12 Jul 2005 - The debate about how we create our path to integration starts here - Trevor Phillips' speech at the launch of the CRE's good race relations guide
It would be impossible to open today's conference without referring to the extraordinary events of the past seven days.
Last Wednesday we were united in victory, our capital city winning the right to stage the Olympic Games in 2012, based on a vision of a diverse, multi-ethnic, multicultural city.
Last Thursday we were united in tragedy, shocked by a vicious assault on London.
Since Friday, we have been united in our determination to fight back against the perpetrators of that atrocity.
This week we will mourn with those who we know have lost loved ones. We continue to pray for those who are injured or recovering. And we stand in awe of our emergency services, whose confidence-inspiring response kept the city on the move.
And at a time when it has become fashionable to talk of politicians with a sneer, we should applaud the statesmanship shown by the Prime Minister, the Opposition leaders and of course, London's Mayor.
Mr Livingstone spoke for the whole city with his defiant words in Singapore. London has become a beacon for diversity. His assertion that the city would not allow itself to be divided by race or by faith has been borne out by the behaviour of our people since then.
The CRE's Safe Communities Initiative has, since last Thursday, been monitoring local communities closely. We know that there have been incidents - attacks on mosques and temples, verbal abuse, and emails flooding organisations such as the Muslim Council of Britain, and indeed the CRE itself. Some are politically motivated, others product of sheer individual prejudice.
But what is most remarkable is that there have been so few of these incidents. Nor has there, yet, been much finger-pointing or blaming directed at one part of our community. Even our media has shown restraint.
Of course there is the odd commentator - some very odd - who wants to use this as an opportunity to fulminate about immigration for example. And I see today, that some papers are beginning to look for enemies amongst the ranks of Muslim scholars.
But most newspapers, and most broadcasters, most of the time, have actively sought to demonstrate that this was an equal opportunity massacre. The pictures of the victims reflect the wide range of races and cultures amongst the people of London. We are all in this together.
What the past six days have shown more than anything else is this: the people of Britain are no longer ready to answer a call to bigotry. Sometimes that bigotry comes from extremists who argue that black or Muslim persons should abandon aspects of their identity which are precious to them if they are to be accepted as truly British. And sometimes we see it from extremists who say that a Muslim or a black person must reject some of Britain's core values if they are to be truly loyal to their religion or their race.
Neither is right. But for some people these arguments can seem compelling. And everyone who entertains these ideas, every recruit to the extremists' cause is a potential enemy to a society which is tolerant, equal and at ease with itself. We are truly at the fulcrum of a great battle of ideas. That is why what happens in the next few weeks matters so much.
I have no doubt that we will deal with the immediate aftermath of this outrage with dignity. But it may not be the worst outrage we experience. It is almost certain that we will be tested again.
And if we are, London has been teaching us a lesson. If the bombers can divide a city which has become a beacon for tolerance and integration, they are halfway to their target of dividing the world, of creating a clash of civilisations.
On the other hand, if we can show that the painfully-built culture of easy-going diversity is so rooted in London's character that it will resist any terrorist action, that tolerance and integration will prove to be our best defence against the extremists' assaults.
I am sure we will get into a serious debate today about what is the best way to describe the process of integration and maybe even if we should use the word. But I would urge everyone to look at this city and learn from what it's done. London is the working model for integration in a modern society. It's all here. All we have to do is to decipher the blueprint and share its principles.
We already know some of the principles behind the architecture of the integrated society.
The best, fairest societies are ones in which people share experiences and common ambitions whatever their cultural backgrounds.
Societies where we can celebrate our diversity, but where difference does not have to mean division. Societies where everyone has the chance to participate in making the decisions that count. And societies in which we share basic values - the rule of law, equity, equality of women, and yes, equality and liberation for people whatever their sexual orientation or gender status. This is anathema to many of the people who carry out these acts of terror.
So the events of the past week have dramatised and given urgency to the need to bring our society together and to defend our basic values.
But this was true seven days ago. And it will be true seven days or seven months or seven years from now whether or not the terrorists strike again. What we also know is that tolerant and integrated societies do not emerge by themselves. In fact every generation has to rebuild those values and then it has to defend them. That is one of the reasons that the Commission for Racial Equality exists.
At the heart of our mandate is a huge task - managing the social consequences of migration. We want the diversity that follows migration to be recognised as a benefit not a burden.
