libertyandlawjournal

2007-09-13T19:55:00.000+01:00

Conservative report on environment a "blueprint for feudalism"

The Libertarian Alliance, the radical free market and civil liberties policy institute, today denounces the Conservative Party report Blueprint for a Green Economy as a "blueprint for green feudalism".

Libertarian Alliance Director, Dr Sean Gabb,argues:

"The Conservatives are proposing more taxes and more regulations on the basis of fraudulent claims about the impact of human activity on the climate. There is no global warming. If there is, it is not our doing. If it is our doing, government action is not the answer. But there is no global warming. This whole set of claims is a device to rescue socialism from the failure of its promise to deliver heaven on earth. Shame on theConservatives for joining in the clamour.

"And shame, above all, on the very rich men who are telling us to tighten our belts in their attempt to 'save the planet'. Zac Goldsmith, one of the authors of this Report, is one of the richest men in the country.

David Cameron and John Gummer are not poor. If all the economic growth of the past century were to be rolled back, their sort would not suffer.

"If the rich want to travel, they have their private jets and helicopters. If they want to eat fresh fruit and vegetables out of season, they have their vast greenhouses. If they want to do without washing machines and gas-fired central heating, they can fall back on armies of servants and expensive personal generators. If they want entertainment, they can have their private theatres and orchestras, or
whatever in our degraded modern culture serve in their place.

"For them, a reduction of the general wealth would be a blessing. It would ease pressure on the roads that they would continue using, and reduce numbers at exotic holiday resorts that would remain within their reach.

"These people talk about making the world a better place. Perhaps they believe what they say. The natural effect of their words, however, would be to make the world a better place for people who have done nothing to earn their wealth other than take the trouble to be born.

"This whole report is a blueprint for green feudalism."

2007-09-04T14:47:00.000+01:00

European Commission’s racially offensive comic rises from the dead

The European Commission cartoon comic What?me? a racist?, on the Europa website since 2001, was taken down after a complaint by civil liberties group Liberty and Law, backed by the Commission for Racial Equality, that its caricatures of Europeans of African heritage were offensive.

Commissioner Spidla’s spokesperson asked the Communications Directorate General on 21 August to remove the comic from its website and this was done.

A check on 4 September, however, showed that the comic was up on the site again necessitating another call to the Commission from Liberty and Law and further action from the Commission’s spokesperson.

Update 14 September
After reporting its resurrection to the Commission it is now not available.

2007-08-22T16:27:00.000+01:00

European Commission to take down racially offensive comic from its website

The European Commission is to remove the comic What me a racist from its Europa website following a complaint from civil liberties group Liberty and Law taken up on its behalf by the Commission for Racial Equality [CRE].

The glossy A4 comic produced in 1998 to combat racism was published in all the official European Union languages. It was “designed for teachers to use when addressing the subject of racism with young people” and has been on its website since 2001.

Liberty and Law complained about the offensive racial caricatures of the black characters portrayed, reminiscent of the treatment given to Africans in Hergé’s 1931 book Tintin in the Congo.

The CRE made rapid progress with the Commission for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities. On 21 August the CRE told Liberty and Law that the Commission underlined to them that it was “not their intention to be offensive to any group or individual and are looking into the matter”. Just a few hours later Commissioner Spidla’s spokesperson asked the Communications Directorate General to remove the comic from its website.

The Commission also confirmed that the paper copies were out of print and would not be reprinted. The CRE reported that the “Commission wanted to reiterate that they did not intend to offend African Europeans (or any other group addressed in the cartoon) and should this have been the case they regret this deeply and offer their sincere apologies.”

Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup commented: “ It is amazing that so little sensitivity was employed by those responsible for its commission and production and that it got past Europe’s anti-racist campaigners. However, Commissioner Spidla deserves credit for acting promptly when it was belatedly brought to his attention.”

What me a racist? http://ec.europa.eu/publications/young/txt_whatme_racist_en.pdf

2007-08-08T12:24:00.000+01:00

Bedfordshire girl puts race commissars on the spot

It has taken an eighteen-year-old Bedfordshire student, Abigail Howarth, to expose the sickness and confusion at the heart of the UK’s race relation’s legislation. She did so because of what she found out when she wanted to compete for a training scheme with the Environment Agency.

The strangely worded advertisement stated that applications for the four traineeships “are encouraged from people of the following descents: Asian, Indian, White other (e.g. Irish, Welsh, Scottish, European), African, Caribbean or of Mixed Race origins.

The traineeships purported to be provided under Section 37 of the Race Relations Act 1976 (Amendment 2000). This allows employers and their agents to provide training schemes to racial groups underrepresented in particular jobs compared to their numbers in the working population either locally or nationally. It had been restricted historically for commonsense reasons to non-white groups although civil liberties groups have long opposed the racial discrimination it perpetuates.

In this case PATH National Ltd, the major development agency acting in this business, in a bizarre and arguably illegal move, extended the qualifying groups to include everyone except white English people.

Civil liberties group Liberty and Law has successfully campaigned against misuses of the Race Relations Act including Section 37 in cooperation with the Commission for Racial Equality. It has asked the CRE to request PATH to freeze the recruitment scheme until it has determined its legality.

There appears be no co-ordination between PATH and the Environment Agency.

Extending the scheme to anyone who is white unless they are English cannot be justified by the statistics available from the Environment Agency. They explained to Liberty and Law that they “have no evidence that white Scottish, Irish or Welsh are underrepresented in the Anglian region of the Environment Agency.” More strongly they stated: “ Whilst PATH employ a broad criteria inviting applicants from people of these backgrounds, applicants would not be progressed further with us.”

2007-08-02T18:09:00.000+01:00

Financial Times latest to award Trevor Phillips a knighthood

Today in a report about the Commission for Equality and Human Rights, Trevor Phillips its chair, in the news over his Queen Mother colostomy bag joke, was designated "Sir Trevor Phillips".

The Financial Times joins a host of other bodies that have assumed a man of his distinction would have a knighthood.

Mr Phillips OBE heads the new body that will combine the roles of the the Disability Rights Commissionthe Commission for Racial Equality and the Equal Opportunities Commission.

2007-08-02T12:44:00.000+01:00

Commission for Racial Equality: institutionally racist and sexist to the end

White staff and men stay grossly under-represented at the Commission for Racial Equality [CRE]. This is revealed in the £20 million organisation’s final report buried away on its website.

It shows 43% of its staff are white and that 64% of are women.

The CRE has remained indifferent about its discriminatory recruitment policy during its entire existence despite being challenged by equality campaigners to set targets to attain a racially and sexually representative workforce..

It still brazenly claims in its final report that its “workforce showed a good mix by ethnicity”1. It has refused to state for many years what the racial profile of its staff should be. This strategy has worked well given lax parliamentary supervision of its work.

Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup stated: “This claim is outrageous. Do its commissioners read the publications their organization puts out? Why do they believe that targets are necessary for everyone else but that they should be exempt? That’s a rhetorical question, of course. The answer is clear. They knew they could get away with it.”

In the absence of any statement from the CRE, Liberty and Law believes that it should have adopted the targets of Ken Livingstone’s Greater London Authority that 52% of the workforce should be women and 27% black, Asian and minority ethnic people. This would at least reflect London’s population from which the majority of the CRE’s staff is presumably drawn - if not the national population.

As the CRE will only exist until 31st September 2007 it will of course escape any sanctions from our holidaying elected representatives.

1 Commission for Racial Equality Employment Monitoring Data 2006

http://www.cre.gov.uk/downloads/cre_employment_monitoring_data.pdf

2007-07-27T21:11:00.000+01:00

Equal Opportunites Commission celebrates over thirty years keeping out men

Institutional gender discrimination had been alive and kicking at Britain’s Equal Opportunities Commission [EOC] ever since its inception. Arguing relentlessly for “targets” for all other employers it has resolutely failed to act to bring about fair employment policies in its own organisation. Successive government paymasters have failed to bring the organisation to heel. The annual report of the government funded £9.438 million quango reveals that male staff has been reduced in its final year to just 17.6% - down even from last year’s derisory 18.2%.

It is surely the lack of a male perspective that ensured that the EOC last year let Avon and Somerset and Gloucestershire Police Services get away scot free with their recruitment scam excluding almost 300 men in favour of women.

We don’t read about these “achievements” in the EOC’s annual reports. Who knows what other initiatives doing down men will be lost down the memory hole when the EOC in October metamorphoses into the Commission for Equality and Human Rights.

2007-07-21T06:33:00.000+01:00

Does Britain need a Libertarian Party?

Maybe, or maybe not. The argument bubbles up regularly in the forums and now the Libertarian Alliance makes it the subject of the first £1000 Chris R Tame Memorial Prize.

Dr Tame was the dynamic founder of the Libertarian Alliance whose contribution to British politics and political thought was not fully appreciated until his premature death last year. It is now and in his honour The PROMIS Unit of Primary Care has established a major yearly £1,000 essay prize.

It is open to everybody. The deadline for receipt of essays is 1 October 2007.

Details of the prize can be found here.

2007-07-12T21:16:00.000+01:00

European Commission updates offensive Tintin cartoons

The European Commission has had on its website now for almost seven years offensive images of African European young people. The artist for the publication "What me a racist?", Sergio Selma, illustrates "sympathetically" a black mother and her son with the same enormous mouths used by Hergé in his 1931 book Tintin in the Congo that has now been reported to the British police.

The most offensive illustration in the ezine is a cartoon showing a middle aged white couple looking fondly at a little black boy and girl with enormous offensively caricatured mouths stating: "Aren't they cute? They're just gorgeous at that age." with the reply "Pity they have to grow up."

The cartoon magazine crassly designed to combat racism can still be seen on the European Commission's website.

Civil liberties group Liberty and Law has reported the website to the Commission for Racial Equality asking it to use its good offices and European contacts to get the European Commission to take it off the website and to pulp all remaining copies of the document published in all the official European Union languages.

The European Commission in a forward to the document claims that "it is determined to combat discrimination based on sex, race, ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability , age or sexual orientation". It goes on to claim that "the humorously written and informative pamphlet has been designed for teachers to use when addressing the subject of racism with young people".

Liberty and law director Gerald Hartup commented: "It is astonishing that this comic has circulated so widely for so long without any action being taken especially given the sheer size of the race relations industry in Europe. We are contacting the European Commission directly to have it taken off its website."

What me a racist? can be seen here.

2007-07-06T06:45:00.000+01:00

The modalities of an offer from Europe too good to refuse

Rt Hon David Miliband MP
Secretary of State.
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA),
Nobel House
17 Smith Square
London SW1P 3JR
16 May 2007

Dear Secretary of State,

My friend, who is in farming at the moment, recently received a cheque for £3,000 from the Rural Payments Agency for not rearing pigs. I would now like to join the "not rearing pigs" business.

In your opinion, what is the best kind of farm not to rear pigs on, and which is the best breed of pigs not to rear? I want to be sure I approach this endeavour in keeping with all government policies, as dictated by the EU under the Common Agricultural Policy. I would prefer not to rear bacon pigs, but if this is not the type you want not rearing, I will just as gladly not rear porkers. Are there any advantages in not rearing rare breeds such as Saddlebacks or Gloucester Old Spots, or are there too many people already not rearing these?

As I see it, the hardest part of this programme will be keeping an accurate record of how many pigs I haven't reared. Are there any Government or Local Authority courses on this?

My friend is very satisfied with this business. He has been rearing pigs for forty years or so, and the best he ever made on them was £1,422 in 1968. That is - until this year, when he received a cheque for not rearing any.

If I get £3,000 for not rearing 50 pigs, will I get £6,000 for not rearing 100?
I plan to operate on a small scale at first, holding myself down to about 4,000 pigs not raised. which will mean about £240,000 for the first year? As I become more expert in not rearing pigs, I plan to be more ambitious, perhaps increasing to, say, 40,000 pigs not reared in my second year, for which I should expect about £2.4 million from your department.

Incidentally, I wonder if I would be eligible to receive tradable carbon credits for all these pigs not producing harmful and polluting methane gases.

Another point: These pigs that I plan not to rear will not eat 2,000 tonnes of cereals. I understand that you also pay farmers for not growing crops. Will I qualify for payments for not growing cereals to not feed the pigs I don't rear?

I am also considering the "not milking cows" business, so please send any information you have on that too. Please could you also include the current Defra advice on set aside fields? Can this be done on an e-commerce basis with virtual fields (of which I seem to have several thousand hectares)?

In view of the above you will realise that I will be totally unemployed, and will therefore qualify for unemployment benefits.

I shall of course be voting for your party at the next general election.

Yours faithfully,

This genuine letter on not rearing pigs was sent to Eurorealist by Cyril Randle, the Walsall Pensioner who was almost prosecuted by Walsall MBC for not throwing chewing gum out of a car window he could not open at the time.

NB In the latest reshuffle Mr Miliband has been promoted to Foreign Secretary

2007-07-06T06:38:00.000+01:00

The modalities of an offer from Africa too good to miss

Dear,
How are you and your present health condition I hope all is well with you?
I am Mr Asumugah Weah. I am from Liberia in West Africa but I am residing at Dakar Senegal at the moment. I am contacting you on this business venture that I would like to associate with you, My late father Dr George Weah Deposited some capital valued at US$15.5 million dollars that was deposited in bank of Senegal by my late father and the statement of account is with me please I would require your urgent concern on this matter because, the Senegalese bank, has issued me a notice to claim the money or have the fund confiscated within the next twenty Official working days, please my current statue now does not permit me to have full access to the money or to deal with the bank to claim the money, So I will be needing your urgent assistance please to recover the money from the bank, and for you to help me start up a good investment in your country with the money.

Therefore, on receipt of your positive response, we shall then discuss the sharing ratio and modalities for transfer. I have all necessary information and legal documents needed to back you up for the claim. All I require from you is your honest cooperation to enable us see this transaction through. I guarantee that this will be executed under a legitimate arrangement that will protect both of us from any breach of the law.
NOTE: On your request the Senegalese bank will released all the details of the account for your verifications.
Awaiting to hear from you in earnest.
Best Regards,
Asumugah weah
00221-3901542.

Inbox cluttered with junk? Clean up with Yahoo! Mail.

asumugah weah asumugahweah1983@yahoo.co.uk

2007-07-03T22:29:00.000+01:00

How many Shami Chakrabatis does it take to change a light bulb?

Liberty has come up with a super idea to protect citizens from terrorism in the UK. With their experience they should really be handed the job of security if the paying public want to really feel safe.

As a spokeswoman put it: "If stop and search powers are applied even-handedly, without racial profiling, they will have the support of Liberty and, hopefully, the whole community."

Just the ticket. Under no circumstances use other than hard intelligence to stop and search unless done on a random basis. That means stopping 90 white people for every 10 minority ethnic people. And make sure you get a fair share of kids playing on the swings too.

This may take a little longer to get results. But, hey, better safe than sorry, surely?

The Scotsman 3 July 2007 Terror, bomb scares, arrests - and births at the Alexandria http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=1033292007

2007-07-01T13:21:00.000+01:00

Is it really time to sack smokers?

If you want to know about employment matters log on to Personnel Today. They have a very good selection of informative articles on smoking in the workforce and smoking by members of the workforce.

On 6 May they ran an article Smoking is not the only addiction that must be tackled in the workplace in which the following mainstream advice was given to employers: "…you should adopt a robust approach to your recruitment strategy and find out at an early stage whether a candidate is a smoker, or likes more than a glass of shandy after work. If so, reject them - unless you are prepared to spend the time tackling future issues that may arise."

These major issues are productivity and absentee losses associated with smoking and alcohol related accidents in the workplace.

This is already being done by some employers. A Sunday Times October 3, 2004 Job vacant ... but not for smokers explained: "BRITISH companies have started to refuse to employ smokers, even if they promise not to indulge their habit during working hours." It reports Kalamazoo-UCS of Northfield, Birmingham that employs 400 people and Kershen-Fairfax, a London accountancy firm as leaders."

Using google "smoking sacking" gives a good introduction to such trends.

Personnel Today’s Employment law: smoking ban special 26 June is cautious about sacking existing smokers "Sacking someone because they smoke in their spare time would be an unfair dismissal…" but as they go on to point out of the United States "… twenty states give employers the right to sack employees who smoke away from work in their own time."

The European Commission provides no protection for smokers. According to Commission equal opportunities spokesperson Katharina von Schnurbein "The Commission can legislate on age, disability, sexual orientation, religion, race and gender . For all other areas, it's the member state's responsibility."

Under these circumstances civil liberties group Liberty and Law is asking the Commission for Racial Equality [CRE] and the Equal Opportunities Commission [EOC] to investigate any companies who refuse to employ smokers as well as any recruitment companies or media outlets that accept advertisements proclaiming such discriminatory intent.

Companies refusing to take on smokers are certain to be indirectly sexually and racially discriminatory because of the differential smoking patterns related to the sex and race of Britain’s workforce. The penalties for such discrimination are potentially massive and trade unions can be expected to support affected members at employment tribunals.

Action on Smoking and Health, ASH provides evidence of widely differential smoking patterns by race and sex. It shows that Bangladeshi men for example under a no smoking regime will be turned down almost twice as frequently as Chinese men. Irish women will be turned down 13 times more frequently than Bangladeshi women.

Liberty and Law is contacting recruitment companies to check that they have not and will not accept commissions from companies that refuse to hire people who smoke outside working hours and that they will report such companies to the CRE and the EOC.

It will also directly report companies advertising their intention to exclude smokers to the CRE the EOC and libertarian smoking rights group Forest.

http://www.forestonline.org/output/page209.asp

Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup stated: “We must have zero tolerance of businesses that would indulge in repressive bullying. Their hectoring intolerance must be stubbed out. If necessary they need to suffer the consequences of their anti-social pretensions in the courts or in other ways that affect their bottom lines.”

2007-06-30T23:19:00.000+01:00

Do you really want to know how they dumbed down A-level maths?

Education think tank Campaign for Real Education published a short document in 2004 summarising what has happened. You can find it on http://www.cre.org.uk/maths1.pdf

It shows exactly what was ripped out of the syllabus and the disastrous results for students taking university courses with a substantial mathematical content.

2007-06-19T14:18:00.000+01:00

Mayor’s action over Fire Authority appointments reported to race and sex watchdogs

London mayor Ken Livingstone has blocked the appointment of every Conservative and Liberal Democrat white male nominated to the governing body of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority. He has acted claiming that their nominations failed to tackle the under representation of women, black, Asian and ethnic minority Londoners. He has asked these parties to reconsider their nominations except for one Conservative female councillor acceptable to him.

At a press conference on Tuesday he confirmed that he had not sought advice from either the Equal Opportunities Commission or the Commission for Racial Equality and that there were contradictory legal views of his powers in this area.

These appointments are well paying with a basic allowance of £7,206 a year to every borough representative. Special responsibility allowances bumped up the average payment to over £11,000 in 2005/2006.

By discriminating in favour of Conservative Cllr Rebekah Gilbert in her appointment and against her white male colleagues it is thought that Mr Livingstone may be in breach of both the Sex Discrimination Act and the Race Relations Act.

Civil rights group Liberty and Law has asked the EOC and the CRE to investigate urgently the action of the Mayor to determine whether it conforms with equal opportunity legislation.

Director Gerald Hartup said:“ This is not just a quarrel between the Mayor and the political parties. It raises important issues about the nature of our democracy. It is too important to be just left to them to sort out".“

The mayor argues in a press release of 15 June: "It is crucial that important public bodies such as the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority represent London’s diverse communities. This year’s nominations offered a real chance to improve the profile of the authority and address the serious under-representation of women and black and ethnic minority Londoners but sadly this has not been acted on.

‘The nominations that have been made by groups within London Councils and the London Assembly are unrepresentative of London’s diverse communities.

"I just do not believe that it is impossible to find more black and Asian people to serve on the fire authority, or that there are not more women who wish to participate.

"It is unacceptable that when there are 1,861 councillors in London, of which 555 are women and 293 from Black, Asian and Ethnic Minority groups, all seven Conservative nominees to the fire authority are white and include only one woman, and all three Liberal Democrat nominees are white men.

"To fulfill my duty to promote genuine equality I have decided not to accept these unrepresentative nominees for the fire authority and to ask those who are making these nominations to ensure that they reflect London as it really is.

"I have written to the Chair of London Councils, Cllr Merrick Cockell, Conservative Assembly leader Angie Bray AM and Liberal Democrat Assembly leader Mike Tuffrey AM to ask them to reconsider their nominations.

"It is absolutely crucial that the body which runs the third largest firefighting organisation in the world is far more representative of the people it serves and I will use all the powers of my office to promote equality and tackle under-representation.”

Merrick Cockell Tory chairman of London Councils (formerly the Association of London Government) responded : "It is disappointing that the Mayor has rejected two pensioners, an openly gay councillor and a councillor under 30 as being 'unrepresentative' of London's diverse communities. The fact remains these councillors were democratically elected by London's diverse communities."

Lib Dem leader of the London Assembly Mike Tuffrey raises the fundamental question to be answered:"It is not for the Mayor to dictate to the other parties who they appoint."

This remains to be seen.

2007-06-07T04:25:00.000+01:00

Chancellor reported to race watchdog over jobs for Brits speech

Following Gordon Brown's speech to the GMB union on 5 June in which he indicated that he wanted a claimed 200,000 new jobs to go to what he called "British workers" civil liberties group Liberty and Law has reported him to the Commission for Racial Equality [CRE].

It has asked the CRE to make a statement explaining that any job discrimination based on nationality is against the Race Relations Act and to investigate the policy of the government to ensure that its employment policy is not designed to privilege British job seekers over any other people entitled to seek work in this country.

It has also asked the CRE to obtain a statement from Mr Brown clearly indicating that nothing he has said was intended to suggest that British workers were to be given any priority whatsoever in obtaining employment over foreigners seeking the same work.

Headlines in the media showed clearly Mr Brown's message.

British workers for British jobs, Daily Telegraph
Brown pledges ‘British workers for British jobs’ Daily Mail
Get British jobless doing British jobs Daily Mirror
Brown to put British workers first in jobs queue The Herald
Brown promises Britons first refusal on jobs The Independent

Colin Brown of the Independent explained: “Gordon Brown promised his union backers for the leadership of the Labour Party that as Prime Minister he will ensure British people get first refusal of jobs in Britain.”

Oonagh Blackman of the Daily Mirror summarised his position as:"Gordon Brown yesterday pledged to give jobs to British workers ahead of migrants.”

These headlines were eerily similar to a British National Party campaign posted by its South West Correspondent a few days earlier on 26 May.

"A new leaflet sized poster is starting to “mysteriously” appear on works notice boards in a growing number of Somerset factories - particularly those increasingly employing migrant labour in preference to local people. The posters have the basic design as shown in the example below - but are “customised” by the addition of Party contact details and a strap line depending upon location - such as “British jobs for British workers at Bloggs Foods".

Mr Brown's policy would seem to be similar to that of the BNP. He has given the clear impression that employers can and should discriminate in recruitment between British people and people who are not British but have come to Britain to work and live either permanently or temporarily.

Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup stated "He must be aware that non- British citizens from the European union have an absolute right to live and work in this country without being subject to discrimination by employers. His speech appears to be xenophobic and gives reason for foreigners to fear for their safety in this country as well as for their employment rights, apparently facing a government under his leadership that will attempt to discriminate against them. The BNP website does not yet contain an article trumpeting the fact that the government is now belatedly following its lead. No doubt it will. Mr Brown is doing its job for it."

2007-05-28T15:08:00.000+01:00

Prison Service Directorate colour bar sinks Corby

Liberty and Law Journal has now been provided with the Prison Service’s delayed draft Race Impact Assessment on the controversial proposed move of 65 jobs from the struggling town of Corby to Peat House, Leicester.

The document claims “the setting up of a Joint Midlands Procurement Service Unit is expected to result in efficiency gains in excess of £700k.” It will “try and assist as many staff as possible to relocate to the new property in Leicester through the provision of excess fares and possibly a coach service.”

