unreported, more gerrymandering of the figures and mendacity and meaningless rhetoric from the Mayor. We have a Tory Commissioner who seems, professionally incapable of publically criticising the Mayor, even as he slashes police officer numbers.

Witness protection is a mess, innocent people are convicted under the joint enterprise law, stop and search is through the roof and supergrasses are … paid off for dodgy evidence.

So farewell, Trident, once a jewel in the Mets crown, now a battered bloodied and abused. Crushed by an out of touch politician, whose commitment to tackling gangs is paper thin, glossed with Latin references and cheap publicity stunts.

We are back to the bad old days where Black life in London is seen as cheap. The consequences, I warn you now, will be both profound and expensive.

The inevitable consequence of scrapping Trident is a rise in serious crime affecting the Black community, and that means the decision-makers, Boris and Greenhalgh, may well end up with blood on their hands.

Add into the mix the new 20 percent arrest rate target for stop and search, which I blogged about last month and – with the additional factors of hugely disproportionate Black youth unemployment and austerity measures that will continue to bite into youth services for years to come – and all the ingredients are there for the kind of civil disturbances we last witnessed in the early to mid 1980′s.

The police told The Voice newspaper today that they weren’t axing Trident but this is at odds with the facts, as outlined by the Police Oracle which points out that:

The Metropolitan Police has announced that its recently re-focused Operation Trident Gang Command is to shed responsibility for investigating fatal shooting incidents – the reason why it was originally formed nearly 15 years ago.

While fatal shootings have traditionally been investigated by Trident, a statement issued by the force said that other killings – including the stabbings of young people – had been dealt with by officers and staff from the HSCC (Homicide and Serious Crime Command).

The move means that Operation Trident exists in name-only. This is the second time the unit has been changed under Boris. Just a few months ago he widened its’ remit from specifically tackling ‘black-on-black’ crime to all gang crime regardless of the ethnicities of the victims or perpetrators.

This second change in a short period of time suggests that City Hall really don’t have a clue what they are doing. With Trident now responsible for ‘non-fatal’ shootings while HSCC tackles fatal shootings it is literally a roll of the dice as to whether a gun incident will fall under Trident or not depending on where the bullet hits.

It’s a nonsensical situation that is surely a precursor to the Trident team officially being wound up before too long.

The outgoing chair of the Trident independent advisory group Claudia Webbe wrote in The Guardian today:

Police confirmation that they had moved the central core of Operation Trident – its dedicated murder investigation unit – to the homicide and serious crime command, effectively signals the end of Trident, the London-based organisation I founded with other community activists in the mid-1990s.

Back then, while the culture of gun crime affected whole communities and neighbourhoods, 90% of homicide victims were black, mainly black men. The police response was woeful, using criminal “informants” who were themselves allowed to get away with so-called lesser crimes. Delroy Denton, for example, was left free to brutally rape a 15-year-old schoolgirl and murder Marcia Lawes, slashing her throat 18 times; and Eaton Green was allowed to continue dealing crack cocaine and committing armed robbery.

As a result of community pressure an inquiry was undertaken by the late Sir John Hoddinott, who was chief constable of Hampshire, which confirmed our worst fears: that the police had a better relationship with “criminal informants” than it did with law-abiding black people. The police tactics were flawed from the start; there were very few detections of and/or prosecutions for gun-related murders. Many in the black community believed the police were complicit in the way men of violence were taking hold of our neighbourhoods and estates, using guns to protect their crack cocaine trade.

We campaigned for change, arguing that tackling gun murders and enabling justice for victims and their families relied on the police building trust and confidence with the black community and working in partnership. A new low was reached in 1998 following the brutal murders of Avril Johnson in Brixton and Michelle Carby in Stratford.

However, despite the ongoing community pressure, it was not until the aftermath of the Lawrence inquiry that the then Met commissioner and home secretary finally agreed in 2000 to the establishment of a dedicated Trident operational command unit (OCU), established with over 200 staff to investigate gun murders disproportionately affecting black communities. The unit was to work closely with the already established Operation Trident independent advisory group. Encouraging witnesses and members of the community to come forward required sensitivity, dedicated police time and specialist resources.

As an independent advisory group we worked hard to challenge the generally held negative perception that victims of gun crime were somehow complicit in their fate or, worse still, criminals themselves. The sensitive Trident murder investigations of innocent bystanders such as 17-year-old Annaka Pinto, murdered in Tottenham in 2007, and seven-year-old Toni-Ann Byfield – who was shot dead to prevent her from identifying her father’s murderer – highlight the importance of our work.

Over time, gun murder victims and their families no longer felt ashamed to speak about their experiences. Trident cases require a particular dedication, cultural awareness and sensitivity, and when this is absent it has had a particular damaging impact on community relations.

Perpetrators of gun and violent crime had historically relied on a “culture of silence” and a “climate of fear” to avoid detection. Trident’s success in driving down gun murders has been invaluable not only to the black community but also to London’s population as a whole.

It is hugely detrimental and a retrograde step to learn that the dedicated murder investigation unit, the very heart and engine of Trident, is to be realigned or merged, watering down Trident’s effect. Even more detrimental is the fact that this decision came without consultation or engagement, and this is a huge slap in the face to those of us who campaigned hard to establish Operation Trident.

In February 2012, and with no community consultation, London’s mayor, Boris Johnson, relaunched Trident as a gang command unit: moving from tackling black, gun-related crime to tackling all violent crime relating to young people. Over the past year there has been a gradual whittling away of independent scrutiny of the operational effectiveness of Trident.

In disadvantaged areas with diverse populations and myriad economic and social problems, the slippery use of the language of “gangs” and its loose association with young people mitigates against effective policing, providing a dangerous shortcut to understanding youth conflict. The “gang”, it seems, is sufficient explanation: there is no attempt to understand the broader and more complex social, cultural, economic and political context of youth violence. As a result there is a false and often racialised understanding of the preventative and proactive role of the police.

The strength of Trident – which sent a clear message to gun-wielding murderers and the criminal fraternity – within the black community is now weakened and its successes will become a thing of the past. It is hard now to see how its message that criminals will be hunted down and brought to justice will be enforced in the future.

Nobody has any wish to go back to the days when gun murders went largely undetected, with a community too frightened or lacking confidence in the police. Operation Trident was a model of good practice. But now political interference and the loss of its dedication, specialism and focus has left us all vulnerable.

And that’s the point. The legacy of the Lawrence inquiry, and the whole concept of a dedicated approach to tackling issues disproportionately affecting the Black community, have been buried by politicians with no knowledge of past struggles and no cares about whether their ‘mainstreaming’ dogma might have deadly repercussions.

This would have never happened under Red Ken nor, I believe, any progressive mayor of London including a Liberal Democrat or Labour mayor. They would be vastly more aware of the issues and understand the need to work with the Black community not dictate to them or trample over the advice of those who have decades of experience of policing in the Black community.

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

Interesting to see former National Union of Students president Kat Fletcher pop up as a Labour candidate in a council byelection.

Not because she’s running for Labour – most ex-NUS presidents do. I took note because her name was a blast from the past.

She led the NUS at a time I worked for the anti-racist charity The 1990 Trust and, around this period, I heard several grumbles about alleged racist and Islamophobic incidents.

Not that Fletcher was to blame. She has a long record of public statements condemning all forms of prejudice.

Yet anyone who was into national student politics in the mid-2000′s cannot deny that the NUS was rife with poisonous accusations at the time.

These tensions exploded into the national newspapers in 2005 when Luciana Berger, now a high-flying Labour MP, and two others resigned from the NUS executive in a row over “anti-Semitic” leaflets on a stall at the union’s annual conference in 2005.

Fletcher, who was NUS president at the time, said the union was “deeply concerned” by the resignations and stressed that it had a “proud record in tackling racism and fascism”.

But Berger was quoted as saying: “After five years fighting racism in the student movement, I am devastated to find it so prevalent at the heart of my own union.”

An independent inquiry criticised the NUS leadership for failing to act swiftly against anti-Semitism and the chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, expressed “distress” at the situation.

A year earlier Fletcher’s NUS was at loggerheads with the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS) over a motion calling for respected Muslim academic Professor Tariq Ramadan to be banned from the European Social Forum.

Fletcher has, to her credit, stood up against Islamophobia on occasions and internal NUS turmoil was not unique to her term in office. Indeed after she left one student union officer was banned from NUS events after unveiling a banner saying “bring back slavery.”

I seem to recall other incidents during and after Fletcher’s time, some of which The 1990 Trust published on its’ Black Information Link website. Sadly the archive has been offline for a few years now so I can’t access the stories.

I’ve taken quotes from Fletcher more than once and she was impeccably polite, saying all the right things in terms of her commitment to anti-racism and anti-Islamophobia.

Being a student leader has always been a difficult job, a bit like herding feral cats into a pen, and as such she cannot be held responsible for the bad behaviour of others.

Yet I understand from numerous sources that the NUS and student societies were notoriously riven with racial and religious spats, tensions and suspicion, during Fletcher’s tenure and after she left.

I never got the sense that she or her immediate successors were really leading the struggle to combat these ills despite their faultless public pronouncements.

But then I was never privy to the behind-the-scenes politics of the NUS and I certainly picked up more information from Black and Muslim students who felt aggrieved over various issues than I heard the NUS leadership’s side of the story.

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

I welcome the Liberal Democrats’ spring conference voting overwhelmingly to condemn the Government plan to introduce ‘secret courts’ and is saddened by the fact that most of our MPs defied the wishes of the party by voting for this measure in the Commons.

I’m especially sad that activist Jo Shaw quit the party in protest, announcing her resignation during the emergency debate in Brighton this morning. I understand other members, such as Ruth Edmonds, have also left the party. Jo will be a big loss to the Liberal Democrats. The blog Lib Dem Voice paid tribute to her calling Jo “one of our best”, and I wholly concur with that sentiment.

Leading human rights lawyer, Dinah Rose QC, has also quit the party over this issue. I hope their sacrifice will be a wake-up call for the parliamentarians – particularly our MPs – to remember they owe their positions to the party and when the party express a view overwhelmingly that view should be heeded and acted upon.

However in an otherwise good speech to close the spring conference this morning, Nick Clegg said that we are “not a party of protest” any longer.

I disagree. Protest is integral to politics, whether the party is in power or opposition. While there is injustice, inequality and a lack of liberty in society then party activists and members should indeed protest.

The concept of secret courts is an affront to the principle of liberty enshrined in the preamble to our party’s constitution. As Dinah Rose said:

“The very first sentence of the Liberal Democrats’ constitution states that they exist to build a ‘fair, free, and open society’. The vote in favour of secret courts is an attack on the heart and soul of the party.

“The right to a fair hearing, and the right to open justice, are among the most fundamental of all our basic constitutional rights.”

Open courts with juries, and where the press and public can witness proceedings, is as vital a part of democracy as a free press.

If there was ever a court case arising from the death of Azelle Rodney (pictured) who was shot six times in the head by a police firearms officer in 2005, it would most likely be affected by secret courts because the State would argue that intelligence-gathering would be compromised if heard in open court.

However a public inquiry into Rodney’s death is ongoing, and hearings in September last year took place where officers evidence was heard in public.

Another case where intelligence-gathering was a factor was that of Jean Charles de Menezes, who was shot seven times in the head by a policeman after being mistaken for a suicide bomber in 2005.

The de Menezes inquest heard evidence of the police in public while protecting their anonymity. If ‘secret courts’ makes it into law it is likely that hearings would be held behind closed doors.

It is important that justice is seen to be done and cloaking the law in secrecy undermines the public perception of the criminal justice system. For that reason secret courts need to be opposed.

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats held the first of our three fringe meetings at Lib Dem conference in Brighton last night. The star speaker was Roger Lynch, a highly successful entrepreneur from Peckham in south London.

Lynch paid tribute to his local MP Simon Hughes for getting him involved in politics but warned the party they were lagging behind on race equality and Black political representation.

However the party’s principles remained attractive and the Liberal Democrats just needed to put them into practice more often, he added.

Other speakers at last nights’ fringe meeting (8th March) were Phil Stevens, chair of the Liberal Democrat Disability Association, and Anjua Prashar, a candidate for the European Parliament and until recently a member of EMLD’s executive.

Stevens spoke about his concern over Government proposals to repeal sections of existing Equality Acts including the ‘general duty’ on the equalities watchdog, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, to work towards the elmination of prejudice and promote good community relations.

LDDA had been working with EMLD on this issue as the ‘red tape-cutting’ Enterprise Regulation and Reform (ERR) Bill makes its’ way through Parliament.

Yesterday afternoon we learnt that the EMLD/LDDA emergency motion calling on Lib Dem parliamentarians to oppose measures that roll back existing equalities laws was rejected by Federal Conference Committee. The motion was denied the chance to make the ballot because it failed the ‘emergency’ test, members were told.

However this development is unlikely to dent the determination amongst many party activists to continue to lobby our political representatives over concerns that equality legislation is being hacked away, especially when the ERR Bill returns to the Commons.

Members of the audience at last nights’ fringe included former equalities minister Andrew Stunnel and Lord Qurban Hussein.

Don’t forget to visit the EMLD stall (exhibition stand 6) today!

Article first published on EMLD website here. Follow EMLD on Twitter @EMLibDems or visit their Facebook page: groups/EMLibDems

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats (EMLD) have joined forces with the Liberal Democrat Disability Association (LDDA) to submit a motion to spring conference calling on the party to oppose moves to scrap an equalities mission statement.

The move comes just hours after the Lords voted to keep the ‘general duty’ in the Equality Act which expresses a desire to promote good race relations and end prejudice and hate.

The Government want to axe the general duty claiming it sets “unrealistic expectations” but peers – including six Liberal Democrats – defied the whip to preserve the aspirational statement.

Now EMLD and LDDA have submitted a motion to the party’s spring conference which is due to be debated on Sunday morning (10^th March).

EMLD hope to rally support for this debate at a fringe meeting on Friday (8^th March) with keynote speakers Baroness Meral Hussein-Ece, entrepreneur Roger Lynch and Phil Stevens from the LDDA. The fringe will be held at 8.15pm, hall 8A at the Hilton Metropole in Brighton.

The EMLD / LDDA motion calls on the Liberal Democrats to:

1. Oppose Conservative attempts to weaken the Equality Act and in particular to oppose any weakening of the Public Sector Equality Duty;
2. Object and voice opposition to proposals to remove duty not to harass
3. Object to proposals which would remove the promotion of good relations between different groups and valuing diversity
4. Apply the whip to ensure all proposals which endanger the rights of diverse groups are voted against in stages through parliament
5. Uphold the values of equality by maintaining the rights of diversity strands in employment.
6. Reassert the importance of addressing harassment and victimisation in the work place and work towards a more inclusive society whereby all people, no matter what their background, can achieve their full potential.   