But if we have learnt anything over the past sixty years or so, since the Windrush, this will not happen by accident. We have to work at it, systematically, intelligently and realistically. And we will have to work at it again as a new wave of migrants arrives to enrich us with new contributions and fascinate us and baffle us with new ways.
Our surveys show that by and large people are beginning to understand the benefits of migration and diversity. Britain benefited from the post-war wave of migration that brought my parents here; it is today the principal destination for the newer, very different but just as significant, wave of post-Soviet migration now being characterised crudely as "Polish plumbers".
But we aren't just talking about plumbers - we are talking about teachers and doctors and business people and nannies for example - I've heard it said that most middle-class five-year-olds now arrive at schools speaking English with Warsaw accents.
These new migrants bring new skills, but they also bring new prejudices. I am talking about the attitudes to, for example, Gypsies and Travellers - and what is perhaps the last form of permissible overt racism in this country - and is frankly far worse and far more dangerous in middle and eastern Europe.
The challenge of the new is big enough. But, as Stuart Hall once reminded me, the problems of the new should not mean we ignore the continuing issues of the last wave who, he once memorably said, "are not yet secure even in their alienation".
I am talking, for example, about the challenge of the almost one million Britons of mixed race about whom as a group we know little and for whom, I suspect, we do almost nothing. The nature of our diversity and the issues that come with it never stops changing and that change is today faster that ever.
This is why it is vital that government provides a legal and political framework; civic society creates a social framework; and people, ordinary people, take the time and effort to learn about each other. What success we've had is in part down to positive steps that have been taken by governments and by the people over the past forty years.
Without the race relations laws we have had since 1965, this would still be a city where black and Asian people are " as they are in Paris and Amsterdam and Berlin " effectively segregated in certain parts of the city.
Without the campaigns by parents and the actions of local councillors it would be a city where - as in Rotterdam - they talk about black schools and white schools, and accept them as facts of life.
And without the vigilance of anti-racists it would be a city - as is Antwerp - where an avowedly racist party holds the reins of political power, and cows much larger parties into taking punitive action against its own citizens because of their race or religion.
That is why proactive policies matter. I want to mention three areas in which we may need to find some fresh thinking:
One is that progress on equality in some areas is dangerously close to a standstill;
A second is that the nature of the racism we experience is changing subtly, but critically;
And the third is that our communities are in danger of sleepwalking into a kind of passive coexistence in which a friendly distance today will become an armed stand-off tomorrow.
Equality
To start with, on the equality front, things are changing too slowly. According to the GLA, the Metropolitan Police won't be representative until the mid-22nd century. According to our calculations, the House of Commons which currently has a record number of minority MPs - 15 - won't have a mix that reflects the UK population before the year 2080.
And in some areas - the education of Gypsies and Travellers, the health of some Asian groups, ethnic minority representation on public bodies and local councils - we are moving backwards not forwards.
Racism
A second challenge lies in the very nature of racial bias. The number of reported racial incidents is falling slightly, and a recent ICM survey for the CRE shows blatant discrimination or gross harassment is not found as frequently as in the past - or perhaps it is simply covered up more effectively. But increasingly we are seeing the emergence of some other forms of racial bias which demand different tools.
We need, for example, to tackle what might be called cumulative or 'stealth' racism. By that phrase I mean a series of small, apparently insignificant decisions, incidents, or encounters, none of which by themselves could be the subject of court proceedings, but all of which are to the disadvantage of ethnic minority employees or clients.
Anyone who belongs to an ethnic minority will understand exactly what I am talking about - and it doesn't matter who you are. I recently spoke at a conference and just before I was due to speak I had a call of nature. I attempted to leave the conference hall but the security officer informed me that I would not be let back in without a pass (which I had mislaid). When I told him that I was an invited speaker he looked visibly taken aback. Although he didn't say anything, I knew he was thinking "But you're a black man".
Month after month we receive enquiries about this kind of thing; it is undoubtedly what lies behind the deep and growing discontent amongst many minority professionals in, for example, the health service, the criminal justice system and in education, particularly higher education.
Second, we now know that some aspects of racial bias are not driven by individual prejudice, but by the way we work - or, to put it baldly, it may not matter what your intention is, but what you do may produce a racially biased result. In essence we may not individually be responsible for the racial bias in our organisations - but our failure to challenge the way we work could, by omission, allow racial bias to persist.
