Islamophobia row over choice of consultant for UK Covid role

2020/04/28 Leave a comment

Trevor Phillips continues to court controversy in this appointment. Suspect there were others the UK government could have called on for the analysis given the communications difficulties this has raised:

The appointment of a prominent consultant to investigate why Covid-19 is killing a disproportionately high number of minorities in the UK has sparked a backlash because of his involvement in an Islamophobia row.

Trevor Phillips, a former head of an equality watchdog, was suspended from the opposition Labour party this year over claims of Islamophobia but has been chosen to advise the UK’s main public health body on coronavirus death rates.

Data suggests that 34.5 per cent of critically ill patients were from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds.

The 2011 census suggested that less than 11 per cent of the population was from a black or Asian background.

Mr Phillips was suspended from the Labour party over comments he made about the outlook of the British Muslim community and a case in which Pakistani men abused children.

“To appoint someone who is being investigated for racism is inappropriate and deeply insensitive,” said Yasmin Qureshi, an MP, in a letter to the head of Public Health England.

Ms Qureshi said that the appointment undermined the integrity and credibility of the review.

“It is critical that this review is independent and has the confidence of all communities, and so I urge you to reconsider this appointment as a matter of urgency,” she said.

Dr Zubaida Haque, deputy director of the Runnymede Trust, a race equality think tank, also criticised the appointment.

“Covid 19 is not a culture war It’s the difference between life and death,” Dr Haque said in a tweet.

“The fact that Public Health England have appointed Trevor Phillips, someone with concerning attitudes towards Muslim communities as the main adviser into the racial disparities review is highly concerning.”

Mr Phillips claims to have introduced the term Islamophobia to Britain when he commissioned a 1997 report into discrimination.

He later said a “chasm” had opened between the thinking of Muslims and non-Muslims on social issues. He suggested that multiculturalism in the UK had failed.

The research consultancy run by Mr Phillips and Prof Richard Webber, a demographics expert, was appointed because of the large-scale studies it carries out on ethnicity.

Initial work conducted by his consultancy suggested that washing before prayers may have helped to curb the spread of the disease in some places, he said.

The investigation found that 13 of 17 Covid-19 hotspots in England and Wales had non-white populations above the national average.

“Everyone should be contributing anything they can to tackling this crisis,” Mr Phillips told the Huffington Post.

“Anyone can see the research Richard and I have already done on our website, which explains why we’ve been asked to help.”

Source: Islamophobia row over choice of consultant for UK Covid role

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Trevor Phillips suspended from Labour over Islamophobia allegations

2020/03/11 Leave a comment

Never been a fan of some of the statements of Phillips, including the examples cited in the article. But expulsion only draws further attention to some of the weaknesses of Labour:

The former UK equality watchdog chief, Trevor Phillips, has been suspended from the Labour Party over allegations of Islamophobia.

The Times newspaper reported the anti-racism campaigner is being investigated over past comments dating back years.

Mr Phillips, ex-chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said Labour was in danger of collapsing into a “brutish, authoritarian cult”.

Labour said it takes complaints about Islamophobia “extremely seriously”.

A spokeswoman added: “[The complaints] are fully investigated in line with our rules and procedures, and any appropriate disciplinary action is taken.”

Mr Phillips was among 24 public figures who wrote to the Guardian last year declaring their refusal to vote for Labour because of its association with anti-Semitism.

He could be expelled from the party for alleged prejudice against Muslims.

Mr Phillips has been suspended pending investigation over remarks, including expressing concerns about Pakistani Muslim men sexually abusing children in northern British towns, according to the Times.

It says the complaint also covers his comments about the failure of some Muslims to wear poppies for Remembrance Sunday and the sympathy shown by some in an opinion poll towards the “motives” of the Charlie Hebdo attackers.

The paper said many of his statements are years-old but that Labour’s general secretary Jennie Formby suspended him as a matter of urgency to “protect the party’s reputation”.

‘A kind of racism’

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Mr Phillips stood by his previous assertions that Muslims were “different”, adding: “Well, actually, that’s true. The point is Muslims are different and in many ways I think that is admirable.”

But he criticised the party for taking offence, saying: “I am kind of surprised that what is and always has been an open and democratic party decides that its members cannot have healthy debate about how we address differences of values and outlooks.”

Mr Phillips went on to describe the decision by Labour to adopt the definition of Islamophobia agreed by an all-party parliamentary group on British Muslims as “nonsense”, as Muslims were “not a race”.

He added: “My objection is very simple. That definition said…that Islamophobia is rooted in a kind of racism – expressions of hostility towards Muslimness.