Apart from the logistical advantages claimed for the move it makes clear the reason why Corby had to be disqualified as a contender from the start and has caused such outrage in the town among staff, residents, councillors, local MPs and Northants Race Equality Council.

The document boldly states: “Crown House is unable to meet Directorate (13%) or HMPS (6%) Race/Ethnicity targets. Race/Ethnicity targets to contribute to meeting HMPS’ Race Equality Duty. This is a ministerial requirement.”

It adds: “Leicester provides good recruitment prospects and in time (existing staff are likely to transfer) is likely to assist HMPS in meeting its staff race/ethnicity targets.”

Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup commented: "It looks hopeless for Corby. It seems there is nothing the town can do to persuade the Prison Service to stay. The demographics are against them. They are a black spot to be avoided by employers with government racial targets to meet."

2007-05-27T10:46:00.000+01:00

Time to end charitable status of schools and state interference

According to Geraldine Hackett's report ['Poor law' comes to public schools, The Guardian 26 October 2003] charitable status was worth £82 m a year in tax relief to independent schools. Since then it has apparently escalated to be worth £100 millions.

I use Ms Hackett’s report simply to show how the government uses gradualism as a means of taking control of every aspect of our lives. The government is determined to interfere in their running as a condition for keeping this tax advantage.

In 2003 I calculated on the back of an envelope that with 600,000 children in the independent sector the charitable tax break was worth just £137 a year for each pupil. According to the Independent Schools Council “the UK independent sector as a whole educates 620,000 children in around 2,500 independent schools”. My revised back of the envelope calculation makes the tax break now worth £161.29 per pupil. [Let’s go for spurious accuracy. We are talking education after all.]

Parents in the independent sector subsidized the the state in 2003 by the £1.7 billion it would otherwise have cost to educate their children. No doubt given the investment in state education since then the figure has risen considerably.[ A Daily Telegraph editorial puts it at £2.2 billion: Johnson's threats lack both charity and sense, 27 May 2007 and one of its published letters on 28 May puts it at almost $3 billion.] But pretending it has not for a moment another back of the envelope calculation shows that the Education Secretary takes in a cool £2741.94 from each of these children. [At £2.2 billion we are talking £3548 and at £3 billion £4839.]

Parents whose children are educated independently should demand that their schools should deregister as charities and pay the extra 44p a day necessary to get the government and its bureacrats off their backs. Their schools can still carry on making some of their facilities available to children forced to go to state schools . It would no longer be charitable of course but an independent gesture of social solidarity untainted by the state.

2007-05-12T04:25:00.000+01:00

David Cameron’s ‘no platform] group wins campus ban on BNP

Ken Livingstone’s group Unite against Fascism successfully stopped British National Party chair Nick Griffin from speaking at Bath University next Monday . Together with the University and Colleges Union [UCU] and the National Union of Students they argued for the ‘no platform’ policy to be extended to the university.

Currently the most prominent parliamentary UAF supporter is Conservative leader David Cameron. He is joined by his shadow Home Office minister Edward Garnier, QC MP.

Historically the Conservative party has argued in favour of free speech and against the ‘no platform’ policy of the National Union of Students that in the past was used to prevent Conservative cabinet ministers from speaking.

Bath University had originally given permission for the meeting to go ahead as the BNP was a lawful political party and to conform to its freedom of speech code.

The university only reversed its stance on 10 May following a campaign launched by the ‘no platform’ groups that made the university fear for the safety of staff and students. It also had “fears of disruption to examinations given the likely scale of protests on the day."

Weyman Bennett, Joint National Secretary of Unite Against Fascism explained his stance: “The racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic politics of the BNP pose a danger to many of the staff and students who make up the diversity of the university.”

Sally Hunt, UCU joint general secretary said: “Allowing the BNP to speak would have compromised the safety of staff and students and sent out a very worrying message about Bath University’s commitment to diversity.”/

Let’s give them a warm welcome 4 May 2007
http://bristol.indymedia.org/newswire.php?story_id=26246

University in row over BNP invite 10 May 7.34a
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/somerset/6641407.stm

University halts BNP speech plan 10 May 2007 17.55
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/somerset/6644117.stm

Fascist BNP leader stopped from speaking at Bath University
Protest cancelled 10 May 2007
http://www.uaf.org.uk/news.asp?choice=70510

2007-05-01T14:21:00.001+01:00

2007-05-01T14:21:00.000+01:00

Legal aid cuts need race equality impact assessment first

The UK Parliament’s Constitutional Affairs Committee has woken up to the fact that the government’s proposals to reform legal aid payments to “save” £100 million pounds a year could breach statutory duties under the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000. These regulations now force businesses to carry out a race relations impact assessment when making changes to their business practices that could have an unequal impact on different racial groups.

The government’s scheme has been opposed by Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and the Law Society.

The Law Society Gazette reported last week that the Society of Asian Lawyers (SAL) and the Black Solicitors Network (BSN) had sent the legal Services commission a letter before action challenging its failure to carry out the assessment.

The “best value” competitive tendering sought by the LSC these groups argue would have a disproportionate effect on small firms which themselves disproportionately employ minority ethnic staff.

Liberty and Law believes that SAL, BSN and the Law Society have a very good case. It also believes that the legal profession should be able to pick up massive fees in litigation certain to take place across British industry as a result of the legislation. Trade union lawyers should be on to a winner.

Already the Prison Service has been challenged over its proposed move from Corby to Leicester over the disproportionate effect that would have on the employment of its existing white staff.

MPs say legal aid changes could breach race laws
http://uk.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUKL3032764720070430

2007-04-30T21:41:00.000+01:00

National Black Police Association poll rejects ACPO's Affirmative Action bid

The decision by the Association of Chief Police officers [ACPO] to campaign for the right to discriminate against the hiring of white males has met opposition from the National Black Police Association. Its website poll shows that 55.6% of 520 respondents strongly disagree with Affirmative Action. They outnumber those who strongly agree [28.1%] by 2:1. A further 13.1% agree "with conditions".

National Black Police Association
http://www.nbpa.co.uk/index.php?option=com_poll&task=results&id=16&mosmsg=Thanks+for+your+vote%21

2007-04-24T15:00:00.000+01:00

Police colour bar puts Trevor Phillips at odds with CRE

The decision by ACPO to campaign to racially and sexually discriminate against white males in order to meet government employment targets has revealed a split between Trevor Phillips the newly appointed boss of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR). and his old organisation the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE).

A spokeswoman for the CRE told The Guardian: "The CRE doesn't support positive discrimination and affirmative action," and that "these forms of 'reverse discrimination' could actually increase community tensions, rather than ease them.
"In many areas forces are struggling to recruit people from diverse backgrounds because of people's negative perceptions and experiences. This is the real problem that needs to be addressed."
In the CRE’s view: "The police ought to stop hiding behind the smokescreen of 'affirmative action' and start looking at the real reasons why ethnic minorities are not applying to become police officers."

Mr Phillips has argued for a change in the law since he was first appointed chair of the CRE . In an early and important interview with The Guardian [March 17 2004] his views were revealed:"Phillips wants the body that will succeed the CRE, which goes under the working title of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR), to be given powers to apply to the secretary of state to suspend race and sex discrimination laws so that, in "extreme" cases, numbers of ethnic minorities may be fast-tracked into the force. Once the organisation had boosted its ethnic recruitment, the exemption would be lifted, and recruitment would continue normally."

He went on in the interview to express his alarm that he might be compelled to act against a police force for jumping the gun."A woman or a white man or a man might come along to us and say, 'They're fast-tracking ethnic minorities or they're fast-tracking women; that means I am being deprived of the possibility of two years' salary as a police officer', and under the law we would have to support their case."

Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup said: “ACPO have got the man for the job. Since Mr Phillips in his new job will once again be responsible for policing the police we can have no confidence whatsoever that they will not go ahead with discriminatory schemes even without any change in the law. The law seems to be for the little people. I had never thought that I could possibly regret the passing of the CRE but now I do.”

2007-04-24T13:50:00.000+01:00

Call for corporal punishment in schools

Lynette Burrows is a journalist who argues for the traditional family values overturned and outlawed by the British establishment. She does so with wit and style.

Speaking on 23 April at a conference organised by PARITY and the Royal Society of Medecine she claimed that the abolition of the cane twenty years ago created a culture of violence and anarchy in schools.

She argued that corporal punishment should be reintroduced to restore order in the classroom and teach boys the difference between right and wrong.

PARITY has campaigned for equal rights for men and women since 1986 with some success. Its current objectives are:

· equal liability of men and women over 60 in respect of National Insurance contributions (NICs);

· mitigation, and no further aggravation, of the present inequality as between men and women in state pension provision due to the continuing unequal state pension ages (lasting until, year 2020);

· substantially equal public funding for medical research into and treatment of male and female specific diseases;

· funding for research into the reasons for and means of reducing the persistent difference in life expectancy between men and women;

· equal status for separated parents and more rigorous enforcement of child contact and ofmaintenance orders;

· equal treatment of victims of domestic violence, both male and female, and their children;

· effective Government policies to encourage a more even balance between men and women in primary school teaching;

· equal anonymity for defendants and complainants in sex offence cases until conviction;

· equal provisions for men and women in all statutory and public policies and benefits.

PARITY http://www.parity-uk.org/

2007-04-15T18:25:00.000+01:00

Police chiefs to advocate race and sex discrimination

ACPO, the Association of Chief Police Officers, is expected later this month to back a scheme to fast track women and ethnic minorities into police services throughout the country.

A report by the Daily Express 13 April states that ACPO wants to institute “affirmative action” to meet the diversity targets set by the government. It has been drawn up by Suzette Davenport, Assistant Chief Constable of Staffordshire police and vice-chair of the British Association for Women in Policing.

The proposal is opposed by the Police Federation and the Daily Express reports that a spokesman for the Department for Communities and Local government stated: “We have no intention of changing the law.”

The News of the World, however, [15 April] claims that the scheme is being backed by Home Secretary John Reid.

They report the ACPO plan “as being similar to that used in Northern Ireland which has a 50:50 intake of catholics and protestants.”

The most prominent supporter of a change in the law to allow fast track recruitment of racial minorities is Trevor Phillips. In an early and important interview with The Guardian [March 17 2004] his views were revealed:"Phillips wants the body that will succeed the CRE, which goes under the working title of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR), to be given powers to apply to the secretary of state to suspend race and sex discrimination laws so that, in "extreme" cases, numbers of ethnic minorities may be fast-tracked into the force. Once the organisation had boosted its ethnic recruitment, the exemption would be lifted, and recruitment would continue normally."

He went on in the interview to express his alarm that he might be compelled to act against a police force for jumping the gun.
"A woman or a white man or a man might come along to us and say, 'They're fast-tracking ethnic minorities or they're fast-tracking women; that means I am being deprived of the possibility of two years' salary as a police officer', and under the law we would have to support their case."

Liberty and Law asked Mr Phillips to investigate the Metropolitan Police Service who operated this system but under his leadership the CRE refused to act. It is not at present known how many white males have been discriminated against by the Met since the policy was adopted. Simon Marshall, Director of Recruitment at the Met has admitted “It is true that some white males had to wait up to three years before they were allocated an intake date at Hendon.”

Other police forces have just ignored the rules to favour ethnic minorities and women. Gloucestershire and Avon and Somerset Police Services misused the ethnic monitoring forms on candidates’ applications that assured applicants that under no circumstances would the information be used as part of the selection process. In fact they used it to discriminate against white males, either by selectively and secretly discarding their applications or by demanding higher standards.

The CRE [and the Equal Opportunities Commission] could have halted the racially and sexually discriminatory recruitment process having been asked by Liberty and law to do so but allowed the scam to be successfully concluded before eventually asking the two forces not to do it again.

Mr Phillips’ attitude to his responsibilities to act evenhandedly was revealed on 19 June 2006 in a speech to the Social Policy Forum .
“For example we recently had to order one police force - Somerset and Avon - to stop a programme to fast track some minority applicants into the force, because we thought a court might say that it was unfair to white applicants. Yet they were clear that they only brought in the scheme for operational reasons, not political or social reasons. I don't think it can be right that we have drifted into a situation where the CRE has to stand in the way of moderate measures to increase diversity in the police force - something which Scarman recommended twenty-five years ago, Macpherson more recently, and the Chief Police Officers are desperate to do so they can do their job better.”

Race against time, Saba Salman and Patrick Butler, The Guardian Wednesday March 17, 2004 http://politics.guardian.co.uk/publicservices/story/0,,1171077,00.html

Quotas plan will favour ethnic cop, News of the World, Ian Kirby 15 April 2007

Our PC police force, Daily Express Tom Whitehead 13 April 2007 http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/4322

2007-04-13T12:04:00.000+01:00

Corby victim of Prison Service Alice in Wonderland justice

The Commission for Racial Equality’s investigation into the decision by the Prison Service to move jobs from Corby to Leicester based at least partially on the unsuitable racial demographics of the Northamptonshire town has been delayed because of the failure of the Prison Service to complete a compulsory race equality impact assessment. According to the Commission for Racial Equality it is not now due to be completed until early May.

Civil rights group Liberty and Law that instigated the CRE investigation has asked Prison Service boss Phil Wheatley to invite not only the trade union but also the local MPs and Northamptonshire Race Equality Council to participate in an assessment vital not only to the town of Corby but to good race relations.

Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup commented: “We live in a sinister Alice in Wonderland world where decisions are taken first and only then followed by investigation and consultation. For whoever turns out to be the Queen of Hearts in this unpleasant fiasco there can only be one judgment: “Off with her head!” - or at least an administrative rebuke.”

2007-04-09T11:15:00.000+01:00

BBC mocks over sixties Tories as white, middle class and hearing impaired

The Today Programme BBC Radio 4’s flagship news and current affairs programme ran an item on the speaking appearance of California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger at the Autumn conference of the Conservative party.

Its presenter offered political correspondent Robin Brandt a full toss to exercise his campaigning skills: “How is it going to go down with the Tory faithful?” he asked.

Mr Brandt took up the challenge. “Huh, huh! Most of them are over sixty. They’re white, they’re middle class. I was thinking earlier perhaps half of them can’t hear without the aid of something mechanical.”

Attempts to reach the Today studio to obtain a retraction during the course of the programme were of course futile.

It is quite possible that Mr Brandt is expressing the corporate view of the BBC and that they consider no apology appropriate or necessary.

Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup has warned Governor Schwarzenegger of the BBC’s attitude to age, race, class and disability. He commented: “Arnold Schwarzenegger will of course be over sixty when he addresses this particular audience. Perhaps on the occasion of the Governor's speech in Blackpool BBC correspondents will, referring to his open-heart surgery, opine that speaker, audience and seaside town match one another perfectly. That would seem to be par for the course.”

Liberty and Law has asked chairman of the Disability Rights Commission Sir Bert Massie and chair of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights Trevor Phillips to take this up with the BBC following its failed attempt to contact the Today programme.

2007-04-04T07:46:00.000+01:00

Prison Service initial response to race investigation

In the latest development surrounding the proposed racially controversial move of Prison Service jobs from Corby in Northamptonshire to Leicester the Home Office told Liberty and Law Journal that the Prison Service now has a draft race equality impact assessment with its Management Board and that they will be in consultation with their trade union and staff. [Click on “prison service” for background]

The impact assessment is not yet publicly available for consultation or challenge but will be published on the Prison Service’s excellent website. This contains an extremely impressive Annual Staff Ethnicity Review for 2005/2006. It repays study by anyone concerned with the direction of public policy.

The Commission for Racial Equality asked the Prison Service for the race equality impact assessment by 3 April. It was unable to provide this in the time and has been set a new deadline of 5 April.

Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup stated: “There are difficulties facing all racial groups in the Prison Service because it currently operates to the definition of “institutional racism” foisted on public institutions by Macpherson that this is “the collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amounts to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance or thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantages minority ethnic people”

"At present the Prison Service rules out by definition that non- minority ethnic people can suffer from its collective failure. This must change. It is time that the public, partners after all, took ownership of the rules of the game. The Prison Service is a good place to begin the necessary dialogue to effect required changes.”

Further information about the Prison Service can be found on its website where the impact assessment will be published in due course. http://www.hmprisonservice.gov.uk/abouttheservice/racediversity/

Readers concerned about the issue can write to the Commission for Racial Equality to keep up with its progress in the investigation. The CRE can be emailed at info@cre.gov.uk.

Corby Prison Service employees and those who support them can contact Northamptonshire Race Equality Council to seek their advice and to discuss with them how best NREC can bring public pressure on the prison Service. Their website is http://www.wellingboroughrec.org.uk/index.asp and their email address info@northamptonshirerec.org.uk

2007-04-03T18:42:00.000+01:00

Nelson Mandela guilty of "unwitting racism"

Nelson Mandela is likely to come under fierce criticism from British racial equality campaigners for finding “quite amusing” Barnet councillor Brian Gordon’s dressing up as him at a fancy dress party to celebrate the Jewish festival of Purim.

After Liberal Democrat press officer Ms Stieve de Lance had taken the trouble to appear on television to denounce Cllr Gordon as a racist, to report him to Barnet council’s director of corporate governance and to the Commission for Racial Equality; after the BBC had door stepped him and Keith Vaz MP, the chair of Labour's ethnic minority taskforce had denounced him, it could only be seen as a betrayal when Mr Mandela failed to see the racism inherent in the councillor’s action.

Mr Mandela's spokeswoman Zelda la Grange said: "We shouldn't be over sensitive about issues of this nature. Mr Mandela thought it was quite funny. We can't find anything derogatory in someone dressing up, in fancy dress, portraying Nelson Mandela."

Clearly Mr Mandela should have taken advice before speaking. His own experience of racism is strictly limited and he is totally unqualified to make a judgment on such matters.

It is not known whether the CRE will report Mr Gordon or Mr Mandela to the police. The Guardian reported on 28 March that a CRE spokesman found Mr Gordon's actions objectionable. He stated: "It is unacceptable for elected representatives to behave in a way that might offend members of their local communities ... Good council leadership is essential in managing the differences in our increasingly diverse communities as councils have a duty to promote good race relations."

2007-03-31T11:47:00.000+01:00

Prison Service deadline of 3 April to respond to race watchdog over contested move

The Commission for Racial Equality [CRE] has written to the Director General of the Prison Service Phil Wheatley about a proposed move by the Service from offices in Corby for which one of the criteria publicly provided was the unsatisfactory racial make up of the town’s inhabitants - it being too white.

Writing to local MP Philip Hollobone [Kettering] on 29 March the CRE confirmed that it expected a response from the Prison Service by Tuesday 3 April.

Civil rights group Liberty and Law had formally complained about the matter to CRE chair Professor Kay Hampton on 6 March. The CRE confirmed to it on 15 March that as a reponse to allegations of racial discrimination by the Prison Service it had written to them about any race equality impact assessment they had undertaken over the decision to relocate offices from Corby to Leicester.

Britain’s prison service has been heavily criticized for deciding to move one of its locations from Corby in Northamptonshire to the city of Leicester on racial grounds. Its reasons were disclosed in a leaked letter as being partially on the grounds of the racial profile of Corby, which at 93.7% white was considered to be not sufficiently diverse compared to Leicester’s more favourable 59.6%.

Leicester’s racial profile, the Prison Service believes will allow it to attract a more diverse workforce.Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup in urging the CRE to investigate the legality of Prison service plan stated “The CRE has a responsibility where the actions of public bodies fuel resentment and do enormous damage to race relations to investigate their strict adherence to the law and to report back to the people."

Liberty and Law last year successfully challenged the racially and sexually discriminatory recruitment procedure of Avon and Somerset and Gloucestershire Police Services.

The Prison Service’s proposed move to Leicester is clearly impractical for the majority of the white staff but any reduction in their numbers will create vacancies to allow the Prison Service to more effectively chase government race targets.

Northants Evening Telegraph report that Mr Wheatley has written to Corby Council chief executive Chris Mallender and council leader Pat Fawcett: “I am sorry the decision to relocate our office from Corby to Leicester has been portrayed in such a negative fashion in the media.“The press has chosen to focus on our desire to be able to recruit a well-educated, diverse workforce. I make no apology for including the impact on diversity as one of the key determining business factors of the decision. I want you to understand that we wanted to be sure that we could recruit the right calibre of workforce. These requirements were not catalysts for us moving from Corby – this
decision was based on business need and our desire to save the taxpayer unnecessary costs. Most of the staff will be relocating with us.”

Northants Evening Telegraph continued: Corby Council leaders were angry that it took the Prison Service more than two weeks to respond to its original letter. Council chief executive Chris Mallender said: “The service is in denial. We know directly from the workforce that the majority of the people in Crown House do not want to travel to Leicester.“The service is clearly looking to sweep this under the carpet, but we and the workforce are not prepared to let the issue go.”

Newspaper reports have been universally hostile: The town branded too white and too British; Corby ‘penalized for having the wrong kind of immigrants’; Ordered to discriminate; Outraged town hits back, Prison service ‘in jobs denial’

The response of the public on websites and blogs has been overwhelmingly hostile to the social engineering adopted by a government that works on the principle that people are just ‘human resources’ to be manipulated by their mandarinate.

Northamptonshire Race Equality Council has condemned the action of the Prison Service.

Despite the criticism the Home Office has so far been firm in its backing for a Prison Service that is following government orders to increase the percentage of ethnic minorities on the government pay roll.

A glance at the website of the CRE explains how the Corby situation has come about taking politicians by surprise at the results of their legislative follies. Factoring racial equality into relocation explains it all. The CRE’s successor the Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR) under Trevor Phillips argues for an even more extreme change in legislation to allow companies to discriminate directly on grounds of race to attain racially balanced workforces.

2007-03-25T14:55:00.000+01:00

UCAS application form slammed by top lawyers

Liberty and Law’s challenge to UCAS’ proposal to provide information about the racial background of college applicants to Admissions Officers has been backed by top lawyers in the field of education and human rights.

The Sunday Telegraph reports [Legal challenge to degree admissions, 25 March 2007] leading education and human rights solicitor Jaswinder Gill concluding that the data raised a “real risk of prejudice” and that it breaches Article 14 of the Human Rights Act.

Nick Saunders of Eversheds, a legal firm specialising in services to further and higher education, providers warned that UCAS’ policy would have legal consequences.

Data protection specialist Susan Singleton also saw major difficulties with the policy warning that its operation could lead to criminal offences under the Data protection Act 1998.

2007-03-21T20:28:00.000Z

UCAS challenged over proposed new application form

A civil liberties group has asked the Commission for Racial Equality [CRE] to intervene over the University and Colleges Admissions Service’s [UCAS] proposal to provide data about potential students’ ethnicity to Admissions Officers before rather than after the selection process is complete.

Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup has written to CRE chair Professor Kay Hampton complaining about the proposal on the grounds that it would be in blatant breach of good equal opportunities practice propounded by the CRE over many years.

Monitoring forms the CRE has always argued should be anonymous, kept separate from any application form and from the entire selection process.

Where they are not this can and does allow ruthless discrimination at the selection process. This was evidenced notoriously by the use of equal opportunities data about their race being used last year to reject 289 white male applicants from consideration with Avon and Somerset and Gloucestershire Police Services.

Mr Hartup stated: “We must learn our lesson. We cannot trust Chief Constables with confidential information but they were at least breaking the law. How can we possibly allow the careers of students to depend upon the self denying integrity of Admissions Officers under pressure to come up with the results necessary to achieve maximum funding.”

“Should UCAS go ahead with their misguided policy they must expect legal action by students who can never be sure that the reason for their failure to obtain a place at their preferred institution was because their race did not fit the Education Secretary’s matrix.”

Liberty and law has written to UCAS Chief Executive Anthony McClaren urging him to drop the scheme. It has also written to OFFA [Office for fair Access] that has “a role in identifying and disseminating good practice and advice connected with access to higher education.”

End

2007-03-13T12:22:00.000Z

MEP asks Scotland Yard to investigate BBC relations with EU

The Metropolitan Police have today (13 March) received a bundle of papers from Ashley Mote MEP, Independent, SE England, detailing the tens of millions of euros received by the BBC over recent years.