EMLD lobbied Lib Dem peers over the need to keep Section 3 of the Equality Act 2006, which includes the ‘general duty’ on Britain’s equality watchdog, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, to work towards an equal Britain.

The organisation intend to lobby the party’s MP’s to keep the general duty when the Enterprise and Regulation Reform Bill (ERR) returns to the Commons, and hope that Sunday’s motion to spring conference will add weight to the case.

The motion also urges the party to oppose Clause 58 of ERR which proposes to remove section 40 of the Equality Act to remove any prevention of harassment of employees by employers or colleagues.

And the motion also urges opposition to Clause 59 of ERR which proposes to remove sanctions for those that breach the Equality Act.

EMLD are greatly concerned by attempts to repeal various parts of the Equality Act as well as scrap Equality Impact Assessments which Britain’s 40,000 public bodies use to scrutinise new policies to ensure they do not discriminate.

EMLD also plan to join forces with those opposed to the Governments’ plans to axe another part of the Equality Act, a questionnaire that employers must fill in when facing a tribunal action from an employee alleging discrimination.

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

The campaign to save an equality law enshrining Britain’s commitment to work towards the elimination of racism received a boost this week when the coalition peers defied the Government to keep the aspirational statement.

Ministers were defeated by over 50 votes as peers voted to keep Section 3 of the Equality Act which expresses the desire to promote good race relations and end prejudice and hate.

Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrat (EMLD) had lobbied party peers over the plan to scrap Section 3 and on Tuesday former EMLD chair Baroness Meral Hussein-Ece was at the forefront of the battle to preserve the ‘general duty’ on the equality watchdog, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, to work towards an equal Britain.

You can read the debate here and watch it here.

EMLD chair Issan Ghazni expressed delight that several Lib Dem peers had voted for an amendment to save the that part of the Equality Act 2010.

In a letter to Lib Dems ahead of the debate Ghazni wrote that the mission statement was as important as the preamble to the party’s constitution which refers to ‘liberty, equality and community.’

The lobbying effort paid dividends on Tuesday as several Lib Dem peers defied the whip to keep law. The measure, proposed by disabilities campaigner Baroness Jane Campbell of Surbiton, was support by 217 to 166, a majority of 51.

The result puts pressure on Lib Dem MP’s to follow the Lords example when the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill goes back to the House of Commons. EMLD pledged to continue lobbying to ensure MP’s also vote to save the ‘general duty.’

Lib Dem peers who voted to retain the aspirational statement were: L.Addington, L.Avebury, L.Bradshaw, B.Brinton, B.Hussein-Ece, B.Tonge (unwhipped). There were also a number of abstentions including L.Dholakia and L.Hussain.

The debate revealed supporters of the ‘general duty’ from all sides of the House, including Conservative LAhmed of Wimbledon and several crossbenchers.

Labour, who proposed the amendment in the Lords, intend to continue to fight for the ‘general duty’ when the Bill returns to the Commons.

They are likely to raise concerns over several aspects of Britain’s equalities framework that are under threat including Equality Impact Assessments, which all public authorities currently carry out when designing new policies to ensure they do not discriminate.

There are also concerns over severe funding cuts to the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Speaking in the Lords debate Baroness Meral Hussein-Ece said:

“The Government have a choice between a strong independent body that is committed to promoting and safeguarding our values [or] a watered-down, less independent, weaker institution… without the vision and underpinning that is so important.

“I cannot think of another organisation that does not have some sort of mission statement or a duty to promote or do something. This is the only organisation of its kind in this country. Are we suggesting that the Equality and Human Rights Commission does not need such a mission or values, which were very much fought over and arose as a result of cross-party agreement when the Equality Act 2006 was debated and enshrined?”

The Government suffered a second defeat on Tuesday when Coalition peers again defied the whips to vote to include caste discrimination alongside race, gender, age and disability discrimination.

The Government, represented by ex-BBC boss Conservative minister Baroness Tina Stowell of Beeston, also opposed this proposal but the Lords voted by a majority of over 100 to grant legal protection for lower castes from the Indian sub-continent, especially the Dalit community.

However the coalition chalked up a narrow win by defeating an amendment, proposed by Lib Dem Lord Anthony Lester QC, to save a section of the Equality Act which requires employers to fill out a questionnaire from the employee taking out a discrimination tribunal case.

Former Commission for Racial Equality chair, crossbencher Lord Herman Ouseley, believes that the Government proposal to scrap the questionnaire would disproportionately impact on Black, Asian and other minority communities (BAME) who suffer race discrimination in addition to other forms of prejudice. 

Lord Herman Ouseley

He told the Lords:

“I feel [the Government wants] to allow employers to hire and fire without any fear, weakening employees’ rights and reducing the support and representation available to victims of discrimination in the workplace, while making the EHRC weaker.

“This is being done largely on the basis, as argued by the Government, that it is a burden on employers to have to respond to questions being asked by employees about their treatment. “Employees have to get that information to determine whether they have a basis on which to go forward with a case of unlawful discrimination. Without that information, they literally have no basis for doing so.

“Many employers clearly support the reform put forward here-getting rid of the questionnaire-because they do not want to be accountable for their actions or to respond to questionnaires in which they have to provide explanations for their actions. They regard these questionnaires, as the government side have argued in taking this forward, as a nuisance.”

However the Government narrowly defeated the bid to retain the employer questionnaire by 179 to 167 votes.

Labour withdrew an amendment aimed at saving Equality Impact Assessments after making a mess of presenting their case. Before the amendment was withdrawn Baroness Hussein-Ece said:

“It seems to me there is an awful lot of misinformation regarding the benefits of having an equality impact assessment as part of the public sector equality duty. However, it is an important tool and has been successfully used to assess the impact of public services and of government policy on vulnerable people.

“Of course, there is always room for improvement… however, we must ensure that equality and the right of access to services is open to all, regardless of who they are or their background.

“It provides an important evidence base to support provision that is effective and efficient and ensures that services provide value for money, so it has served an important purpose.”

The failure to have a vote on Equality Impact Assessments has not deflated EMLD who intend to redouble their efforts to lobby for this element of the Equality Act to also be preserved, along with the ‘general duty’ mission statement to work towards the elimination of racism and other forms of discrimination.

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats (EMLD) are lobbying Lib Dems in the House of Lords over clauses in the proposed law to scrap elements of Britain’s equalities legislation.

EMLD are turning up the heat on party peers ahead of a debate in the Upper House tomorrow (Monday 4th March) where former EMLD chair, Baroness Meral Hussein-Ece is planning to speak out over Government plans.

She is concerned by parts of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill which would scrap the ‘general duty’ on the Equality and Human Rights Commission to promote good race relations and work towards the elimination of prejudice and hate.

Baroness Hussein-Ece and a number of other peers have already expressed concern over the plans at an earlier reading of the Bill. Opponents of the move says Clause 56 (1, a & b) is a much needed aspirational mission statement and every bit as valuable as the preamble to the Liberal Democrat constitution which talks of ‘liberty, equality and community.’ Aspirations that should define us as a party, shape our work and hopefully the outcomes we achieve.

EMLD believe that while racial prejudice and unequal outcomes remain so rife in society it is crucial that Britain’s anti-discrimination watchdog keep a firm commitment to work towards the elimination of prejudice and hate and to promote good race and community relations.

The Liberal Democrat Disability Association (LDDA) are known to have similar concerns over the impact of this proposal on people with disabilities.

Baroness Meral Hussein-Ece

During a previous reading of the Bill, Government peers argued that the change was a ‘tidying up exercise’. Yet there has been no demand for such a tidy up, and considering the statistical evidence showing that the effects of prejudice in our country the need for a clear statement of aspiration is undeniable.

Clause 56 (1) (a) proposes the repeal of section 3 of the Equality Act 2006. We are particularly concerned with clauses of the bill that propose to:

• Remove the ECHR (Commission for Equality and Human Rights) general duty;
• Remove the ECHR duty to promote good relations;
• Remove the ECHR duty to work to eliminate prejudice and hate towards groups including BAME people;
• Remove the ECHR duty to work towards enabling BAME people to participate in society;
• Remove the ECHR duty to promote or encourage the favourable treatment of BAME people;
• Remove the ECHR duty to assist with the monitoring crime against groups including BAME people;
• Remove the ECHR duty to assist with the prevention or reduction of crime affecting certain groups including BAME people;
• Remove provisions to protect people from third party harassment;
• Remove the formal procedure which enables applicants to ask questions of an alleged discriminator (the questionnaire procedure).

We are also concerned by Clause 56(1)(b) which would remove the ECHR duties to:

• Promote understanding of the importance of good relations between and towards members of different groups;
• Work towards the elimination of prejudice against, hatred of and hostility towards members of groups;
• Work towards enabling members of groups to participate in society.

EMLD argue that the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill must be seen in the context of other moves by Government to reduce the protection from discrimination, including the plan to abolish the requirement on Britain’s public authorities (including Local Authorities and Government departments) to carry out Equality Impact Assessments on new policies to ensure they do not discriminate against service users.

There is also a Conservative-led review of the Public Sector Duty of public authorities to promote good community relations. And there is widespread concern in some quarters at the severe and disproportionate funding cuts to the EHRC and the removal of its’ powers to launch investigations into public authorities suspected of discriminating.

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

Article first published on Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats website. @EMLibDems

Paddy Ashdown’s former press advisor Jo Phillips has popped up in today’s Daily Telegraph to advise women they should “toughen up”. It’s the most ridiculous comments I’ve read throughout the whole scandal over allegations the Lib Dem’s former chief executive Lord Chris Rennard groped up to ten women.

Well, not the most ridiculous. That prize has to go, as ever, to Rod Liddle of the Spectator who wrote today that its’ okay to sexually harass “lithesome bints” if you are good-looking. Just as well no-one takes this bottom-dwelling pond scavenger seriously.

But returning to Jo Phillips, her comments really made my blood boil. She said:

“If you’re going into politics, you’re going into a very tough world. It’s tough for men and women. There’s a lot of bullying, there’s a lot of nastiness, there’s a lot of appalling behaviour that you’d never get away with outside politics so you do have to toughen up a little bit.”

In other words if some powerful but oily creep squeezes your derrière don’t cry and get upset, pull yourself together. It’s how politics works. It’s a man’s world, you know.

Phillips is effectively giving men a green light to carry on with their macho culture and telling women to put up with it.

She also appears to forget that standing up to unacceptable behaviour is the toughest thing to do. Keeping your head down and tolerating sexism is the easy way out. As such any woman that comes forward to complain about mistreatment by a man deserves to be applauded and her actions should not impact on her career.

What makes it harder to challenge harassment is when colleagues choose to keep quiet. And certainly in the case of Lord Rennard there are questions as to what extent women in the party who knew what was going on – and men for that matter – stood up to be counted. Certainly the former MP Sandra Gidley was conscientious enough to raise the matter in person with Nick Clegg but if others had taken a leaf out of her book would this issue have lain dormant for so long before exploding years later during a crucial byelection?

I’ve no wish to make life any more difficult for women in the party though. The most important issue for me is not so much ‘who said what to whom and when? but getting to the root of the problem. And that is not merely failures in procedures but addressing the whole question of macho culture in politics.

Of course this issue is far from exclusive to the Liberal Democrats. Every party is plagued by it. But as the Lib Dems are currently investigating what happened I’d certainly like to see the wider cultural issue explored. If there were failures to properly investigate claims at the time or attempts to dissuade women from taking the matter further to what extent was this caused by a ‘canteen culture’ of Alpha-maleness?

In many ways it is the same question that some Black and Asian party members want answered when it comes to the failure of the party to give racial diversity the priority it deserves.

As well as looking at wider cultural attitudes towards women this is an ideal opportunity to have an open debate about mechanisms to improve gender balance in the party.

While around half of the target seats which have selected candidates for the next general election have picked women, in reality no-one is expecting the Lib Dems to gain any seats in 2015. The only question is how many of the current sitting MPs can hold onto their’s. And presently just seven of them are women.

Worse, the New Statesman has reported that most of the current seven women MPs have tough battles to hold onto their seats. The magazine says:

“Back in 2011, research by the Fabian Society showed that five of the Lib Dems’ seven female MPs, including Sarah Teather, Jo Swinson and Tessa Munt, hold seats among the party’s 12 most vulnerable, while none hold any of the 20 safest.

In addition, the two ‘safer’ seats held by Lib Dem women – Cardiff Central and Hornsey & Wood Green – are vulnerable to a Labour challenge. As Sunder Katwala noted, “both were gained in 2005 from Labour, through appeals to students and voters disillusioned with Labour over Iraq and other left-of-centre issues.””

In other words it doesn’t so much matter how many women are selected in target seats the party doesn’t current hold, we need to save the women we have.

And the same is true when it comes to BAME representation. Yes, running in target seats will give Black and Asian hopefuls valuable experience for the future but if we want to make a breakthrough in 2015 – and we must – then some sitting MPs will have to make way.

If they don’t then the outcome is clear; the Lib Dems will continue to have an all-white Commons team after the next general election and Clegg’s pledge early in his leadership to consider all-Black shortlists “the election after next” will come to the fore, because that election-after-next will have taken place.

Similarly, if we want more women in the Commons then some sitting MPs – particularly those in ‘safer’ seats – ought to get up and allow women to sit down.

Looking at the Fabian Society’s figures the worst case scenario is that the Lib Dems end up with an all-male as well as an all-white set of MPs. Anyone who thinks that’s scare mongering just needs to cross-reference the prospect of losing half the current seats with where the women MPs are.

Some women in the party oppose the notion of all-women shortlists, which Labour have run since 1997 and are still doing so. But I’m firmly in favour of them as a short term measure. They work and, as Labour can testify, they have helped change the macho culture of their party.

Why? Because a critical mass of women gain strength from each other to push forward an agenda to combat sexism inside politics and also to promote more female-friendly policies to the voters.

It is on these issues that the Lib Dems needs to “toughen up”. Because as welcome as new anti-harassment procedures would be, they won’t in themselves change the wider macho culture. That can only come about by determined action to improve gender balance in the party.

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

Back in 2009 I wrote an article in The Guardian on the ‘Media’s all-white club’. This was prompted by my research into the racial diversity of BBC Radio 4 presenters. Out of 100-plus regular presenters just two were Asian and none from an African or Caribbean background.

This, despite the fact that Rajar figures showed a greater proportion of BAME communities listened to Radio 4 compared to the national population.  So this notion of a white middle-class listenership wasn’t entirely true.

In reality the listenership wasn’t being reflected in the studio. And it was even worse behind the scenes. The backroom staff – the producers and assistant producers – were almost exclusively white. Trevor Phillips coined the phrase ‘snowy peaks’ to describe the upper echelons of business, but Radio 4 also had snowy valleys as well.