“First of all, Muslims are not a race. My personal hero was Muhammad Ali, before that Malcolm X.

“They became Muslims largely because it is a pan-racial faith. This is not a racial grouping, so describing hostility to them as racial is nonsense.”

Mr Phillips was the founding chair of the EHRC, which is currently investigating anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, when it launched in 2006.

He has previously made documentaries about race and multiculturalism, and now chairs Index on Censorship – a group that campaigns for freedom of expression.

Asked if he would change his language as a result of the suspension, Mr Phillips pointed to this new role, adding: “Frankly, it would be a bit odd if I suddenly decided because I had been kicked out of the club, I couldn’t express my beliefs.”

Source: Trevor Phillips suspended from Labour over Islamophobia allegations

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Trevor Phillips Says Multiculturalism Is ‘A Racket’ Ahead Of Channel 4 Race Documentary

2015/03/17 Leave a comment

Trevor Phillips on the dangers of excessive political correctness and the need for more open and frank discussion:

The perverse and unintended consequences of our drive to instil respect for diversity is that our political and media classes have become terrified of discussing racial or religious differences.

“Our desperation to avoid offence is itself beginning to stand in the way of progress. And all too often the losers are minority Britons.

“Preventing anyone from saying what’s on their minds won’t ever remove it from their hearts. People need to feel free to say what they want to without the fear of being accused of racism or bigotry.”

He listed ’10 true things’ it is taboo to say, including “Romanians are far more likely to be pickpockets” and “Jewish households are twice as wealthy as the rest”.

He cited the child sex abuse scandals in towns including Oxford, Rotherham and Rochdale and the murder in 2000 of eight-year-old Victoria Climbie as examples of institutions failing to act for fear of offending minority groups.

Phillips, a Labour London Assembly Member, also admitted he felt he bore some responsibility for the July 7 bombings in 2005 because, as then head of the CRE, he failed “to see what was coming”.

He said: “Because I had made it my business to spend part of each week in a community outside London, I already knew some groups were becoming so isolated that values and ideas which most people would find alien were tolerated and even encouraged.

“But we had said little about it and done even less. After 12 months at the CRE I had come to the conclusion that, while beautiful in theory, multiculturalism had become a racket in which self-style community leaders bargained for control over local authority funds that would prop up their own status and authority.

“Far from encouraging integration it had become in their interest to preserve the isolation of their ethnic groups. In some, practices such as female genital mutilation — a topic I’d made films about as a TV journalist — were regarded as the private domain of the community.

“In others, local politicians and community bosses had clearly struck a Faustian bargain: grants for votes.

“And I saw a looming danger that these communities were steadily shrinking in on themselves, trapping young people behind walls of tradition and deference to elders.

“Of course none of this was secret. But anyone who pointed the finger could expect to be denounced for not respecting diversity.”

Phillips criticised the public reaction to “pefectly reasonable” comments by Benedict Cumberbatch about the lack of roles for black actors in the UK.

He said Cumberbatch was making the “much-needed case for the employment of black actors in greater numbers”.

Trevor Phillips Says Multiculturalism Is ‘A Racket’ Ahead Of Channel 4 Race Documentary.

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Bruce Springsteen, Trevor Phillips and when a cluster becomes a ghetto | UK news | The Guardian

2014/04/08 Leave a comment

Hugh Muir on the distinction between “benign clustering”, part of the normal lives we lead, and ghettoization:

Relating his experience as part of Mapping Integration, a new project by the think tank Demos, Phillips called it “benign clustering”. We tend to look askance at events or spaces that exhibit monoculture – because many people still embrace multiculturalism, and even those who don’t insist they crave a culture shared by all. But, through background, tradition, we occasionally make choices that draw those of a similar background together in one place. That’s no bad thing, Phillips says, so long as there is no barrier or prescription to integration. “We can survive this kind of benign clustering,” he writes. “What we do with our own time, and who we do it with should have no impact on public policy.”

And yet he is also right to differentiate, for when the clustering occurs in other spheres, people get nervous. When monocultural clustering newly impacts on a neighbourhood or a school, we talk of segregation, of ghettoisation and feel we are losing one of the elements that make community relations less fraught than they are in countries such as the US. We readily accept that the motives for clustering around Springsteen at Wembley are harmless, whereas those that drive others towards residential clusters in Bradford or religious free schools in Tower Hamlets are troubling. One presents as celebration, the other as rejection. I fall into this trap myself; but then I was raised in a mixed London suburb. That’s my default position. There’s more to this than logic.

Bruce Springsteen, Trevor Phillips and when a cluster becomes a ghetto | UK news | The Guardian.

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