He has invited Deputy Assistant Commissioner John Yates, Director of Intelligence at Scotland Yard, to review the BBC's sources and application of funds, excluding the licence fee. The police have been asked to examine the evidence linking the EU as a source of these funds with the BBC’s open support of the EU in its editorial coverage, contrary to its obligations under the Royal Charter.

Recent correspondence between the BBC’s management in Brussels and the MEP has revealed a prima facie case for investigation, Mr Mote claims. The documents show that the BBC’s senior management has, over many years, accepted money from the EU and its institutions in exchange for which they have enforced an editorial policy of positive support of the EU, contrary to both the spirit and the letter of the charter.
The BBC’s Royal Charter has the force of law. It requires balance in the reporting of news and current affairs. All strands of opinion on political matters must be given a fair hearing and roughly equal air time.
Solid proof exists that this is not the case, Mr Mote says. He has told Scotland Yard that evidence of bias has been collected by professional media analysts for Lord Pearson of Rannoch, who has funded research into BBC coverage of the EU for many years.

“My focus has been on the money”, Mr Mote says. “We now know that the BBC has in recent years borrowed tens of millions of euros from the European Investment Bank, an institution of the European Union. The correspondence shows that the BBC gained these large sums of public money from the EIB on terms that would never have been available commercially. It also acquired funding from other parts of the EU’s web of institutions, again on less than transparent terms and – sometimes – for the vaguest of reasons.

“The purpose of these soft loans and other funding is clearly intended to further the cause of EU federalism – in effect to ‘buy’ BBC support. Some might argue that it is bribery and corruption, others that it is fraud. At the very least I suggest malfeasance – a deliberate act knowingly undertaken against the public interest”, he wrote to DAC Yates.

The full text of the letter from Ashley Mote MEP to DAC John Yates at New Scotland Yard follows:

BBC Malfeasance – A Case for Investigation?
You will recall my letter of 20 February offering to provide you with evidence of the BBC’s commercial and editorial activities which conflict directly with the Corporation’s legal obligations under the Royal Charter. There appears to be a prima facie case of malfeasance.

This letter and the enclosures represent the evidence accumulated in recent months. If, having considered it, you need any further information I will of course attempt to provide it.

In a nutshell, the case is this: the BBC’s senior management has, over many years, accepted money from the EU and its institutions in exchange for which they have enforced an editorial policy of positive support of the EU, contrary to both the spirit and the letter of the Royal Charter.

The Charter, which has the force of law, requires balance in the reporting of news and current affairs, although it has to be admitted that the obligations to maintain balance set out in the present document are much watered down from those in the original of some 80 years ago.
Nonetheless, even the present Royal Charter makes it clear that all strands of opinion on political matters must be given a fair hearing and roughly equal air time.

Solid proof exists that this is not the case. That evidence can be obtained from Lord Pearson of Rannoch, who has funded research into BBC coverage of the EU over many years. I have no doubt he will gladly make it available to you, together with any other relevant evidence you might find helpful.

You might also find a recently published book instructive - Can We Trust the BBC? by Robin Aitken. Mr Aitken worked for the Corporation for 25 years. His book describes numerous horror stories of bias and political prejudice, many of them quietly buried by past generations of BBC management.

This letter and enclosures concern themselves mainly with the other side of the coin – to be precise, the provision of substantial sums of EU money on less than commercial terms and for questionable motives.

I have also taken the liberty of enclosing background reading – for example the BBC’s internal attempt to put right an acknowledged lack of balance in EU editorial policy.

The BBC receives an annual funding of approximately £2.7 billion from the public through the licence fee system. This obliges members of the public to finance the BBC simply because they own a TV set.

As this is a legally enforceable poll tax, the public can expect the BBC to comply scrupulously with the terms of its Royal Charter. The governors have a duty to satisfy themselves that all activities of the BBC are carried out in accordance with the highest standards of public accountability.
It is arguable that they have not complied with such obligations. When reporting on the EU, the BBC routinely demonstrates a commitment to UK membership which at times amounts to little more than pro-EU propaganda.

Furthermore, the BBC has openly admitted that their reporting of EU activities is biased. Why else have they taken steps to redress the balance by appointing internal investigations and commissioning reports on the subject?

Some brief points from the evidence follow, specifically:
a) Article 7(1)(e) of the Royal Charter requires the governors "to ensure that any comments, proposals and complaints made by viewers and listeners of the Home Services are given due consideration and are properly handled by the Corporation". Lord Hutton's report on the death of Dr David Kelly clearly showed that the BBC did not comply with this Article when dealing with complaints from Alistair Campbell.

Furthermore, the BBC has on numerous occasions refused to consider complaints from viewers and listeners about coverage of EU affairs, despite the Charter obligation for complaints to be given due consideration. Refusing to accept complaints is not an option, and unlawful.

b) Article 7(1)(f) requires the governors "to ensure the treatment of controversial subjects with due accuracy and impartiality". The BBC clearly supports Britain’s membership of the EU and the abolition of the £ sterling in favour of the euro. The statistical and documentary evidence is overwhelming and readily available, as mentioned above. Much of the statistical evidence has been gathered for Lord Pearson by Minotaur Media, an independent monitoring organisation.

Some Minotaur Media research findings have been reported on the Global Britain web site. Other websites also support the view that the BBC has its own agenda, particularly on the EU. In addition, scores of anecdotal newspaper articles have pointed out the BBC's bias towards the EU.

Despite all this powerful evidence to the contrary, and its own internal enquiries, the BBC continually refutes complaints about its lack of balance in reporting EU news and current affairs. At times its denials border on calling black ‘white’, or insisting that the Emperor really is wearing clothes.

c) Rod Liddle (ex Editor, Radio 4’s Today programme) wrote an article about the Welsh National Assembly and the Scottish Parliament in The Spectator of 10 May 2003. He stated that the BBC's attitude was…
"the result of institutionalised political correctness, every bit as corrupting as institutionalised racism. It is result of seminars and workshops (I remember them well) where journalists are instructed time and time again that the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly are bloody important and don’t you dare suggest they aren’t".

Such editorial ‘guidance’ in the reporting of these institutions meant that the BBC was directly and specifically supporting the EU's policy of breaking up the UK into regions which could be more effectively controlled by Brussels. Such a policy was contrary to the BBC’s obligations under the Charter, and its implementation more propaganda than news.

d) The BBC's governors recently set up a review body under the chairmanship of Lord Taylor to examine whether or not the BBC was biased in favour of the EU. Their main finding was that the BBC was biased in favour of the EU “but that this bias was not deliberate”. The report confirmed that bias existed in the BBC, again contrary to its obligations under the Charter.

But to claim that it was not deliberate was an absurd conclusion bearing in mind the overwhelming contradictory evidence. Since when, for example, was the setting up and management of the seminars referred to above not "deliberate"? Since when were such events "accidental"?

e) The BBC has in recent years borrowed tens of millions of euros from the European Investment Bank, an institution of the European Union. These borrowings and other funding are detailed in the enclosed correspondence with the BBC’s team which is permanently based in Brussels (next door to the European Parliament building).

The correspondence also shows that the BBC gained these large sums of public money from the European Investment Bank on terms that would never have been available commercially. It also acquired funding from other parts of the EU’s web of institutions, again on less than transparent terms and – sometimes – for the vaguest of reasons. Indeed, as you will see, transparency in all of these dealings is notable by its absence.
The purpose of these soft loans and other funding is clearly intended to further the cause of EU federalism – in effect to ‘buy’ BBC support. Some might argue that it is bribery and corruption, others that it is fraud. At the very least I suggest malfeasance – a deliberate act knowingly undertaken against the public interest.

I write, therefore, to invite the Metropolitan Police to review the BBC's sources and application of funds, excluding the licence fee. Further, to examine the evidence linking the EU as a source of these funds with the BBC’s open support of the EU in its editorial coverage, contrary to its legal obligations under the Royal Charter.

Ashley Mote can be contacted at ashley.mote@btconnect.com
www.ashleymote.co.uk

2007-03-06T17:32:00.000Z

Prison Service reported to Commission for Racial Equality over relocation racial discrimination

Britain’s prison service has been heavily criticized for deciding to move one of its locations from Corby in Northamptonshire to the city of Leicester on racial grounds. Its reasons were disclosed in a leaked letter as being partially on the grounds of the racial profile of Corby, which at 93.7% white was considered to be not sufficiently diverse compared to Leicester’s more favourable 59.6%. Leicester’s racial profile, the Prison Service believes will allow it to attract a more diverse workforce.

Civil rights group Liberty and Law has reported the Prison Service to the
Commission for Racial Equality [CRE]asking them to investigate the legality of its racially discriminatory action. Director Gerald Hartup states “The CRE has a responsibility where the actions of public bodies fuel resentment and do enormous damage to race relations to investigate their strict adherence to the law and to report back to the people. ”

Liberty and Law last year successfully challenged the racially and sexually discriminatory recruitment procedure of Avon and Somerset and Gloucestershire Police Services.

The move to Leicester is clearly impractical for the majority of the white staff and their clearance will create vacancies to allow the Prison Service to more effectively chase government race targets.

Newspaper reports had headlines such as: The town branded too white and too British; Corby ‘penalized for having the wrong kind of immigrants’; Ordered to discriminate; Outraged town hits back.

The response of the public on websites and blogs has been overwhelmingly hostile to the social engineering adopted by a government that works on the principle that people are just ‘human resources’ to be manipulated by their mandarinate.

Northamptonshire Race Equality Council has condemned the action of the Prison Service together with the Conservative MP for neighbouring Kettering Philip Hollobone.

Despite the criticism the Home Office has been firm in its backing for a Prison Service that is following government orders to increase the percentage of ethnic minorities on the government pay roll.

A glance at the website of the CRE explains how the Corby situation has come about taking politicians by surprise at the results of their legislative follies. Factoring racial equality into relocation explains it all. The CRE’s successor the Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR) under Trevor Phillips argues for even more extreme change in legislation to allow companies to discriminate directly on grounds of race to attain racially balanced workforces.

2007-02-28T07:07:00.000Z

How many Al Gores could the earth sustain?

It seems to have taken a few days before it reached the British media. The first mention of it was an article in today’s Guardian. [An inconvenient truth: eco-warrior Al Gore's bloated gas and electricity bills]

Thanks to what the paper describes as “a little-known group based in his home state, the Tennessee Centre for Policy Research” Mr Gore’s consumption of gas and electricity is now in the public domain.

Gore’s electricity and gas bills of almost $30,000 a year were revealed to the Centre under America’s freedom of information rules.

It seems to have taken Gore, his supporters and the director of his film “An inconvenient truth” completely by surprise given their clumsy “shoot the messenger” response to the revelation.

The Centre’s team despite being dissed by the liberal media as having no “official status” is clearly doing a good job.

Tennessee Centre for Policy Research
http://www.tennesseepolicy.org/main/page.php

2007-02-21T19:39:00.000Z

Time is running out to save Freedom of Information Act

It’s the last chance to get in your protests about Government plans to neuter the Freedom of Information Act. The Act has been successfully used by journalists across all media to uncover information politicians, corporations and others want to keep secret. Plans by the Government to amend the Act will make it easier for public authorities to turn down legitimate requests on the basis of cost. There are also plans to exempt MPs from the requirements of the Act. The NUJ has joined forces with campaigners and industry bodies to oppose the changes. Make sure your voice is heard before the Government consultation closes on 8 March. Sign up to the Press Gazette petition at http://www.pressgazette.co.uk Tell your MP what you think. Go to http://www.writetothem.co.uk For further information and other campaign tools see http://www.cfoi.org.uk Do it today – before it’s too late!

This is a release from the National Union of Journalists

2007-01-17T08:26:00.000Z

Cameron backs BNP ballerina's right to work now

Ken Livingstone’s Unite against Fascism group, currently using David Cameron’s name as a supporter on its website to give credibility to its campaign to have BNP ballerina Simone Clarke sacked now publicly lacks his support.

When questioned by the Daily Telegraph his spokesman stated: “I think it must be a different David Cameron. David doesn't sign petitions and we don't know anything about this. "

The spokesman added: "He thinks the BNP is repugnant but doesn't believe she should be sacked."

Until now leaders of the main political parties have been silent on this key freedom issue.

A mystery still remains. Three other current Conservative MPs are claimed as supporters on the UAF website: Home Office shadow minister Edward Garnier QC, Peter Bottomley MP and Anthony Steen MP.

A spokesperson for civil liberties group Liberty and Law stated: “It is important that these MPs make their position clear and do not allow UAF to exploit their names in a campaign to bully a woman out of her job.”

UAF’s explanation fails to clear up the matter over Mr Cameron: “I'm not sure how long he has been a supporter or how he came to support us. He must have signed up to one of our campaigns in the House of Commons."

Over 50 MPs are on the UAF’s list together with many names of the great and the good. It is not known how many of these wish their names to be associated with UAF or its witch hunt.

It is important for the future of freedom that they should now make their position clear and have their names deleted from this shameful list.

2007-01-12T06:26:00.000Z

Cameron backing for "anti-racist" group in bid to sack BNP ballerina

David Cameron is listed among a group of prominent politicians and personalities claimed by Unite against Fascism [UAF] as supporters as they demonstrate today outside the English National Ballet calling for the sacking of principal dancer Simone Clarke who was outed as a BNP member following a recent Guardian investigation by a journalist posing as a BNP supporter who gained access to that party’s membership list.

Civil rights group Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup said: “It is now important that Mr Cameron makes his position clear on what rights he believes members of the BNP have in this society. It’s not much fun defending the human rights of BNP members but it comes with the job of politicians who believe in freedom.”

The UAF published supporters list is headed by Ken Livingstone whose race adviser Lee Jasper also chairman of the National Assembly Against Racism initiated the witch-hunt against the ballerina in The Guardian with the words “I think she should be sacked”.

It is not known how many of these prominent individuals will make up the 100 or so demonstrators expected to support the call of Weyman Bennett , the Socialist Workers' Party Joint Secretary of UAF to join in the demonstration.

There are now increasing calls for members of the BNP to be sacked from their jobs. This view has been given support by Trevor Phillips former chair of the Commission for Racial Equality.

The UAF supporters list currently contains over 50 MPs, nine MEPs, fifteen trade union leaders including TUC general secretary Brendan Barber, human rights lawyer Louise Christian and even Institute of Employment Rights director Carolyn Jones. For how long this will remain the case is a matter of some significance.

End

UAF supporters http://www.uaf.org.uk/aboutUAF.asp?choice=4

2007-01-02T11:54:00.000Z

BBC shock research reveals 96% of councillors are men

In an almost casual aside during an interview [2 January 2007] about the pay of councillors Today presenter Sarah Montague informed listeners: “ 96% of councillors I think are men.”

These figures are a shocking deterioration on those provided by the Fawcett Society who state: “Women currently make up only 27% of local councillors.” According to the Equal Opportunities Commission in 2001 men made up 71% of councillors.

In the same segment another surprising but this time reassuring fact was enunciated by Cllr Miranda Grell. She explained that “nobody goes into becoming a local councillor for the pay.” Her own local authority has recently increased the remuneration of councillors to £10,000.

2006-12-28T13:26:00.000Z

Bogus racial attack on Sikh youngster follows similar claims

On 15 November 2006 the Edinburgh News reported an unnamed 15year old Sikh youngster from Edinburgh as the subject of a vicious racial attack. According to the boy he had his hair cut off, his bandana pulled off and was punched. It was separately reported that he had racist epithets written on his body by four white youths who he was able to comprehensively describe to the local police and that he was kicked to the ground suffering bruising and swelling to his nose and both cheeks as well as soreness to his left shoulder and ribs.

The story was reported all over the world. It promoted an inter-faith vigil on 19 November to promote peace attended by Sikhs from all over the UK.

On 24 December the Observer reported Sikh boy admits his attack lie. Sources told the Observer “that he felt torn between his Sikh values and more westernised ones. They said he had wanted to get his hair cut for some time, but was afraid of the reaction of some members of his family and the Sikh community.”

Source: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1978539,00.html

No action is to be taken against the youngster who has apologised for his action.

Here are two more similar stories from Canada.

BRITISH COLUMBIA -- TEEN FAKED RACIAL ATTACK
Globe and Mail, August 26, 1998

"SURREY, A Sikh teenager faked a racial attack to avoid facing his parents over his desire to look more Western, police said yesterday.
The 18-year-old man reported last month that he was attacked and beaten by three white skinheads who ripped off his turban and cut off his long hair. Police investigating the so-called attack quickly began hearing rumours that it never took place.
The victim has admitted to police that he staged the incident, Staff Sergeant Ross Fisher said. The teenager's wish to adopt a more Western style of appearance didn't sit well with his parents, so he and three friends faked the attack by cutting his hair. Because he and his friends have unblemished records, Staff Sgt. Fisher said, police will try to work with them to avoid laying charges."

Source: http://www.canadianfreespeech.com/human_wrongs/full_article.html

B.C. teen won't face charges over racial attack story
Last Updated: Thursday, June 9, 2005 12:27 PM ET

The RCMP will not lay charges against a B.C. Sikh teenager who made up a story about being the victim of a vicious racial attack.
The 17-year-old Richmond Sikh had told police that five white men in their 20s beat him, cut off his turban and hacked off his hair, which, for religious reasons, had never been cut.
The alleged attack two weeks ago spurred outrage and fear among the Indo-Canadian community.
The teenager later admitted he made up the story, and that he had injured himself and cut off his own hair.
"The RCMP and our partners do not believe it is in the best interest of this young person or society in general to have this incident carry forth through criminal charges," the RCMP said in a statement.
"This incident is not as much about criminality as it is culture, compassion and the emotions of a young person. This is a time that calls for calm understanding and not a time to be thinking about criminal charges."
RCMP Cpl. Peter Thiessen wouldn't say whether the boy made up the story just to explain getting a haircut against his parents wishes.
There are definitely some cultural identity issues and this young person is under an incredible amount of pressure," he said.
Richmond RCMP Supt. Ward Clapham said the teenager will instead face a community justice forum.
"So the victim gets to be heard, the victim gets to feel they're being understood, the victim gets to share the pain the anger and all the emotions and realities they faced," he said.
But some in the Sikh community say the police are going too easy on the teenager.
Balwant Singh Gill, a spokesman for many of B.C.'s Sikh temple societies, said the incident has been an embarrassment to the Sikh community and set back racial harmony in the province.
Gill said he'd rather see the boy face criminal charges and that he's not sure how community leaders are supposed to come up with a suitable punishment.
He added that he's worried that the next time a real hate crime occurs, people will ignore it.
The RCMP said the boy will be held accountable and that in other cases, young offenders have been asked to perform community service, write letters of apology or undergo counselling.

Source: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1978539,00.html

2006-11-28T17:36:00.000Z

Trevor Phillips and the 289 white people he turned his back on

In some of the few words so far directly attributed to Trevor Phillips at the Commission for Racial Equality’s two day conference [27/28 November] he talks of "the racism that smiles to your face just as it's dumping your job application in the bin marked 'not white enough'". [Guardian 27 November 2006]

Let us examine that statement. Trevor Phillips is a wonderful media performer capable of sublime political jujitsu.

If he had replaced “not white enough” with “white” he would have been talking about the biggest race scam for years in which he played a crucial role in facilitating and securing its success.

He aided and abetted the racist exclusion of 289 males this year whose applications to join the police were indeed binned by the chief constables of Avon and Somerset and of Gloucestershire. Mr Phillips was asked by Liberty and Law to intervene in time to reinstate their right to be considered for work. A single telephone call by him or one of his officers could have stopped the vicious colour bar but the CRE let the recruitment go ahead by spinning out its investigations. Mr Phillips knows how not to use the law. He is the soul of charming if diabolical discretion.

Of course, the CRE eventually had to conclude that the chief constables were acting against the law and make the police authorities sign a piece of paper saying they would not do it again. But tempo was important. The white males were successfully shafted and the job completed and with no penalty. The police got away with their [and his] racist recruitment policy scot-free thanks to his position as boss of the £20million quango with a legal monopoly.

Mr Phillips has been helped of course by a feeble national media and politicians from all the major parties terrified to call him to account. It would take more than white victims of racism to stir them.

Why did Mr Phillips collude in the colour bar? He has been bold enough to make it clear in his speeches.

At the Social Policy Forum on 19 June he stated “For example we recently had to order one police force - Somerset and Avon - to stop a programme to fast track some minority applicants into the force, because we thought a court might say that it was unfair to white applicants. Yet they were clear that they only brought in the scheme for operational reasons, not political or social reasons. I don't think it can be right that we have drifted into a situation where the CRE has to stand in the way of moderate measures to increase diversity in the police force - something which Scarman recommended twenty-five years ago, Macpherson more recently, and the Chief Police Officers are desperate to do so they can do their job better.”

Note the weasely description. The Forum wonks would not have got from his gloss how white applicants had been summarily rejected once their race had been discovered from the equal opportunity forms, which they were assured were no part of the recruitment policy.

2006-11-24T23:05:00.000Z

Race watchdog's secret protocol on incitement to racial hatred

Civil rights group Liberty and Law was exclusively sent by the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) its Protocol on Incitement to Racial Hatred on 5 July 2006. Its contents may be contrasted with the anodyne document published on the CRE’s own website on 8 November 2006.

The CRE claims that this published policy was approved in February and circulated after that. Liberty and Law has not been able to establish from the CRE what the status of the 5 July document sent to them was. It assumed that a spokesperson’s statement on 5 July “Please find attached the Code as you have requested.” confirmed its status.

Liberty and Law believes that the policy was only published after intense pressure from it over a period of more than a year. This included contacting Robin Allen QC on 27 June who the CRE had consulted over the protocol and seeking his help to speed up its publication. His immediate inquiry of the CRE no doubt speeded up the project.

A CRE spokesperson claimed on 7 November that “this document [at the time not published L&L] was intended for internal purposes and is already in use. The code has been approved by the Commission as official policy guidance to advise staff on how to deal with calls. It will be available on our website shortly".

In the CRE press release of 27 January 2004 its chair Trevor Phillips claimed, in announcing CRE plans new code of conduct for referring race hate material to the police: “I will publish that code, so that everyone who chooses can be guided as to why we at the Commission do what we do.”

Liberty and law director Gerald Hartup commented: “As it turns out that is pretty much nothing at all. The CRE leaves people to their own devices. If they contact the CRE they will be involved with a bureaucratic monster.”

The CRE's 5 July Protocol on Incitement to Racial Hatred is reproduced below.

Why is the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) concerned about incitement to racial hatred?

The CRE is a body established by the Race Relations Act 1976 with statutory duties to:

· Work towards the elimination of racial discrimination and

· Promote equality of opportunity and good race relations

Incitement to racial hatred creates conflict between different racial communities, which in turn can lead to a breakdown in good race relations. It could also have a wider impact, in that members of other racial groups might discriminate against members of the target group in, for example the work place, access to education or the provision of goods and services. The CRE would be failing in its statutory duty if it did not actively take steps to discourage conduct that incites racial hatred.

The CRE receives a number of complaints from members of the public about conduct they perceive as incitement to racial hatred. There are various reasons for this : for example:

· The complainant does not know that incitement to racial hatred is a criminal offence

· The complainant is does not know that the police, not the CRE, have responsibility for investigating complaints of incitement to racial hatred

· People are not confident that the criminal justice system will deal satisfactorily with offences that involve racism

The CRE does not have the power to deal with complaints of incitement to racial hatred. This is because incitement to racial hatred is a criminal offence and only the p0lice have the power to take action against those who commit it. The CRE therefore, advises complainants to report alleged incidents of incitement to racial hatred to the police, in the first instance.

There is no obligation on the CRE to refer a complaint to the Police but on very rare occasions it may be necessary for us to do so. This protocol sets out criteria which will govern the exercise of our discretion to make a referral.

Criteria for referrals
The test for referral is whether the complaint merits investigation by the Police: the decision to prosecute must rest with the CPS and the Attorney-General.