The then station controller, Mark Damazer, did produce figures for Black and Asian people working at the station. The trouble was when I looked at these more closely they were mostly freelancers. All of them! They came in, made a contribution and left again. Meanwhile the staff jobs – and staff salaries – went to white staff.

Why was this happening and how typical is this of the British media today?

The issue is of crucial important because media output reflects society back on itself. And international reports, with all the nuances and cultural attitudes underpinning the journalists’ dispatch, go a long way to shaping the worldviews of the British public.

Typical coverage of the 2011 London riots

Take the London riots of 2011. “Moron” is one of the kinder words tabloids such as The Sun used. On the inside pages words such as “cockroach” and “rat” were used to describe the rioters. Dehumanising words.

I’m not defending what happened that week at all. Criminality must be punished. Yet the newspapers in particular went a long way to setting the public mood which, in turn, allowed politicians to pressure the judiciary to make an example of those caught. So rioters got unusually heavy prison sentences for stealing water, chewing gum and ice-cream.

The riots panel – set up by Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister – didn’t have a lot to say about the media but did acknowledge the perceptions about media coverage expressed by the young people they spoke to.

The report noted:

“We heard from many about the negative images of young people portrayed by the media, which help to fuel a negative stereotype of young people. This then shapes society’s views of the value young people can add and impacts on employers, local residents and young people themselves. Only 14 per cent of people in the Panel’s Neighbourhood Survey feel that the media is positive about young people. This feeling was also widespread among the young people we spoke to.”

Of course the London riots weren’t a ‘race riot’ – young people of all backgrounds took part. But there were many who recognised the similarity between coverage of the disturbances in 2011 with coverage of the Brixton riots in the early 1980’s.

Added to this were the issues not adequately explored in the tabloids such as the perception that the shooting of Mark Duggan was an example of oppressive policing. Issues of high youth unemployment in the inner cities,  social exclusion and the impact of government austerity cuts on local youth services.

These are issues that disproportionately affect Black youth. So race did play its’ part, if not in the disturbances themselves then certainly it was implicit in the media coverage.

Did the racial composition of the media affect the way this event was covered? It’s hard to say for sure. The age and social background or ‘class’ of the journalists and editorial decision-makers may have been a factor too. But the question is: does a critical mass of Black and Asian journalists make a difference to the nature of the output?

To draw a parallel with the police, the diversity debate – from the Lord Scarman report to the Sir William Macpherson report into the death of Stephen Lawrence – has centred around changing the ‘canteen culture’ by hiring more officers who are able to challenge attitudes. The argument goes the more Black and Asian officers there are the more comfortable they will feel about challenging policies and practices.

Whether we are talking about dealing with ‘a few bad apples’ or institutional racism the principle is the same… diversity is not just about the colour of the workforce, it’s about how the organisation works.

Individually, police officers may not be able to affect much change on the newsroom floor, but if there are enough right-minded people then more progress can be made about how stories are treated.

This is important because the media there to serve everyone and if it is not sufficiently sensitive to the perceptions of sections of society and is not reflecting and representing them properly then there is an issue.

The second reason why diversity matters in the media is the importance of visible representation. This is particularly important for TV, but we must not under-estimate the value of picture-bylines in the printed press or voices on radio.

When I was growing up in the 1970s there was excitement whenever anyone who was Black appeared on our TV screens. It was “Come, quick, there’s a black person on TV!” Of course times have changed… we’re much more used to seeing Black and Asian TV news-anchors, reporters and other presenting roles.

Some say that racial diversity at this level is often more diverse than society as a whole. And if that’s the case, it is justified in my view because it helps make-up for all those years when Britain’s multicultural society simply wasn’t represented on screen.

Yet leaving aside news anchors, generally speaking Black and Asian people on TV tend to be frequently posted on cover an ‘ethnic story’, or hold specialist posts like arts, entertainment and sport. Aside from Faisal Islam at Channel 4, how many economics reporters of colour are there? And political reporters? There’s Rita Chakrabarti and John Pienaar for the BBC, but that’s about it. There is still pigeon-holing and stereotyping at play based on the perceived interests and talents of the BAME communities.

Model presenters: Nina Hossein and Mishal Husein

And all too often those that make it to become news anchors are highly likely to be people of colour who were born with more European facial features. It’s a fact that appearances matter on TV yet it is worth asking whether the fact that there are a number of conventionally beautiful Asian women presenters and news-anchors has anything to do with their features being more ‘acceptable’ to a white audience?

I’ve nothing against Nina Hossein or Mishal Husein (pictured), but how often do we see a Sikh male presenter? Or a presenter with strong Nubian West African features? Or how often do we see a Black woman with natural hair? The fact is, the full range of facial features and shapes in our multicultural society are not reflected on our TV.

The issue here is one of conformity as well as physical acceptability. There is also a premium on dress; conforming rather than embracing diversity of expression. In other words, diversity on screen (such as it is) has yet to get much more diverse than skin colour.

Perhaps more importantly the extent to which the mainstream media reflects society matters because the media affects public discourse on issues of race, culture, religion and identity.

Historically our parents and grandparents were reflected badly in the British media. The butt of jokes and stereotyping  – from the Black and White Minstrels to Love Thy Neighbour to Jim Davidson’s ‘Chalky’ – the representation was crude and created exclusively through the eyes and minds of white people. Positive and multi-dimensional characters were few and far between. As a result, the media collectively created a distorted public perception of immigrant communities.

A lot has changed since then. When Professor David Starkey made his comments on Newsnight that “white youth had become black” there were hundreds of complaints. And recently when I launched an online petition to keep Mary Seacole on the national curriculum 36,000 people signed – many of them almost certainly white.

Yet aside from the question of how ‘anti-racist’ Britain has become in its’ social attitudes a cursory look at the statistics of deprivation and disadvantage and its’ clear that we still are a racially-divided society.

Whether we are talking about Black youth up to 28 times more likely to be stopped and searched, or Black men being twice as likely to be unemployed as their white counterparts or the gap in good GCSE results and disproportionate rates of school exclusion, the evidence of unequal racial outcomes is stark and has changed very little of the years. In many areas progress is actually going backwards.

Can we lay the blame for this at the media’s door? To assign all the blame would be grossly unfair. But there is an argument that the news media in particular are not doing much to challenge these issues. And I would argue this is directly related to the lack of Black and Asian journalists in a position to influence the agenda.

Considering how much of a scandal it is that rates of homelessness or mental health are disproportionately affecting BAME communities, there is a surprising reluctance to tackle these issues in the mainstream media.

Or at least the British media. Russia Today, al Jazeera and Press TV have all devoted greater attention to these structural issues of racial injustice, and have amassed a decent following among Britain’s BAME communities who turn to them for ‘the truth’ rather than Sky or the BBC.

Why should the mainstream media ignore such burning issues? Part of the blame can be attributed to the basic journalistic training and instincts to go for ‘breaking news’, but I don’t think that explains it by any extent.

Much of the problem is due, in my view, to the same reactions and emotions that many other institutions face when it comes to ‘race’. They are simply not comfortable ‘going there’. They would rather convince themselves that they are treating everyone equally than analyse themselves and be open to identifying discriminatory attitudes and institutional racism.

The absence of any willingness to apply the journalistic principles of exposing the truth to the scandal of unequal racial outcomes in Britain has created a vacuum that has been filled instead by Right-leaning commentators and columnists with an agenda in fostering a public discourse on race that is quite negative.

Columnists like Simon Heffer, Melanie Phillips, Trevor Kavanagh and Richard Littlejohn can be relied upon to churn out a regular stream of copy that demonises asylum seekers and immigrants, and frequently religion and culture too. And not all such columns refer to communities colour the ‘problematisation’ of non-English people helps to foster public attitudes that impact particularly on people of colour no matter whether they are second, third or fourth generation.

Of course there are more progressive columnists. Yet with the exception of Yasmin Alibhai Brown in the Independent there are no regular columnists of colour, and none that write about issues of race and inequality with any regularity. As much as Polly Toynbee is a doyen of the Left, she has little positive to say on these issues.

That’s not to say that Black and Asian journalists are there to write constantly about the condition of their own communities, any more than Black and Asian politicians are there to only represent their own. However if there were more BAME journalists and columnists gainfully employed in the mainstream then these subjects would get certainly more airtime and column inches. And that would be for everyone’s benefit because no one should want to live in a racially unequal society where prejudice holds back talent.

Daily Diet of negative images

When we are subjected to negative front-pages from the likes of the Daily Express and Daily Mail on a regular basis it alters the public discourse on race, disregards the positive enriching of Britain by the many nations and cultures in our multicultural society. Instead it breeds suspicion and division, inflates feelings of competition with other races for housing, jobs and health services, and allows politicians to keep ‘race’ off the political agenda.

That may not be the intention but its’ certainly the effect. Just as the self-replicating tendency when it comes to hiring journalists may not intend to exclude Black and Asian journalists, but the figures show that this is the outcome.

Having a more diverse media simply makes good business sense. It’s not about being “politically-correct”, as much as I loathe that word! It is simply that media organisations which overlook capable and talented Black and Asian journalists and the cultural knowledge they bring, miss out on a whole range of good stories as well as star journalists. They also miss the positive and inclusive image that advertisers want to see.

Pandering to prejudice is pandering to a declining audience as Britain becomes ever more diverse, as we saw from the recent population census figures. If media organisations want to survive and grow in a tough environment they need to raise their game on diversity. Editors know this. So why is progress so slow?

Back in 2001 Greg Dyke, then director-general of the BBC, famously he branded the Beeb as “hideously white”. In actual fact the BBC employs roughly the same proportion of BAME people as the population as a whole. Where it is lacking is senior management positions. The higher up you go, the whiter it becomes. And there are whole pockets of the Beeb where non-white faces are extremely rare. Radio 3 and to a large extent 4. The Nature programmes office in Bristol.

Sure, you’ll find Black and Asian people at 5Live, and certainly on 1Xtra! So are we not interested in classical music or nature? I know a lot of Black people who are.

In 2008 Trevor Phillips published a report entitled ‘Superdiversity Television’s newest reality.’ It noted:

“The media industry as a whole remains at some remove from the general population in its ethnic and faith make-up. The picture in front of the camera has improved; but behind the mike and in the executive layers of the industry little has changed from twenty-five years ago.”

The report proposed that:

“All major media players, including the top 20 independent production companies should agree to a voluntary code of monitoring of diversity of senior decision-makers in the industry, with results to be published annually.”

So far that recommendation has been completely ignored. So the whole issue of diversity in commissioning remains unresolved.

The situation is a lot worse in the commercial sector. Channel 4, for example, commission most of their programmes from independents. And they are probably the most undiverse part of the mainstream media today. But you’ll never know because they are not housed in one huge office but are spread out in their own small offices across London. If they need a studio they’ll hire one but if not the headquarters will hardly know they exist.

These independent companies do their own hiring, and as you’re guessing, they self-replicate. Too often its’ about who you know or the dinner party circuit. And if they don’t know that many Black or Asian journalists and don’t invite many to their dinner parties then the outcome is inevitable.

I’m sure many heads of independent film companies would say they want a diverse workforce, but simply haven’t taken the steps to bring that about.

A the same time as Greg Dyke’s comments, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia brought out an interesting report into called ‘Racism and Cultural Diversity in the Mass Media‘. It noted:

“As yet there have been virtually no initiatives to recruit journalists from ethnic minorities. In 1995, out of approximately 5,000 staff journalists on national newspapers, fewer than thirty came from minority backgrounds, and there were no ‘black’ or ‘Asian’ editors, regular critics, or columnists. Since then, there have been a few limited changes, with the Financial Times, Telegraph, Daily Mail and the Guardian / Observer now having a number of ‘black’ and ‘Asian’ staff. This can in part be accounted for by the fact that recruitment of journalists for national newspapers tends to be done on an informal basis, rather then through formal advertisements and interviews, which makes journalism somewhat of an insider clique that is difficult to penetrate.”

The reference to print journalism being an “insider clique” is largely as true today as it was then. The report pointed to the informal recruitment practised of the mainstream print press as being largely responsible for the lack of diversity in newspaper newsrooms. It acknowledged that a small amount of progress had been made – and more progress has been made since that report was written. But it is still far too slow. And the observation that the print media had not put in place any specific initiatives is as true today as it was then.

While the broadcast union BECTU has done tremendous work with their Move On Up initiative to improve diversity in TV and radio, so far print hasn’t followed. The Guardian have a particular scheme, but nothing industry-wide.

So what are the solutions?  Firstly, the newspaper industry should recruit in the same way as most other parts of the economy, with open advertisements and a transparent procedure. Out of the few Black and Asian journalists on mainstream papers a ‘gems’ have been uncovered almost by accident.

Afua Hirsh, the Guardian’s legal correspondent, had little experience of journalism – just writing for Young Voices, the Voice’s youth supplement. She worked a solicitor but fancied a change of career. She contacted the paper and the rest is history. And Gary Younge – who is one of my heroes – only ended up at the Guardian because he got on a diversity internship. So how many more excellent journalists from BAME backgrounds are there?

The answer is a lot. But the opportunities for entry are minimal. If the recruitment procedure was open and clear they would expose themselves to a great deal more talent and that can only be to the benefit of the newspapers themselves.

Secondly, we need to focus extensively on regional and local papers. For many they are the training grounds, the gateways, which allow entry to Fleet Street. Yet many of them, especially the ‘big city regionals’ are heavily white. While they remain inaccessible the flow of BAME journalists to the nationals will remain at a tiny trickle.

Thirdly, Black and Asian journalists in the media need the networks of support that some of their well-connected white already benefit from. Not just for their professional development but also so that they do not feel isolated and feel confident enough to challenge assumptions in the media as well as confront bad behaviour.

The report ‘Why ethnic minority workers leave london’s print journalism sector’ said:

“Ethnic minority journalists reported that they had often felt reluctant to challenge racist behaviour when working in the sector for fear of being labelled as, or singled out as, ‘troublemakers’, or even losing their jobs. Some ethnic minority ex-journalists felt that challenging editors or colleagues about racism would lead to them being ‘blacklisted’ in the industry, and thus make it impossible to find work on other titles or to further their careers.”

Clearly this needs to change. Opening up the media – print, broadcast and the independent sector – to diversity requires action. And that means structural changes to ensure fair and transparent recruitment, reflecting society in its’ fullness and allowing diversity of expression, and challenging their own institutional attitudes and ways of working that are all too often out of step with a modern multicultural society.

And hopefully that will bear fruit in the way the media also report on the issues with less stereotyping and scaremongering, and more attention to the scandals of unequal outcomes and discrimination that are clearly ‘news’ but seldom reported.

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

Phillips is also the consummate politician so of course slips in the odd qualifying statement (“most of the hostility travels in one direction”) but the bulk of his interview with Tory ex-blogger turned presenter Iain Dale was clearly aimed at the typical listener who will experience a rush of elation as they exclaim: ‘A-ha! You see! They’re racist against us!! Look, even Trevor Phillips is saying it!’