Southall is apparently the least creditworthy district in the country. Why? It's a prosperous area, full of thriving businesses. It turns out that Sikhs don't like to borrow, and as a result banks can't predict whether they will pay back a loan. Clearly not a case of all bank managers hating people with turbans!
Third, we are observing what I would consider an abuse of the term "institutional racism". This phrase was never meant to get people off the hook by suggesting that the bias that showed up in an organisation had nothing to do with the individual and could be remedied by the right number of training sessions and the provision of satisfactory pieces of paper that meet the requirements of the law.
The point here is that the entire apparatus of race equality exists to promote change, not to create a new category of excuses. We should not accept that the fact that racial bias is systemic relieves each of us of the responsibility for our own actions or omissions.
Interaction
Let me turn now to what you might call failures of interaction. Most liberal minded people and those who live in London tend to assume that year by year people of different races and ethnicities are becoming closer and less trapped by their communal origins.
It's a nice hope, but wrong. In fact, we are, generation by generation drifting apart. Last year the CRE published figures showing that a majority of white Britons could not name a non-white person in their circle of twenty best friends - not exactly an exclusive group for most people. Even in London fewer than one in six could name two non-white friends - and in London, statistically, if race were not a factor in our choices most people should have seven or eight non-white friends.
More disturbing still is the finding that young people from ethnic minorities, who you would expect to be more socially integrated than their parents, are actually twice as likely to have an all-black or all-Asian circle of friends. We are moving in the wrong direction.
So what does this all mean?
It means that though we have made huge progress over the past forty years we are:
More unequal by race and ethnicity;
Less likely to interact with people not like ourselves; and
Less likely to see minority participation in the key arenas of political civic and cultural life.
That is why, over the past year, some of the questions that have been raised by the work of the CRE have seemed so controversial. But set against the real background, some of the apparently radical measures we have floated seem positively timid.
When we look at the intractable educational failure of some minority groups, can we afford to close our minds to consideration of radical remedies, however uncomfortable they might make us feel?
When we see the divisive and stultifying effects of old-style, corporate multiculturalism, aren't we compelled to ask whether a policy which puts recognition of difference before equality merely ensures that while we salve our consciences by paying lip service to diversity, we deny some people the same life chances as most of us?
When we see that for whatever reason black and Asian people do not feel at home in some parts of Britain, shouldn't we be putting all our efforts into ensuring that no part of our country is closed, however subtly to any group because of their race or culture?
The integration agenda
In essence we want to reassert the need for a society in which everyone's life chances are unaffected by what or where they were born. Your race should not be a determining factor in predicting whether you are a convict or Lord Chancellor. Today we know that there is not going to be a black Lord Chancellor in the foreseeable future, and we know that a black young man is twice as likely to be in jail as he is on a university campus.
This is what we want to change. At the heart of our agenda for change lie three simple points:
There must be equality for all sections of the community;
There must be interaction between all sections of the community; and
There must be participation by all sections of the community.
This is what we mean when we speak of integration - not some mealy-mouthed process where new migrants are told to leave their identities behind, and to become like everybody else, whoever everybody else is. No, we mean a process in which everyone who lives in this country has the right to every opportunity it offers and the duty to make every contribution of which they are capable.
We can see abroad why these three things must go together and why we will succeed in none if we don't make progress on all parts of this agenda.
In the USA, black children study in black majority schools, whites live in white districts. It is the very separateness of their lives - and they grow more separate by the year - for example schools are more segregated now than they were before legal desegregation - that guarantees their inequality.
In Holland, they speak of black schools and white schools. This is a society which has been in denial about its treatment of Muslims for more than a decade. Today it is in crisis.
We need not copy their examples.
Integration
The CRE has called this conference to start a debate about how we create our path to integration. We have done it many times before and we have a clear principle, based on our successful history of integration.
Our history is one of toleration and acceptance of change by the majority, and creative development of their historical identity by the minority. Five centuries ago British Catholics were reviled and persecuted.
Today they are both British and Catholic - creating a uniquely Catholic perspective on what it means to be British, and at the same time developing a uniquely British contribution to what it means to be a Catholic. The same is true for Jews, black Britons and I hope it will one day be true for British Muslims too.
The new communities change. So does Britain.