· There is evidence that the words or behaviour has led to, or is very likely to lead to, a breakdown in relations between people from different racial groups. The CRE will be guided by evidence that

Ø community relations are already strained; or

Ø community relations are very good - this might be evidence of an intention to incite racial hatred

Case Example: A BNP supporter in Glasgow distributed leaflets which were offensive to Muslims in an area with a significant Pakistani population. The local REC gave evidence that relations between the Pakistani and other EM groups with White Scottish people were good and that the leaflet undermined these good relations. The Sheriff stated that to distribute the leaflet in such circumstances was evidence of an intention to upset relations and consequently to incite racial hatred.

The rate of racial incidences is high
The rate of racial incidences has increased following an incident
At a local level, the offending words or behaviour refer to a particular group and members of that group are:
Ø few in number and
Ø are easily identifiable For example members of the particular group are known locally or are concentrated in a particular part of the region or are in an asylum dispersal area.
· Written material, containing false information, for example, about high public spending in areas known to have a high concentration of ethnic minorities, is distributed in surrounding areas with high levels of social deprivation among people from different racial groups
The speech or written material contains information, that is deliberately false, misleading or based on negative stereotypical assumptions; for example, it claims that Gypsies and Travellers are prone to criminal behaviour, or their presence will lower the quality of the community.
The words or behaviour goads or encourages others to commit offences against one or more racial groups, for example by the use of words such as ‘kill’, ‘wage war’ or ‘destroy’ This may be evident from the words displayed or spoken.
The conduct is perpetrated by a prominent public personality, such as a councillor, or a celebrity.
The information is particularly offensive and is capable of being disseminated widely, for example, via a broadcast, newspaper or the internet E.g. newspaper reports such as on the death of PC Blakelock with words like ‘hacked to death’ accompanied with reference to the racial group of the suspects.

Accountability - how the CRE will decide on referrals

The CRE is a public body and must exercise sound judgement in carrying out its statutory duties. Criminal enforcement agencies have stretched resources: and the CRE would not want to abuse or be seen to abuse, wittingly or unwittingly, those resources, by referring unmeritorious allegations for investigation. The CRE will therefore, ensure accountability and transparency in the referrals process.

Decisions on whether to refer a complaint to the prosecuting authorities will be taken by:The Legal Committee, subject to the following procedure:

· The Director of Legal Services and Enforcement refers the issue to the Legal Affairs Committee, with a recommendation for referral

· The Legal Committee decides on whether to accept or reject the recommendation

· If the Legal Committee accepts the recommendation, the Legal Director refers the matter to the police

The CRE will publish its decision on the CRE website.

Ends

Sources:

The CRE’s protocol for dealing with queries relating to possible offences under the public order Act 1986 8 November 2006
http://www.cre.gov.uk/legal/rra/incitement.html

CRE plans new code of conduct for referring race hate material to the police 27 January 2004
http://www.cre.gov.uk/Default.aspx.LocID-0hgnew011.RefLocID-0hg00900c008001002.Lang-EN.htm

2006-11-18T08:53:00.000Z

Sir Trevor Phillips tries on the Pope’s hat, Methodists knock it off

Sir Trevor Phillips has in an encyclical addressed to religious leaders excommunicated members of the BNP. He calls for all pastors to refuse them communion. He has already called for them to be dismissed from their jobs. Speaking to the TUC three years ago, describing them as “knuckle dragging apes” he explained “the workplace is no place for racists. Making this a reality shouldn't just fall to trades unionists. Employers have a responsibility too.”

Church leaders have in general backed his pontificate but have been slow to respond to his latest fatwa. As he put it following BNP boss Nick Griffin’s acquittal by a secular jury: "If ever there was a moment for hellfire and damnation, this is it.”

So far only the Bishop of Croydon, Nick Baines has publicly backed the CRE chair. He has not, however, yet called for their exclusion from communion nor stated that he will back any of his priests who turn away BNP supporters from communion as Sir Trevor has demanded.

Fringe religious groups rejecting his authority will now be put under pressure. One such, Methodists, have gone so far as to reject his call in a press release “Communion should be for all”. In a direct challenge to him Anthea Cox, its coordinating secretary for public life and social justice said:

"We would welcome everybody into Methodist churches. There is no room within the Church for racism under any circumstances, and we will always challenge these attitudes, but we will never turn people away."

In his other part time secular job as chair of the Commission for Racial Equality Trevor Phillips was successful in allowing Gloucestershire and Avon and Somerset Police to unlawfully turn away 295 white job seekers. He issued indulgences to the Chief Constables allowing them to escape without penalty. Whether the secular authorities will allow him to continue to offer them sanctuary is not yet clear.

Ends

Note to editors

1. Trevor Phillips is not a knight although he is often referred to as such by the media.

2. Methodist press release “The Good news” 17 November 2006 http://www.thegoodnews.co.uk/regionnewsstory.asp?id=1438®ion=reg0

3. Trevor Phillips’ speech 9 September 2003 http://www.tuc.org.uk/congress/tuc-7134-f0.cfm

2006-09-08T21:02:00.000+01:00

Trevor Phillips turns out to be an exceptional candidate

As expected Trevor Phillips has been appointed chair of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR). The salary was advertised at £140,000 but more for an exceptional candidate. His salary is £160,000. As we pointed out it is fortunate that Mr Phillips raised his salary at the Commission for Racial Equality from £120,360 to £149, 690 last year. Otherwise it might have been thought that he was not Premier League.

All’s well that ends well.

2006-09-03T13:43:00.000+01:00

Race entrepreneurs fall out over establishment Trevor Phillips’ appointment

Britain’s race entrepreneurs are out to get Trevor Phillips, the £150,000 personable chair of the Commission for Racial Equality [CRE]. They did not want him to get the job as the boss of the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR). [Salary £140,000 but more available for an exceptional candidate.] Lucky then that his CRE salary was increased from a derisory £120,360 to £149,690 last year. So he won’t come cheap.

Lee Jasper, £111,000 race adviser [when we last looked] to London Mayor Ken Livingstone who had a run in with Phillips over his offer to let him run as his deputy in the 2000 mayoral election, was the key figure in the campaign.

In his capacity as secretary of the National Assembly Against Racism [GLA grant £180,000 grant] Mr Jasper was deeply unhappy at the prospect of his boss’ old enemy getting the top job.

He was backed up by colleague Simon Woolley of Operation Black Vote [chair Lee Jasper] [three year Labour government grant £450,000] who is also chair of Black Londoners Forum [GLA grant £37,500] and who wants a ‘chair of conviction’.

These champions of the movement are joined by Milena Buyum, of the National Black Alliance [founder Lee Jasper] who accuses Phillips of reducing the number of discrimination cases the CRE supported.

They certainly have a point here. Mr Phillips resolutely refused to act to punish
Avon and Somerset and Gloucestershire Police Services for rejecting hundreds of white male applicants out of hand in blatantly racially fixed recruitment policies. But that is not what these guys are going on about. That sort of discrimination is OK for race entrepreneurs.

The campaign to stop Phillips was run on the website of the 1990 Trust’s [three year Labour government grant £450,000; former director Lee Jasper] Black Information Link [BLINK]

BLINK prominently reported Mayor Ken Livingstone’s last ditch attack on Phillips with the headline Trevor Phillips “to join the BNP soon” says Mayor [31 August 2006]. This cavalierly misquoted Livingstone’s jibe “ I don't know where he's going. He accused me of being a racist when during the first Mayoral election I asked him to be my deputy. He's going so far to the other side I expect he'll be joining the BNP soon.” But what the hell!

End
Trevor Phillips appointment as CEHR chairman condemned, BLINK, September 1 2006
http://www.blink.org.uk/pdescription.asp?key=12426&grp=44&cat=356

2006-08-14T12:36:00.000+01:00

Racist thugs in ‘affront to society’ lock up farce

An Asian man was subjected to appalling racial violence in Edinburgh by three young thugs. They were caught, prosecuted and found guilty. The judge rebuked them harshly for their actions. BBC Scotland, the Scotsman and the Glasgow Daily Record provided similar reports shown on Google as below. Reports suggested that tough punishments had been meted out.

Racist thugs locked up for 13 years after brutal attack Scotsman, United Kingdom - Aug 11, 2006 THREE racist thugs whose savage attack on a young Asian man was described as "an affront to civilised society" were put behind bars for a total of 13 years ...

Total of 13 years for race attack BBC News, UK - Aug 11, 2006 Three young men who carried out a racist attack on an Asian man have been jailed for a total of 13 years. John Anderson, 21, got ...

RACIST THUGS CAGED Glasgow Daily Record, UK - 10 hours ago THREE racist thugs who savagely attacked an Asian man have been locked up for a total of 13 years. They left their 22-year-old victim ...

All the reports suggested that the perpetrators faced a total of 13 years in jail: “put behind bars for a total of 13 years” ... “jailed for a total of 13 years”… “have been locked up for a total of 13 years”.

Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth although the news media merely used the reporting convention that pretends that the sentence passed is the sentence to be served. This convention pulled the wool over the eyes of the public for many years about the nature of the criminal justice system. Today it merely alienates a more informed public aware of its inability to enforce change on a judicial Establishment out of touch and out of control.

How can news media change their reporting? It is not practicable for them to always include a note to the effect that less than half, sometimes much less than half of the sentence passed will actually be served. However, we should be spared the language of the reports quoted above all of which also gave the impression that the reporters considered the punishments imposed harsh if fair.

Of the three reports the Scotsman was by far the most interesting because its website contained feedback from readers.

A Cape Town reader stated: “Why say "a total of 13 years" in the title? That's a completely pointless thing to say. It really makes my blood boil. This "newspaper" gets worse all the time. Why not say, racist thugs get 4 years each in jail, for example?
It means nothing to totalise the sentences given. You are cretins, complete cretins. The thugs will be out in two years, which is 11 years of difference to what it says in your headline. Sort it out FFS.”

Ordinary citizens might be surprised that the attack took place as long ago as 1 May of last year. They will be less surprised to note that one perpetrator “had three previous convictions for assault to injury, one of which was a racial matter” and that another “had a previous conviction for assault”. The third “was a first offender at the time, although the sheriff noted he had been in trouble since.” [The Scotsman]

As Lenin said, perhaps in a different context: “What is to be done?”

2006-08-14T12:21:00.000+01:00

BBC diversity czar’s call for reporting colour bar challenged

Civil rights group Liberty and Law has reported the BBC’s powerful editorial director of diversity to the Commission for Racial Equality following her racially charged reported comments in the Observer [13 August] about its white reporters that appear to have the backing of the corporation. It has asked CRE chair Trevor Phillips, a broadcaster himself, to intervene.

Mary Fitzpatrick is quoted as speaking of the BBC’s white international reporters in unacceptable terms: 'I get tired of repeatedly seeing programmes where [the situation is] "here we are in Africa and here's a white person, saying well, look at these people".
'I would prefer to see somebody who understands that culture, understands what's going on and can say, "look with me, because I am a part of this". It feels more authoritative and more involved.'

Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup stated: “It is grossly inappropriate for Ms Fitzpatrick to attack the professional ability and credibility of fellow journalists in this way. Her remarks make it difficult to see how journalists can be treated fairly given her key role at the BBC. The BBC must act immediately to repair the damage to community relations and to its reputation as an equal opportunities employer. Its journalists must be appointed and deployed and seen to be appointed and deployed on the basis of their objective talents not on the basis of Ms Fitzpatrick ‘being tired’ or of pandering to her feelings.”

Ms Fitzpatrick also addresses domestic reporting from the same divisive communitarian perspective. She states: 'If there's a situation where the Muslim community is unhappy, you need to feel that the person that is reporting from whatever that event is, actually has some understanding.'

Observer media correspondent Rob Sharp’s understanding of Ms Fitzpatrick’s personnel philosophy is shown in two paragraphs of his report.

“The BBC's team of foreign correspondents should come from the same ethnic background as the country they are reporting from, according to the corporation's new diversity tsar. ….” and
“Fitzpatrick said that the same rule on ethnicity and reporting should be applied in the corporation's domestic coverage, and that the broadcaster should recruit more reporters who could 'confidently speak' to non-white Britons.”

Liberty and Law has successfully campaigned against racially and sexually discriminatory recruitment schemes, most recently those adopted by Avon and Somerset and Gloucestershire Police Services.

It continues to press the CRE and EOC to conclude their investigations into the Metropolitan Police Service’s publicised policy of discriminating against white males by selectively delaying their start dates.

Ends

BBC correspondents abroad 'too white', Rob Sharp, Observer 13 August 2006 http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1843598,00.html

2006-07-25T14:23:00.000+01:00

Equal Opportunites Commission celebrate thirty years discriminating against men

Institutional gender discrimination is alive and kicking at Britain’s Equal opportunities Commission [EOC] .The annual report of the government funded £10 million quango reveals that male staff has been reduced to just 18.2% after an unfortunate blip the previous year when 19% was reached. EOC could surely win the prize for the most successful homophobic major employer in the country. It would certainly be hard to beat over the last thirty years.

Glamorous and charismatic EOC chair Jenny Watson could also boast how her organisation had frustrated an attempt to prevent Avon and Somerset and Gloucestershire Police Services operating recruitment scams to arbitrarily exclude almost 300 men in favour of women. They were able to exploit their statutory powers to ensure these sexually discriminatory recruitment processes were successfully completed before making a pointless judgment on 26 June that they were unlawful, accepting a promise from the guilty authorities that they would not employ those particular tricks again. The cheats were allowed to walk off with their gains with no penalty.

Gerald Hartup director of civil libeties group Liberty and Law said: “ There is a lesson to be learnt. Rules are for little people. Why did I expect the EOC to act after informing them about discrimination so blatant that everyone knew it was a scam? Citizens clearly need to understand that for proper governance there is a requirement for double standards and to operate within the new system. Only in this way will they not be alienated from it. The EOC is the model to follow.”

Liberty and Law in November 2005 also reported the Metropolitan Police Service to the EOC over another version of institutional gender discrimination against men. It is confident however that the EOC is capable and determined to meticulously research the programme with the help of the Met with the result that no conclusion of any help to discriminated against men is arrived at.

Mr Hartup stated: “It will be another triumph for modern democratic management. The crude enforcement of the rule of law has proved to be unsatisfactory to progressives who require and can now utilize discretion to control the mob, the schmucks with their childish obsession with “objective justice". But we shmucks will still be shmucks.”

Ends

2006-07-11T13:26:00.000+01:00

Race watchdog to decide tomorrow whether to prosecute colour bar police forces. EOC to let them off sex discrimination scot free.

The Commission for Racial Equality’s Legal Affairs Committee will decide tomorrow [12 July] whether or not to take action against two police services who this year operated a sex and colour bar recruitment policy.

Avon and Somerset and Gloucestershire Police Services excluded a total of almost three hundred white male applicants from consideration for employment in a successful bid to favour minority ethnic and female candidates.

The method used according to civil liberties group Liberty and Law was to interrogate the Equal Opportunities page of each candidate’s application to determine their race although this page claimed that under no circumstances would it be used as any part of the recruitment process but for monitoring purposes only.

Avon and Somerset then randomly deselected 186 white male candidates to reduce their numbers. Gloucestershire assessed all applications before splitting candidates into two sections. All women and minority ethnic candidates who were successful in the paper stage were allowed to go through to the final selection stage but only the top performing white males were allowed through. 109 white males were unfairly rejected under this system.

When the police action was leaked Liberty and Law reported the race discrimination to the CRE and asked them to request the two services to freeze their recruitment processes pending its own assessment of their legality. The CRE declined to do this and as their investigations took about four months in both cases this facilitated the racially and sexually discriminatory recruitment to be successfully completed in both services.

Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup commented: “These are almost certainly the biggest racially discriminatory recruitment operations that the CRE has investigated but it has failed dismally to protect the people affected by this public sector scam. All competent lawyers were unanimous about the illegality of the two services’ secretive schemes but by their reluctance1 to act and their decision not to intervene and to procrastinate in coming to a conclusion the CRE has brought the Race Relations Act into disrepute. Legal action against the two police authorities is now the least that they can do in order to regain some credibility.”

Liberty and Law also reported the actions of the two police services to the Equal Opportunities Commission. These investigations, according to Liberty and Law were carried out at an even slower pace. The EOC finally wrote to both police authorities on 26 June stating that their actions were not in compliance with the Sex Discrimination Act to which Avon and Somerset have today [11 July] responded with the statement required of them by the EOC. The EOC awaits a similar response from Gloucestershire Constabulary. The EOC claims that no further action is required in either case.

Mr Hartup commented: “This is another triumph for the EOC. They believe the police broke the law. They are the body responsible for enforcing this law but using their discretion the police are allowed to get away with this blatant discrimination. It is a result for our untouchable politically correct establishment.”

End

Further information: Gerald Hartup Tel: 020 7928 7325 Fax: 020 7207 3425 gerald.hartupatbtopenworld.com

1. CRE chair Trevor Phillips’ view in speech to Social Policy Forum on 19 June “For example we recently had to order one police force - Somerset and Avon - to stop a programme to fast track some minority applicants into the force, because we thought a court might say that it was unfair to white applicants. Yet they were clear that they only brought in the scheme for operational reasons, not political or social reasons. I don't think it can be right that we have drifted into a situation where the CRE has to stand in the way of moderate measures to increase diversity in the police force - something which Scarman recommended twenty-five years ago, Macpherson more recently, and the Chief Police Officers are desperate to do so they can do their job better.”

2006-06-06T13:20:00.000+01:00

“Pants down” Prescott fair game says advertising watchdog

Ryanair’s advertisement entitled Don’t get caught with your pants down featuring a caricature of Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott in such a state published in the Daily Telegraph of 3 May did not breach the advertising code according to the industry’s watchdog the Advertising Standards Authority.

Ryanair’s advertisement was exploiting the publicity surrounding Mr Prescott’s sex life to advertise the airline’s low fares.

Responding to civil liberties group Liberty and Law, which had argued that the advertisement breached the ASA code in eleven ways it explained: “Although this advertisement did refer to Mr Prescott in an adverse way, it did so in a manner very much in step with the already high-profile negative media coverage surrounding the story of Mr Prescott’s extra-marital affair, and as such we do not feel that the advertisement, tasteless though it may have been, was unfair to Mr Prescott.”

In arriving at its decision the ASA’s “Council posed three questions: will the advertisement offend most people who see it; will it so deeply offend a few that their interests should prevail against the undoubted liberty of advertisers to reasonable free expression; should the majority who are not offended be prevented from hearing what the advertisers want to say? Their answer to all three was negative.”

The Council “felt that although the advert could be considered distasteful, it was likely to be seen as light-hearted.”

Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup commented: “Politicians may now sleep less comfortably even when laying in their own beds. The ASA’s strong judgment in this case is a helpful clarification of how the advertising rules are interpreted. Ryanair has set a trend in using satire to squeeze commercial value from discredited politicians.”
Liberty and Law had invited the ASA to consider the following potential breaches of the Code:
2.1 The communication is not decent since it refers in a trivialising way to reports of sordid sexual behaviour that the DPP has not even admitted to be true.

2.2 Holding up the DPP to ridicule for actions that the Prime Minister has accepted are personal matters not affecting his ministerial office is irresponsible.

2.4 The advertisement brings advertising into disrepute by using such means.

3.1 The advertisers have not made any attempt to prove the claim that Mr Prescott was actually caught with his pants down.

3.3 There is a significant division of informed opinion about the claim.

3.4 The claim is not an obvious untruth or exaggeration and so cannot be protected on these grounds.

3.5 The advertisement is couched in a manner certain to cause widespread offence particularly since it deals with intimate sexual relationships.

9.1 The advertisement can only cause distress to Mr Prescott and it does so for no better reason than to use a shocking image to attract attention.

9.2 It cannot seriously be argued that Ryanair is taking it upon itself to encourage prudent behaviour or to discourage dangerous or ill-advised actions by politicians.

12.3 It could be argued that the advertisement is designed to influence voters not to support the Labour Party and so is exempt from the Code, but not surely with any conviction. It can only be an accidental by-product.

13.1 Marketers should not unfairly portray or refer to people in an adverse or offensive way. There can be no doubt that in this case the portrayal is adverse and offensive.

ASA Code of Practice http://www.asa.org.uk/NR/rdonlyres/A44808F1-1573-482A-A0E5-D8045943DA57/0/The_CAP_Code_Ed11_20060227.pdf

2006-04-21T19:32:00.000+01:00

Does Freedom Association’s attack on Tories presage first skirmish of party civil war?

Freedom Association chairman, anti federalist campaigner and former Conservative MP Christopher Gill [Ludlow 1987-2001] is to join Ukip. His action reflects the struggle for the soul of the Conservative party. The Freedom Association’s governing Council contains senior Tory MPs Christopher Chope, Gerald Howarth and Andrew Rosindell, influential MEP Daniel Hannan as well as effective Commons newcomer Philip Davies while its magazine Freedom Today enjoys a regular column by John Redwood.

In a statement reported on Ukip’s website Mr Gill stated: “Mr Cameron’s new, forward looking Conservative Party seems to have brought back many of the disastrous has-beens from the Major administration: Maude, Gummer, Heseltine and Clarke, to name but a few, dinosaur Europhiles all.
“It is clear that no argument will move the Conservative Party’s official position on Europe, despite many of their MPs privately agreeing with UKIP.”

2006-04-14T11:08:00.000+01:00

Standards Board gives Mayor Livingstone all clear over “chiselling little crook“ jibe about American ambassador

Responding to the complaint by Liberty and Law of 28 March the Standards Board for England’s decision made on 5 April and sent to the parties on 6 April was:

"It was noted that the Mayor of London Mr Livingstone has a political platform that he can use to draw attention to matters of public importance. Whilst it was considered that Mr Livingstone’s choice of language could potentially amount to a failure to comply with the Code of Conduct, in particular the obligation to treat others with respect, on balance it was not considered that the allegation is sufficiently serious to warrant referral for investigation and any consequent action."

The Mayor’s office issued a press release on 7 April in which its Notes to Editors cut the decision to “ on balance it was not considered that the allegation is sufficiently serious to warrant referral for investigation and any consequent action”.

The Standards Board was not asked to adjudicate on Mr Livingstone’s later elaboration of his initial insult to the American ambassador speaking on 2 April to Andrew Marr [BBC 1 Sunday AM] "A chiselling little crook. And that's actually quite an interesting parallel because when we find someone who consistently doesn't pay the congestion charge we usually find the police want them for other things as well, minor crimes in some cases armed robbery, so there is a clear pattern –"

Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup stated: “Complaints to the Standards Board and its decisions allow local politicians covered by its rules to have a better understanding of what they are or are not permitted to say in our now regulated democracy. The term ‘chiselling little crook’ and similar terms may now enliven political debate following the Board’s admirably speedy decision.”

2006-04-11T15:19:00.000+01:00

Colour and sex bar constabulary now seeks white male cops

Gloucestershire Constabulary has written to 108 white male candidates whose applications were controversially rejected in January on the grounds of their race and sex inviting them to a new assessment stage beginning 21 August.

Civil liberties group Liberty and Law who reported the constabulary to both the Commission for Racial Equality and the Equal Opportunities Commission welcome the development but remain disturbed by the Constabulary’s handling of the situation and the institutional inertia of the CRE and EOC in failing to act with any sense of urgency. Gloucestershire Constabulary are still waiting for a decision by both the CRE and EOC.

The constabulary states that it has not completed its recruitment requirements for 2006/2007 and 2007/8.

Recruitment officer Anthea Barrett explains in her letter of 7 April to the men: “I recognise that you will have been disappointed not to have been invited to attend the Assessment Centre held in February. The number of candidates who attained the score required to pass the CBQ1 stage significantly exceeded the number of places we were able to offer at the February Assessment Centre and therefore you were not offered a place.”

Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup stated:“ The Constabulary just cannot come clean about what it has done. It carefully avoids admitting that these applicants had been lied to in January. They were told then that they had been “randomly deselected” because too many applicants had passed the paper test. The truth was they had been specially selected for rejection on the grounds of their colour and sex and that the “confidential”2 Equal Opportunities page of their application form in which their racial origin could be found was used to discriminate against them. Only those white males who obtained the highest marks were allowed through unlike their minority ethnic and female competitors for whom a bare pass was sufficient.”