Clever Trev knows which buttons to press. And he’s certainly got form. Whether he is proclaiming there’s nothing wrong with the word ‘coloured’ to demanding immigrants learn the English language, or arguing that St George’s Day should be a public holiday so we can celebrate Englishness, he is ever careful to nuance his arguments sufficiently to claim he’s being misunderstood when facing criticism but, as a smooth media operator, knows full-well how to manufacture a snazzy headline to please the likes of the Daily Mail.

When he pronounced that multiculturalism is dead and that institutional racism was no more he knew exactly what he was doing. Get hold of the full text of his speeches and he said a lot more than that, but really, who is going to bother to do that? All Britain remembers is that he said multiculturalism was dead and institutional racism is no more.

And that all adds to a negative public discourse that has sidelined race while all the evidence shows racial disadvantage getting worse. It encourages obnoxious newspaper columnists to push he boat out that bit further and says to politicians they can keep race off the agenda.

Back in 2009 I wrote that perhaps it was time to reassess Trevor Phillips. After years of being wound-up by his public statements there were signs that he was finally moving in the right direction during his second term as chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Well he’s left the EHRC now (on its’ knees, actually). And if tonight’s radio appearance was anything to go by it’s time to re-reassess Trevor Phillips. Again. But perhaps that’s exactly what he wants; to divide opinion, to please and annoy in equal measure. And of course to stay in the media spotlight. A bit like a former Big Brother contestant who will do almost anything to revive the fame they once enjoyed.

So what did he say tonight?

“Prejudice, bias and abuse by people who are not white towards people who are white is not surprising. This is not a new idea. Myself and others have addressed it over the last few years.

“Acknowledging the fact that racial hostility can work both ways also takes people marked Black and Asian out of the box labelled ‘victim’. We need to reassure and encourage people who are white to come forward if they feel they are victims of racial abuse.

“For many young kids a lot of crime visited amongst white kids are visited by gangs that include people who are black or Turkish or whatever.”

Asked a question about the Equality and Human Rights Commission, he said:

“It’s important that people understand that the Equality and Human Rights Commission is anti-discrimination and not to [just] look after black people. They are there for use by everyone.”

And in response to a question about education, he added:

“The people who are least favoured by the education system used to be African-Caribbean boys. Now if you have to pick a group it’s poor white kids. We shouldn’t think of disadvantage as something that affects people who are black.”

Can you imagine the reaction if a white Conservative said all this? There would be an outcry because, resonating at a higher pitch than Phillips’ calm and reasonable vocal tones, is a rather shrill and unpleasant dog-whistle.

A message that screams: ‘Black people and the race relations industry are always going on about how bad things are but what about us? We suffer racism from them! But we don’t get help from their organisations! And what about poor white kids? Forgotten with all this talk about black kids!’

Most of all Phillips’ comments lack perspective. If most racism flows in one direction why devote most of the radio interview to talk about the minuscule amount that might flow the other way? As a quasi-academic with years of service in the race relations field why avoid the ‘power plus prejudice’ debate which defines the varying cause and effects of white-on-black racism from black-on-white?

And if he was serious about talking about disadvantage in the education system why present an ‘either/or’ argument pitching poor white children in competition with African-Caribbean children? After all, the good GCSE achievement gap between Black pupils and the national average is still a massive 28 percentage points which surely means there must be no let-up in the focus on reducing this gap.

Especially when the dynamics are very different from poor white kids. Black children have to cope with disproportionate school exclusions, low teacher expectations based on colour and culture, and the fact that class makes very little difference; no matter how well-off the Black family is their child still faces the same colour-based hurdles. But raising these points would no doubt lessen the impact of Phillips’ interview so they went unsaid.

It was Phillips back to his worst. Yet he no longer occupies a lofty public position, so perhaps this time his words might fall on stony ground for once. A year ago his LBC interview would have guaranteed an appearance in the morning papers but today it could be ignored completely.

And if that occurs then I too will ignore him from now on regardless of what he says. Maybe I don’t have to re-reassess him any more after all…

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

EMLD held a successful AGM on Saturday (16^th February). The turn-out of 30 members was encouraging considering that the main attraction – a conference on race equality – had been postponed in order to take a battlebus to campaign in the Eastleigh byelection.

In addition, many of the positions had been elected unopposed. Considering these factors I was delighted at the turn-out at the party HQ in Westminster.

EMLD intend to reschedule the Race Equality conference which we will hold jointly with the Social Liberal Forum. We had confirmed a host of excellent speakers including MPs Simon Hughes and Tom Brake, and education experts Prof Gus John and Dr Rob Berkeley from the Runnymede Trust. We hope these speakers will be able to make a new date and will be seeking additional high profile names.

Saturday’s AGM kicked off with a chairs report by Issan Ghanzi and a short speech by Baroness Meral Hussein Ece. Special thanks were given to the outgoing Secretary Jonathan Hunt for his service over the past four years. Baroness Meral Hussein-Ece and Lord Qurban Hussain continue as ex-officio members. More details to come as I don’t have my notes with me… that includes any names missing from the list below!

EMLD ELECTION RESULTS

Elected Unopposed:

Chair – Issan Ghanzi
Secretary – Lester Holloway*
Treasurer – Godfried Gyechie
Vice-Chair – Rabindranath (Rabi) Martins
Vice-Chair – Ruwan Uduwerage-Perera*
Vice-Chair – Merlene Emerson*
Executive Member – Tahir Maher*
Executive Member – Janice Turner*
Executive Member – Kihoro (Kui) MacKay*
Executive Member – Jonathan Hunt

Elected / co-opted at AGM:

Membership Secretary – Dr Turhan Ozen
Executive Member (Strategic Plan) – James Jennings
Executive Member – Graham Neale*
Executive Member – Pash Nandra*
Executive Member – Janice Turner
Executive Member – Marisha Ray*

* – New to position or new member of the executive.

EMLD members at Saturday’s AGM

Baroness Meral Hussein Ece

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

EMLD made a big impact at the Eastleigh byelection on Saturday, taking a large contingent of members to Hampshire on Saturday (16^th February) to canvass for candidate Mike Thornton.

We drove to the constituency in a battle-bus after holding our Annual General Meeting at the party HQ in Westminster.

We received positive feedback about the impact of EMLD and also met Nick Clegg who visited the local campaign HQ in Eastleigh after touring the local area.

Some EMLD members had already helped out in the byelection before Saturday, and others plan to visit again in the coming days.

Issan Ghanzi, who was re-elected unopposed as chairperson of EMLD earlier in the day, said he was delighted by the turnout for the action day in Eastleigh as well as the AGM.

Nick Clegg and EMLD members

Me, Pash Nandhra and Rabi Martins

Jonathan Hunt and Ruwan Uduwerage-Perera

Ruwan Uduwerage-Perera, Michael Bukola and Yahaya Kiyingi

Turhan Ozen, Rabi Martins, Michael Bukola and others

In Eastleigh

Clegg with Eastleigh candidate Mike Thornton

Disrespectful to the dead woman and her grieving family? Yes. Leering, sexist and tasteless? Undoubtedly. In many ways the Current Bun cannot complain. Not for the first time its’ misjudged the public mood. From ‘Bonkers Bruno’ to Hillsborough the title has a long charge-sheet of cock-ups most of which stem from under-estimating the humanity and sympathies of Britain.

Yet the newspaper is the most successful for a reason, namely that most of the time it gets the treatment right, whether or not we agree with its’ politics.

Yesterday it ran a page 2 lead “Lib Doom” on the flimsiest of pretexts; an anonymous Lib Dem source expressing fears the Tories will use behind-the-scenes coalition debates against the party at the next election. It was a sorry excuse of a story, but it was engaging and well-written with a catchy headline. I disagreed with the story but could not fault its’ presentation.

And herein lies the rub. The Sun excel in the art of tabloid production. Accessible design and headlines and a concise blokey writing style with the readers’ instincts, eyes and prejudices in mind. It’s an art-form sadly under threat in this tabloid age of smart-phones and tablets. However it jars with my sentiments the Sun is always a joy to consume for its’ journalism and visual layout. Well-presented colourful bite-size snacks that feed the pallet but don’t weight down the stomach with information.

Of course I enjoy the broadsheets too and I guess I am naturally a Guardian-reader by instinct. But as informative as the Grauniad is, too often it feels like a groaning heaped plate of food delivered out of a cement-mixer. Long pompous sentences boasting four commas where full stops would suffice, it leaves you feeling full-up half-way through an article.

As wrong as The Sun have got the Steenkamp murder story, every day it produces a good 60-odd pages of quality tabloid fare that is often inspired, sharp, funny or plain revolting. Of course the paper often plays fast-and-loose with the facts (any newspaper that does not, no matter how up-market, please throw the first stone) so it cannot object to the barrage of criticism this morning. If you live by the sword you die by it.

It’s headlines frequently crystallise and define issues for the whole nation. Yet the creativity that goes into producing such a paper every day does mean that in many ways it is living on the edge. Every so often its’ inspiration fails and it ends up relying on its’ prejudices or chauvinism.

The Sun has always been too sexy for its’ shirt and just like Right Said Fred they offer a cocktail of entertainment, self-deprecation and plain preposterousness.

In the Steenkamp case it was the right front page story with the wrong treatment. The headline was uninspired, and use of the bikini picture lazy and misogynistic. However I wondered, coming hot on the heels of Rupert Murdoch’s tweet expressing doubts over Page 3, it was ironic to see Page 3 transposed to Page 1. A message, perhaps, from the paper to its’ proprietor?

Clearly this wasn’t one of its’ better headlines, yet aren’t we being a bit hypocritical in our condemnation of the paper I wondered after joining the masses in firing off a couple of outraged tweets?

All this week The Sun’s front page headlines have all hit the mark. Yesterday it was “Shock telly blunder: ITV chump flashes pic of Kate’s bump” – okay not brilliant but certainly a talking point – and Wednesday they went with “Exclusive, Mum Speaks: I ripped my baby from jaws of fox”, a good story well-delivered even if the fox threat is being hyped-up beyond justification.

But that’s The Sun for you. Always clambering for attention, forever trying to catch the mood and quite often succeeding but occasionally failing spectacularly. Often they try to shock, like printing a pictured of the bloodied and dead Gadaffi with the headline “That’s for Lockerbie”.

I suspect that such instances where the paper appears to lack humanity for life is down to the fact that the paper is stuffed with educated middle-class hacks writing principally for the working classes and sometimes relying on stereotypes as a compass.

That said, I still admire The Sun for practicing the art of tabloid journalism at the cutting edge. As a former tabloid editor myself, running the African and Caribbean weekly the New Nation, I aspired to the highest standards of presentation but strived to also uphold the principles I hold dear and use the paper as a force for good. As the Daily Mirror often shows the art form can be used for the right reasons.

Yet amid the front-page stories calling for justice for victims of racism I was not above running with an entertainment story, not least because I answered to a managing director and board who were nervous about all this conscious politics stuff.

The deal was I would publish what I liked on the inside pages but would carry ‘heavy’ and ‘light’ front-pages on alternate editions. One week I was feeling particularly peeved about this and decided to run with a completely vacuous story about a beef between two ‘video vixens’. It was a terrible story probably lifted from Media TakeOut, and was illustrated by the two bikini-clad ‘vixens’ in question facing each other.

I thought at the time: right, if my bosses want a light non-story this will teach them! How wrong I was! On deadline day the newsroom all gathered around to admire the front-page and tell each other how good it was. One staff member told me: “Now this is why I love working for this paper!” I thought, what was wrong with the last front-page calling for reparations for slavery?!

The video-vixens splash went down a treat, much to my dismay. I never repeated the trick but it reminded me of the desire to gossip about news.

Ultimately tabloids are what they are. They are papers with life, with loud voices, with laughs, sometimes with tears (albeit crocodile ones!), but most importantly they passion and heart. They paint pictures for our visual minds, know what they want to say and speak straight to the reader.

They are risk-takers and have their faults like any living human. They say stupid things sometimes but are still loved for who they are; flawed passionate creatures.

And that’s the point. They should be judged not merely on their mistakes but their whole personality, including what they get right. I view newspapers according to their personalities and as much as I am politically on the Left I will buy any newspaper – broadsheet or tabloid, Left or Right leaning – according to my mood.

The only exceptions I make are for the Daily Express and Daily Star which I never buy as they are cheap parodies of their genre, the latter only one step removed from the Daily Sport.

Is the Sun guilty of “lechery over a corpse” today as the Guardian suggests? No, they are simply ‘guilty’ of being a tabloid walking a high wire act to entertain the masses only to fall off. But they’ll get back on the wire, as they always do, because they enjoy entertaining us. And, politics aside, Britain is a brighter place for it.

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

Labour’s shadow justice secretary Sadiq Khan is quoted in today’s London Evening Standard as pledging that half of its’ key target seats in the capital will have all-women shortlists.

This is admirable from a party that has already used all-women shortlists, initially in the face of much grassroots opposition, to change the face of British politics. More importantly it is a statement that despite progress in getting more female MPs it is not ‘job done.’ While severe under-representation exists then measures are still needed to address the problem.

Khan also raised the continuing under-representation of Black, Asian and other minority ethnic communities in Westminster. I am pleased that he is seeking to keep the issue on the political agenda. It would be easy to avoid this topic after 27 BAME MPs were elected in 2010, the biggest increase in history. But, as Khan knows, BAME communities are still woefully under-represented.

With the 2011 census showing a non-white population of 14.1 percent the House of Commons would need 91 MPs of colour – 64 more than at present – to reflect the society it serves.

Khan was silent on the prospect of all-Black shortlists, although his colleague David Lammy has called for them in the past. But the issue certainly hasn’t gone away in Labour circles. Last November the website Next Generation Labour debated the question, and Robbie Scot writing in Labour Uncut about the Euro elections had this to say on the matter:

“All black shortlists were notably absent from the 2009 Equality Bill after the initiative was backed by Harried Harman and Jack Straw. That doesn’t mean we can’t use our own initiative. A firm commitment to equality and diversity… ought to be extended to would-be ethnic minority candidates.”

We will have to see whether all-Black shortlists are raised more seriously by Labour as they begin the process of selecting for key target seats.

For the Liberal Democrats, who disgracefully don’t have a single MP of colour, the issue is much more pressing. But the instincts of the Lib Dems have always been to shy away from positive action never mind positive discrimination.

The overriding emotion from grassroots members is ‘discrimination is bad and illegal’ with hardly any mental effort given to what alternatives they might suggest to deal with the issue of chronic under-representation of Black communities. I’ve tried debating many times with members but mostly I feel like I’m taking to a brick wall.

I say to them let’s stop thinking ‘positive discrimination’ and start to realise that the playing field is currently uneven and the goalposts are different sizes. In order to level the playing field we need short term action to guarantee and ‘normalise’ change.