But today we must not make the error of assuming that this change will take place easily - or that it will automatically be in the right direction.
So part of our job is to use the tools at our disposal to bring about our integration agenda of equality, interaction and participation.
I want to emphasise again that these three legs of the integration agenda go together.
So what, practically, can we at the CRE do about it?
Well, I want to end by saying a word or two about some examples of the new, practical actions that we are taking to promote our integration agenda.
On equality we have a major programme of pushing forward the Race Equality Duty in the public sector and trying to mimic its effect in the private sector by use of the procurement of public authorities.
We have recently agreed with the treasury and the Home Office new targets in five key areas of public policy: education; health; housing; employment; and criminal justice to ensure that as improvements in service delivery come through they do not take place at the expense or the neglect of minorities. We must not improve average performance at GCSE but leave Pakistani heritage children's achievement levels unchanged. And we must not create better outcomes in health care yet leave Bangladeshi heritage infants twice as likely to die.
On participation we intend to start at the top:
We are, with the help of parliamentary allies, monitoring the appointment of ethnic minorities to public appointments. It is a disgrace that in 2003 there were fewer ethnic minority people on public bodies than previously, and that in 2004 there were fewer local councillors than in 2001.
We will be speaking - once again - to party leaders about their selections for parliamentary seats - and we will be doing so this year, so that no-one has the excuse of saying that the issue was raised too late in the process.
We have launched with Operation Black Vote our own shadowing scheme in which people from ethnic minority backgrounds have the chance to shadow CRE Commissioners including me, for a year, so that they see how a public body works, the money, the politics, the arm-twisting, the deals. My own shadow, Marvin Rees, is here. At the end of this year no-one should be able to say he's not ready for public office, or that he hasn't seen enough.
Finally, we intend to take the challenge of interaction very seriously indeed. We know from research done for us that the most significant counter to prejudice is real life contact with people who are different from ourselves.
We also know that people will not get to know each other because the CRE tells them to do so. And meeting each other at work, where we have to, is not enough. We have to mix in the community, and in our social and cultural lives, so that we have common experiences, common gripes, common ambitions, and, dare I say it, common hopes and dreams.
We want people to get to know each other in the course of their real lives: as parents at the school gates, sharing their confidences about the school; as teenagers away from home for the first time, perhaps coming to terms with socialising with folks who are not our best mates.
We intend over the next three years to focus this work on people who we know are willing partners - for example the young and women.
That is why today we are publishing the Commission for Racial Equality's Good Race Relations Guide, which is available in CD-ROM format and on our website. Other colleagues will speak more about this today, but let me say that at the core of this is a tremendously good sign.
The guide captures dozens of examples of quiet but effective pieces of work which have led to greater interaction between communities. This is work between faith communities, in schools, in local authorities, in hospitals and in voluntary organisations. And from all over the country there are examples that should be of value.
But the CRE intends not just to share others' good practice. We also want to act ourselves. One way in which we can help is simply to provide backing for efforts to bring people together in neighbourhoods and towns all over the country, in activities that give people pleasure.
Appropriately perhaps, our first major venture in this area will be in sport - timely in view of the wonderful news that the Olympics are coming to Britain, and that the Government intends that young people and diversity should be at the heart of the London Games.
Over the next three years, along with our partners at Sport England we will, through our joint body, Sporting Equals, be supporting projects throughout England which use sport as a way of bringing people of different races and ethnicities together.
In total we expect to spend over £2 million on such projects over three years. If we can attract more funds, we will spend more.
We want people to play football in the parks - but not just with other Asians or other whites. We want to support swimmers, as there's no reason why the British team should be all-white forever. And we want young people to discover that they share a passion for sport with people who they would never otherwise meet.
We know that playing sport will not guarantee that young people become friends. But we do believe it will mean that they need not be strangers, and we think that once they know each other they are less likely to be enemies.
This we believe is the answer to those who want communities to be isolated from each other, and for passive coexistence to fester into simmering enmity.
Our integration agenda confronts new challenges for this country. But it uses some very old principles. When we meet each other as real people we tend to treat each other as real human beings, we extend tolerance and above all we see that we have more in common than we have that divides us.
Whatever word we use to describe this agenda we think it will be well understood and liked by most British people. Many of us have been debating these issues for a very long time. What we have done in the past has had a positive impact I believe. But there is still a lot of work to do.