Rejected white male applicants have been advised that they should take their cases to an employment tribunal but those still seeking a career with Gloucestershire Constabulary are put off because they fear that such action would harm their chances of selection. They are prepared to settle for being discriminated against for the sake of their potential long- term careers.

Some failed candidates simply believe that the letter from the Constabulary is an attempt to dissuade victims of the constabulary’s positive discrimination selection process from applying to an employment tribunal within the time limits allowed.

Ends

1 CBQ Competency Based Questionnaire

2 “The information on this form is for monitoring purposes only and will not be made available to those assessing our application. The information supplied will be treated in the strictest confidence and will not affect your job application in any way. …. This information forms no part of the recruitment process. It will be detached from your application on receipt.”

Background:

Gloucestershire Constabulary Statement on Police Officer Recruitment, 10 April
http://www.gloucestershire.police.uk/news/555.html

Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Gloucestershire Police reported to CRE and EOC over blacklisting white male recruits

Tuesday, 7 March 2006
Police drop race and sexually discriminatory recruitment scheme after three months pressure by civil liberties group

http://www.libertyandlaw.co.uk/page.php?domain_name=libertyandlaw.co.uk&viewpage=news

2006-04-02T15:30:00.000+01:00

Livingstone insults Britain’s dead soldiers in spat with US ambassador

London mayor Ken Livingstone puts his customary spin on a New York Times editorial agreeing with his view that the American embassy should pay the congestion charge.

What he neglected to tell Londoners on his taxpayer funded website was that the New York Times shared the view of most observers that his behaviour was utterly inappropriate for someone in his office.

This is what it said: “The London mayor, Ken Livingstone, needs to work on editing what comes out of his mouth (this week he called the American ambassador a "chiseling little crook" and he is currently appealing a suspension from his duties for comparing a Jewish journalist to a guard at a concentration camp). He poked further fun at the ambassador for his previous job, which - unfortunately, in light of the debate - was owning a large car dealership.”

His behaviour has become even more obnoxious elaborating even more offensively on his earlier remarks about American ambassador Robert Tuttle in today’s interview with political journalist Andrew Marr [BBC 1 Sunday AM]
Livingstone: A chiselling little crook. And that's actually quite an interesting parallel because when we find someone who consistently doesn't pay the congestion charge we usually find the police want them for other things as well, minor crimes in some cases armed robbery, so there is a clear pattern -
Andrew Marr: ... ambassador ...
Livingstone: No, no but there is a clear pattern of those people who they consistently don't pay their fines and that they're wanted for other ... of the police."
After that outburst he continues: "I have to say I do think it is completely and utterly unacceptable that the American ambassador turns up, having made his billions selling cars, and they stop [paying] particularly at a time when we're basically the only serious ally that America's got and our young people are putting their lives on the line for George Bush's foreign policy every day. I think it stinks that he's weaselling his way out of paying his fair share to London because it makes Londoners have to pay more if he's not paying his whack."

So what is Livingstone now saying? By “we” in the “only serious ally” he certainly doesn’t mean “him”. Our young people are putting their lives on the line for our government’s foreign policy not the mayor’s. Livingstone’s jibe exploits both our dead and serving military as if their lives can be equated with a motoring tax and used as a bargaining chip in his vulgar argument with the American ambassador.

Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup commented: “Mr Livingstone’s cheeky chappie mask is slipping and we are seeing something altogether more unpleasant.”

Further information:

New York Times urges US Embassy to pay congestion charge 31 March 2006
http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=7732

Mayor defends US toll payment row 2 April 2006
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/4869588.stm

Andrew Marr interview
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/sunday_am/4869690.stm

2006-03-28T13:27:00.000+01:00

Livingstone reported to Standards Board over “chiselling little crook” attack on U.S ambassador

Civil liberties group Liberty and Law has reported London mayor Ken Livingstone to the Standards Board [11.00am] for what it believes to be a breach of the code governing the conduct of the Greater London Authority {GLA] over the way he has conducted his dispute with embassies based in London over the Congestion Charge because of their refusal to pay what he calls a "charge" and what they call a tax.

Liberty and Law believes that Mr Livingstone is in breach of the Standard board's code’s requirement that members of the GLA must - treat others with respect; that they should not do anything which compromises or which is likely to compromise the impartiality of those who work for, or on behalf of, the authority; and also that a member must not in his official capacity, or any other circumstance, conduct himself in a manner which could reasonably be regarded as bringing his office or authority into disrepute.

In his letter to the Standards Board Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup drew attention to reports in national newspapers about the affair and how it was viewed. The Daily Mirror reports what has happened 28 March as:
Ken Livingstone: Us envoy “A chiseling [sic] little crook
Ken road toll fury at envoy

It started: Ken Livingstone yesterday branded a top American diplomat a “chiseling [sic] little crook for refusing to pay congestion charges.

The Guardian reported the affair 28 March: Livingstone under fire for likening US ambassador to crook

Ken Livingstone's colourful vocabulary landed him in more hot water yesterday when he likened the US ambassador in London to a "chiselling little crook".
The mayor of London criticised Robert Tuttle while bemoaning the US embassy's insistence that its diplomatic staff should not pay the congestion charge because they view it as a tax. Embassies are exempt from all local tax under the 1961 Vienna convention.

The Independent reported jthe event 28 March:
'A little crook': Ken's undiplomatic name for US ambassador
The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, launched an attack on the US Ambassador yesterday, accusing him of being a "chiselling little crook".
Mr Livingstone, who was spared a suspension last month after being accused of anti-semitism, also likened Robert Tuttle to a car salesman.

... speaking at the unveiling of the new Wembley Park station yesterday, Mr Livingstone queried the motivation for the decision to stop making the payments. He said: "This new ambassador is a car salesman and an ally of President Bush. This is clearly a political decision. When British troops are putting their lives on the line for American foreign policy it would be quite nice if they paid the congestion charge," he said. "We will find a way of getting them into court either here or in America. We are not going to have them evade their responsibilities."

Mr Hartup commented: "Although like Mr Livingstone we believe the Standards Board should be abolished and that electorates should determine the suitability or otherwise of their representatives, until that position is reached it is important to ensure that even the most dignified and progressive of politicians is subject to the same rules as more humble office holders."

2006-03-26T16:47:00.000+01:00

Margaret Hodge blames Commuters for London unemployment

Speaking at Saturday’s packed State of Race Equality in London Conference Minister of State for Employment and Welfare Reform Margaret Hodge provided what may prove for the government an easy solution to London’s unemployment problem. There would be enough jobs for all Londoners she explained except for the out of town commuters who she claimed snap up 3 out of every ten jobs that could otherwise go to London residents.

One of these job snatching out of towners speaking at the conference was Transport for London supremo Peter Hendy, CBE who earns £300,000 a year commuting from Bath. He told Liberty and Law Journal that his salary was “outrageous” but that he would be able to earn more in the private sector [no doubt true]. He may have to under a Hodge regime unless he gets a second home to legitimise his employment in the capital.

A valuable contributor in the morning was Rose Fitzpatrick who explained her role as Deputy Assistant Commissioner was of the Metropolitan Police Service was to make the Metropolitan Police Service an employer of choice for black and minority ethnic people. She reported that minorities in the Service had increased by 82% since 2002 – but from a very low base. BME officers now constituted 7.4% and were targeted to reach 7.7% this year. She explained that support was now being given to BME individuals before, during and after the application stage and that 43% of applications were now coming from minorities.

The Mayor Ken Livingstone gave a typically brilliant speech in which he reprised to an appreciative audience how England’s colonial record in Ireland made them worse than the Nazis and explained how the problems in Ireland could be resolved were it not for Ian Paisley and his knuckleheads.

Conference MC Lee Jasper the GLA’s Director of Equalities and Policing had optimistically told delegates just before lunch “Don’t forget the London Philharmonic Orchestra will play requests for you. They will never have seen so many black people. You can all go out and shock them. Asking for Reggae tunes”. As it happens the orchestra had finished its performance and delegates instead queued stoically for a meal for over an hour because Lee’s catering ran out and he had to send off to Marks and Spencer’s for sandwiches.

In the final session the delegates showed a surprising commitment to ignore equal opportunities by agreeing with a workshop report that the new boss of the Commission for Equalities and Human Rights had to be a black woman.

2006-03-07T16:47:00.000Z

Police drop race and sexually discriminatory recruitment scheme after three months pressure by civil liberties group

Avon and Somerset Police Service today caved in over their attempt to discriminate against the employment of white males following three months of pressure from civil liberties group Liberty and Law.

Director Gerald Hartup had warned them that their positive action in randomly deselecting white males to bring about a more diverse workforce was in breach of the Race Relations and Sex Discrimination Acts.
He reported the Service to the Commission for Racial Equality and the Equal Opportunities Commission on November 29 and also to the Information Commission.
Mr Hartup commented on the decision:
“I obviously welcome the decision of the Chief Constable to drop the scheme but am disappointed that it took him so long to do so. I am also concerned that he did so without the benefit of any input from either the CRE or the EOC whose investigations have been extremely dilatory.”

“I had asked the Chief Constable to suspend the recruitment process pending the advice of these two bodies but unfortunately he refused to do this. He deserves credit, however, for acting on his own initiative."

“I warned both the CRE and the EOC that it would be outrageous if their investigations took so long that in the event they determined that the policy breached employment law that the racially and sexually discriminatory appointments would stand. I asked them to request that Avon and Somerset suspend the recruitment process pending their investigations but they refused to do so."

“It is of course important that the white male candidates who were rejected on racial grounds are not disadvantaged and this can be achieved provided no appointments have yet been made.”

He continued: “It is important that these equal opportunities bodies get their acts together if they are to have any credibility with the public. We have the right to demand that they now act speedily to investigate and to come to a conclusion about the schemes of the Metropolitan Police Service and Gloucestershire Police Service.”

“The lesson to be learned from this fiasco is that public authorities must trust the public and not try to sneak through their plans. Local newspapers deserve great credit for their determination in reporting this abuse of power.”

A CRE spokesperson commented:

"What this case highlights is the difficulties, employers, like police forces, face when trying to tackle the problem of under-representation within their workforces. There is a need for a public debate that looks at how other measures may be used to help authorities to tackle under representation across all elements of discrimination. In the meantime, we will encourage police forces to use every legal step available to them to improve representation".

An EOC spokeswoman was able to make no comment because its investigation was still ongoing

2006-02-28T09:51:00.000Z

Media campaign to knight Trevor Phillips now looks unstoppable

An international campaign led by the BBC, British Council, Guardian/Observer, Daily Mirror, NUT, North Yorkshire Police Authority the South African Sunday Times and Parliament’s Joint Committee On Human Rights to surreptitiously upgrade the title of the ambitious chair of the Commission for Racial Equality from humble OBE to knight thought to have been thwarted by British civil liberties group Liberty and Law has gained further momentum.

It was thought that The Guardian at least had lost its nerve on 19 August coming clean about their man’s real title in Corrections and Clarifications and that with this setback the campaign would run into the sand.

A Google search In August 2005 for “Sir Trevor Phillips” gave 66 results. During his u-turn on multiculturalism on ITV’s Jonathon Dimbleby programme on 26 February his new title was launched giving it a massive boost. There are now 125 such links and the new title is now firmly entrenched with the BBC, ITN. Channel 4 News, Daily Telegraph, The Times and Scotsman.

The Guardian thought it was safe to return to the campaign on 27 February but its Corrections and Clarifications fought back bravely today reinstating Mr Phillips as a commoner [although it did continue to refer to him as the “chairman” rather than chair of the CRE].

Liberty and Law director Sir Gerald Hartup has now admitted his failure. “It’s no good, I’ve done my best. The position must now be regularized and Mr Phillips given a knighthood.”

It is thought that Mr Phillips, for whom only a peerage serves any practical purpose, is annoyed by the clumsiness of his cheerleaders.

1445 update The BBC's website confirms that it is now seeking to destroy all use of the false title in its reports.

2006-01-31T21:01:00.000Z

Gloucestershire Police reported to CRE and EOC over blacklisting white male recruits

Civil liberties group Liberty and Law has reported Gloucestershire Police to the Commission for Racial Equality and the Equal Opportunities Commission for what it claims to be breaches of both the Race Relations Act and Sex Discrimination Act.

Gloucestershire Police Service, following its interpretation of these Acts, rejected 109 white male candidates at the second stage of a recruitment drive. This was part of its positive action programme to boost the number of minority ethnic personnel and women in its ranks.

The Gloucestershire Police Service in its document Positive action guidance makes the claim that “it has been approved by both the Commission for Racial Equality and the Race Relations Employment and Advisory Service.”

Liberty and Law argues that the attempt by Gloucestershire Police Service to stretch the clear meaning of legislation so as to enable them to racially and sexually discriminate in the early stages of recruitment providing they are not caught out “discriminating in favour of a certain group at the point of final selection” is an interpretation that has no credibility.

The discovery of Gloucestershire Police Service’s policy follows Somerset and Avon Police Service’s similar action that is currently under investigation by the CRE and EOC following a complaint by Liberty and Law on 29 November last.

Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup has asked both bodies to request that Gloucestershire Police freeze the recruitment process pending their investigation of its legality.

Both bodies have also been asked to check whether similar policies are being rolled out without public debate by other police services.

Mr Hartup stated: “The public must be concerned at the time that our enforcement bodies have taken to come to a conclusion in the Somerset and Avon case. In these circumstances it is important that neither of these two police services should make their final appointments pending speeded up investigations.”

End

Further information: Gerald Hartup 020 7928 7325 or 020 7207 3425
gerald.hartupATbtopenworld.com

2006-01-29T11:01:00.000Z

Race boss plans new code of conduct to refer race hate material to the police

Difficulties about deciding what is or is not a hate crime could now be resolved by Britain’s Commission for Racial Equality [CRE]. Its chair Trevor Phillips has intervened dramatically [27 January] over race hate material by drawing up a code of conduct for him to refer material to the police under the incitement to racial hatred provisions of the Public Order Act.

Mr Phillips explained: “I think that the public has every right to expect consistency and transparency in the exercise of my judgement in these matters. I am therefore taking three steps to ensure that my conduct is clear, and that my powers are exercised fairly. First, I have asked the distinguished lawyer Robin Allen QC to review the way in which the Chair of the CRE intervenes in such cases and to advise me on my legal responsibilities. Second, on receiving Mr Allen's opinion the Commission will draw up a code for my own conduct in these matters, after consultation with our colleagues at the Press Complaints Commission, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Attorney General. Third, I will publish that code, so that everyone who chooses can be guided as to why we at the Commission do what we do.”

Nearly ready now

Substantial progress has been made since Mr Phillips announced the initiative just two years ago [27 January 2004]. On 1 September 2005, following the return from vacation of one of its key officers, the CRE was able to report that the “document has been drafted and is currently awaiting approval”. The exact current state of readiness [29 January 2006] of the document, however, is not known.

Not ‘all mouth and trousers’

Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup who has closely followed the CRE’s initiatives commented: “There are many critics of the CRE who doubt its ability to act expeditiously and who claim that the organisation is “all mouth and no trousers”. This is just one illustration of how a modestly funded organisation with a part-time chair actually delivers the goods.”

http://www.cre.gov.uk/Default.aspx.LocID-0hgnew011.RefLocID-0hg00900c001002.Lang-EN.htm

2006-01-10T01:13:00.000Z

EOC cooks the books over women’s pay

Every year round about Christmas the Equal Opportunities Commission [EOC], the UK’s “sex equality” body that has successfully kept its male staff down to 20% for 30 years, comes out with phoney statistics about women’s earnings, which generally takes in the media and politicians.

So a typical headline runs Cameron will campaign to end women's pay 'scandal' Daily Telegraph, 29 December 2005.

The ‘scandal’ is created with the bogus concept of “pay gap” defined as the difference in hourly earnings between part-time women and full- time men. This is currently 38.4%. A meaningful comparison would be between part time hourly earnings of both men and women. This shows a mean pay gap of not 38.4% but just 10% and a “pay gap” for median earnings actually 3% in favour of women.

It is no good looking for this in press releases from the EOC. You won't even find there what hourly earnings of part time men are. In a welter of statistics this crucial information has been censored. [Mean £9.81, median £6.50 actually] How can you make a sensational claim if you give people all the facts? Only if you search around a bit does an obscure EOC report acknowledge that “there is no gap between the earnings of female part-time workers and male part-time workers over most of the distribution”.

A genuine equal opportunities body of course would be publicising the plight of low paid men as well as women. Since the EOC reports that “men from black and ethnic minorities are twice as likely to be in part-time employment as white men” could the reason for it marginalising men be attributed to institutional racism as well as its ingrained institutional sexism?

I wonder whether the EOC will be able to pull the same trick next Christmas.

2005-12-30T10:42:00.000Z

Norway moves to National Socialist business controls

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard [Norway makes the most of short shelf life, Daily Telegraph 29 December] in writing about how Norway has managed its oil revenue, writes:
Even the new Left-Socialist finance minister has been a model of restraint since the overthrow of the conservatives in September, though she wants to soak the super-rich a bit harder.
Kristin Halvorsen has reserved her radicalism for gender politics. For starters, firms with fewer than 40pc women on their boards will face closure from January next year. "These companies must be forced to take on qualified women. It doesn't matter how good the men are, they are still not good enough. The men have to step aside," she said.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2005/12/29/ccnorway29.xml

2005-11-29T17:00:00.000Z

Civil liberties group seeks challenge racially and sexually discriminatory police recruitment schemes

Civil liberties group Liberty and Law has today reported both the Metropolitan Police Service and Avon and Somerset Police Service to the Commission for Racial Equality and the Equal Opportunities Commission for their recruitment schemes now blatantly discriminating against the employment of white males. It has asked them both to formally investigate the two police services.

Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup said: “The services have come up with different schemes which they think can sneak by the provisions of the Race Relations Act but they have to be challenged. The Met pretends that by selectively delaying the start of successful candidates according to their race or sex by up to three years they can avoid prosecution. It is now up to the CRE and the EOC to demonstrate that they are not above the law.

“Avon and Somerset think that they can simply randomly deselect unfortunate able bodied white males with a stroke of a felt tip pen and without penalty. Chief Constable Colin Port calls this trying “something different”. The CRE and the EOC should see it as “trying it on” and stamp down on the abuse.

“Meanwhile white males who have been discriminated against should contact the CRE and the EOC to take up their cases at employment tribunals where the Chief Constables can be made to answer for the institutional racism and sexism that they have imposed upon their respective services.”

“The CRE’s Trevor Phillips and the EOC’s Jenny Watson have the opportunity and responsibility of bringing sense and fairness to our police services.”

Ends

Positive action leads to positive results (forcewide) Avon and Somerset press release

http://www.avonandsomerset.police.uk/LocalPages/NewsDetails.aspx?nsid=3564&t=4

2005-11-11T18:24:00.000Z

Race hate prosecutions reach record levels -
but the Crown Prosecution Service still don't even know the race of the perpetrators or victims

The Crown Prosecution Service prosecuted 4,660 defendants for racially aggravated offences between April 1, 2004 and March 31 2005 according to their report published today, a rise of 29 per cent over 2003 - 2004.

The information is contained in their Racist Incident Monitoring Scheme Annual Report 2002-2003 and is the fifth of these reports produced under the requirements of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. In none of the reports does the CPS provide data on the racial profile of victims or perpetrators because they still do not keep such basic records.

What a shambles

Asked last year by civil rights group Liberty and Law for information about the racial identity of perpetrators for current and past years CPS confirmed on 31 March 2004 that it "does not have a database which collates the racial identity of defendants prosecuted for racially aggravated crime".

Progress at last?

Following correspondence with and pressure from Liberty and Law the CPS has at last started to put information about the race of perpetrators and victims in their computerised system. A spokesman told Liberty and Law Journal on 11 November 2005 that they hoped this information would be available next year.

Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup commented: "It is outrageous that the CPS does not provide this information and that Home Office has not insisted that they do so. We need to know who does what to whom and where and how this is changing over time to develop an effective strategy to defeat the scourge of racially motivated crime. The CPS has let us down badly. Parliament and people are being denied information that could easily and quickly be extracted from CPS statistics by a clerk working for just a week. What do we pay these people for?”

2005-10-30T16:21:00.000Z

European Culture wars

They do things differently in France. Here’s Liberation [17 October] quoting the law passed on 23 February laying down the history of France that has to be taught in its schools.

"Les programmes scolaires reconnaissent en particulier le rôle positif de la présence française outre-mer, notamment en Afrique du Nord, et accordent à l'histoire et aux sacrifices des combattants de l'armée française issus de ces territoires la place éminente à laquelle ils ont droit."

A rough translation:

The school syllabus will recognize in particular the positive role of the French presence overseas, in particular in North Africa, and accord to this history and the sacrifices of soldiers of the French Army in these territories an eminent and deserved place.

So, in France history is what the government says it is. Time to re-read 1984.

I came across a reference to this in No Pasaran

2005-10-25T22:51:00.000+01:00

Dorset Fire Authority snubs fire chief’s attack on BNP

Dorset Fire Service has rejected an attempt by its chief fire officer to initiate a programme of action that would have resulted in the dismissal of any officers who were members of the British National Party.

“Current legal advice indicates that it is not yet possible to dismiss an employee for being a member of the BNP, ” the rejected statement lamented.

Authority Members yesterday unanimously voted to withdraw this statement which had also attempted to commit the authority to support legislation to have members of the Fire and Rescue service treated in the same way as the Police.

It is not thought that there is a single member of the BNP in the Dorset Fire Service.

Civil liberties group Liberty and Law had lobbied the Authority against the statement arguing that all officers should be judged by their actions and not by their protected political beliefs.

Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup stated: "It’s not much fun when defending freedom means defending the human rights of BNP members but we all have a responsibility to do this. The alternative is a society run by much more dangerous thought crime commissars.”

Ends
The way it is:

Fire Service’s BNP ban goes up in smoke Daily Echo 25 October 2005

The way it was:

BNP members 'not wanted' by fire service news. telegraph 22 October 2005

2005-10-23T18:47:00.000+01:00

BNP reportage pours oil on troubled Handsworth

The British National Party's[BNP] triumphant headline Race riot erupts in Handsworth had in pride of place a burnt out car with the tag Asian driver was burnt alive in this vehicle.

The ‘on the spot’ BNP correspondent Sharon Ebanks reported "in the worst incident of the night, a taxi cab driven by an Asian was surrounded, then set alight with the Black gang cheering as the driver was consumed by the flames.”

Ms Ebanks the failed BNP parliamentary candidate for Birmingham Erdington was no doubt as a responsible community leader trying to pour oil on troubled waters. Her ‘on the spot’ observations were no doubt confirmed for her by the report in The Independent which said “One report said the dead man had been inside a burning taxi, which had possibly been petrol bombed” and another in the Sunday Telegraph stating “Unconfirmed reports said another man also died when a minicab was set alight.”

The BNP boasts that more people look at its website than that of any other political party in the UK. It no doubt took full advantage of this to publish its take on the events in Handsworth on Saturday.

It will be interesting to see how long Ms Ebanks' report is allowed to remain on the BNP website.

October 25 update

BNP sticks to discredited rumours

The BNP has not only continued to stand by their [23 October] claim that an Asian taxi driver had been burnt to death:

“… in the worst incident of the night, a taxi cab driven by an Asian was surrounded, then set alight with the Black gang cheering as the driver was consumed by the flames.”

but has now developed this with a claim [24 October] that there is a conspiracy by the media to hide this from the public.

“… it appears the media are trying to downplay the death of an Asian taxi driver who was petrol bombed in his car on Saturday night by a black mob and burnt to death. This death of the taxi driver was first reported in the Sunday Mercury newspaper which is the main Birmingham weekend newspaper.“

Checking with the Mercury news desk it transpired that in the heat of the action the paper had reported:

"...Meanwhile the Lozells area was awash with rumours that an Asian taxi driver had died after being turned into a human torch in his car after being surrounded by a baying mob.”

This was modified in the report with the cautionary statement

“ Last night West Midlands Police confirmed there had been one fatality but was unable to shed any light on a possible second."

