On the 8th March 2020, Trevor Philips was suspended from the Labour Party. Trevor Phillips has – for a very long time now – used his platform as the former EHRC head to voice his dismay at the current generation of activists from multiple marginalised communities, and indeed those in support of those activists – on the basis that they’re trying to undermine freedom of speech. Indeed, in his last documentary Has Political Correctness Gone Mad?, Philips attempts to make the case that social justice activists are now more concerned with condemnation of regular people and policing behaviours than making British society more equal. At one point, he likens them to Stalinists and Maoists. What powers these activists and groups have to “silence” or “police” people beyond a reaction from the intransigent prone to complain about political correctness he hadn’t clarified. But as a consistent appeaser to reactionaries, aggreived Little Englanders, “Very Serious People” and the wider “freeze peach” crowd, it was as much as anything he’s done recently.
Naturally, you will not find an ally in Trevor Philips in me. That the first president of the National Union of Students had reduced himself to the proverbial man ranting at cloud is regrettable but not entirely unexpected. He was always a simpering liberal. For him, the road to racial equality at the end is engaging in respectability politics and victim-blaming as its means – viewing material gains through his elitist lens. I recall in the documentary Things We Can’t Say About Race That Are True his framing of the interview he conducted with Les Ferdinand on racism in football to make a point about the “real taboo”: black bosses. Not Ferdinand’s brother Anton being called a “black cunt” by John Terry. Apparently the lack of black coaches in English football is the real problem and not the underlying culture that allows for this problem. He did this again fairly recently, regarding the the lack of representation of BAME people in executive positions in business. This is the fight that Philips was really interested in: Whether our corporate overlords are black or brown, than whether or not they can feel comfortable in the streets or a workplace without having dehumanizing jibes thrown at them. Black faces in high places.
It is from this respectability politics that Philips is motivated to oppose multiculturalism – and went to head with Ken Livingstone during his tenure as Mayor during the early years of the Greater London Authority, and invoked the ire of Operation Black Vote. It is also where his apparent issue with Muslims – which is the basis for his expulsion from Labour – seems to come from. For him, Muslims seem to represent a faction within British society that is impervious to ‘integration’. Consistent with the patrician faction of liberals such as Anthony Flew, Richard Dawkins and Anthony Giddens – Philips identifies multiculturalism as a threat to Britain, following a curiously crude interpretation of it existing as British state being the manager of different identity groups – all apparently monolithic, steadily encroahing on the British core in exchange for their culutral values remaining untouched.
His anti-Muslim animus motivated him in writing and on TV, to continuously refer to the Rochdale sex trafficking scandal, arguing that authorities ‘not wanting to look racist’ addressing the problem of Pakistani men grooming young girls – who were white. No mention of the lack of trust the authorities had within Asian communities, or indeed that ‘white’ (non-Muslim) grooming gangs are greater in number. No, just blame the victim – the Pakistani and Muslim community as a whole. It’s ‘cultural relavitism’ that have them a chance to exploit those girls, and the Left making excuses for them. They are a ‘nation within a nation’. Giving the amount of times he blames the Left for teachers not supporting black students, for protecting the feelings of Muslims who were “segregating”, and other grievances – I can’t help but womder whether his issue is really with the Left, or whether it is a convenient all-encompassing shorthand for identity politics and marginalised groups as a whole, but he feels he can’t outright say every individual group he charges with victimhood. If anything, other than Simon Danusck, I’ve never seen a more right-wing Labour Party member, or a former equalities campainer and leader work so hard to undermine the gains in British society.
Philips now charges the Labour Party of having become a “totalitarian cult”. Perhaps he should have spent more time musing and speaking on whatever draconian policies the party has, instead of suggesting that the Labour Party has a uniquely anti-Semitic culture that needed to be addressed.
See also:
- “Freeze peach” (coming soon)
- A list of Labour Party suspensions/expulsions on racism allegations (coming soon)
- Black liberals (coming soon)
- Red-baiting (and why reactionaries do it) (coming soon)
- Respectability politics (coming soon)
- Multiculturalism (coming soon)
- Can black people be racist? (coming soon)
Because It Doesn't Affect You 