Today I hope what we'll concentrate on how we make our future together a better one. It's what we owe our country and its people.
Source: Commission for Racial Equality 2005
Last Wednesday we were united in victory, our capital city winning the right to stage the Olympic Games in 2012, based on a vision of a diverse, multi-ethnic, multicultural city.
Last Thursday we were united in tragedy, shocked by a vicious assault on London.
Since Friday, we have been united in our determination to fight back against the perpetrators of that atrocity.
This week we will mourn with those who we know have lost loved ones. We continue to pray for those who are injured or recovering. And we stand in awe of our emergency services, whose confidence-inspiring response kept the city on the move.
And at a time when it has become fashionable to talk of politicians with a sneer, we should applaud the statesmanship shown by the Prime Minister, the Opposition leaders and of course, London's Mayor.
Mr Livingstone spoke for the whole city with his defiant words in Singapore. London has become a beacon for diversity. His assertion that the city would not allow itself to be divided by race or by faith has been borne out by the behaviour of our people since then.
The CRE's Safe Communities Initiative has, since last Thursday, been monitoring local communities closely. We know that there have been incidents - attacks on mosques and temples, verbal abuse, and emails flooding organisations such as the Muslim Council of Britain, and indeed the CRE itself. Some are politically motivated, others product of sheer individual prejudice.
But what is most remarkable is that there have been so few of these incidents. Nor has there, yet, been much finger-pointing or blaming directed at one part of our community. Even our media has shown restraint.
Of course there is the odd commentator - some very odd - who wants to use this as an opportunity to fulminate about immigration for example. And I see today, that some papers are beginning to look for enemies amongst the ranks of Muslim scholars.
But most newspapers, and most broadcasters, most of the time, have actively sought to demonstrate that this was an equal opportunity massacre. The pictures of the victims reflect the wide range of races and cultures amongst the people of London. We are all in this together.
What the past six days have shown more than anything else is this: the people of Britain are no longer ready to answer a call to bigotry. Sometimes that bigotry comes from extremists who argue that black or Muslim persons should abandon aspects of their identity which are precious to them if they are to be accepted as truly British. And sometimes we see it from extremists who say that a Muslim or a black person must reject some of Britain's core values if they are to be truly loyal to their religion or their race.
Neither is right. But for some people these arguments can seem compelling. And everyone who entertains these ideas, every recruit to the extremists' cause is a potential enemy to a society which is tolerant, equal and at ease with itself. We are truly at the fulcrum of a great battle of ideas. That is why what happens in the next few weeks matters so much.
I have no doubt that we will deal with the immediate aftermath of this outrage with dignity. But it may not be the worst outrage we experience. It is almost certain that we will be tested again.
And if we are, London has been teaching us a lesson. If the bombers can divide a city which has become a beacon for tolerance and integration, they are halfway to their target of dividing the world, of creating a clash of civilisations.
On the other hand, if we can show that the painfully-built culture of easy-going diversity is so rooted in London's character that it will resist any terrorist action, that tolerance and integration will prove to be our best defence against the extremists' assaults.
I am sure we will get into a serious debate today about what is the best way to describe the process of integration and maybe even if we should use the word. But I would urge everyone to look at this city and learn from what it's done. London is the working model for integration in a modern society. It's all here. All we have to do is to decipher the blueprint and share its principles.
We already know some of the principles behind the architecture of the integrated society.
The best, fairest societies are ones in which people share experiences and common ambitions whatever their cultural backgrounds.
Societies where we can celebrate our diversity, but where difference does not have to mean division. Societies where everyone has the chance to participate in making the decisions that count. And societies in which we share basic values - the rule of law, equity, equality of women, and yes, equality and liberation for people whatever their sexual orientation or gender status. This is anathema to many of the people who carry out these acts of terror.
So the events of the past week have dramatised and given urgency to the need to bring our society together and to defend our basic values.
But this was true seven days ago. And it will be true seven days or seven months or seven years from now whether or not the terrorists strike again. What we also know is that tolerant and integrated societies do not emerge by themselves. In fact every generation has to rebuild those values and then it has to defend them. That is one of the reasons that the Commission for Racial Equality exists.
At the heart of our mandate is a huge task - managing the social consequences of migration. We want the diversity that follows migration to be recognised as a benefit not a burden.