By Sunday it was quite clear to absolutely everyone that these rumours were false. There was no human torch and no dead taxi driver.

2005-09-26T20:50:00.000+01:00

Misreporting racial crime in London

The media continue to misreport the phenomenon of racially motivated crime. One of the most spectacular recent examples was a two-page report in London’s Evening Standard of 23 November 2004 [Minorities face 36 race crimes a day]. It made the damaging mistake of claiming that London’s ethnic minorities were the sole victims of the race crime recorded by the Metropolitan Police.

The newspaper had considered Metropolitan Police figures recording some 13,116 racial crimes in the previous 12 months. This number did indeed, if crudely divided by 365, work out at 36 incidents a day. The Met figures however, gave no indication of the racial identity of either the victims or the perpetrators.

The Evening Standard simply assumed that all the victims were ethnic minorities.

The facts were available to interpret this police data. In March of 2004 the Metropolitan Police provided Liberty and Law Journal with a breakdown of racist notifiable crime for the financial year 2002/2003, The total racial offences for that period were 13,721. The clear up rate was 23.3%. Victims were recorded as: Indian/Pakistani 33.6%, White 28.9%, African/Caribbean 28.4%, Chinese/Japanese 1.5%, Arabic/Egyptian 2.9% and Not Known 4.7%.

These may still be the most up to date figures publicly available.

Of the suspects 68.5% were White, 16.3% African/Caribbean, 9.6% Indian/Pakistani, 0.5% Chinese/Japanese, Arabic/Egyptian 1.3%, Not Known 3.8%.

In the absence of any more recent information it would have been reasonable for the Evening Standard to apply these percentages to the 13,116 recorded by the Met during the year to November 2004. Readers would then have learned that the propensity for racial violence appeared to be no greater among white people in the capital than among ethnic minorities.

For many years commentators, misled by Commission for Racial Equality and BBC publications, have not understood the dynamic of our multi racial society and so have simply assumed that only whites can be guilty of racial aggression. This has been damaging for race relations and has played into the hands of groups like the BNP and the National Front who have claimed with some justification that the media censors racial attacks against whites.

We should understand that relatively small numbers of bad people of all races attack people because of the colour of their skin. The vast majority of people of whatever colour are sick of them and want them caught and severely punished. We rub along pretty well in London, perhaps better than anywhere else in the world.

2005-09-03T12:55:00.000+01:00

Race watchdog’s race hate reporting code could be ready soon

Following his decision to report Robert Kilroy Silk to the police for a potential breach of the Public Order Act, Commission for Racial Equality chair Trevor Phillips followed this up with a wider ranging initiative.

On 27 January 2004 he press released his intention to draw up a code of conduct for referring material to the police under the incitement to racial hatred provisions of the Public Order Act.

On 1 September 2005 the CRE was able to reveal progress made on this code exclusively to Liberty and Law Journal in answer to its 16 August query following the return from vacation of a key CRE staffer. A spokesperson explained that the “document has been drafted and is currently awaiting approval” although perhaps disappointingly no date for this approval is yet available.

In announcing the scheme just nineteen months earlier CRE Chair Trevor Phillips, said: “I think that the public has every right to expect consistency and transparency in the exercise of my judgement in these matters. I am therefore taking three steps to ensure that my conduct is clear, and that my powers are exercised fairly.First have asked the distinguished lawyer Robin Allen QC to review the way in which the Chair of the CRE intervenes in such cases and to advise me on my legal responsibilities. Second, on receiving Mr Allen's opinion the Commission will draw up a code for my own conduct in these matters, after consultation with our colleagues at the Press Complaints Commission, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Attorney General. Third, I will publish that code, so that everyone who chooses can be guided as to why we at the Commission do what we do.”

CRE plans new code of conduct for referring race hate material to the police

http://www.cre.gov.uk/Default.aspx.LocID-0hgnew011.RefLocID-0hg00900c001002.Lang-EN.htm

2005-08-20T08:29:00.000+01:00

Trevor Phillips loses bogus knighthood

An international campaign led by the BBC, British Council, Guardian/Observer, Daily Mirror, NUT, North Yorkshire Police Authority the South African Sunday Times and Parliament’s Joint Committee On Human Rights to surreptitiously upgrade the title of the ambitious chair of the Commission for Racial Equality from humble OBE to knight has been thwarted by British civil liberties campaigning group Liberty and Law.

Following its investigation it challenged The Guardian, which lost its nerve on 19 August and came clean about their man in Corrections and Clarifications. The campaign looks now to run into the sand.

It is thought that Phillips for whom only a peerage serves any practical purpose is annoyed by the clumsiness of his cheerleaders.

A google search for “Sir Trevor Phillips” now gives 66 results

2005-08-15T09:07:00.000+01:00

Commission for Racial Equality in cover up of its employment records

Just 76 of the 204 staff [37.3%] of the Commission for Racial Equality [CRE] are revealed to be ‘White’ in the latest annual report of the £20million quango. This continues a history of their gross under-representation in the organisation. For over ten years the CRE has failed to adopt ‘targets’ to make itself representative of the broad population it serves, remaining determinedly institutionally racist. 77 of its staff are ‘Black or Black British’, 30 ‘Asian or Asian British’, while only one of its staff is recorded as of ‘Mixed background’.

The CRE’s race and gender record keeping is also unacceptable. Despite its obsessive monitoring the latest annual report does not account for the racial identity of nine [4.4%] of its staff whose sex and grade is however known. It is nonetheless a substantial improvement on its 2001 annual report, which without any explanation failed to account for the race, sex or grade of 39 [18.3%] of its then 213 staff.

Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup stated: “We should have the right to expect that our equal opportunities bodies are competent and practice what they preach. Parliament now needs to look critically at their activities and provide them with appropriate direction. Recommendations and investigations by the CRE cannot be taken seriously until it starts to put its own house in order”

The CRE has revealed that there is “under representation from certain ethnic groups” within its staff but will not voluntarily answer the straightforward question: which ethnic groups and by how much. Such an answer would provide a helpful guide to London employers about the racial profile they should aim for and would enable the CRE to be judged in the same way as the bodies that it investigates.

The CRE revealed minimal information to Liberty and Law Journal [LLJ] when asked on 25 July a straightforward question: The 2003 [Annual] Report also reveals "under-representation from certain ethnic groups" in employment at the CRE. Which are these under-represented groups? How under-represented are each of these groups according to CRE employment figures on which the conclusion of under-representation was reached? Your reply should allow me to see what the shortfall in numbers of each of these ethnic groups is and what their proportion of the total workforce should be.

The answer, which was came on 12 August was evasive. It said: The CRE uses Census 2001 - ethnicity and religion in England and Wales as well as the regional breakdowns to assess representation by ethnic group in our workforce. This information is available on the ONS website for you to compare with the CRE staffing numbers, which includes a breakdown by ethnicity, made available in our annual reports.

LLJ is now forced to use the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act to uncover this basic information that the CRE will not otherwise provide.

Ends

CRE’s three-year review: pages 10,11
http://www.cre.gov.uk/downloads/cre_res_functions_policies_assessment_2005.pdf

CRE Annual Report 2004, see pages 48-50 http://www.cre.gov.uk/downloads/AR04main.pdf

2005-08-12T16:36:00.000+01:00

Green ribbons gimmick no substitute for catching hate criminals

Civil rights group Liberty and Law has condemned the decision by Nottinghamshire police chief Steve Green to ask his officers to wear green ribbons, the traditional colour of Islam, in his bid to show solidarity with Muslims suffering harassment after the London bomb attacks.

Director Gerald Hartup stated: ”The chief constable has let his heart rule his head. His vocation may very well be as a pressure group organiser but his profession is still that of a police officer. He has no business pressurising his officers to make political statements. He should concentrate instead on catching hate crime perpetrators not grandstanding. We would expect ACPO to join with our political representatives in urging him to drop this ill thought out politically correct and counterproductive gimmick.”

In the Chief Constable’s press release he claims that wearing the ribbons is a way of showing “that not everyone is prejudiced or bigoted”.

Mr Hartup added: “Police officers and the public will not appreciate his lack of confidence in the organisation he leads. Serving officers should not expect to have to wear badges and ribbons to prove to the public and to Mr Green that they are absolutely committed to protecting everyone from evil-doers.”

Following the Chief constable’s misguided initiative there will obviously now be two categories of police officer in Nottinghamshire: those who put on the green ribbons and those who do not. What consequences flow from this? Police officers who fail to wear the ribbons may now be thought by sections of the Muslim community to be at the very least unsympathetic to the problems they face and unprepared to make a simple gesture of sympathy and support. If such officers are a substantial number it may even be claimed as illustrating the racism of the police service. How long before a ribbon count and ribbon targets? Police officers may be asked in the street why they are not wearing the ribbon. Their response will be either to say it is a personal matter inviting the conclusion that they are off hand or to engage in what would be a political discussion in which they would need to express their political opposition to such initiatives. Has the Chief constable even considered this?

Not to wear the green ribbon will indicate at the very least a lack of support for the Chief Constable’s initiative and even judgment. This may reasonably be expected to put unacceptable pressure on officers, especially senior officers, to toe the line. Will their careers be blighted by their independence?

Wearing of the ribbons by Nottinghamshire police may damage race relations in another way. They may easily be misunderstood as the politically correct favouring of Muslims compared to non-Muslims when dealing with claims of inter- community crime engendering the very backlash he is so clumsily seeking to oppose.

Ends

Further information: Gerald Hartup tel: 020 7928 7325 fax: 020 7207 3425
email gerald.hartup@btopenworld.com

2005-08-11T01:28:00.000+01:00

Equal Opportunities Commission corrects the record about late publication of the gender make-up of its staff

Following Liberty and Law Journal’s reports of 24 July and 2 August exposing the institutional sexism of the Equal Opportunities Commission [EOC] we have been asked by them to correct the record. The EOC states:

1. Your article suggests we are unable to provide up-to-date information on the gender make-up of our staff – or at least unsure where the public can find it. The EOC is very happy to provide this information, and it is available in the public domain and on our website – your article suggests otherwise.

We reply: The EOC’s annual report was published on 21 July without this information. We requested this information by telephone on 24 July but were not able to get it. We requested information about the gender and racial makeup again on 26 July and again on 29 July. Finally on 1 August the data relating to gender but not race makeup was provided to us by email. This information was used in our report of 2 August.

Unknown to us the EOC eventually published this information [as they confirm on10 August] on their website on 2 August. Clearly the information was not in the public domain until this date. We can agree with the EOC that it became in the public domain some 12 days after we requested it. We reported quite correctly that the EOC believed the information was in the public domain. As it turns out their belief was misplaced although our reporting was accurate.

Our report of 24 July stated: The EOC was unable to provide any up to date figures today but believed that these figures were in the public domain. It is not known at present whether failure to publish these figures in its annual report puts the EOC in breach of the Race Relations Act or the Sex Discrimination Act.

And on 2 August our report stated:
According to figures obtained on 1 August by human rights group Liberty and Law, which monitors the work of Britain’s equality bodies, the Equal Opportunities Commission [EOC] increased the proportion of its male staff last year by over 16%. Now almost one in five [19.3%] of its staff is men.
The data is not carried in its annual report published on 21 July but was provided by the EOC within nine days of a request for it.
2004-2005 Analysis of Equal Opportunities Commission staff by gender
Gender: Female 117,Male 28,Total 145

The EOC also ask us to make the following correction. They state:

2. We are not in violation of the Race Relations Act or the Sex Discrimination Act.

We reply: Liberty and Law Journal did not say that the EOC was in violation of these acts. We wrote: “It is not known at present whether failure to publish these figures in its annual report puts the EOC in breach of the Race Relations Act or the Sex Discrimination Act.”

We are happy to report that the EOC believes that it is not in breach of either of these acts. The EOC, however, does not have a 100% record in its legal observations, most notoriously advising the Labour Party before the 1997 election that all women shortlists were legal.

2005-08-03T15:20:00.000+01:00

BNP’s very own Nuremberg Laws promulgated

In a news story of 1 August Taxpayers financed London bombers the British National Party’s website carries its proposals to counter terrorism. They eerily resonate with the Nuremberg Laws promulgated seventy years ago in Hitler’s Germany.

Jews of course were the internal enemies of the National Socialists in 1935 and in a Supplementary Decree of November 14 1935 they were to be dismissed from all public offices.

Muslims now appear to fulfil this role for our domestic national socialists having partially replaced Jews in their pantheon of hate. Here is what they have to say.

“..the BNP's proposals to safeguard Britain from further terrorist attack include the banning of any further immigration from Pakistan and similar Islamic countries, the removal of Muslims from sensitive employment (such as in water treatment plants and chemistry and biology laboratories in universities), and the confiscation of the passports of all male Muslims living in Britain between the ages of 15 - 40 in order to stop them travelling to religious indoctrination schools and terrorist training camps in Islamic countries, as an estimated 3,000 have already done.”

Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup commented: “The mainstream media generally content themselves with condemning the BNP as “racist” without making clear what they actually stand for. We need to inform the electorate of exactly how nasty they are.”

Notes

Taxpayers financed London bombers
http://www.bnp.org.uk/news_detail.php?newsId=431

Liberty and Law defends the civil rights of members of the BNP including the right not to be dismissed from employment on the grounds of their membership of the party. It advocates intense political opposition to its policies.

2005-08-02T11:14:00.000+01:00

Equal Opportunities Commission’s jobs for the boys

According to figures obtained on 1 August by human rights group Liberty and Law, which monitors the work of Britain’s equality bodies, the Equal Opportunities Commission [EOC] increased the proportion of its male staff last year by over 16%. Now almost one in five [19.3%] of its staff is men.

The data is not carried in its annual report published on 21 July but was provided by the EOC within nine days of a request for it.

2004-2005 Analysis of Equal Opportunities Commission staff by gender
Gender: Female 117,Male 28,Total 145

The EOC’s 2003/2004 Annual Report, unfortunately no longer on the EOC’s website, revealed that male representation had dropped to what Liberty and Law believes to be a historic low of 16.4%.

Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup stated: “After the disastrous figures posted in 2004 EOC commissioners are thought to be delighted with this improvement demonstrating a shift from the institutional sexism that has plagued their organisation since its inception. Unfortunately their concern only comes after their closure date has been announced. We will, however, learn from their failure.”

End
Note to editors:
The EOC’s Annual Report can be found on http://www.eoc.org.uk/EOCeng/EOCcs/AboutEOC/annual_report_2004_05.pdf

2005-07-30T14:24:00.000+01:00

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown apologises for Rod Liddle smear

In her Evening Standard column of 25 July anti-racist campaigner Yasmin Alibhai-Brown claimed that Rod Liddle “ on Radio 4’s Start the Week, complained bitterly that too many middle-class Asian women have infiltrated the media (we are everywhere apparently).”

She now realises, having listened again to the Radio 4 programme that this was an appalling misrepresentation of what Mr Liddle had to say. The text of the conversation of Liddle with Andrew Marr follows.

Rod Liddle: What the corporation seems to me to have done and you don’t blame them for this because the intent is good – is you set up units in order to impose diversity on the great massive behemoth of an organisation - and what happens in the end is that instead you get less diversity in a way and what comes through, particularly at the BBC, you have perhaps an overrepresentation of middle class Asian women because they do their jobs very well etcetera but you have a shortage of African Caribbean men. You particularly have a shortage of working class African Caribbean men and so you have this sort of edifice imposed upon the BBC, which the BBC imposes upon itself which actually militates against diversity…

Andrew Marr: and also by the way an extraordinary lack of Chinese people almost everywhere in public life …

Rod Liddle …a total lack of Chinese people

Ms Alibhai-Brown linked Rod Liddle with Jeremy Clarkson in the story insultingly entitled “A pair of charmers who prefer people like them” and Liddle’s picture appeared with the subheading Liddle: media infiltration.

There is no direct evidence, or indeed any evidence at all, that Ms Alibhai-Brown has actually apologised, but what the hell, let's join Yasmin in the touchy feely New Journalism.

2005-07-24T12:57:00.000+01:00

Still no jobs for the boys at Equal Opportunities Commission?

The Equal Opportunities Commission's [EOC] 2004-2005 annual report released to the House of Commons on 21 July excludes information about the sex or race of its staff.

Male representation at the EOC last year had fallen to a new low of 16.4% of its total staff of 152 as revealed in its 2003=2004 annual report.

The EOC was unable to provide any up to date figures today but believed that these figures were in the public domain. It is not known at present whether failure to publish these figures in its annual report puts the EOC in breach of the Race Relations Act or the Sex Discrimination Act.

The EOC describes itself as “the leading agency set up to tackle sex discrimination” and that “it is committed to challenging discrimination in all its forms and at all levels of society”.

Civil rights group Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup contests this view. He claims the £9.5million quango [£8.1million 2003-2004] has refused to commit itself to a target to overcome the institutional sexism that has characterised it since its inception.

Mr Hartup said: “How can business and human resources professionals take seriously a body whose own arrangements put it at the bottom of the equal opportunities league? The EOC unfortunately illustrates perfectly the problem it purports to solve.”

Ends

Note to editors

EOC Annual Report 2003-2004 pp 20,21 This appears to be the best link available

http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:MPxY0iq4uGEJ:www.eoc.org.uk/cseng/abouteoc/annualreport2004.pdf+EOC+Annual+Report+2003-2004&hl=en

EOC Annual Report 2004-2005

http://www.eoc.org.uk/EOCeng/EOCcs/AboutEOC/annual_report_2004_05.pdf

2005-07-19T18:18:00.000+01:00

Circulating circulation disinformation

Daily Telegraph readers who took their Maths ‘O’ level some time ago will gain confidence from the paper’s front page report [19 July] on its battle with The Times for circulation supremacy. A bar chart shows their paper represented by a 2.7cm column compared to a derisory 1.1cm for The Times. This is achieved by the classic statistical trick of not starting sales from zero but from 500,000.

The text does point out that circulation of The Times is 683,495 compared to the Telegraph’s 910,743. The Times circulation is therefore 75% of that of the Daily Telegraph while the Telegraph chart manages to make it look like just 41%.

As they say: “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

2005-07-05T12:02:00.000+01:00

How the BBC responds to fucking criticism

According to the Daily Star the BBC was forced to apologise for the use of the word ‘fucking’ by Madonna and other Live 8 stars at the London venue before the 9pm watershed after which swearing is allowed. The ‘apology’ is a minor classic of its kind. Here it is with a translation of what it really means.

“We do apologise if anyone was offended. What a drag these people are, but let’s go through the motions anyway. All the artists were told before they went on stage that it was live and to be mindful of their language. We covered ourselves, what more do these idiots expect us to do? Obviously the excitement and occasion got to people, but how can you tell Madonna off? For Christ’s sake these people are big, big names. We’re not going to mess with them. We received just over 350 complaints about swearing. Considering the billions watching that is not much. Just the regular oddballs, see. No one else gave a toss. To put it in context if EastEnders [a British soap] starts five minutes late we get over 500 complaints. Now do you understand how unrepresentative these jokers are. People have the right to complain but this is a live event and there is not much we can do. I suppose we have to say this but let’s make it absolutely clear that we are not going to do anything as a result of their whingeing. ”

The BBC enjoys a monopoly and anyone who watches television is compelled to pay a non income related poll tax to fund its operation.

2005-06-02T11:58:00.000+01:00

Leylandii disputes to grow unintended consequences

Householders upset by the fees to be charged by local authorities for enforcing the regulations relating to the height of these fast growing trees may not have considered an even greater hidden cost involved in exercising their new rights.

What will be recorded as a neighbour dispute will have to be revealed when either of the householders wishes to sell his property. Legal action or the threat of it may be more expensive than both neighbours ever dreamed. Bad neighbours reduce the value of properties rather more than a scruffy kitchen. Indeed they may make them unsaleable.

The moral must be, if not “Love thy neighbour as thyself” at least “Do unto him only that which you would have done to you”.

2005-05-30T12:34:00.000+01:00

Standards Board investigates bid to sack BNP care worker

Following civil liberties group Liberty and Law reporting a senior Leeds councillor to the Standards Board for England over a campaign to dismiss a BNP care worker from her job because of her party affiliation the watchdog has confirmed [19 April] that it is holding an investigation under Section 58 of the Local Government Act 2000 by referring it to an Ethical Standards Officer.

Liberty and Law had asked the Board to investigate whether Councillor Keith Wakefield the leader of the Labour group failed in his duty to:(a) promote equality by not discriminating unlawfully against any person;(b) treat others with respect; and(c) not do anything which compromises or which is likely to compromise the impartiality of those who work for, or on behalf of, the authority as required by the Board’s code of practice.

Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup explained: “The BNP is an extremely unpleasant political party whose views are rejected by the vast majority of British people. It is however a lawful political party which people are entitled to join, stand for in elections and to vote for under our system of democracy. It is appropriate to condemn their policies and their actions and to challenge these as forcefully as necessary to ensure they remain marginal to British political life.

“BNP supporters however have the same rights to protection from harassment as the most upstanding and meritorious citizens amongst us. Among these rights are the same rights to employment as everyone else in the absence of any evidence that they present a threat to the people they work with or work for. To attempt remove those rights in the absence of a clear and present danger is an affront to freedom both theirs and ours.”

The case involves care worker, Mrs Julie Day who works for a company providing community care to Leeds City Council. Mrs Day is a BNP activist who is standing for election in the Leeds West constituency. As a result of complaints about her employment with Allied Healthcare, the parent company of Yorkshire Careline, which provides services for Leeds City Council, a special audit of her work was carried out. Leeds Council's executive board member for social services Cllr Peter Harrand told the Yorkshire Post Today: ”As we requested, Allied Healthcare sent out questionnaires to all the service users and they are content with the service they are receiving. There have been no complaints - everybody is satisfied with the service they have received from this lady. Until there is anything to the contrary, things will continue as they are. On that basis, we will not be taking any further action."

There appears to have been no justification whatsoever for the extraordinary audit of Mrs Day’s work other than her association with the British National Party. Mrs Day claims to have been doing this work and similar work for sixteen years. However, even after the audit found a positive response to the work of this woman Councillor Keith Wakefield the leader of the Labour Party opposition group is quoted in Yorkshire Post Today [electronic version 18 March] stating, "I am very disappointed, indeed angry that the ruling administration does not appear to have taken this issue very seriously. As I have said before, I have grave concerns that someone with such extreme political views is working with some of the most vulnerable members of society. Surely, if the individual concerned is not in the direct employment of the council, discussions could have been held with the agency to find her a less frontline role. I will be raising this matter with the leader of the council as a matter of urgency."

Liberty and Law believes that Cllr Wakefield’s intervention could possibly allow Mrs Day’s employer to sack her on grounds similar to that used to sack Bradford BNP councillor Arthur Redfearn who was legally sacked by West Yorkshire Transport Services on health and safety grounds. The company argued successfully that it feared there might be attacks on its buses or on Cllr Redfearn himself once the association with the far-right party was known.

In an earlier report [10 May Yorkshire Post Today electronic version] Cllr Wakefield is reported as “shocked that Mrs Day was working on a Leeds City Council contract and demanded every pressure was put on the company to end her employment.” He is quoted in the article as saying, "I have very strong reservations about this. If she's working in the care area with her political views I would want council officers to look at the contract to see if there is something we can do to make sure people like this are not employed. I find it staggering she's working in care with her political views. I want every pressure to be put on this company as it is totally inappropriate that someone responsible for care in the community should employ someone who has those kind of views towards different races and ethnic groups."

Liberty and Law believes Cllr Wakefield’s continued intervention in her employment with the publicity that has resulted puts Mrs Day’s continued employment and her personal safety at risk and that his action may constitute unlawful harassment of this woman.

The Standards Board is satisfied that the allegation falls within its legal jurisdiction and considers the matter should be investigated. This does not mean that the allegation is necessarily true. The Board aims to complete 90% of investigations withing six months.

