A few days ago I saw a piece that was highlighted by Guido Fawkes by Harry Phibbs a former councillor in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. In this piece Mr Phibbs talked about the absolute stupidity of and the damaged caused by the obsession with ‘inequalities’ that Britain’s governing classes have.

Mr Phibbs said that a coterie of ‘professional anti-racists’ had ‘betrayed’ Dr Martin Luther King’s dream of a colourblind world, where people’s conduct would be what a person would be judged by and not the colour of their skin. Having read the article by Mr Phibbs and seen for myself just how all pervasive the ‘inequalities’ agenda has been in Britain and the damage and resentment that this agenda has caused, I find that I cannot disagree with what Mr Phibbs has said.

The inequalities agenda has produced such foolishness as the BBC spending over £100 million on promoting ‘diversity and inclusion’ in order to ensure that minorities are even more disproportionally represented in BBC roles than they currently already are. This agenda has also meant that almost every interaction with the State or state funded bodies has to be accompanied by a mandatory ‘monitoring form’ which asks the customer for details of their race, religion, gender or sexuality. These forms are often dished out by highly paid ‘diversity’ apparatchiks from councils and other public bodies even when, as Mr Phibbs points out, the interaction with the local authority is as mundane as having a new boiler fitted.

Mr Phibbs said:

“I have a dream,” declared Martin Luther King on August 28, 1963, “that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.”

That inspirational cry for justice – for a colour blind society of individual opportunity and responsibility – has been betrayed. Those thwarting that dream are not some phantom phalanx of white supremacists occupying the commanding heights of British public life this last half century. Rather, look to the professional anti-racists in the equalities industry who have been firmly in charge of almost every institution in this country for just about the entire working lifetime of anyone. Their racial essentialism is the public doctrine of this country and has been for some long time now. The state of modern British society, of which they complain so bitterly, is very much on them.

This bitter irony will not have escaped the notice of the more assiduous followers of current affairs. Outfits such as “Black Lives Matter” have not been championing cohesion, harmony, and equal treatment. They have been dedicated to division, discrimination, and separatism. 

Well said there Mr Phibbs. Spot on. Dr King’s dream has indeed been betrayed by those who promote racial and communal grievances even when such grievance is clearly not justified. There is now in Britain an army of professional anti-racists and communal grievance mongers, all too many funded either directly or indirectly by the taxpayer who are dividing people where instead they should have been bringing people together. We have a situation where some groups but not others can promote racial essentialism, which to my mind is the very opposite of genuine equality.

Mr Phibbs went onto talk about Enoch Powell’s infamous speech in Birmingham in 1968, where he predicted that a ‘river of blood’ would flow because of racial conflict. Mr Phibbs said that Powell’s prediction has in the main not come true and that we have remained a tolerant island, but that the actions of racial and communal grievance mongers who claim to act in the interests of minority groups and police officers who take the knee before the Marxist thugs of the Black Lives Matter movement, risk damaging race relations. Mr Phibbs said that this bowing down by the state to loud minority interests risks damaging rather than enhancing race relations. He said that the knee taking and the pandering that is going on could make more people wonder whether Powell was right? Mr Phibbs also wonders whether this sort of division is what extremist groups like Black Lives Matter actually want? After all, he pointed out, BLM and similar groups seem quite relaxed about the idea of segregation and division. The problem as I see it is that the State and the British people have allowed those favourable to the idea of segregation and division to pose as those opposed to it. By doing so we have allowed concepts like ‘fairness’ and ‘equality’ to lose much of their true meaning in modern Britain. We now have a situation where in many public sector or third sector entities, people are hired not because their conduct or their qualifications mean that they deserve to be hired, but because they tick the correct box when it comes to gender, race or sexuality. That is bad for the taxpayer, the donors to charities, the organisations themselves and also to the person who is hired, who may forever worry whether they were hired for their ability or for some immutable characteristic that they have.

But, Mr Phibbs is not merely whinging about a bad situation without offering ideas to make things better. He has come up with a suggestion that could solve many of Britain’s current cohesion problems in one fell swoop. Mr Phibbs is suggesting that the primary legislation that causes so many of these problems, for example the 2010 Equalities Act that created the idea that people have ‘protected characteristics’ be replaced by a Non-Discrimination Act.

Mr Phibbs added:

What should the Government’s response be? It should pass a Non-Discrimination Act ensuring the public sector follows the principle of true equality. That doctrine genuinely is and should be colour blind. We should not “positively” discriminate based on colour, or on sex or sexuality: this discrimination is exactly the evil our credo is meant to be fighting. The government ought to be determined to make King’s dream the reality. The people who fight are more than willing to use legislation and the administrative state to achieve their ends: they need to be headed off at the pass while there is still a government in office willing to try.

Such has been the extent of the mutation of equalities law in recent decades that this change would be dramatic. For example, in the last week it was reported that the BBC was to spend £100m on “diverse and inclusive content”. The announcement followed June Sarpong’s appointment last year as the BBC’s director of creative diversity, as the Corporation pledged that “50% of on-air roles will go to women by 2020, with targets of 15% for black, Asian, and minority ethnic groups [BAME], 8% for disabled people, and 8% for LGBT staff.” Under the Non-Discrimination Act that spending and those targets would be illegal. 

Mr Phibbs is in my view correct with his suggestion that the legislation that is exploited by the dividers, the racial and communal grievance mongers and by the extremists from these groups needs to be replaced. With Boris Johnson’s Conservative government having such a massive majority in the House of Commons this should be the ideal opportunity to replace Labour’s divisive and dangerous 2010 Equalities Act with something much better. The legislative sledgehammer that racial and communal grievance mongers use against anyone who stands in their way needs to go. I would go further than what Mr Phibbs is suggesting and repeal all laws that operate according to the ‘perception’ of hurt by members of those with ‘protected characteristics’. All the ‘hate speech’ and ‘hate crime’ laws that ensure that some groups are more equal than others, also need to go. A fair and free society should not be privileging one group over another but that is exactly what the Equalities Act and the various ‘hate crime’ and ‘hate speech’ acts do.

I want to see Britain as a society where people get on because of what they can do or what they are capable of doing, rather than as at present where people are hired or promoted on the basis of who or what they are. Fairness and justice are not dirty words but the actions of the Left and the various groups of racial and communal grievance mongers have made them so. The Leftists and their fellow travellers have turned fairness into unfairness and justice into injustice and this needs to change if Britain is to survive and thrive. I believe that Mr Phibbs suggestion that a comprehensive Non-Discrimination Act be passed by Parliament is an excellent one and one that could solve many of Britain’s current societal problems.