There is nothing stopping us having unofficial all-Black shortlists for target seats. Labour had shortlists that happened to be all-Black in Brent South and Southall. We have all-white shortlists all the time and they don’t need to be legislated for.

All that is required is a change to the way particular constituency selections are handled, and that certainly doesn’t require a change in the law. The party simply needs to pick shortlists for certain target seats centrally, as they do for byelections. And there is a strong rationale for doing this if the target seat has a small party membership or its’ membership is unrepresentative of the constituency as a whole.

In such a scenario some shortlists will have a mixture of women and men, white and BAME hopefuls, and others will just happen to be all-BAME.

Although the Lib Dems have a tradition of local democracy action it is clear that needs to be taken where that democracy is failing for the greater good of the party at large and its’ reputation and image amongst the British public in general.

In 2009 Nick Clegg said that if the party fail to make progress “by the election after next” he would seriously consider introducing all-Black shortlists. That “election after next” is now the next one in 2015. And if the Lib Dems emerge from this election with yet another all-white Commons team quite simply no excuses will cut it; An all-white set of MPs post-2015 means Clegg’s pledge to consider all-Black shortlists comes very much into play.

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

The number of Black youth arrested in London is set to shoot up following a pledge by the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to quadruple the proportion of arrests resulting from stop and search.

Black youth are already up to 28 times more likely to be stopped and searched than white youth, according to research by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Now Scotland Yard boss Bernard Hogan-Howe (pictured) has committed his force to a 20 percent arrest rate target which represents a three-fold rise from the current arrest rate of six percent.

With Black youth already being disproportionate targeted through stop and search this new quota is bound to cause a dramatic rise in the numbers of Black youth arrested on the streets of London.

The Met boss has ushered in the new arrest rate target under the guise of “scaling back” stop and search by halving the use of ‘Section 60′ stops, where officers can search members of the public without having reasonable suspicion of a crime having been committed – effectively the new ‘sus laws’.

Although the reduction in the random use of s.60 powers is welcome it does not go nearly far enough. Hogan-Howe has also failed to introduce any measures to reduce the shocking disproportionality of Black youth being stopped.

Police constables, faced with meeting the new 20 percent arrest rate target and not having any incentive to stop singling out Black Londoners, will face the temptation to arrest more Black youth even if there is no evidence to charge or caution them.

Last night I challenged the Met’s Assistant Commissioner Simon Byrne over this issue at a policing consultation event at the Secombe Theatre in Sutton. I expressed fears that far greater numbers of innocent Black youth could be arrested and released with no further action in order to bolster officers’ arrest targets.

Such a scenario would further damage the Black community’s confidence in the police and plug the stream of intelligence officers need in order to target criminals instead of randomly searching innocent young people.

More youth arrested and released without charge would lead to increased tensions and make it even harder for police to use stop and search effectively creating a catch-22 situation.

Byrne acknowledged the disproportionality in the figures and that it damaged relations with the Black community and repeated Hogan-Howe’s intention to reduce s.60. However he sidestepped the question over whether more innocent youths would be arrested as a result of the arrests target.

Scotland Yard seem to believe that cutting back s.60 stop and searches will automatically nullify the issue and I am far from convinced that will be the case. If officers are to exercise the stop and search tool more effectively they will need a far higher level of intelligence-led stops while at the same time dramatically cutting back on random stops. This requires a complete sea-change in their approach.

Hogan-Howe clearly wants to reduce the controversy caused by stop and search but will need to do more than simply call for borough forces to reduce s.60 to make it happen. Clearly more intelligence-led stops should result in higher arrest rates but if they are carried out fairly they shouldn’t be so heavily concentrated on Black youths.

At the same time the new 20 percent arrest quotas risk making the problem worse with more arrests of innocent Black youths in order to meet the target.

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

Meet PCSO Steve. He’s a much-loved character in Sutton created by a real-life PCSO who pounds the beat in my ward. He attends community fun-days and schools and is sometimes spotted waving at passers-by in the High Street. And he’s immensely popular. However Sir David Attenborough could have been talking about PCSO Steve today as the tele-environmentalist launched the Endangered exhibition at the Natural History Museum.

You see PCSO Steve, or rather the real-life PCSO’s pounding London’s streets, are indeed an endangered species with the cause of the extinction threat Stephen Greenhalgh, the policing chief to mayor Boris Johnson.

Greenhalgh, the bottom-slapping policing chief at City Hall, graced Sutton’s Secombe Theatre with his considerable bulk tonight to reveal that 900 PCSO’s will get the bullet in a major – and ill-thought out – reorganising of the capital’s force.

Greenhalgh is the former leader of the controversial Tories in Hammersmith and Fulham before Boris asked him to run the Metropolitan Police on his behalf because the mayor doubles up as the elected Police Commissioner in the capital but delegates the job to his deputy as he’s far too busy writing well-paid columns for the Daily Telegraph.

And the PCSO’s – Police Community Support Officers – look like being the first victims of the Rightwing arch-reformer. 

Once upon a time PCSO’s were the subject of much derision. “Plastic police”, part-timers without powers of arrest who have to call up real coppers every time they encounter a situation. Initial public scepticism was down to a rebellion by ‘proper’ officers and their Police Federation union who waged a media war against this army of naive volunteers who think they know how to uphold law and order.

The rest of the scepticism was because the PCSO’s champion was called Sir Ian Blair, the much-maligned former Met commissioner who couldn’t seem to put a foot right between being accused of ‘political correctness’ and being labelled a New Labour lackey eager to please government ministers.

Greenhalgh and Boris

But times have changed. PCSO’s have grown on the public, especially in London’s suburban donut. In places like Sutton. If walking inner city streets represent a trial of terror for PCSO’s then the leafy suburban streets are the polar opposite; a place where the sun always shines, at least in the eyes of grateful old folk who feel safer. The PCSO is there for them and has time to chat without having to cut short their conversation to dash off to the next emergency.

The sight of a couple of PCSO’s is normally enough to make can-kicking youths temporarily cease their anti-social ways as effectively as any ‘official’ constable. PCSO’s in Sutton spend time sitting on people’s couches discussing an event that has troubled them. They conduct house-to-house satisfaction surveys and work with residents groups on a range of activities such as establishing neighbourhood watches or training locals to use speed-guns.

Their job is genuinely pro-active and community-orientated and reaps enormous benefits in terms of community confidence. Yes, they often spend time in areas with a relatively low crime rate but that doesn’t mean low-crime neighbourhoods are without the fear of crime. Far from it.

Ultimately they help set the tone of a neighbourhood as being a safe place to live. By being there every time something minor happens they prevent it turning into something major. PCSO’s really are about zero tolerance with a smile. The policing equivalent of the bright-lights theory; light up the dark corners and crime and graffiti will slink away.

Myself, my ward councillor colleagues, and representatives from residents associations, regularly meet with the Safer Neighbourhood Teams – a fully-fledged sergeant and the ward PCSO’s – to discuss issues and set priorities for the Sutton North ward. These ‘ward panels’  share information about problems and action to address them, as well as talking about upcoming community fayres. Of course PCSO’s also deal with sharp-end policing challenges too, indeed one PCSO arrested a man wanted for paedophile offences in my ward.

PCSO’s and ward panels are generally liked and appreciated in places like Sutton, and the culture of partnership working between the Council and police pioneered by the Liberal Democrat authority has contributed to one of the lowest crime rates and highest rates of resident satisfaction in London.

With crime falling and the public happy the most obvious thing to say is ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.’ Regrettably such sentiments are lost on Planet Boris and the super-sized Greenhalgh meteorite threatening to make PCSO’s extinct.

Greenhalgh told tonight’s meeting that he was creating a “thicker blue line.” Well, things don’t get much thicker and bluer than him. By axing large numbers of PCSO’s and sinking the money into employing a few more fully-fledged constables we’re likely to end up with fewer law-enforcement bodies on our streets.

As one of my colleagues, Simon Wales, pointed out at tonight’s meeting the statistics we were being bombarded with appeared to be a smoke and mirrors trick. Certainly I noticed that Greenhalgh was careful to boast about the anticipated rise in real PC’s while excluding the (almost certainly larger) fall in PCSO’s from the equation. 

What this means for the Sutton North ward is that we will lose two of our three PCSO’s while the borough as a whole will have a (supposedly) larger team of ‘community officers’ who won’t be ward-based and will be expected to patrol the hot-spots. In other words Boris and Greenhalgh have kicked away the very foundation of community policing in the leafy backstreets to shoehorn a mass of coppers into over-policed town centres.

It’s a bit like privatised bus services around Britain; backed up nose-to-tail in the centre of town but out in the surrounding countryside you can’t catch one for love nor money.

Perhaps more offences will be detected, massaging up the figures so that the mayor can make political capital out of it, but sadly this would be at the cost of neglecting the residential areas where fear of crime will rise, particularly among the elderly, and anti-social behaviour goes largely unchecked. The only way to stop this happening is for borough commanders to quietly ignore the new centrally-imposed reorganisation and keep community officers on the backstreet beat.

As I pointed out at the meeting, Sutton has already struck a successful balance between taking care of crime and disorder in the town centres and ward-based community policing in residential areas. Council leader and ward colleague Ruth Dombey summed it up perfectly at the end when she said these proposals might be appropriate for other boroughs but it smacks of a one-size-fits-all approach imposing a model that simply isn’t the right one for Sutton.

I certainly think it’s an un-liberal top-down model that erodes ward panel priority-setting between police, councillors and residents groups and could lead to less PCSO’s in quiet roads to reassure locals about safety where they live.

Whether these changes are the result of ideological Tory dogma seeking to dismantle the legacy of Sir Ian, the Labourite former Met police boss who introduced PCSO’s, I don’t know. But it certainly looks like the wrong change for Sutton which threatens to undo years of good work at the grassroots. Save our PCSO Steve’s!

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

It’s been over two years since the Angel pub was shut and now finally it looks like Tesco’s are getting ready to build an Express store.

As I’ve previously written, I had concerns that Tesco are able to open a store without applying for planning permission and giving local residents an opportunity to object or support the proposals.

However the fact is that we can’t do anything about that. Tesco’s are used to exploiting planning loopholes so that they don’t need to go through the democratic planning process.

I am, however, glad that something is going to be built on this site which has been lying vacant for two years when the troublesome Angel pub was closed down following a police and council trading standards ‘sting’ that exposed alcohol sales to under-age children.

The pub had been a real problem for a long time, with a long list of complaints from neighbours about rowdy drunkenness and alleged criminal behaviour. Sutton council’s licensing committee withdrew the pub’s licence for three months in January 2011 but it initially appeared the pub was continuing to trade in breach of its’ licence before the whole pub mysteriously burnt down in a blaze. Police suspected arson.

Thankfully the wonderful front exterior was not seriously damaged and when Tesco’s brought the site in March 2011 they pledged to keep the distinctive frontage, which I was pleased about.

I have recently been informed that Tesco’s now plan to build their Express store in April this year. About time too really… in April it will be over two years since they acquired the site and myself and my ward colleagues have been fielding questions ever since about when work will start.

Tesco’s have told ward members: “We are now aiming for an opening date in Spring of next year. We have the relevant planning consents and own the freehold of the site, so it is a case of scheduling the build. We have reviewed our position and remain committed to delivering a new store for customers and… although we do not have a fixed date, as it stands we are working towards April.”

So there we have it, the Tesco’s that no-one had any choice over is now arriving after a two year wait.

I remain hopeful that the store will not negatively impact on nearby independent stores and also remain sad that Sutton North only has one pub, the Prince Regent next to the Job Centre. But it is a fact that pubs are no longer the hub of community life, not least because of cheap booze sold in supermarkets, but also changes in society. However there is a need for family-friendly boozers and regrettably the old Angel pub was badly-managed and attracted a rough crowd.

I will keep you posted about any further news about this site.

There is still time for local residents to comment on plans to build new housing on the former Burger King site on Sutton High Street.

Last November I reported on this blog that the planning application to build a four and five storey Travelodge hotel had fallen through because the developers could not raise the finances to go ahead with the construction.

There was a very real worry, which I expressed at the time, that the site would remain vacant and a blight on the High Street area.

However the developers Belgrave are now coming forward with new plans for a 40 residential apartments up to six storeys high.

You can view their initial public consultation document here for the site officially known as 324-340 Sutton High Street.

As a member of the Development Control Committee (DCC) I don’t have an opinion about it at present, however as a ward councillor I am keen to hear your views. Please email me on: lester.holloway@sutton.gov.uk

Street view looking towards the pedestrianised end of the High Street

The developers held a consultation event at the Holy Family Catholic Church on Saturday January 26^th, which unfortunately I was not able to attend due to short notice.

At the time of writing there has not been a planning application submitted but I assume it will be presented before DCC councillors at some point probably this year.

For comparison of scale you can view the previous approved application for the Travelodge hotel here.

The new housing application varies in height between two and three storeys on the south end, rising to six storeys as it faces towards the Prince Regent pub and the Job Centre.

The developers plan to build 40 residential units and two ground-floor retail spaces. This would comprised of 13 one bed apartments, 24 two bedroom apartments and 3 three bedroom apartments.

When it comes to height and bulk it is worth noting that there has been an extensive consultation for an even bigger development immediately on the other side of the road for a Sainsburys supermarket, hotel and retail on the site that is currently the gasworks, vacant Zurich building and Magnet showroom.

Of course we still await the planning application for this major development. However if it was built it would be bigger, in all dimensions, than the proposed housing units on the old Burger King site.

Some of the key issues for me are:

• Is a housing development appropriate for a High Street that is mostly retail?
• Does the height impact on local residents?
• Does the design and qualify complement and enhance the local environment?
• What are the environmental and aesthetic implications of the site continuing to remain vacant?
• And last but definitely not least, what do residents and local businesses feel about the proposal?

I welcome your comments. Please send them to the email above.

The 36,000 people who signed the Mary Seacole petition were thanked today. They were instrumental in securing victory after education secretary Michael Gove unveiled the new schools curriculum.

In addition, the number of MPs of all parties, who signed the Commons early day motion had climbed to 72 before yesterday’s announcement. A full list of MPs is included below.

When I set up the petition and pulled together a campaign group (Simon Woolley of Operation Black Vote, Patrick Vernon, Prof Elizabeth Anionwu, Khi Rafe, Juliet Alexander and Zita Holbourne) a few short weeks ago I could not have imagined the impact that this campaign would make.

Although the victory was a cause of celebration yesterday we were disappointed that the new curriculum failed to include the teaching of Africa before Europeans arrived, and this is something we intend to continue to campaign for.

However we were pleased that the status of Seacole and Oladuah Equiano was raised from being in the notes to an established part of key stage 3 in the classrooms. In addition, the curriculum will also include the teaching of Jomo Kenyatta, Kwame Nkrumah and Britain’s retreat from Empire. Also the Windrush, the race relations laws, slavery and the role of the abolitionists will be taught.

