Trevor Phillips, the former head of the equalities watchdog, has condemned Labour’s decision to suspend him from the party over alleged Islamophobia, while defending his view that the UK Muslim population is “different”.
Phillips, a pioneering anti-racism campaigner who previously chaired the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), has been suspended from Labour pending an investigation and could be expelled from the party.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Phillips said he was surprised and dismayed at the move, and defended his comments about British Muslims.
“I’m kind of surprised that what is and always has been an open and democratic party decides that its members cannot have a healthy debate about how we address differences of values and outlook,” Phillips said.
“They say I am accusing Muslims of being different. Well actually, that’s true. The point is Muslims are different. And in many ways I think that’s admirable.”
Challenged on whether comments such as his claim in 2016 that the UK’s Muslims were “becoming a nation within a nation” amounted to sweeping generalisations about a disparate population of around 3 million Britons, Phillips rejected this.
“There’s all sorts of differences in our society, and the central point of my pamphlet was to say we cannot continue simply to say that differences won’t matter,” he said. “In my view it’s a form of disrespect to say to people: ‘Oh, don’t worry, the differences of values that they have, the beliefs that this or that group have, they’ll get over it.’”
Asked about his “nation within a nation” phrase being adopted by the far-right anti-Muslim campaigner Tommy Robinson, Phillips said he had not heard about this, adding: “As my grandmother says, just because the devil picks up a tune doesn’t mean it is a bad tune.”
It was correct for Muslims to be judged collectively, he argued. “You keep saying that I make these generalisations. But the truth is, if you do belong to a group, whether it is a church, or a football club, you identify with a particular set of values, and you stand for it. And frankly you are judged by that.”
News of Phillips’s suspension emerged in the Times, which said the 66-year-old former broadcaster and politician was being investigated over past comments including about Pakistani Muslim men sexually abusing children in northern British towns.
It said the complaint also covered comments by Phillips 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 dated back years, but Labour’s general secretary, Jennie Formby, had suspended him as a matter of urgency to “protect the party’s reputation”.
Phillips has been a vocal opponent of moves to extend a definition of Islamophobia drawn up by an all-party parliamentary group, as now used by Labour among others. Muslims were a multiracial group “united by a faith and a belief” and could not thus be treated as a race, he told Today.
Phillips, who chaired the EHRC when it launched in 2006, was among 24 public figures who last year wrote to the Guardian declaring their refusal to vote for the Labour party because of its association with antisemitism.
The group said the path to a more tolerant society “must encompass Britain’s Jews with unwavering solidarity” and said Jeremy Corbyn had “a long record of embracing antisemites as comrades”. The EHRC is the organisation now investigating the Labour party over alleged antisemitism.
Phillips has made two Channel 4 documentaries dealing with race and discrimination – 2015’s Things We Won’t Say About Race That Are True and What British Muslims Really Think, which aired the following year. He now chairs Index on Censorship, a not-for-profit group that campaigns for and defends free speech.
A Labour party spokesperson said: “The Labour party takes all complaints about Islamophobia extremely seriously and they are fully investigated in line with our rules and procedures, and any appropriate disciplinary action is taken.”
Labour's obsession...
Labour's obsession...
with identity politics is getting to the verge of madness....
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”