Ends

Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup prevented the use of a colour bar in the appointment of a curator at Bristol art gallery Arnolfini in 2004, advising the Commission for Racial Equality on the correct application of the law. The Arnolfini experience helped the CRE revise its advice to companies contained in its magazine Connexions.·

He initiated the prosecution of Cheltenham racist Bill Galbraith in 1990 over his harassment of black parliamentary candidate John [subsequently Lord] Taylor.·

The website www.libertyandlawjournal.blogspot.com is a vital resource for journalists dealing with race relations in the United Kingdom.
Yorkshire Post Today linkshttp://www.ypn.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=55&ArticleID=967084 http://www.ypn.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=55&ArticleID=974980

www.standardsboard.co.uk

2005-04-19T12:29:00.001+01:00

Trevor Phillips snubs gypsies and travellers

The Commission for Racial Equality has junked its campaign with the Gypsy Council to make political parties and the media use capital G and capital T when writing about gypsies and travellers. Its chair Trevor Phillips is revealed as himself indifferent to breaching the CRE’s own guidelines when writing for the media or quoted in major interviews and refuses to even advise police services and the Labour Party when they ignore CRE guidelines.

The Gypsy Council states: “The Gypsy people are a recognised ethnic group and when writing about us, please show us the same respect as other ethnic and racial groups by spelling our name with a capital not a small g.”

The CRE’s website nominally backs this campaign. In its ‘guidance’ it hectors journalists with the ‘do as I say not do as I do’ admonition: Listen to the people you are writing about
and continues: “This is particularly important when it comes to the terms and language you use. … The terms Traveller(s), Gypsy or Irish Traveller should be used with initial capital letters.”

But in The Observer of 28 March Mr Phillips’ own article used a lower case to refer to travellers and in the course of an extensive interview with The Times on 12 April he was quoted using a lower case g and t.

The CRE refused to state whether the politically incorrect use in The Observer was originated by Mr Phillips or the result of an editorial decision by the newspaper but did insist they were too busy to get a correction published by its Reader’s Editor.

In his major Times interview of 12 April Mr Phillips refers to ‘gypsies’ and ‘travellers’ despite being put on alert by Liberty and Law about the correct use of language and the presence of his press officer Colleen Harris. The CRE confirmed that they would not be asking The Times to make any correction on this occasion either.

Trevor Phillips’ use of language unacceptable to the Gypsy Council mirrors the Labour Party’s election website that contains releases quoting Tony Blair, John Prescott and Margaret Beckett doing exactly the same. Informed by Liberty and Law of its offensiveness to the Gypsy Council and its flouting of CRE guidelines the Labour Party has nevertheless since 21 March stuck to its use of ‘gypsy’ and ‘traveller’ taking encouragement from the CRE chair’s own use of the language.

The CRE’s dismissal of the Gypsy Council’s concerns was illustrated by their point blank refusal to even telephone Cambridgeshire Police over this Authority’s use of the ‘institutionally racist’ lower case in its press release POLICE REACH OUT TO TRAVELLERS. The CRE claimed to lack the resources even for this simple task.

It was left to civil liberties group Liberty and Law to ensure that they conformed to the politically correct model by amending the press release and promising henceforth to use always the upper case G and T.

Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup commented: “One can see why Trevor Phillips and the CRE can’t make time for a couple of phone calls. They have different priorities. They have just advertised for a new international public relations officer and a head of international communications to promote Mr Phillips on a global scale. Money is bound to be tight for domestic work. The best idea for gypsies and travellers might be to make a call from abroad or even lobby him in Brussels or Strasbourg. ”

Mr Hartup added: “Of course the campaign is misguided. Liberty and Law like Trevor Phillips, the Labour Party, most journalists and the police [before they are corrected] uses the lower case to describe gypsies and travellers. Liberty and Law does so however not out of ignorance or lack of respect. It demands the same rights for people adopting these lifestyles as for everyone else but rejects the use of coercive language designed to consolidate the creation of bogus racially privileged groups. Language is being used [sometimes] by the CRE to attempt to dictate the terms of political debate. Tony Blair, John Prescott and Margaret Beckett may have instinctively understood this and be challenging political correctness. It could of course be simple ignorance or bigotry on their part. There can now be no excuse for the media or politicians. It is not a question of reaching for the style guide. It is a question of conforming with the demands of the language police or taking them on. It would be helpful to know where the Labour Party and the other parties stand on this issue.”

Ends
Further information Gerald Hartup
Liberty and Law
Unit 384, 78 Marylebone High Street, London W1U 5APTel: 020 7928 7325 Fax: 020 7207 3425 gerald.hartup@btopenworld.com

Gypsy Council http://www.thegypsycouncil.org/ under the heading RespectCommission for Racial Equality Guidance for Journalists http://www.cre.gov.uk/media/guidetj.htmlTony Blair highlights the Tories' opportunistic campaign 21 March 2005
http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:kLnFbHYhr1cJ:www.labour.org.uk/ac2004news%3Fux_news_id%3Dtbcamp+Tony+Blair+highlights+the+Tories%27+opportunistic+campaign+&hl=en
Beckett attacks "opportunistic Howard" 21 March 2005
http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:g8VaD7AhpygJ:www.labour.org.uk/ac2004news%3Fux_news_id%3Dopportunistichoward+Beckett+attacks+%22opportunistic+Howard%22+&hl=en

Tony Blair is a man of judgment. Michael Howard is an opportunist http://www.labour.org.uk/index.php?id=news2005&ux_news%5Bid%5D=prescott35years&cHash=f607e5c456

It's bad - but real solutions can be found, Trevor Phillips, Observer Sunday March 27, 2005 http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1446437,00.html
Parties warned against inflaming race tension, The Times 12 April, Tom Baldwin, Philip Webster and Sam Coates
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,171-1565686,00.html

2005-03-29T18:52:00.000+01:00

What rights should the BNP possess in a free society?

A Sunday Telegraph scoop [27 March 2004] revealed the name and location of the company that prints the British National Party’s newspaper The Voice of Freedom. The reporting raises fundamental issues about the nature of political freedom tentatively addressed at the conclusion of this article.

The company turns out to be Satellite Graphics Ltd in Barking, Essex, a subsidiary of Asharq Al-Aswat Ltd whose parent company is the Saudi Research and Publishing Company.
The article argued that given the BNP’s notorious hostility towards Islam its use of such a company ‘will stun even its own members’ and ‘is evidence of the BNP’s hypocrisy’. This is reflected in the article’s headline: Guess who prints the BNP’s ‘anti-Muslim’ newspaper…a firm owned by Muslims

The article also suggests that Satellite Graphics’ behaviour is strange given that it specialises in printing Arab, Muslim and Asian newspapers. Newspapers seen on display at the company’s plant included The Sikh Times, The Daily Nation, a daily Urdu newspaper and Asharq Al-Awsat, a London based Arabic newspaper.

A company manager told the undercover reporter: “We do print the Voice of Freedom. They run 16 pages. Most of the publications we do are Asian or Arabic, but we can do anything for you.”

The article reported the hostility shown to Islam by the BNP reminding readers of exposés of the BNP on television and the arrests and criminal convictions of some of its key members. It also gave a condensed summary of the oppressive nature of the Saudi regime founded on Wahhabi Islam, pointing out that its followers have been key recruits for Osama bin Laden.
Seeking to maximise the impact of its story it sought comment from the BNP, Asharq Al-Awsat and the Saudi embassy. Only the BNP replied: “If you would like to go and get a wholly owned British firm that would print our newspaper, fair enough. Islam is not compatible with Western Christian values in Britain but it is not their printing works that are dangerous to our way of life, it is the other things they do.”

What will the result of this article be? What if anything was its intended result? Was it just a very good story or was the Sunday Telegraph engaging in campaigning journalism? One may now assume that intense pressure will be put upon the printing company to end its contract with the BNP through the Saudi embassy as well as pressure by the company’s other horrified customers. It would be reasonable to bet that such pressure will quickly be successful. If not it can be expected that there will be demonstrations outside the print company demanding that The Voice of Freedom should not be produced.

In short it looks as if the article will precipitate the BNP having to find another printer soon.
Pressure has already been successful in denying the BNP a bank account in the UK and has ensured that their website can only be hosted in the USA although its substantial content has not brought about any prosecutions under hate crime legislation.

The article was also illustrated by a picture of a demonstration whose centrepiece was a banner that proclaimed “Shut down all Mosques in Britain”. This was a rally by the National Front, now the BNP’s mortal enemy. The strap line immediately beneath the picture, however, read “Members of the British National Party are hostile to Islam yet the party’s newspaper is printed by Satellite Graphics Ltd a company staffed entirely by Muslims”. This gave the clear impression that it was a BNP demo and that their policy was to demand the closure of all mosques. The BNP indignantly deny this on their website and state that they are reporting the paper to the Press Complaints Commission.

The other main picture used to illustrate the article consists of a Voice of Freedom front page with the headline “Why we must beware of Islam”. This appears oddly similar in its approach to that of a series of articles by Will Cummins published by the Sunday Telegraph in 2004 for which its editor Dominic Lawson drew the wrath of Muslims and for which his sacking was demanded [unsuccessfully] by them.

In a pretty desperate piece of perhaps calculated sycophancy, nonetheless expressing government policy, the BNP defends its association with the Saudis, ignoring its espousal of the most extreme form of Islam. “The BNP is mature enough to be able to differentiate between moderate Islam and Islamic fundamentalism. We respect and are prepared to work with moderate Muslims but we are totally opposed to Islamic fundamentalism. Saudi Arabia is a long established trading partner of the UK government, the European Union and the US. Saudi Arabia is viewed by these countries and institutions as a vital ally in the War Against Terror. We are not against Islam or Muslims but only against the minority of fundamentalist Islamists that terrorise us and moderate Muslims alike.”

The politically important question to be considered is what is the attitude of the Sunday Telegraph to the BNP. Does it believe that the BNP should be denied by public pressure the right to print its material? Does it believe that the BNP has the right to publish on the Internet? Does it believe that the BNP has the right to have a bank account in the UK? Does it believe that BNP members should be sacked from their jobs? Does it believe that the BNP should be banned, full stop?

These are questions that concern us all not just the Sunday Telegraph? What should our attitude be? Where do the main political parties stand? Who would want to take the BNP’s shilling as a printer, bank or web-hosting organisation? Who given the choice would wish to employ a member of the BNP? Who would wish to legally represent them?

Liberty and Law has drawn a line at BNP members being sacked from their jobs for their membership of this party. It explains why it has done so elsewhere on this site. Labour leader reported to Standards Board over bid to sack BNP care worker Sunday, March 20, 2005.

Guess who prints the BNP's 'anti-muslim' newspaper...a firm ownedby Muslims, 27 March 2005
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/03/27/nbnp27.xml

Surviving in a repressive state, 27 March 2005 http://www.bnp.org.uk/news_detail.php?newsId=246

2005-03-24T13:21:00.000Z

Blair and Beckett campaign material lacks respect for Gypsies

In two of its latest election press releases Tony Blair and Margaret Beckett have shown an alleged lack of respect to gypsies by using the lower case “gypsies” to refer to them despite the pleas of the Gypsy Council and the Commission for Racial Equality’s guidance “Listen to the people you are writing about”.

The Gypsy Council states: “The Gypsy people are a recognised ethnic group and when writing about us, please show us the same respect as other ethnic and racial groups by spelling our name with a capital not a small g.”

The CRE states: “The terms Traveller(s), Gypsy or Irish Traveller should be used with initial capital letters.”

Both press releases were put out on Monday 21 March. After being informed of their perceived offensiveness the next day by civil liberties group Liberty and Law the Labour Party website has not corrected the language used.

Labour’s use of the terminology came in two attacks on Conservative party leader Michael Howard for raising the issue of gypsies in his campaign in what they argued was an opportunistic manner.

Tony Blair and Margaret Beckett are not alone in their continued use of the lower case. Hansard ignores the CRE advice in its reports as does the Press Association and newspapers such as the Daily Mirror, Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph. The Guardian and Observer consistently use the upper case. The Independent uses an upper case for gypsies and a lower case for travellers, as do the Liberal Democrats.

Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup commented: “This is not just a linguistic spat. Language is used to dictate the terms of political debate. The otherwise perfectly reasonable use of upper case bolsters the maintenance of racial divisiveness. The continued use by mainstream politicians and journalists of the lower case helps to limit this development in an already polarised society of fragmenting ‘communities’. Tony Blair and Margaret Beckett may have instinctively understood this but political correctness demands that they fall in line with the language police. How long before everyone is compelled to do so?“

Ends

Gypsy Council http://www.thegypsycouncil.org/ under Respect

Commission for Racial Equality Guidance for Journalists http://www.cre.gov.uk/media/guidetj.html

Tony Blair highlights the Tories' opportunistic campaign 21 March 2005
http://www.labour.org.uk/ac2004news?ux_news_id=tbcamp
Beckett attacks "opportunistic Howard" 21 March 2005
http://www.labour.org.uk/ac2004news?ux_news_id=opportunistichoward

Note to editors:
The website http://www.libertyandlawjournal.blogspot.com/ is a vital resource for journalists dealing with race relations in the United Kingdom. This material can also be found on http://www.libertyandlaw.co.uk/

2005-03-22T16:30:00.000Z

School exclusions: the real story and the hidden agenda

Gerald Hartup

The Daily Telegraph ran a story, Some schools ‘institutionally racist’ [21 March 2005], reporting yet another government funded account revealing black Caribbean pupils excluded from schools at over three times the rate of white pupils; a hardy misleading perennial from the race relations boys.

The report could have revealed white students are respectively six times, and four times more likely to be excluded than Chinese and Indian youngsters, twice as likely as Bangladeshis, 50% more than Pakistani pupils and equally as likely as Black Africans.

It could have shown that black Caribbean youngsters were six times more likely to be excluded than Bangladeshis, twelve times more likely than Indian pupils and a whopping 18 times more likely than Chinese. But the comparison had to be made with white students and white students only because otherwise grave doubts would inevitably be raised about the very existence of ‘institutional racism’; a notion the report was clearly designed to buttress.

The study Minority ethnic exclusions and the Race Relations [Amendment] Act 2000, despite its title, concentrated entirely on black exclusions ignoring the comparatively favourable experience of other minorities. This let it avoid a fact clearly unpalatable to the government and the race relations industry that all our other main ethnic minorities have a better exclusion record than white pupils and that if institutional racism exists whites are victims too.

The academics involved in the research could not ignore these inconvenient facts entirely but did manage to ward them off until page 35 of their main report and keep them out of the six page summary that busy journalists could be expected to read.

Should white parents be worried about the ‘institutional racism’ that the data reveals? Of course not. It merely reflects the bad behaviour of a tiny minority of white children [12 per thousand] compared to an even tinier minority of ethnic minority children. Black Caribbean parents whose children have an exclusion rate of 37 per thousand should take a similar view. Incidentally, Black African children at 12 per thousand do no worse than white children. Behaviour is the problem.

Black parents should not be conned by the politically correct into making schools a discipline and so learning free area. It is their children who disproportionately suffer the consequences of racially obsessed educational researchers and activists. They should understand that the politicians responsible for enforcing their theories, whether black or white, always get their children into good schools.

All voters however should be concerned with the discriminatory genesis of this research study. According to its authors the Race Relations Amendment Act [2000] places “duties on organisations as from April 2002, to examine their practice and consider adjusting them if they had negative effects on minority ethnic groups.” In fact the Act itself is not racially discriminatory and whites are theoretically protected by it too but the authors’ understanding of the Act describes accurately the approach taken to it by them, by LEAs and by the government. Any ‘negative effects’ on whites can be safely ignored. After all who will dare protest?

If they were genuinely to take the concept of ‘institutional racism’ of schools seriously the authors would be recommending urgent action to allow white pupils to perform as well as, say, Indian youngsters. If they were successful total permanent exclusions of 9,270 in England and Wales of which white children make up 6,880 could be cut to just 4,110. But would that approach win any contracts? Would that approach fit in with the ideology enforced on teachers by our political commissars?

gerald.hartup@btopenworld.com

Some schools ‘institutionally racist’ Daily Telegraph, 21 March 2005 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/03/21/nrace21.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/03/21/ixportal.html

Minority ethnic exclusions and the Race Relations [Amendment] Act 2000, February 2005 Brief No: RB616 http://www.dfes.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/RB616.pdf

Minority ethnic exclusions and the Race Relations [Amendment] Act 2000, February 2005 Report No: RB616 http://www.dfes.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/RR616.pdf

Number of Permanent Exclusions by Ethnic Group 2002/03
By Ethnic Group, Number of exclusions, % of the ethnic group

White 6,880 0.12, White British 6,690 0.12, Irish 30 0.1,
Traveller of Irish heritage 20 , 0.51, Gypsy/Roma 20 0.36, Any other White background 130 0.09, Mixed 380 0.22, White and Black Caribbean 180 0.29, White and Black African 40 0.26, White and Asian 40 0.11, Any other Mixed background 120 0.2, Asian 250 0.06, Indian 50 0.03, Pakistani 130 0.08, Bangladeshi 40 0.06, Any other Asian background 20 0.04, Black 590 0.25,
Black Caribbean 360 0.37, Black African 130 0.12, Any other Black background 90 0.32,
Chinese 0.02, Any other ethnic group 70 0.12, Unclassified 1110, All pupils 9270 0.13

Source: Table 4.1 Minority ethnic exclusions and the Race Relations [Amendment] Act 2000, Report No: RB616

2005-03-20T13:18:00.000Z

Labour leader reported to Standards Board over bid to sack BNP care worker

Civil liberties group Liberty and Law has reported a senior Leeds councillor to the Standards Board for England over a campaign to dismiss a BNP care worker from her job because of her party affiliation.

Liberty and Law has asked the Board to investigate whether the Councillor Keith Wakefield the leader of the Labour group has failed in his duty to:

(a) promote equality by not discriminating unlawfully against any person;(b) treat others with respect; and(c) not do anything which compromises or which is likely to compromise the impartiality of those who work for, or on behalf of, the authority.

as required by the Board’s code of practice.

Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup explained :“The BNP is an extremely unpleasant political party whose views are rejected by the vast majority of British people. It is however a lawful political party which people are entitled to join, stand for in elections and to vote for under our system of democracy. It is appropriate to condemn their policies and their actions and to challenge these as forcefully as necessary to ensure they remain marginal to British political life.

“BNP supporters however have the same rights to protection from harassment as the most upstanding and meritorious citizens amongst us. Among these rights are the same rights to employment as everyone else in the absence of any evidence that they present a threat to the people they work with or work for. To attempt remove those rights in the absence of a clear and present danger is an affront to freedom both theirs and ours.”

The case involves care worker, Mrs Julie Day who works for a company providing community care to Leeds City Council. Mrs Day is a BNP activist who is standing for election in the Leeds West constituency.

As a result of complaints about her employment with Allied Healthcare, the parent company of Yorkshire Careline, which provides services for Leeds City Council, a special audit of her work was carried out. Leeds Council's executive board member for social services Cllr Peter Harrand told the Yorkshire Post Today: ”As we requested, Allied Healthcare sent out questionnaires to all the service users and they are content with the service they are receiving. There have been no complaints - everybody is satisfied with the service they have received from this lady. Until there is anything to the contrary, things will continue as they are. On that basis, we will not be taking any further action."

There appears to have been no justification whatsoever for the extraordinary audit of Mrs Day’s work other than her association with the British National Party. Mrs Day claims to have been doing this work and similar work for sixteen years.

However, even after the audit found a positive response to the work of this woman Councillor Keith Wakefield the leader of the Labour Party opposition group is quoted in Yorkshire Post Today [electronic version 18 March] stating, "I am very disappointed, indeed angry that the ruling administration does not appear to have taken this issue very seriously. As I have said before, I have grave concerns that someone with such extreme political views is working with some of the most vulnerable members of society. Surely, if the individual concerned is not in the direct employment of the council, discussions could have been held with the agency to find her a less frontline role. I will be raising this matter with the leader of the council as a matter of urgency."

Liberty and Law believes that Cllr Wakefield’s intervention could possibly allow Mrs Day’s employer to sack her on grounds similar to that used to sack Bradford BNP councillor Arthur Redfearn who was legally sacked by West Yorkshire Transport Services on health and safety grounds. The company argued successfully that it feared there might be attacks on its buses or on Cllr Redfearn himself once the association with the far-right party was known.

In an earlier report 10 May Yorkshire Post Today [electronic version] Cllr Wakefield is reported as “shocked that Mrs Day was working on a Leeds City Council contract and demanded every pressure was put on the company to end her employment.” He is quoted in the article as saying, "I have very strong reservations about this. If she's working in the care area with her political views I would want council officers to look at the contract to see if there is something we can do to make sure people like this are not employed. I find it staggering she's working in care with her political views. I want every pressure to be put on this company as it is totally inappropriate that someone responsible for care in the community should employ someone who has those kind of views towards different races and ethnic groups."

Liberty and Law believes Cllr Wakefield’s continued intervention in her employment with the publicity that has resulted puts Mrs Day’s continued employment and her personal safety at risk and that his action may constitute unlawful harassment of this woman.

Ends

· Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup prevented the use of a colour bar in the appointment of a curator at Bristol art gallery Arnolfini in 2004, advising the Commission for Racial Equality on the correct application of the law. The Arnolfini experience helped the CRE revise its advice to companies contained in the current edition of its magazine Connexions.
· He initiated the prosecution of Cheltenham racist Bill Galbraith in 1990 over his harassment of black parliamentary candidate John [subsequently Lord] Taylor.
· The website www.libertyandlawjournal.blogspot.com is a vital resource for journalists dealing with race relations in the United Kingdom. This material can also be found on www.libertyandlaw.co.uk

Yorkshire Post Today links

http://www.ypn.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=55&ArticleID=967084

http://www.ypn.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=55&ArticleID=974980

2005-03-15T12:12:00.000Z

Operation Black Vote’s colour bar demand for Brent South condemned by civil liberties group

Operation Black Vote’s [OBV] call for the Labour Party to introduce a hybrid Black and Minority Ethnic [BME] and women shortlist at the forthcoming election in Brent South has been roundly condemned by civil liberties group Liberty and Law as a disgraceful attempt to introduce the colour bar into British politics.
OBV’s demand comes with the announcement of Brent South MP and cabinet minister Paul Boateng’s proposed move to South Africa after the general election as Britain’s ambassador.
Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup said: “When Paul Boateng was first elected in 1987 he memorably declared:’Today Brent South. Tomorrow Soweto.’ If OBV have their way history will be reversed with a colour bar introduced to Brent after its dismantling in Soweto.”
Liberty and Law has also criticised Commission for Racial Equality chair Trevor Phillips for his interference in the recent selection process of the Labour candidate for West Ham during which he gave his support for the creation of all black shortlists.
Liberty and Law argues that the action of groups like OBV and the CRE give aid and comfort to the British National Party and is absolutely counter productive to the real interests of Britain’s ethnic minorities.
Liberty and Law condemns the encouragement of communitarianism by self-interested unrepresentative groups which politicians appear frightened to confront but ready to appease.
Liberty and Law will seek the support of Paul Boateng to reject racial selection of his parliamentary successor and ensure that all citizens continue to have the right to compete for every parliamentary seat in the country whatever their colour.
Liberty and Law is also contacting Mayor Livingstone’s office to ask him to make clear his opposition to this latest demand by OBV and for him to explain to them that Londoners will not stand for the imposition of a colour bar.
Ends
Further information: Gerald Hartup
Liberty and Law, Unit 384, 78 Marylebone High Street,
London W1U 5AP Tel: 020 7928 7325 Fax: 020 7207 3425 gerald.hartup@btopenworld.com
http://www.libertyandlaw.co.uk/ http://www.libertyandlawjounal.blogspot.com/

2005-03-08T18:09:00.000Z

CRE still confused and confusing over colour bar

In the current issue of its magazine Connexions the Commission for Racial Equality [CRE] uses the case of an attempted colour bar at Bristol’s Arnolfini Gallery to illustrate the problems of engaging in positive discrimination. [Winter 2004/2005 Take care when being positive]

The CRE’s head of legal policy explains: “In Spring 2004, the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol advertised a fellowship for a Senior Curator. The post was open only to Black, Asian and Caribbean applicants, and this triggered hostile coverage in some media. It also resulted in complaints to the CRE, even though the advertisement made it clear that the Gallery was taking positive action to tackle the under-representation of these groups among senior curators. On the CRE’s advice, the Gallery withdrew the advertisement and reconsidered the post.”