As mentioned yesterday on this blog, the outcome is a clear victory for people power and reinforces faith in the power of campaigning, especially utilising the social media. Over 6,200 people commented about the issue on the petition site and it was shared on Facebook and Twitter many thousands of times.

Special thanks go to the campaign team, who all worked terrifically hard, and change.org who emailed and tweeted the petition. We garnered a very impressive amount of media coverage, bolstered by the huge numbers of people who signed the petition.

I am especially grateful to the 50+ public figures who signed the open letter to the Times newspaper – including Rev Jesse Jackson, playwright Kwame Kwei Armah, children’s writer Michael Rosen, author Zadie Smith, and broadcasters Bonnie Greer and Garth Crooks. Thanks also to everyone who tweeted support including MP Chuka Umunna, singer Beverley Knight, comedienne Angie le Mar and actor Adrian Lester.

The Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, boosted the campaign further when he wrote about Seacole in his final Sun on Sunday column, and the former deputy prime minister John Prescott also wrote a fabulous article in his Sunday Mirror column. Finally, the intervention of the current deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, who declared that Seacole would remain in the classrooms, was a significant development.

Final list of MPs who signed the Commons petition:

Bottomley, Peter Conservative Party Worthing West

Percy, Andrew Conservative Party Brigg and Goole

Williams, Stephen Liberal Democrats Bristol West

Leech, John Liberal Democrats Manchester Withington

Hancock, Mike Liberal Democrats Portsmouth South

Ward, David Liberal Democrats Bradford East

Horwood, Martin Liberal Democrats Cheltenham

Stunell, Andrew Liberal Democrats Hazel Grove

Farron, Tim Liberal Democrats Westmorland and Lonsdale

Reid, Alan Liberal Democrats Argyll and Bute

Williams, Mark Liberal Democrats Ceredigion

George, Andrew Liberal Democrats St Ives

Campbell, Menzies Liberal Democrats North East Fife

Thurso, John Liberal Democrats Caithness Sutherland and Easter Ross

Harvey, Nick Liberal Democrats North Devon

Meale, Alan Labour Party Mansfield

Hopkins, Kelvin Labour Party Luton North

Abbott, Diane Labour Party Hackney North and Stoke Newington

Campbell, Ronnie Labour Party Blyth Valley

Bayley, Hugh Labour Party York Central

Sharma, Virendra Labour Party Ealing Southall

Rotheram, Steve Labour Party Liverpool Walton

Caton, Martin Labour Party Gower

Corbyn, Jeremy Labour Party Islington North

McGovern, Jim Labour Party Dundee West

Skinner, Dennis Labour Party Bolsover

Lazarowicz, Mark Labour Party Edinburgh North and Leith

McDonnell, John Labour Party Hayes and Harlington

Osborne, Sandra Labour Party Ayr Carrick and Cumnock

Cunningham, Tony Labour Party Workington

Gapes, Mike Labour Party Ilford South

Vaz, Valerie Labour Party Walsall South

Ruddock, Joan Labour Party Lewisham Deptford

Lammy, David Labour Party Tottenham

Flynn, Paul Labour Party Newport West

Wright, David Labour Party Telford

Glindon, Mary Labour Party North Tyneside

Reed, Steve Labour Party Croydon North

Love, Andrew Labour Party Edmonton

Mudie, George Labour Party Leeds East

Clwyd, Ann Labour Party Cynon Valley

Godsiff, Roger Labour Party Birmingham Hall Green

Vaz, Keith Labour Party Leicester East

Cunningham, Alex Labour Party Stockton North

Lavery, Ian Labour Party Wansbeck

Doran, Frank Labour Party Aberdeen North

Hood, Jim Labour Party Lanark and Hamilton East

Kaufman, Gerald Labour Party Manchester Gorton

Davidson, Ian Labour Party Glasgow South West

Francis, Hywel Labour Party Aberavon

Anderson, David Labour Party Blaydon

Havard, Dai Labour Party Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney

Owen, Albert Labour Party Ynys Môn

Clarke, Tom Labour Party Coatbridge Chryston and Bellshill

Walley, Joan Labour Party Stoke-on-Trent North

Roy, Lindsay Labour Party Glenrothes

Qureshi, Yasmin Labour Party Bolton South East

Clark, Katy Labour Party North Ayrshire and Arran

O’Donnell, Fiona Labour Party East Lothian

Barron, Kevin Labour Party Rother Valley

Glass, Pat Labour Party North West Durham

Hendrick, Mark Labour Party Preston

Goggins, Paul Labour Party Wythenshawe and Sale East

Mearns, Ian Labour Party Gateshead

Robertson, John Labour Party Glasgow North West

Benton, Joe Labour Party Bootle

Shannon, Jim Democratic Unionist Party Strangford

Simpson, David Democratic Unionist Party Upper Bann

Hermon, Lady INDEPENDENT North Down

Williams, Hywel Plaid Cymru Arfon

Galloway, George Respect Bradford West

McDonnell, Alasdair Social Democratic and Labour Party Belfast South

Several weeks of campaigning to keep Mary Seacole and Olaudah Equiano on the schools curriculum has paid off today after the education secretary Michael Gove bowed to public pressure.

Seacole, the Crimean War nurse, has actually been elevated in the new national curriculum which was published today. Before she was in the ‘notes’ but today she is a firm part of the curriculum itself.

So too is the former slave-turned-abolitionist Equiano whose writings helped pave the way for emancipation.

The great Pan-Africanist and first leader of a free Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, and the equally-great Jomo Kenyatta from Kenya will also be part of the key stage three textbooks.

The study of the British Empire is titled “Britain’s retreat from Empire including independence for India and the Wind of Change in Africa.” This suggests that lessons will not focus on a glorification of Imperialism but will instead study the fight for independence from the bloody oppression of colonialism.

Other highlights from the new curriculum include “the Windrush generation, wider new Commonwealth immigration, and the arrival of East African Asians” and “society and social reform, including the abolition of capital punishment, the legalisation of abortion and homosexuality, and the Race Relations Act.”

The inclusion of Windrush immigration from the Caribbean and the first race relations laws offer a positive chance for children to study the contribution of Caribbean immigrants and the battles against racism they fought in a hostile Britain of the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

Mary Seacole is included in the section of the curriculum dealing with “Britain’s social and cultural development during the Victorian era” and is on par with Florence Nightingale and Annie Besant. The slave trade and the abolition of slavery are also included.

I am delighted with the new curriculum which heralds a significant step forward in the teaching of black history and social history to all school children.

Clearly there is further to go in broadening and deepening the appreciation of black and African history, and there is a pressing need to properly fund supplementary schools as well as give opportunities for black-run free schools to be established.

But there is no denying that Gove has listened to the huge public outcry that followed a story in the Daily Mail about the threat to axe Mary Seacole.

I took the initiative to start a petition on change.org which has now attracted 36,000 signatures and pulled together a team of campaigners who all worked terrifically hard.

It has been an absolute pleasure working with Simon Woolley of Operation Black Vote, Cllr Patrick Vernon, Khi Rafe, Professor Elizabeth Anionwu, Juliet Alexander and Zita Holbourne. Without their efforts this campaign would not have achieved its’ aims.

I wanted to express my sincere gratitude to every single person who signed the petition. There is no doubt that the 36,000 signatories rattled the government and encouraged a range of public figures to endorse the campaign.

Everyone from the Archbishop of York John Sentamu, civil rights leader Rev Jesse Jackson Snr, to playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah and writer Zadie Smith helped to raise the profile of the campaign in the media with several articles across various national newspapers.

Singer Beverley Knight, actor Adrian Lester, comedienne Angie le Mar and Labour MP Chuka Ummuna tweeted support for the campaign.

I believe that the intervention of Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, who insisted to me that Seacole would not be removed from the curriculum, also played a major part in Gove’s decision.

My article in the Guardian, which attracted over 400 comments, also helped move the debate forward not least because I sought to link the threat to Seacole and Equiano with the prospect of ‘white’ social history also being eliminated from classrooms.

In the end it was clear that something had to give, and I was pleased that Gove has seen sense and presented a positive curriculum which gives us a firm platform to build upon.

By Lester Holloway@brolezholloway

The New Statesman have today published my article on race equality and the Liberal Democrats. The full article is reproduced below.

Liberal Democrats are feeling pleased with themselves over the equal marriage vote with hearty congratulations lavished on the former equalities minister, Lynne Featherstone, for driving this forward. And there’s no denying that the Lib Dems deserve their share of the credit. Yet progress on other strands of equality, in particular race equality, is going into reverse.

It’s bad enough having an all-white party in the Commons but just as shamefully, the Lib Dems have never had much to say on race. In 2010, their manifesto contained just one idea of note, name-blind job applications. Yet two-and-a-half-years on, this policy hasn’t even been rolled out to all Whitehall departments yet, never mind the rest of Britain.

Last year, the Conservatives commissioned Lord Ashcroft to study the attitudes of Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities towards the Tories and the results were dire for the party. But buried in his report was even more devastating news for the Lib Dems. BAME Lib Dem support was in single figures – just nine per cent of Asians and a paltry six per cent of Africans and Caribbeans. And that was after Cleggmania. With the Lib Dems having done so little to appeal to BAME communities since taking power, one can only assume future surveys will need a microscope to detect traces of support.

How different things were when Nick Clegg was the fresh-faced and newly-elected party leader. Then he promised the Lib Dems would challenge Labour in its inner city heartlands. Sadly this was another broken promise. The party entered government without a clue of how to tackle endemic race inequality in Britain. And after two-and-a-half-years of drift, many BAME activists in the party are now at their wits’ end.

On the 20th anniversary of the death of Stephen Lawrence,  the promise of change symbolised by the Macpherson report couldn’t be further from coalition’s agenda, despite the mounting evidence that Britain is becoming more racially divided. 

Disproportionate BAME unemployment has shot up in this recession, not least because cuts to public services have hit black and Asian workers hardest, impacting on families who were first encouraged to fill those public sector jobs when they migrated to Britain in the 1960s and 70s. Meanwhile, youth unemployment in London is running at 56 per cent, a similar level to Greece, and much of that is concentrated among black young jobseekers.

Section 60 stop and searches, under which police can stop people without reasonable suspicion, is targeted at black youth and was a source of discontent that contributed to the 2011 London riots. Last year, the equalities watchdog, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), found that black youth were 28 times more likely to be stopped and searched under Section 60, effectively making it the new “Sus” law.

In every area of public life – from education, to health, to criminal justice – there are big issues of racial inequality that demand serious policy answers. Yet despite the Lib Dems wearing equality on their sleeves, the party has singularly lacked ideas for tackling these issues. Instead, they have brought into a Conservative integration agenda which argues that if only ethnic minorities could speak better English, integrate a bit more and shop the extremists then everything would be okay. Yet lack of English has always been an over-hyped myth of the right, minorities are generally more integrated than ‘indigenous’ communities, and the vast majority of Muslims deplore extremism as much as anyone else. On the real issue of racism, the Lib Dems have been eerily silent with the exception of Clegg’s speech on the anniversary of the Scarman report into the Brixton riots of 1981.

Worse still, Lib Dem ministers have been colluding with their Tory colleagues to dismantle much of the equality infrastructure of the state. Having slashed the EHRC’s budget by two-thirds, removed its race commissioners and axed the watchdog’s powers to investigate authorities suspected of discrimination, the coalition is now ramping up its equalities vandalism to a new level.

David Cameron has already announced that equality impact assessments (EIAs) are to be abolished. EIAs are a requirement on public servants to consider equality when designing new policies. They need to be strengthened to stop council officers and Whitehall mandarins going through the motions, not scrapped. But the government intends to bin them altogether, in the apparent belief that if we ignore equality it will magically happen anyway – we just won’t know about it because we aren’t monitoring it.

On top of this, Vince Cable’s Enterprise and Regulatory Bill proposes to repeal the “positive duty” on the EHRC to work towards eliminating discrimination, something that was enshrined in the 2010 Equality Act. At the same time, ministers have convened a Tory-dominated taskforce to review the “general duty” on all 40,000 public authorities to promote good race relations.

This rolling back of Labour’s equalities laws, many of which date back to the race relations acts of 1976 and 2000, and the decimation of the watchdog charged with upholding the legislation, adds up to a disturbing picture of the government’s attitude towards race.

The two coalition partners both share responsibility for this. Meanwhile, time is running out to implement policies that will make a positive difference to BAME communities before the 2015 general election.

Interestingly, the Conservatives have been changing tact lately. Cameron has signalled he wants more BAME MPs to add to the nine elected in 2010 and has ordered party vice-chair Alok Sharma and other ministers to come up with policies that will appeal to black and Asian communities. Tory cabinet members recently had a special briefing on the need to win over BAME voters in key marginals and nullify the negative legacy of Enoch Powell.

The Lib Dems, meanwhile, are still sleepwalking to disaster as far as BAME support is concerned. We’re still waiting for a report on access to bank loans for BAME businesses – a relatively minor issue – that was commissioned by Clegg in 2011. An internal taskforce looking at the issue of education and employment, which I am part of, produced a 20,000 word report after a year of taking evidence only to learn that apparatchiks had expunged it from the party’s spring conference agenda.

And now I learn that the party’s manifesto working group has rejected the party’s foremost expert on race equality, Baroness Meral Hussein-Ece, in favour of someone who has little knowledge of the issues and has spent much of her life opposing positive action.

On race equality, it is make-or-break time for the Lib Dems. That is why the Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrat group has joined forces with the Social Liberal Forum to hold a conference next Saturday to debate these issues.

As a party with a proud history of social radicalism it is time to promote radical solutions to address persistent race inequality in society. Unless we get into gear in the next few months, it may take a whole generation before the party gains credibility within BAME communities and attracts the brightest and best talent to stand for parliament.

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

With half of Conservative backbenchers voting against equal marriage Tory attitudes towards equality will no doubt come under the microscope. But here’s another example. The ConservativeHome blog today has described Equality Impact Assessments as “a turd.”

The site, which represents rank-and-file Tories, argues: “Equality Impact Assessments are worse than polishing a turd. They add a new turd. Treat people as individuals and equality on the frontline looks after itself.” In other words abolish the monitoring of equality and equality will happen naturally. Only we won’t know whether it does because there is no monitoring to prove it one way or the other.

The coalition government is currently consulting on Equality Impact Assessments, which all public authorities (and government itself) are currently obliged to do when presenting a new policy. The idea is that by focusing policy-makers minds on the potential negative impact of a policy it will encourage public bodies to design-out discrimination and design-in mechanisms to ensure everyone gets equal access to services.