But if we have learnt anything over the past sixty years or so, since the Windrush, this will not happen by accident. We have to work at it, systematically, intelligently and realistically. And we will have to work at it again as a new wave of migrants arrives to enrich us with new contributions and fascinate us and baffle us with new ways.
Our surveys show that by and large people are beginning to understand the benefits of migration and diversity. Britain benefited from the post-war wave of migration that brought my parents here; it is today the principal destination for the newer, very different but just as significant, wave of post-Soviet migration now being characterised crudely as "Polish plumbers".
But we aren't just talking about plumbers - we are talking about teachers and doctors and business people and nannies for example - I've heard it said that most middle-class five-year-olds now arrive at schools speaking English with Warsaw accents.
These new migrants bring new skills, but they also bring new prejudices. I am talking about the attitudes to, for example, Gypsies and Travellers - and what is perhaps the last form of permissible overt racism in this country - and is frankly far worse and far more dangerous in middle and eastern Europe.
The challenge of the new is big enough. But, as Stuart Hall once reminded me, the problems of the new should not mean we ignore the continuing issues of the last wave who, he once memorably said, "are not yet secure even in their alienation".
I am talking, for example, about the challenge of the almost one million Britons of mixed race about whom as a group we know little and for whom, I suspect, we do almost nothing. The nature of our diversity and the issues that come with it never stops changing and that change is today faster that ever.
This is why it is vital that government provides a legal and political framework; civic society creates a social framework; and people, ordinary people, take the time and effort to learn about each other. What success we've had is in part down to positive steps that have been taken by governments and by the people over the past forty years.
Without the race relations laws we have had since 1965, this would still be a city where black and Asian people are " as they are in Paris and Amsterdam and Berlin " effectively segregated in certain parts of the city.
Without the campaigns by parents and the actions of local councillors it would be a city where - as in Rotterdam - they talk about black schools and white schools, and accept them as facts of life.
And without the vigilance of anti-racists it would be a city - as is Antwerp - where an avowedly racist party holds the reins of political power, and cows much larger parties into taking punitive action against its own citizens because of their race or religion.
That is why proactive policies matter. I want to mention three areas in which we may need to find some fresh thinking:
One is that progress on equality in some areas is dangerously close to a standstill;
A second is that the nature of the racism we experience is changing subtly, but critically;
And the third is that our communities are in danger of sleepwalking into a kind of passive coexistence in which a friendly distance today will become an armed stand-off tomorrow.
Equality
To start with, on the equality front, things are changing too slowly. According to the GLA, the Metropolitan Police won't be representative until the mid-22nd century. According to our calculations, the House of Commons which currently has a record number of minority MPs - 15 - won't have a mix that reflects the UK population before the year 2080.
And in some areas - the education of Gypsies and Travellers, the health of some Asian groups, ethnic minority representation on public bodies and local councils - we are moving backwards not forwards.
Racism
A second challenge lies in the very nature of racial bias. The number of reported racial incidents is falling slightly, and a recent ICM survey for the CRE shows blatant discrimination or gross harassment is not found as frequently as in the past - or perhaps it is simply covered up more effectively. But increasingly we are seeing the emergence of some other forms of racial bias which demand different tools.
We need, for example, to tackle what might be called cumulative or 'stealth' racism. By that phrase I mean a series of small, apparently insignificant decisions, incidents, or encounters, none of which by themselves could be the subject of court proceedings, but all of which are to the disadvantage of ethnic minority employees or clients.
Anyone who belongs to an ethnic minority will understand exactly what I am talking about - and it doesn't matter who you are. I recently spoke at a conference and just before I was due to speak I had a call of nature. I attempted to leave the conference hall but the security officer informed me that I would not be let back in without a pass (which I had mislaid). When I told him that I was an invited speaker he looked visibly taken aback. Although he didn't say anything, I knew he was thinking "But you're a black man".
Month after month we receive enquiries about this kind of thing; it is undoubtedly what lies behind the deep and growing discontent amongst many minority professionals in, for example, the health service, the criminal justice system and in education, particularly higher education.
Second, we now know that some aspects of racial bias are not driven by individual prejudice, but by the way we work - or, to put it baldly, it may not matter what your intention is, but what you do may produce a racially biased result. In essence we may not individually be responsible for the racial bias in our organisations - but our failure to challenge the way we work could, by omission, allow racial bias to persist.