The CRE told Liberty and Law on 20 July that Arnolfini “has given a signed undertaking to comply with the advertising provisions of the Race Relations Act and have also indicated their intention to review the programme for trainee curators.”

Initially the CRE gave a mistaken interpretation of the law to the media. A spokesman said the advertisement did not appear to breach guidelines set out in the Race Relations Act and that “There are exceptions in the Act for the training and apprenticeship opportunities and I believe that is what the post is offering.”

Fortunately Arnolfini agreed to freeze the position after Liberty and Law contacted them pending a resolution of its complaint to the CRE. This gave the CRE time to correct their original misunderstanding of the law.

The Arnolfini case illustrates two main problems relating to the CRE’s policing of the Race Relations Act

the CRE fails to recommend that the advertising media always ask for the necessary evidence that the racially discriminatory advertisements are within the law. At a stroke this would force what the CRE calls “well meaning employers and training providers” to provide objective justification for any colour bars they wish to operate. The CRE continues to fail to inform the advertising media of their responsibilities.

the CRE is responsible for appalling delays between the receipt of complaints and their disposal. In the case of Arnolfini what should have taken 48 hours to resolve was spun out to take over three months. This results in too many cases where the CRE’s delay allows colour bar appointments to be made that are retrospectively determined to be contrary to the Race Relations Act but are not then reversed.

2005-02-27T12:09:00.000Z

Livingstone backs Tories on freedom of speech

Ken Livingstone has a good sense of irony. To bolster support for his battle with the Standards Board over his concentration camp jibe directed at an Evening Standard Jewish journalist he prayed in aid Daily Mail columnist Andrew Alexander, quoting him in his statement of 22 February.

With considerable chutzpah he selectively quoted from the part that suited him. Here is what he said. To quote Andrew Alexander writing in the Daily Mail last week “Freedom of speech, if it means what it says, involves the right to irritate, annoy, dismay and shock anyone who listens. The only sensible limitations should be on speech which leads to violence, affray or disorder.”

What he left out was the first sentence in Alexander’s paragraph. This stated: "The threat to Livingstone comes in the wake of another threat to free speech in the Government’s new legislation to ban remarks which may stir up religious hatred."

Mr Livingstone is of course a prominent supporter of the new law on the incitement of religious hatred having published an open letter to the Home Secretary supporting this restriction of free speech using as justification: “Freedom of speech must be upheld. But not a freedom to urge people to kill Jews or Sikhs or Muslims.” Mr Livingstone knows that this is already against the law but interpretation of the legislation can be expected to impact upon his political enemies.

The mayor had earlier in his statement condemned the Daily mail group. This is what he said: “After a decade of pandering to racism against our citizens of Black and Irish origin they have moved on and now describe asylum seekers and Muslims in similar terms. For the Mail group the victims may change but the intolerance, hatred and fear pervade every issue of the papers.”

Mr Livingstone is now threatened by his own politically correct revolution but his conversion to even partial freedom of speech is gratifying. He went as far as to enthusiastically endorse the Conservative Party’s commitment to abolish the Standards Board. Mr Livingstone’s mayoralty may yet become a force for freedom.

2005-02-08T15:06:00.000Z

Now Trevor Phillips backs a colour bar

Trevor Phillips the chair of the Commission for Racial Equality [CRE], now playing a central role in the debate about the UK’s immigration and asylum policy, said of a respected journalist who disagreed with him on this subject “Nice people do racism too.” He is at it again. This time Conservative leader Michael Howard meets with his patronising disapproval.

But he is right even if he hits the wrong targets. One of the most extreme examples of ‘nice people doing racism’ is his own campaign to impose a de facto colour bar on a constituency where white people now constitute an ethnic minority, in this case London’s West Ham.

This safe Labour seat that sitting Labour MP Tony Banks has grown tired of representing is currently selecting his replacement. It is in this racially hypersensitive community, that Mr Phillips, himself a failed Labour London mayoral candidate, has seen fit to intervene. Speaking to the BBC he said: "It would be terribly disappointing and pretty destructive, I think, for ethnic minorities' faith in politics if, in the least white constituency in Europe, we did not see an ethnic minority candidate.”

Mr Phillips wants to impose change. He now advocates colour bar legislation to let parliamentary parties exclude white candidates from consideration for selection to serve their community in the office of MP that in a free society should be open to all.

In the meantime his irresponsible employment of the ‘numbers game’ in West Ham goes a long way to delegitimise anyone selected should they have the ‘wrong’ colour skin and gives an appalling weapon to the BNP who specialise in racial grudge communitarian politics.

There is now a real danger that the CRE led by Mr Phillips and the BNP under Mr Griffin may be seen as just two sides of the same racist coin, both educated at our best universities and wearing smart suits but both with totalitarian inclinations

2005-01-29T11:32:00.000Z

Press Release 2 March 2004 [lost from site]

MPs reported to police

Following Labour Party chairman Ian McCartney’s speech to the Scottish Labour Party Conference referring to shadow chancellor Oliver Letwin as a 21st century Fagin and his failure to apologise for so doing he has been reported to Scotland’s Northern Constabulary by Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup.
Mr Hartup commented: “To use the term Fagin, Charles Dickens's archetypal evil Jew, is reminiscent of the style of politicians like Jorg Haider, Jean-Marie Le Pen or our domestic BNP whose own 'subtle' racism is shown in describing Michael Howard as Mr Hecht. It drags political debate into the gutter. Mr Blair should take McCartney’s speech off the Party website immediately, demand an apology and give him a severe dressing down.”
Broxtowe MP Nick Palmer has been reported to Nottinghamshire Police following reports that he posted on his website and e-mailed 1400 constituents racially and religiously offensive ‘jokes’.

Mr Hartup commented: “Were Mr Palmer to be a prospective police officer he would surely be weeded out and were he a serving office no doubt sacked. Does Parliament have lower standards and should his constituents be made morally complicit in his anti-Arab and anti-Islamic ‘jokes’. It is time for the Prime Minister to demand from him a public apology and remove the whip from him should it not be forthcoming.”

Ends

Notes :
Gerald Hartup instigated the prosecution of Cheltenham racist Bill Galbraith in 1992 for his behaviour during and after the selection of Conservative Party candidate John [now Lord] Taylor for the then Tory marginal seat of Cheltenham won and now held by the Liberal Democrats.
In 2002 he reported Ann Winterton MP to Cheshire police for her ‘joke’.

2005-01-11T15:01:00.000Z

Why no Chinese comedy shows or funerals on British TV?

Victor Lewis-Smith writes a regular review column for London’s Evening Standard. And very funny he is too often making shrewd observations of the world. On 23 November in An Asian house of horrors he reviewed The Kumars at No 42. He doesn’t like the programme and gives some good reasons for his opinion.

However, he then strayed into the subject of racial statistics. Speaking of his boredom watching the Kumars he says: “Long before the end, I’d lost concentration and mind wandering, had begun wondering why it is that there are more than a million people of Chinese descent in this country yet I’ve never ever seen a Chinese comedy show (or a Chinese funeral, come to that – well have you?)”

I can’t be bothered to answer his question except to say that according to the latest census there are actually some 400,000 people who class themselves as Chinese in the UK split into comedically diverse backgrounds that make them a situation comedy problem area for programmers.

According to Min Quan, The Monitoring Group in China Town:

http://www.monitoring-group.co.uk/TMG%20services/minquan/community_history.html

“The Chinese population in UK is now estimated at around 400,000 people. It is a diverse community and a recent survey reported 26% of the Chinese population as UK born, 26% from New Territories or Hong Kong, 10% from Malaysia, 12% from Vietnam, 4% from Singapore, 12% from Mainland China, and 12% from other parts of the world. This illustrates the richness and diverse background of the Chinese community in Britain.”
Quite.

2005-01-11T14:00:00.000Z

Experienced barmaid required

for Monday Tuesday and Friday nights
The possibilities of extra sessions available
Must be smartly dressed Tel 020 72** 0***

Political correctness has not entirely got through to publicans or local newspapers. Here is an example reported to the Equal Opportunities Commission [EOC].

What did they do? Nothing.What do you expect? At last count less than 20% of the EOC's staff were men. Do they have targets to end male underrepresentation? You must be joking? Will they get away with it? Who is going to stop them?

2004-10-16T15:21:00.000+01:00

You really want know how our fish stocks are being destroyed?

This is what you need to read. It is in today's EU Referendum. Here is a taster.

It was about 5.30 in the morning, perhaps ten miles off Barrow-in-Furness in the eastern part of the Irish Sea, still dark, when the haul broke the surface.

In the glare of the floodlights on the stern of our vessel, the Fleetwood trawler Kiroan, the first net was hooked onto the power block – a huge hydraulic lifting arm – and skipper Philip Dell expertly pulled the bulging cod end from the water and swung it over the fish room hatch.

Philip held the bag there, suspended, so we could see thousands of tiny fish packed into the bag. Most of what we could see was small plaice, with scores of them protruding though the narrow mesh, gasping and flapping in their death throes.

An unseen hand below pulled the quick release on the end of the bag. The contents cascaded down a stainless steel chute onto the conveyor belt in the fish room, awaiting our further inspection.

We stayed on deck long enough to see the second bag plucked from the sea, its contents likewise dumped down the chute. Then I, Conservative shadow fisheries minister Owen Paterson, and the PPC for Blackpool North and Fleetwood, Gavin Williams, squeezed our way along the top deck, stepping over the still taut warp cables, and made our way down the vertical ladder to watch the crew sorting the fish.

As the first batch was sorted, we watched in mounting horror as Mate, Francois Bruneel with Steve McDaid and Gary Hugman, the enormously impressive crew, threw marketable fish into red plastic bins – not unlike laundry baskets – sweeping the rest, undersize and unmarketable fish along the belt.

Lubricated by a constant flow of sea water, they were flushed through a small opening in the hull, back into the sea, dead and dying, from whence they had so recently been plucked.That was the horror. From that first, bulging net, the harvest of the sea, we estimated that at least ninety percent of the catch was dumped – or "discarded" in the clinical jargon of the trade.

2004-10-10T13:39:00.000+01:00

BNP website brought down very quietly by Hackarmy

Scotland’s Daily Record had a political scoop in its Friday 9 October edition Hackers blitz BNP website. A group called Hackarmy issued a statement to the paper claiming responsibility for shutting down the British National Party’s [BNP] website. It said: “The British National Party is a disgrace. It has been decided that their online existence will now be put to an end. We have started a distributed denial of service attack on their main website.”

The story was picked up by Google and distributed by them on 9 October at 3.22am. Subsequent searches of the web, however, finds just one other reference to this story as at 11.54 am 10 October.

The BNP has been the recipient of substantial media coverage and the lack of follow up to this story seems unusual.

Could it be that media outlets have taken the decision not to give the oxygen of publicity to either the BNP or to Hackarmy? Could it be that Hackarmy has succeeded in freezing comment about its activities by a media frightened at the prospect of interference with their own computer systems?

Ends

1. Hackers blitz BNP website [Daily Record 9 October 2004]
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=14735903&method=full&siteid=89488&headline=hackers-blitz-bnp-website-name_page.html

2. http://hackers.wikiverse.org/

2004-10-04T01:54:00.000+01:00

2004-09-30T10:17:00.000+01:00

Call for police investigation of Cardiff Labour Party election leaflet

Civil liberties pressure group Liberty and Law has reported to South Wales Police Chief Constable Barbara Wilding the distribution of a Labour Party election leaflet distributed during June’s local election campaign in Cardiff on the grounds that the action may have been in breach of the Race Relations Act.

The action follows an investigation by the Commission for Racial Equality [CRE] and a subsequent apology announced today by Welsh Labour stating that the leaflet pandered to prejudice and was likely to cause offence to the Travelling community and to residents in Llanedeym and Pentwyn [the Cardiff Ward in which the distribution took place].

Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup said: “It is unacceptable that it took over three months for Welsh Labour to make an apology for the leaflet that appeared in its name.

The so far anonymous perpetrators have apparently been simply censured and rebuked. If in fact the leaflet is as offensive as stated by Welsh Labour and the CRE the perpetrators should surely be named and shamed. No cover up can be tolerated.

A police investigation is also essential to determine whether the production and or distribution of the leaflet actually broke the law or was simply unacceptable to the CRE and to Welsh Labour (retrospectively). Only in this way will the limits of free speech be determined.”

CRE Welsh Labour apologise for offensive leaflet http://www.cre.gov.uk/media/nr_arch/2004/nr040929.html

PA News: 'Disgraceful' labour leaflet reported to police
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3563146

2004-09-22T14:50:00.000+01:00

CRE evasive about BNP members right to work as Lib Dems adopt principled stand

Liberal Democrat shadow home affairs spokesman Mark Oaten, who has an impressive record of combating BNP’s racist propaganda, has committed the Liberal Democrats to fight government plans to ban civil servants from membership of this national socialist party should they adopt this policy.

Speaking at The Guardian’s fringe Liberty or Equality debate at Bournemouth on Monday 20 September, he said: "I am not prepared to have legislation banning BNP membership in place. If an individual starts expressing racist or offensive views, then there are laws already in place to deal with that."

In doing so the Liberal Democrats become the first mainstream political party to draw a line in the sand in defence of Britain’s traditional political liberty against the forces of oppressive political correctness. Conference delegates applauded when he denounced the Labour Party’s plans “a step down a very, very dangerous path".

As if to justify his principled and practical stance, the next day West Yorkshire Police announced the arrest of a seventh man following their investigation of the BBC programme Secret Agent exposing racism within the police service.

Civil rights group Liberty and Law welcomed the initiative of Mr Oaten. Director Gerald Hartup called upon the Labour and Conservative Parties to follow his lead and challenge any implementation of what it calls “an offensive Berufsverbot”.

He said: “It’s not much fun when defending human rights means defending the human rights of BNP members. But our society is strong enough both to defend the BNP and to marginalise it. Lib Dems have broken the mould of political cowardice and deserve our thanks. It is not just the government’s totalitarian inclinations, however, that must be challenged but those of its creature the Commission for Racial Equality. Its chair Trevor Phillips began the witch hunt last year when speaking to the TUC [Congress, 9 September], arguing that that ‘the workplace is no place for racists’ and challenging employers to follow the Prison Service policy of sacking BNP members. The CRE must be made to come clean about its policy and intentions since it has set the agenda for oppression.” [See Questions put to CRE and responses 21 September 2004]

A major example of this witch-hunt is the continuing attempt by officers of the Fire Brigades Union in Hampshire to have a 30 year retained firefighter dismissed from the local service because of his membership of the BNP. The CRE states that it is unable to comment on this “because of its role as a statutory body”.

Background

Trevor Phillips speech to TUC Conference, 9 September 2003 http://www.cre.gov.uk/downloads/docs/TUC%202003%20Remarks.doc
Call to sack BNP fireman rejected, 16 June 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hampshire/dorset/3806643.stm
Anger over firefighter’s BNP ties, 15 September 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hampshire/3660576.stm
FBU letter to Hampshire Fire and rescue Service, 10 June 2004
http://www.hantsfbu.org.uk/news/bnp%20candidate%20letter%20to%20eastwood.pdf

Questions put to CRE and responses 21 September 2004

Q1a. Does Mr Phillips and/or the CRE call for the dismissal of BNP members or
supporters from all work places?
Q1b. Does Mr Phillips and/or the CRE call for the dismissal of BNP members or
supporters from just some workplaces? If so can the CRE specify those
workplaces?
Background provided to CRE:
Trevor Phillips speaking at the Trades Union Congress on 9 September 2003 said:
"The workplace is no place for racists. Making this a reality shouldn't just fall to trades unionists. Employers have a responsibility too.
For many years the far right targeted one particular public service - the Prison Service. Three years ago, the then Director General, Martin Narey said this: "..membership of racist groups like the BNP, the National Front, Combat 18, on its own would be punishable by dismissal. And everyone who joins the Prison Service now has to sign an agreement that they never have been and never will become a member of one of those organisations".
These were not empty words. In May 2001 a prison officer who wore Nazi
insignia to work was sacked for that and for that reason alone. That
Congress is what I call leadership.
But as far as we know no other major employer has yet followed that lead. Let me issue a challenge to employers today: can you pass the Prison Service
test? "

These words seem to indicate that Mr Phillips backs companies that dismiss members of racist groups that presumably include the BNP, what he calls in the same speech " just another bunch of knuckle-dragging apes."
A. The CRE is concerned about BNP membership and how compatible this is with the delivery of public services to all communities under the Race Relations (amendment) Act. We have not called for any individuals to be dismissed from their jobs as a result of membership of this party.

Q2. Does Mr Phillips and /or the CRE support or oppose the union call for the dismissal of the Hampshire retained fire fighter?
Background provided to CRE:
I am presently looking at the case of a BNP member who stood in an election in Hampshire. The Fire Brigades Union Southern Region Executive Council
Member Dean Mills has written to Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service with the clear implication that this man should not be employed by them.
The story has been reported on BBC website, most recently on 15 September [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hampshire/3660576.stm]
The Fire service maintains their position expressed in June that it would not sack the man and that he was not breaking its regulations. The case is extensively argued on the BBC website of 16 June
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hampshire/dorset/3806643.stm].
A. I'm afraid we can't comment on the specific case you refer to because of our role as a statutory body.

Q3. Is Mr Phillips and or the CRE contributing to the government's discussions about banning BNP members from civil service employment? Does it support or oppose the ban in principle?
A. As we understand it the Home Office have not made any formal decision to ban BNP members from Civil Service employment. You should contact the Home Office press office if you have any further questions about this.

2004-09-20T13:52:00.000+01:00

Police to fast-track recruits with minority ethnic languages

According to a scoop in The Independent by crime correspondent Jason Bennetto [Police to fast-track recruits with ethnic minority languages, 20 September 2004] applicants to join the police service “who speak languages such as Turkish, Bangladeshi and Hindu will be fast-tracked … under a positive discrimination scheme being considered by the Home Office.” The minister in charge of policing, Hazel Blears, has apparently revealed that the scheme “would involve adopting a system where applicants with a foreign language such as Indian, Pakistani, Turkish or Bangladeshi would be recruited first, providing they passed entry requirements”.

Whether the minister actually thinks that Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi and Hindu are languages as opposed to nationalities and a major religion is not known. Whether the minister was excluding from her consideration Patois and European and African languages was also not revealed.

However, the gist of the scheme is clear and it could well ‘solve’ the problem of racial under-representation within the Metropolitan Police Service. 7,500 minority ethnic officers are needed to meet the government’s 2009 target of 25.9%. According to the Met’s Human Resources director Martin Tiplady this would need 80% of all new recruits being from ethnic minorities over the next five years.

With 300 languages being spoken in London the police service, using language as a genuine occupational qualification, would only need to recruit 25 officers of each of the required languages. Providing the numbers of each language group are not specified and kept flexible, creating an ethnically balanced service is practicable. With this scheme there is no reason why any monolingual English speakers at all should be appointed in the next five years since the Home Office and the Met believe there are already too many of them in the service.

If to Mrs Blear’s initiative Commission for Racial Equality [CRE] chair Trevor Phillips’ suggestion of paying minority ethnic teacher recruits more than white recruits should be adopted for the police service the target of a racially representative police service looks even more achievable. Should this still not serve the police services could even extend their recruitment all over the world for recruits considered suitable.

The only two problems militating against the success of the initiative at the moment is that there is a freeze on police recruitment and the Home Office do not know whether it would be in breach of the Race Relations Act. The law may need to be changed. As Mrs Blears puts it: “I think we should examine what the legal position is at the moment and see are there ways we can make the existing law work better in terms of drawing people in.”

The Independent’s view that “the idea is likely to be criticised by some as a backdoor quota system that discriminates against white Britons” hits the nail on the head.

Liberty and Law director Gerald Hartup explained: “We are pleased that from April to June 2004 the Met attracted 23% of recruits from ethnic minorities without positive discrimination. They must keep up the good work, explain that the Home office targets are ludicrous and drop any attempt to gerrymander recruitment. Mrs Blears’ scheme, of course, does not just discriminate against the Independent’s ‘white Britons’ but against monolingual Britons of all shades. What is clear is that we can’t afford to leave progress to the Metropolitan Police Service, the Metropolitan Police Authority, the CRE, the Home Office or the race entrepreneurs. It is just too important. Ordinary people with some common sense need to get stuck in. They might or might not include politicians.”

Ends

2004-09-17T01:18:00.000+01:00

Wednesday 4 August 2004 [original publication]

Bristol Gallery drops colour bar recruitment scheme

Leading Bristol art institution Arnolfini’s controversial plan to exclude white candidates from a post of Curatorial Fellow has been successfully challenged by civil liberties pressure group Liberty and Law [L&L] following an investigation by the Commission for Racial Equality [CRE].

L&L director Gerald Hartup had written to CRE chair Trevor Phillips on 8 April requesting him to ask Arnolfini to freeze its recruitment process while his legal department investigated the legality of the gallery’s action and its impact on good race relations. Mr Hartup also made a direct request to Arnolfini to freeze the appointment process to allow it to think again about its duty to be an equal opportunities employer and to take into consideration the opinions of the community.

Mr Hartup stated: “ Arnolfini acted very responsibly in agreeing to my request to freeze the recruitment process. Their prompt action gave the CRE time to correct their initial view expressed to the media that the colour bar post was a legitimate use of the Race Relations Act. Arnolfini have since given a signed assurance to the CRE undertaking to comply with the advertising provisions of the Race Relations Act and have also indicated their intention to the CRE to review the programme for trainee curators. This I hope will allow them and their funding partner the Arts Council to consider again the use of race as a job qualification.”

The gallery’s recruitment policy had tried to make use of the provisions of the 1976 Race Relations Act that allows the use of a colour bar to address under-representation of racial minorities in any particular employment area by allowing employers to make special training facilities available to them to compete for such employment.

Liberty and Law argued that restricting the post to African, Asian and Caribbean curators was not justified under Section 37 of the Race Relations Act because the job, to curate an exhibition on Blaxploitation, the African-American film genre of the 1960s and 1970s, was clearly not a training post but a substantive one as its job description and salary grade [Grade 5 £18,889 - £21,408] made clear. Liberty and Law argued that far from being a training position it was the sort of job which ambitious curators would be delighted to undertake.

Mr Hartup added: “Arnolfini’s good faith in this matter is self evident. There is, however, confusion about the use of Section 37 shared even by equal opportunities professionals. I am asking the CRE to put up on its website details of the Arnolfini case and other Section 37 cases that it has ruled against, unfortunately without publicity, to help reduce the unknown extent of the abuse. Had more information been available local Councillors, MPs and the Bristol Racial Equality Council would have had the information to enable them to challenge the use of the colour bar in this case.”

“In the meantime Liberty and Law will seek cross party parliamentary support to end the Section 37 exemption. “

Working with the CRE in 1994 Mr Hartup then with the Freedom Association successfully prevented the BBC from implementing a similar Section 37 scheme to recruit a Senior Radio Producer and a Television Producer that the Corporation had claimed were traineeships.

Ends

Note to editors

[1] The colour bar exclusion
Arnolfini is working towards Equal Opportunities. Arnolfini is taking positive action to address under representation of Black and Asian artists in accordance with Sections 35 and 37 of the Race Relations Act 1976. The post is only open to African, *Asian and Caribbean curators based in England. However, Arnolfini welcomes applications from all sections of society. We would appreciate it if you could complete and return the enclosed monitoring form with your application. If you require any part of this information in large print or other format, please do not hesitate to contact us.

[2] CRE initial media response
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bristol/3601855.stm
No whites policy for arts job, 5 April 2004-08-03
A Commission for Racial Equality spokeswoman said the advertisement did not appear to breach guidelines set out in the Race Relations Act.
She said: "There are exceptions in the Act for training and apprenticeship opportunities and I believe that is what this post is offering."

[3] Other Liberty and Law race relations initiatives
See index www.libertyandlaw.co.uk