At the root of Equality Impact Assessments – or EIAs – is a recognition of the concept of institutional racism. The notion that public bodies can unwittingly discriminate against minorities because they are simply not thinking about equality. Of course proof of institutional racism is everywhere as statistics from every area of public life show. From disproportionate rates of BAME unemployment, to rates of homelessness, school exclusions, police stop and search and higher and longer prison sentences. The fact that public authorities and the state discriminate is undeniable.

Yet, according to ConservativeHome, simply shutting our eyes to the reality of racism and absolving public servants of any obligation to think about race equality will somehow make everything better. It is utter nonsense.

Clearly EIAs need to be improved. Many public authorities go through the motions when producing EIAs and many of them aren’t worth the paper they are written on. But this isn’t a reason to abolish them, far from it. They need to be strengthened in order to make them work. And that means making EIAs more structured and evidence-based. Public authorities need to be compelled to look at evidence of unfair outcomes and required to demonstrate how a particular policy will combat it.

Tories may want to throw the baby out with the bathwater rather than nurturing that baby, but that just proves what turds they really are. And we can see that despite David Cameron’s diversity make-over beneath the surface the Tories really haven’t changed their anti-equality spots.

Lib Dem Equality minister Jo Swinson, writing on the Liberal Democrat Voice blog last month, said: “EIAs are not under threat from the Coalition Government but they are a good example of why we need to move beyond a slapdash exercise at the end of the process and make sure equality is rooted in from the beginning.” But the comment thread underneath her article pointed out that EIA’s were indeed under threat.

Indeed in November last year David Cameron announced that EIAs were to be axed in a story that was widely covered in the media. He said: “We have smart people in Whitehall who consider equalities issues while they’re making the policy. We don’t need all this extra tick-box stuff. So I can tell you today, we are calling time on equality impact assessments. You no longer have to do them if these issues have been properly considered.”

At present there is no indication that Cameron is willing to perform a u-turn on this and if they government press ahead with abolishing EIAs this reflects badly on both coalition parties and speaks volumes about their commitment to a “fairer society”. The basic history of equality is that it has always had to be fought for and while racism and institutional racism exists there is a need for strengthened EIAs that require greater effort on the part of public servants to tackle discrimination.

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

The resignation of Chris Huhne as MP for Eastleigh today was sad but inevitable after pleading guilty at the start of his driving points trial. It presents a tricky but eminently winnable byelection test for the Lib Dems not least because the local party is very strong and currently holds all but four of the council seats.

In national parliamentary terms the constituency is a marginal but it looks like a straight fight between the Lib Dems and Conservatives and recent election history shows the Lib Dems have a good record – particularly at a local level – taking on the Tories who are particularly weak in Eastleigh despite being the main challengers.

Many Lib Dems will no doubt be relieved today that Huhne did not win the party leadership race or else the situation for the party would be critical today. However it is still a great shame that Huhne’s political career is over, not least because as energy and climate secretary he was arguably the most effective Lib Dem cabinet minister with a long record of achievement in his short time in office.

I didn’t share his particular brand of Liberalism though. He is an Orange Booker sharing pretty much he same space on the political spectrum with Nick Clegg, a Brown to Clegg’s Blair.

But he perhaps had more populist instincts than Clegg and took a realistic view of the decline and eventual rise of party fortunes once we’d tied our fortunes to David Cameron.

His resignation means the party has lost a valuable strategist and, obviously, has also lost a potential challenger or replacement to Clegg. Although Huhne was not on the left of the party is was conceivable that he would have eventually hitched his wagon there given the rise of the Social Liberal Forum in the party’s committee elections.

That’s for the birds given today’s events and Clegg must be feeling a tad more secure in his position at least for now. For social-liberals the outlook is not so bright considering the paucity of standard-bearers. Unlike the Tories we don’t have an Adam Afriyie in the ranks ready to be a credible and electable-looking stalking horse and none of the names currently being banded about – Vince Cable, Tim Farron and even Don Foster – are likely to send a shot of adrenalin through the party faithful.

The answer could potentially lie with Eastleigh itself. Should the Lib Dem’s select someone of leadership material if elected they would have two years to establish themselves before the 2015 general election and possible subsequent leadership campaign. Former MP Dr Evan Harris springs to mind, but others could include Greater London Assembly member Stephen Knight or SLF director Dr Prateek Buch.

The most obvious local choice, council leader Keith House, has already confirmed that he won’t be standing and with rumours circulating about a strong UKIP campaign the prospect of the Tory vote being split offers the Lib Dems considerable hope of holding the seat.

Eastleigh presents a chance to rebuild the party along progressive principles two years in advance of its’ potential battering at the next election if the right choice is made.

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

As the report suggested, this move had more to do with hard number-crunching than altruism or a genuine desire to see a more racially-equal society. It owes far more to two overlapping factors: the Romney Effect – the realisation that the Republican candidate lost out on the White House because he ‘ran out’ of white voters – and UK seat-by-seat analysis which shows sizable BAME populations in many marginal constituencies that the Tories need to win if they are to gain an outright majority at the 2015 general election.

Neither factor should come as a surprise. I wrote last November, in the wake of the US presidential elections that British political parties needed to consider the Romney Effect.

Parties persist with a colour-blind approach, and therefore treat BAME communities as invisible, they will continue to ignore the issues that most affect them – such as racially-disproportion outcomes on jobs, education and health – are effectively writing off any hope of loosening their historical ties to Labour.

And if Labour fail to present policies to deal with institution racism Black and Asian communities will be more likely to not vote at all, disenfranchising themselves, which has huge consequences for the legitimacy of the political process.

The latest population census has helped focus political minds in the Conservatives about the need to win a greater share of the BAME vote. As I wrote last November the historical reputation of the Tories as being naturally hostile to Black and Asian communities is only part of the picture. Yes, the legacy of Enoch Powell and the infamous Smethwick election campaign have left a hard-to-shift stain on the Tory brand but it is the failure of the modern Tory party under Cameron to recognise the extent of racial discrimination and its’ failure to put in place serious policies to address it that is causing the most damage.

BAME communities know that the Conservatives are no longer the party of Enoch Powell but they believe that while negative attitudes have faded they have not been replaced with positive policies to create a more racially-equal society. It is as if Tories believed that not being overtly and explicitly racist will somehow trickle down and magically undo decades of unfairness without the need to lift a finger.

The Times report suggests that Cameron now realises that he needs to deliver proof in pudding form that the Tories care about BAME communities. Tory vice-chair Alok Sharma is now in charge of coming up with Black-friendly policies and other ministers have also been asked to put their thinking caps on.

This is welcome but it remains to be seen whether such a strategy can deliver policies that are implemented with a difference that can be felt in time for the 2015 election. A report by Lord Ashcroft showed just how much ground the Conservatives need to make up, and an article I wrote for The Voice last month suggests that it is Labour who are in a much better position to win seats by appealing to BAME voters in marginal seats held by Tories and Liberal Democrats if Ed Miliband can himself come up with the policies to demonstrate that Labour are serious about tackling racial disadvantage.

Either way it is encouraging that BAME votes are becoming a key battleground with all parties competing with each other instead of writing off the ‘Black vote’ as being concentrated in Labour’s inner city heartlands.

Given that it was Labour who abandoned the ‘race agenda’ around 2005 with the abolition of the old Commission for Racial Equality and the adoption of a colour-blind agenda they too have some convincing to do.

The Lib Dems, a party with a self-image of being dedicated to equality, are in danger of being left behind the bigger two parties unless they raise their game. Sadly over the past two years Lib Dem ministers have completely brought into a Tory ‘integration’ agenda that does nothing to challenge unfair racial outcomes in Britain and they now risk being left behind as Cameron changes direction to appeal to BAME communities.

Unless the Lib Dems completely reappraise their approach to race equality they are in danger of being the most irrelevant party in the eyes of Britain’s Black and Asian communities.

It is this issue that will be at the forefront of a conference later this month organised by the Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats (I sit on their executive) and the Social Liberal Forum. MPs Simon Hughes and Tom Brake will be addressing this conference and I am speaking in the afternoon.

In many ways this comes at the most crucial time for the Lib Dems. The question is simple: change now or end up like Mitt Romney with hardly any support from Black voters and not enough support from white voters to make a difference. You can book your place here.

Saturday 17^th February: Race Equality – A New Liberal Democrat Approach

From 10am. Hughes Parry Hall, University of London, 19-26 Cartwright Gardens. London. WC1H 9EF, nearest underground Kings Cross and Euston

Speakers include: SLF chairs Gareth Epps and Naomi Smith, EMLD chair Issan Ghazni, Baroness Floella Benjamin, Wilf Sullivan – Race Equality Officer TUC, Rob Berkeley – Director Runnymede Trust, Baroness Meral Ece, Professor Gus John, Simon Hughes MP, Tom Brake MP, Cllr Lester Holloway.

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

The campaign to keep Mary Seacole and Olaudah Equiano on the schools curriculum continued to gather steam with two articles in today’s newspapers.

The Independent reports that education secretary Michael Gove and Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg could be on a collision course over the issue. The piece mentions me by name.

Meanwhile Hugh Muir’s Guardian diary carried the same story and quotes Simon Woolley of Operation Black Vote saying of Clegg: “Given the political furore about Clegg’s broken promise to students over tuition fees, it is inconceivable that he would make another pledge that he couldn’t keep.”

I was pleased to see that the public petition for Mary Seacole has now reached 35,500 signatures.

I was also delighted to note that the number of MPs who have so far signed a Commons motion (Early Day Motion) has now risen to 48.

The Mary Seacole campaign are continuing to ask people to lobby their local MP to sign the EDM, unless they are on the list of MPs that have signed. Please see details below of how to lobby your MP.

The MP’s who have so far signed the EDM are:

Alan Meale Mansfield Labour

Diane Abbott Hackney North and Stoke Newington Labour

Peter Bottomley Worthing West Conservative

Jim Shannon Strangford DUP

Lady Hermon North Down Independent

Kelvin Hopkins Luton North Labour

Steve Rotheram Liverpool, Walton Labour

Virendra Sharma Ealing, Southall Labour

Stephen Williams Bristol West Liberal Democrat

Hugh Bayley York Central Labour

Ronnie Campbell Blyth Valley Labour

John Leech Manchester, Withington Liberal Democrat

George Galloway Bradford West Respect

Martin Caton Gower Labour

Jeremy Corbyn Islington North Labour

Jim McGovern Dundee West Labour

Valerie Vaz Walsall South Labour

Mike Hancock Portsmouth South Liberal Democrat

Mike Gapes Ilford South Labour

Tony Cunningham Workington Labour

Sandra Osborne Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock Labour

John McDonnell Hayes and Harlington Labour

Mark Lazarowicz Edinburgh North and Leith Labour

Dennis Skinner Bolsover Labour

Mary Glindon North Tyneside Labour

David Wright Telford Labour

Paul Flynn Newport West Labour

David Lammy Tottenham Labour

David Simpson Upper Bann DUP

Joan Ruddock Lewisham, Deptford Labour

Ian Lavery Wansbeck Labour

Alex Cunningham Stockton North Labour

Keith Vaz Leicester East Labour

Roger Godsiff Birmingham, Hall Green Labour

Ann Clwyd Cynon Valley Labour

George Mudie Leeds East Labour

Alasdair McDonnell Belfast South Social Democratic and Labour Party

Andrew Love Edmonton Labour

David Ward Bradford East Liberal Democrat

Frank Doran Aberdeen North Labour

Martin Horwood Cheltenham Liberal Democrat

David Anderson Blaydon Labour

Andrew Stunell Hazel Grove Liberal Democrat

Hywel Francis Aberavon Labour

Ian Davidson Glasgow South West Labour

Gerald Kaufman Manchester, Gorton Labour

Jimmy Hood Lanark and Hamilton East Labour

Andrew Percy Brigg and Goole Conservative

Please find below a model letter for you to email to your local MP asking them to sign toe EDM, which you can adapt and personalise as you see fit.

You can find contact details of your MP on www.theyworkforyou.com – there’s a facility on the homepage.

MODEL LETTER

Dear (insert name) MP

I am writing to you as a constituent to ask that you support the campaign to keep Mary Seacole on the national curriculum. The Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove has proposed that Mary Seacole be removed. A nurse, born in Jamaica, Mary Seacole travelled to the Crimea to tend wounded solidiers at her own expense and returned to Britain as a national heroine. She was recently voted the Greatest Black Britain.

The government’s proposal has been met with outrage by the public with over 32000 people signing a petition on change.org calling on Michael Gove to keep Mary Seacole on the Curriculum and a recent  open letter in The Times signed by over 50 well known personalities including members of Parliament.

I am requesting that you support the campaign by signing the petition http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/michael-gove-secretary-of-state-for-education-keep-mary-seacole-on-the-national-curriculum and signing Early Day Motion 919 tabled by Alan Meale MP.

EDM number 919 in 2012-13, proposed by Alan Meale on 15/01/2013.

That this House is aware of history which records the many heroic and compassionate acts carried out unselfishly by renowned war nursing heroine Mary Seacole for innumerable wounded soldiers injured on the Crimean War’s bloody battlefields; notes her efforts have rightly become part of the nation’s schools educational curriculum with further recognition of her contribution shortly to be revealed by the unveiling of a large bronze statue in her memory to be erected in the grounds of St Thomas’ Hospital facing the Houses of Parliament; is therefore greatly alarmed by reports that the Secretary of State for Education has announced plans to overhaul the core history content taught to our nation’s schoolchildren which won’t include the story of her exploits on behalf of others; reminds the Minister that at the age of 50 years she paid her own way to the front to help establish a centre to administer the sick and tended to the wounded on the battlefield throughout the war much of the time under bombardment, brave and caring acts which led to her being little rewarded for all of her distinguished service in the field as she returned to Britain impoverished and had to declare bankruptcy; and believes the nation and its children are best served by being reminded of such unselfishness and hopes the Secretary of State will desist in his attempt to undermine her memory.

Yours sincerely

I learnt of the death of the African history scholar Professor Tony Martin last week. Dr Martin was a renowned authority on Hon Marcus Mosiah Garvey – who was famously honoured by the immortal Burning Spear tune No One Remembers Old Marcus Garvey. So it was with sad irony that so few people got to hear of Dr Martin’s passing at the age of 70. He joined the ancestors last Thursday (17^th January) but no one remembered him.

I remembered a community activist who once told me: “Malcolm X? Everybody loves Malcolm now. We’ve got Malcolm X t-shirts, Malcolm X baseball caps. We love him now he’s dead! But when he was alive not so many people loved Malcolm. They were scared by media talk of him being a dangerous radical. But he’s safe now he’s gone.”

Perhaps one day – when it is safe to do so – people might dare to remember Dr Martin who wrote some 14 books on Garvey, enslavement and Pan-Africanism. He was a barrister-at-law at Gray’s Inn and lectured across the world.

I know we in Britain tend not to celebrate our leading academics as they do in America (which is a great shame) but even factoring that in, given that Dr Martin was high profile and lived a lifetime of being outspoken and often controversial his passing hardly merited a mention on social networking sites let alone the official media. I learnt of the news from Bro Toyin Agbetu’s email newsletter.