Southall is apparently the least creditworthy district in the country. Why? It's a prosperous area, full of thriving businesses. It turns out that Sikhs don't like to borrow, and as a result banks can't predict whether they will pay back a loan. Clearly not a case of all bank managers hating people with turbans!
Third, we are observing what I would consider an abuse of the term "institutional racism". This phrase was never meant to get people off the hook by suggesting that the bias that showed up in an organisation had nothing to do with the individual and could be remedied by the right number of training sessions and the provision of satisfactory pieces of paper that meet the requirements of the law.
The point here is that the entire apparatus of race equality exists to promote change, not to create a new category of excuses. We should not accept that the fact that racial bias is systemic relieves each of us of the responsibility for our own actions or omissions.
Interaction
Let me turn now to what you might call failures of interaction. Most liberal minded people and those who live in London tend to assume that year by year people of different races and ethnicities are becoming closer and less trapped by their communal origins.
It's a nice hope, but wrong. In fact, we are, generation by generation drifting apart. Last year the CRE published figures showing that a majority of white Britons could not name a non-white person in their circle of twenty best friends - not exactly an exclusive group for most people. Even in London fewer than one in six could name two non-white friends - and in London, statistically, if race were not a factor in our choices most people should have seven or eight non-white friends.
More disturbing still is the finding that young people from ethnic minorities, who you would expect to be more socially integrated than their parents, are actually twice as likely to have an all-black or all-Asian circle of friends. We are moving in the wrong direction.
So what does this all mean?
It means that though we have made huge progress over the past forty years we are:
More unequal by race and ethnicity;
Less likely to interact with people not like ourselves; and
Less likely to see minority participation in the key arenas of political civic and cultural life.
That is why, over the past year, some of the questions that have been raised by the work of the CRE have seemed so controversial. But set against the real background, some of the apparently radical measures we have floated seem positively timid.
When we look at the intractable educational failure of some minority groups, can we afford to close our minds to consideration of radical remedies, however uncomfortable they might make us feel?
When we see the divisive and stultifying effects of old-style, corporate multiculturalism, aren't we compelled to ask whether a policy which puts recognition of difference before equality merely ensures that while we salve our consciences by paying lip service to diversity, we deny some people the same life chances as most of us?
When we see that for whatever reason black and Asian people do not feel at home in some parts of Britain, shouldn't we be putting all our efforts into ensuring that no part of our country is closed, however subtly to any group because of their race or culture?
The integration agenda
In essence we want to reassert the need for a society in which everyone's life chances are unaffected by what or where they were born. Your race should not be a determining factor in predicting whether you are a convict or Lord Chancellor. Today we know that there is not going to be a black Lord Chancellor in the foreseeable future, and we know that a black young man is twice as likely to be in jail as he is on a university campus.
This is what we want to change. At the heart of our agenda for change lie three simple points:
There must be equality for all sections of the community;
There must be interaction between all sections of the community; and
There must be participation by all sections of the community.
This is what we mean when we speak of integration - not some mealy-mouthed process where new migrants are told to leave their identities behind, and to become like everybody else, whoever everybody else is. No, we mean a process in which everyone who lives in this country has the right to every opportunity it offers and the duty to make every contribution of which they are capable.
We can see abroad why these three things must go together and why we will succeed in none if we don't make progress on all parts of this agenda.
In the USA, black children study in black majority schools, whites live in white districts. It is the very separateness of their lives - and they grow more separate by the year - for example schools are more segregated now than they were before legal desegregation - that guarantees their inequality.
In Holland, they speak of black schools and white schools. This is a society which has been in denial about its treatment of Muslims for more than a decade. Today it is in crisis.
We need not copy their examples.
Integration
The CRE has called this conference to start a debate about how we create our path to integration. We have done it many times before and we have a clear principle, based on our successful history of integration.
Our history is one of toleration and acceptance of change by the majority, and creative development of their historical identity by the minority. Five centuries ago British Catholics were reviled and persecuted.
Today they are both British and Catholic - creating a uniquely Catholic perspective on what it means to be British, and at the same time developing a uniquely British contribution to what it means to be a Catholic. The same is true for Jews, black Britons and I hope it will one day be true for British Muslims too.
The new communities change. So does Britain.
But today we must not make the error of assuming that this change will take place easily - or that it will automatically be in the right direction.
So part of our job is to use the tools at our disposal to bring about our integration agenda of equality, interaction and participation.
