Ray Honeyford - Commission for Racial Equality: British Bureaucracy and the Multiethnic Society

Social Policy and Social Theory Series

David Marsland, Series Editor

Transforming Men, Geoff Dench

The Australian Nation, Geoffrey Partington

Darwinian Evolution, Antony Flew

The Commission for Racial Equality, Ray Honeyford

First published 1998 by Transaction Publishers

Published 2017 by Routledge

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Copyright 1998 by Taylor & Francis

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Library of Congress Catalog Number: 98-13611

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Honeyford, R.

The Commission for Racial Equality : British bureaucracy and the multiethnic society / Ray Honeyford.

p. cm. (Social policy and social theory series)

Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

ISBN 1-56000-365-0 (alk. paper)

1. Great BritainRace relations. 2. Great Britain. Commission for Racial Equality. 3. MinoritiesGreat BritainSocial conditions. 4. Great BritainEthnic relations. 5. EqualityGreat Britain. I. Title.

DA125.A1H56 1998

305.8'00941dc21

98-13611

CIP

ISBN 13: 978-1-56000-365-6 (hbk)

My purpose in writing this book is to expose the theorising, policies, and practices of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) to the public gaze. I also hope that it will help to promote an informed debate about the right of the CRE to exist.

The CRE possesses considerable legal powers, powers which seriously undermine our great civil liberties. Far too few British citizens are aware of the serious threat to freedom of speech, freedom of contract, and freedom of association the CRE, and the Act under which it functions, constitute. This is because the race relations lobby, at whose head stands the CRE, has been successful in labelling anyone who questions its orthodoxies racist. In this country any issue connected with race is surrounded by taboos, and any individual expressing a view must restrict himself to the politically correct vocabulary and concepts of those who consistently depict Britain as a society rotted with endemic racism, and our ethnic minorities as victims of a hostile social and political climate. I seek to show that this is a serious and misleading picture of multiracial realities, but one which is bound to prevail, if we fail to assert our right to free speech on the issue. In order to achieve my aim I place the CRE in its historical and political context, outline its powers, critically examine its literature, and give detailed analyses of some of its key reports in the fields of education, employment, and housing. I also look critically at the CREs publicity machine and its effects on public and educational libraries.

I make a number of references to the excellent American literature which is highly critical of the U.S.s equivalent of our CRE and its attendant lobby. I do so in order to point out the danger of this country going down the American roadwhich we show every sign of doing. Since the passing of the Civil Rights Act 1964, Americans have replaced their notion of a successful melting pot society, with all citizens loyal to a national ideal, with a tossed salad concept, which seeks to create separate, self-conscious ethnic groups, each claiming special access to the public purse, and using the rhetoric of rights. Such groups have little regard for either national cohesion or traditional civic liberties, and have created a civic order which the philosopher John Gray has described as low-intensity civil war.

The CREs demands for greatly increased powersrejected by successive Conservative Home Secretariesare very likely to be granted by the new Labour government. And that makes the need for an informed, critical debate all the more urgent.

There is a degree of repetition in the book. Specifically, I repeat ideas concerning the notions of racial representation, civil liberties, and Codes of Practice. There are two reasons for this: I want the reader to be reminded of these notions in relation to my attack on the CRE, and, by repeating them in different chapters, I allow the reader to focus his attention on just those parts of the text which may interest him, i.e., I make sections of the book self-contained.

Criticism of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) can so easily be misunderstood or misrepresented that any informed discussion needs to begin with an open-minded examination of the broad principles on which its existence is based.

The CRE would claim that its roots lie in the classical liberalism invented during the Renaissance, expanded in the Reformation, and given revolutionary expression in the eighteenth century; and which reached its zenith in the nineteenth century. The rights of the individual to liberty in the fullest senseover and above the claims of states, classes, and religions: this key liberal concept the CRE would assert as its honourable, historic starting point. Echoes of John Locke, the French Enlightenment and John Stuart Mill are often found in the rhetoric of the CREas are the ringing, absolutist tones of the United Nations 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with its reference to respect for human rights without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.

The CRE also looks back to the humanitarian side of British imperialism. The basic intention of colonialism was the extension of territory, and the acquisition of wealth and power, enterprises which undoubtedly led to the exploitation of subject peoples. Alongside this impulse, however, there was also a deeply felt concern for the welfare, treatment, and progress of indigenous populations. This expressed itself in the building of hospitals, the establishment of schools, the creation of economic infrastructures, and the bringing of principles of equity, justice and order to areas formerly characterised by strife, barbarism, and instability. William Wilberforce is only the most prominent of those who, in their noble work, embodied this compassionate objective.

This tradition survived the loss of empire. It can be seen at work when the first group of West Indian immigrants to postwar Britain disembarked from the Empire Windrush in 1948. It is embodied in such organisations as the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, the U.K. Immigrants Advisory Service, the early, though not the current, Institute for Race Relations. It formed an important strand in the discussions and Parliamentary debates which foreshadowed the British Nationality Act, 1948, and the Race Relations Acts of 1965 and 1968, and of 1976, the legislation which gave birth to the CRE. Our myriad Race Equality Councils, at the local level, would claim to be operating from within this tradition. There is little doubt that public opinion in this country supports the principle of equality of opportunity, and deplores racial discrimination. There are few who would quarrel with the CREs aims of seeking to eliminate bigotry and promoting good race relations.