So why don’t we want to know Dr Martin? His wikipedia page gives a clue. He was embroiled in a series of controversies and libel counter-actions over claims that he was introducing students to books that dealt with the subject of the role of Jewish people and the enslavement of Africans.

Now don’t get me wrong, I know this is a topic likely to inflame passions. But surely the purpose of academic study is to explore the evidence and test the theories not shut the whole debate down amid accusations of being anti-Semitic.

Sadly this one issue has overshadowed Dr Martin’s lifetime of work on Marcus Garvey and other aspects of African history. I don’t know enough about Jews and transatlantic slavery to offer a view but I am instinctively not inclined to assume that simply broaching the matter equates to anti-Semitism especially where books have been authored on the subject. It seems to be as worth of academic exploration as the role of any other races and nationalities in slavery are.

I disagree with Dr Martin’s decision, in 2001, to share the stage with the discredited Far Right historian David Irving for a lecture entitled ‘The Judaic Role in the Black Slave Trade ‘ not least because the company he kept on that stage seriously undermined his arguments on it.

I first came across Dr Martin while working for the anti-racist think-tank The 1990 Trust. He had just been dis-invited to a conference at London City Hall during the time that Lee Jasper was race advisor to the then mayor Ken Livingstone. The dis-invitation appeared to be the result of an outcry principally from British-Jewish figures and was the spark for many months of bitterness and acrimony between Pan-Africanists – who defended the right to hear the academic speak – and anti-racist groups who were effectively accused of being ‘in the house.’

I was expected to help push out the anti-racist defence explaining why Dr Martin’s views rendered him so unacceptable that this African academic should not address a primarily Black audience in London.

My last job before The 1990 Trust was as news editor of The Voice newspaper I had made a particular stand in campaigning for the ban on Louis Farrakhan to be overturned, not because I agreed with everything Farrakhan said – far from it – but because the case for suppressing the free speech of the Nation of Islam leader were far weaker than the arguments as to why he should be allowed to visit Britain.

I won’t rehearse the arguments here but, as a Liberal, my position has not changed. The similarities between Min. Farrakhan and Dr Martin were clear. If I supported the right of one to visit Britain why not the other?

I was never convinced by the anti-racist stance over Dr Martin but was distressed at the extent of personal attacks that resulted, much of it from Pan-Africanists. It struck me that talk of ‘unity’ flew out the window when discussing the likes of Jasper and the divisions in the community that widened in 2003 are present a decade later.

Garvey was a great advocate of unity and had been alive I’ve no doubt his sympathies would have been with Dr Martin but I believe he would have also been troubled that this issue was such a cause of friction. Perhaps the passing of Dr Martin signals a time to forge greater links between activists and community campaigners. Acknowledging him and learning more about his academic works would be a start.

As painful as some of the issues he raise were Dr Martin is part of African history now. We should be able to remember him while feeling able to discuss what we agree and disagree about his works and views. Free to talk about him without fear of societal pressure to shun him.

If we are able to sit down and discuss him perhaps, ironically, he might yet become a symbol of unity.

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

The selection of Layla Moran for the Liberal Democrats in the target seat of Oxford and Abingdon is welcome. As welcome, in fact, as the selection of any Liberal Democrat candidate anywhere. But last night, at a private meeting with equalities ministers, Jo Swinson twice insisted that we – a small gathering of BAME party activists – should be particularly celebrating her selection, as Moran (pictured) is an ethnic minority. Suddenly I had a flashback.

At the turn of the millennium Labour suddenly found itself with a ‘diversity issue’ in London, the most multicultural of cities. Black and Asian people were conspicuous by their absence on newly created London Assembly. So suddenly three ‘new’ BAME politicians appeared as if by magic. Step forward Assembly members Toby Harris, Nicky Gavron and Len Duvall.

This came as somewhat of a surprise to some BAME Labour activists who were familiar with this trio of big-hitters, and aware of their Jewish heritage, but had never previously associated them with being ‘black’, politically-speaking. Indeed the trio had not identified themselves as such to anyone’s knowledge. But Labour spin doctors nevertheless reckoned pinning brand new BAME badges on them would help the party out of a hole it had found itself in because of the lack of visible minorities.

Harris, Gavron and Duvall

It’s that word ‘visible’. Looking at Duvall – who has since proved himself a highly effective assembly member not afraid to raise issues bugging Black communities – you can just about see he has some ‘ethnic’ part of his heritage. The other two? It’s very hard to tell. So why does this matter? The answer, according to the gospel of Lester Holloway, is that it doesn’t really. Except where ethnicity is used and abused for political expediency. Where it is used as a tool or tactic used to pacify BAME political activists who are fuming about a lack of visible minorities.

I have no evidence to suggest that Labour’s class of 2000 were complicit in marketing themselves as BAME. My guess is they were probably blameless. But it raises some interesting questions. The first is that there are more politicians than we care to imagine, from every political party, who could conceivably claim to be ethnic on ground of their family background. There are at least 24 Jewish MPs in the House of Commons who are not generally regarded as minority ethnic, and neither do they demand to be.

Add in a kaleidoscope of other ethnicities – Armenian, Russian etc. – and we’re talking a hell of a lot of MPs. Even Boris Johnson, with his bright blond mop, told an Asian radio journalist “you can’t out-ethnic me!” while boasting about his diverse genes, including Turkish.

No-one has tried to out-ethnic the London mayor. But as a white man he cannot lay claim to truly understand the experiences of the capital’s visible minorities, only listen to them and use his power to act against discrimination. And his record suggests he’s not doing that.

I have always firmly believed in the right of self-determination of ethnicity. The London assembly trio and the current mayor are perfectly entitled to call themselves ‘ethnic minorities’ if they so choose and I, for one, am not going to object. However it is worth noting that some politicians who are not obviously a ‘visible’ minority choose to declare that they are BAME, while others do not. They have a choice. Don’t mention it and few will notice. Do mention it and they will.

The difference between visible and other BAME people is that many of the latter could ‘pass for white’ in most environments. There might be a clue in the name or the dark eyes or hair, but essentially they are highly unlikely to suffer the casual racism of those who dislike people based on skin colour. If someone appears to be white they are equally unlikely to truly understand the everyday experience of people of colour. They can be angry about racism and discrimination, they can be passionate about race equality. But then so can politicians who have no claim to themselves be BAME.

Indeed some of the strongest advocates of race equality in parliament – from Jeremy Corbyn to George Galloway – are white. There are many MPs who got into politics because of a strong belief in equality or because they campaigned against fascism. And that’s to be celebrated. Clearly you don’t need to be from a BAME background to work to better the condition of BAME communities by tackling racism in all its’ forms and dismantling the barriers to opportunity and racial equality in practice.

So what does this have to do with Layla Moran. In fairness I don’t know too much about her. She is described as being born to a Palestinian mother and English father and works as a physics teacher. She comes across as educated and professional. I have no idea about her life experiences or whether she has ever suffered racism. I believe she is a paid-up member of the Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrat group.

What I do know is that a few years ago she proposed a motion to the Lib Dem’s London regional conference to abolish the only positive action measure for BAME communities the party had – for ‘zipping’ the London Assembly top-up list to ensure a BAME candidate is in the top four places. The motion was later dropped after I kicked up a fuss.

I think it is fair to say that in most professional environments and under most lights Moran could pass for a white professional woman. I don’t know how she identifies her class, if at all, but some would say she appears middle-class. Of course none of this is in any way a criticism. Who she is is who she is. And nothing from her background should hold her back. I’m sure she won the selection entirely on merit and will no doubt make an excellent MP should the voters elect her in 2015.

And if she wishes to self-identify as BAME that’s great too. But her record of championing the cause of race equality is, as far as I can see, a chapter yet to be written. Therefore if her selection as a parliamentary candidate is being held up as a great step forward for Black political representation – as it appeared to be last night – some of us can be forgiven for saying ‘hold on a minute!’

Hold on, Britain’s Black and Asian communities – many of whom criticise the Liberal Democrats for having an all-white team of MP’s – are unlikely to be popping champagne corks at Moran’s selection. And if she ends up being the only ethnic minority Liberal Democrat elected to parliament, the question as to whether the party still has an all-white Commons team (ie. the absence of visible minorities) might get slightly more complicated but certainly won’t go away.

I welcome the selection of Moran but believe it is quite problematic for figures in the party to be imploring BAME activists to start celebrating the news. I will celebrate when I want to and my champagne is definitely still in ice.

By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway

The campaign to save the Thameslink First Capital Connect line from Sutton to Luton via King’s Cross has been won!

Last September I blogged about the campaign against plans to terminate the service at Blackfriars by 2018, which would mean residents changing trains in order to continue their journey northwards. This threatened to adversely affect Sutton’s local economy or at least inhibit future additional investment.

After much campaigning the Department for Transport has now performed a U-turn by announcing that the Thameslink Loop Line will remain.

The line runs through the Sutton North ward including Sutton Common station.

This is a huge victory for the residents of Sutton and for people-power in general! It made no sense to cut off travellers from the city of London, Kings Cross St Pancras, Stansted and Luton airports.

The victory will also help Sutton’s ambitions to grow business in the borough and develop it as a retail centre to compete with Croydon and Kingston.

Sutton Council sent the DfT figures that prove Loop Line stations are carrying more passengers every year. In 2010/11, 5,768,694 passengers used Sutton station up1.4 per cent on the previous year, while West Sutton and Sutton Common also recorded rises of 8.5 per cent and 14.7 per cent respectively.

Other stations that recorded year-on-year rises included Carshalton, where passenger numbers rose by 3.6 per cent and Hackbridge which recorded a small rise of 0.7 per cent, but the submission stressed that significant development in Hackbridge will bring about an increased demand for rail services.

Cllr Lester Holloway

Last week I reported that the recycling centre on Sutton Green is to be moved following appalling fly-tipping on the site.

Myself and fellow ward councillors Ruth Dombey and Marlene Heron are now inviting responses to two suggested alternative sites, a few feet away from the original location.

Both options will make it easier to catch any culprits that think they can continue to fly-tip their waste, some of which appears to be commercial waste.

Option one is adjacent to the old toilet block, and Option two is on the corner of Bushey Road and the High Street.

Please let me know which one you prefer, or any other location you have in mind.

Email me: lester.holloway@sutton.gov.uk and copy in the waste strategy manager: amy.harris@sutton.gov.uk

As previously reported, the existing recycling centre is being shut and returned to grass as per the rest of the Green. A banner giving information about this has been put up, posters are on lamp posts surrounding the site and letters have been delivered to residents.

Cllr Lester Holloway

That represents a jump of two thirds since the Early Day Motion was last updated.

Michael Gove is expected to unveil a new school curriculum within the next week and campaigners hope that the extent of public protest – 34,600 have signed an online petition – and resulting media coverage will have influenced the education secretary.

Celebrities who have supported the campaign include author Zadie Smith, playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah, civil rights leader Rev Jesse Jackson Snr and the Archbishop of York John Sentamu.

Rising Labour MP Chuka Umunna, singer Beverley Knight, actor Adrian Lester and comedienne Angie le Mar have tweeted support.

The Mary Seacole campaign is encouraging people to lobby their local MP to sign the Early Day Motion (number 919) – see below for more details.

The MP’s who have so far signed the EDM are:

Alan Meale Mansfield Labour

Diane Abbott Hackney North and Stoke Newington Labour

Peter Bottomley Worthing West Conservative

Jim Shannon Strangford DUP

Lady Hermon North Down Independent

Kelvin Hopkins Luton North Labour

Steve Rotheram Liverpool, Walton Labour

Virendra Sharma Ealing, Southall Labour

Stephen Williams Bristol West Liberal Democrat

Hugh Bayley York Central Labour

Ronnie Campbell Blyth Valley Labour

Martin Caton Gower Labour

George Galloway Bradford West Respect

John Leech Manchester, Withington Liberal Democrat

Jeremy Corbyn Islington North Labour

Jim McGovern Dundee West Labour

Jeremy Corbyn Islington North Labour

Valerie Vaz Walsall South Labour

Mike Hancock Portsmouth South Liberal Democrat

Mike Gapes Ilford South Labour

Tony Cunningham Workington Labour

Sandra Osborne Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock Labour

John McDonnell Hayes and Harlington Labour

Mark Lazarowicz Edinburgh North and Leith Labour

Dennis Skinner Bolsover Labour

David Wright Telford Labour

Paul Flynn Newport West Labour

David Lammy Tottenham Labour

David Simpson Upper Bann DUP

Joan Ruddock Lewisham, Deptford Labour

Mary Glindon North Tyneside Labour

Please find below a model letter for you to email to your local MP asking them to sign toe EDM, which you can adapt and personalise as you see fit.

You can find contact details of your MP on www.theyworkforyou.com – there’s a facility on the homepage.

MODEL LETTER

Dear (insert name) MP

I am writing to you as a constituent to ask that you support the campaign to keep Mary Seacole on the national curriculum. The Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove has proposed that Mary Seacole be removed. A nurse, born in Jamaica, Mary Seacole travelled to the Crimea to tend wounded solidiers at her own expense and returned to Britain as a national heroine. She was recently voted the Greatest Black Britain.

The government’s proposal has been met with outrage by the public with over 32000 people signing a petition on change.org calling on Michael Gove to keep Mary Seacole on the Curriculum and a recent  open letter in The Times signed by over 50 well known personalities including members of Parliament.

I am requesting that you support the campaign by signing the petition http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/michael-gove-secretary-of-state-for-education-keep-mary-seacole-on-the-national-curriculum and signing Early Day Motion 919 tabled by Alan Meale MP.

EDM number 919 in 2012-13, proposed by Alan Meale on 15/01/2013.

That this House is aware of history which records the many heroic and compassionate acts carried out unselfishly by renowned war nursing heroine Mary Seacole for innumerable wounded soldiers injured on the Crimean War’s bloody battlefields; notes her efforts have rightly become part of the nation’s schools educational curriculum with further recognition of her contribution shortly to be revealed by the unveiling of a large bronze statue in her memory to be erected in the grounds of St Thomas’ Hospital facing the Houses of Parliament; is therefore greatly alarmed by reports that the Secretary of State for Education has announced plans to overhaul the core history content taught to our nation’s schoolchildren which won’t include the story of her exploits on behalf of others; reminds the Minister that at the age of 50 years she paid her own way to the front to help establish a centre to administer the sick and tended to the wounded on the battlefield throughout the war much of the time under bombardment, brave and caring acts which led to her being little rewarded for all of her distinguished service in the field as she returned to Britain impoverished and had to declare bankruptcy; and believes the nation and its children are best served by being reminded of such unselfishness and hopes the Secretary of State will desist in his attempt to undermine her memory.

Yours sincerely