I want to emphasise again that these three legs of the integration agenda go together.
So what, practically, can we at the CRE do about it?
Well, I want to end by saying a word or two about some examples of the new, practical actions that we are taking to promote our integration agenda.
On equality we have a major programme of pushing forward the Race Equality Duty in the public sector and trying to mimic its effect in the private sector by use of the procurement of public authorities.
We have recently agreed with the treasury and the Home Office new targets in five key areas of public policy: education; health; housing; employment; and criminal justice to ensure that as improvements in service delivery come through they do not take place at the expense or the neglect of minorities. We must not improve average performance at GCSE but leave Pakistani heritage children's achievement levels unchanged. And we must not create better outcomes in health care yet leave Bangladeshi heritage infants twice as likely to die.
On participation we intend to start at the top:
We are, with the help of parliamentary allies, monitoring the appointment of ethnic minorities to public appointments. It is a disgrace that in 2003 there were fewer ethnic minority people on public bodies than previously, and that in 2004 there were fewer local councillors than in 2001.
We will be speaking - once again - to party leaders about their selections for parliamentary seats - and we will be doing so this year, so that no-one has the excuse of saying that the issue was raised too late in the process.
We have launched with Operation Black Vote our own shadowing scheme in which people from ethnic minority backgrounds have the chance to shadow CRE Commissioners including me, for a year, so that they see how a public body works, the money, the politics, the arm-twisting, the deals. My own shadow, Marvin Rees, is here. At the end of this year no-one should be able to say he's not ready for public office, or that he hasn't seen enough.
Finally, we intend to take the challenge of interaction very seriously indeed. We know from research done for us that the most significant counter to prejudice is real life contact with people who are different from ourselves.
We also know that people will not get to know each other because the CRE tells them to do so. And meeting each other at work, where we have to, is not enough. We have to mix in the community, and in our social and cultural lives, so that we have common experiences, common gripes, common ambitions, and, dare I say it, common hopes and dreams.
We want people to get to know each other in the course of their real lives: as parents at the school gates, sharing their confidences about the school; as teenagers away from home for the first time, perhaps coming to terms with socialising with folks who are not our best mates.
We intend over the next three years to focus this work on people who we know are willing partners - for example the young and women.
That is why today we are publishing the Commission for Racial Equality's Good Race Relations Guide, which is available in CD-ROM format and on our website. Other colleagues will speak more about this today, but let me say that at the core of this is a tremendously good sign.
The guide captures dozens of examples of quiet but effective pieces of work which have led to greater interaction between communities. This is work between faith communities, in schools, in local authorities, in hospitals and in voluntary organisations. And from all over the country there are examples that should be of value.
But the CRE intends not just to share others' good practice. We also want to act ourselves. One way in which we can help is simply to provide backing for efforts to bring people together in neighbourhoods and towns all over the country, in activities that give people pleasure.
Appropriately perhaps, our first major venture in this area will be in sport - timely in view of the wonderful news that the Olympics are coming to Britain, and that the Government intends that young people and diversity should be at the heart of the London Games.
Over the next three years, along with our partners at Sport England we will, through our joint body, Sporting Equals, be supporting projects throughout England which use sport as a way of bringing people of different races and ethnicities together.
In total we expect to spend over £2 million on such projects over three years. If we can attract more funds, we will spend more.
We want people to play football in the parks - but not just with other Asians or other whites. We want to support swimmers, as there's no reason why the British team should be all-white forever. And we want young people to discover that they share a passion for sport with people who they would never otherwise meet.
We know that playing sport will not guarantee that young people become friends. But we do believe it will mean that they need not be strangers, and we think that once they know each other they are less likely to be enemies.
This we believe is the answer to those who want communities to be isolated from each other, and for passive coexistence to fester into simmering enmity.
Our integration agenda confronts new challenges for this country. But it uses some very old principles. When we meet each other as real people we tend to treat each other as real human beings, we extend tolerance and above all we see that we have more in common than we have that divides us.
Whatever word we use to describe this agenda we think it will be well understood and liked by most British people. Many of us have been debating these issues for a very long time. What we have done in the past has had a positive impact I believe. But there is still a lot of work to do.
Today I hope what we'll concentrate on how we make our future together a better one. It's what we owe our country and its people.
Source: Commission for Racial Equality 2005