"What legitimacy is there in a Parliament which makes crucial decisions on immigration with just fifteen ethnic minority MPs when there should be more than sixty? How can a House of Commons expect its decisions on counter-terrorism to be taken seriously by Muslim communities when there are only four Muslim MPs in the House of Commons?"
Trevor Phillips posed these rhetorical questions in a much publicised speech he delivered at the week-end to mark the fortieth anniversary of Enoch Powell’s notorious ‘rivers of blood’ speech.
In having posed them, Phillips might be supposed to have been wanting to suggest that "we are all prisoners of our race, our heritage or our religious beliefs."
For why else should anyone claim that, to enjoy legitimacy, Parliament must reflect in its racial and religious make-up the same composition as that of the wider society over which it exercises authority?
Why, unless prisoners of their race or religion, can't people represent, and be happy being represented by, those of different ethnicity and religion to themselves?
Surely only a prisoner of their race or religion would demand that Parliament contain members of their own race or religion before they were willing to accord it any legitimacy.
Yet, the claim that we are all prisoners of our race and religion is precisely a view that Phillips rightly sought to contest in his speech.
Was Phillips guilty of inconsistency in both denying that we are all prisoners of our race and religion, yet in also asserting that Parliament lacked legitimacy unless its racial and religious makeup reflected that of the wider society for which it passed laws?
Phillips can avoid the charge of inconsistency, only by having made an assumption that I feel confident he would be happy to avow.
This is the assumption that, when religious and racial groups do not occupy positions of power and influence in proportions that match their overall share of the population, it is because they are being held back from doing so on account of their race or religion.
To make such an assumption is to suppose that all different racial and religious groups are identically motivated and talented.
However, if he assumed this, why then did Phillips also use the occasion of his speech to draw attention to and celebrate the disproportionate numbers of immigrants in the country’s top football teams?
In connection with them Phillips remarked: "No one asks players where they come from; clubs and fans only ask what they bring…. We know what the facts about numbers of players are. Everyone plays to the same rule book; there is no special treatment for any cultural group."
Why does Phillips think different rules must apply when it comes to the selection of parliamentary candidates? He does not explain.
One would like to know why.
If one did not know him better, one might be tempted to suppose Phillips was guilty of some prejudice against white Britons. That would really be worrying to find in a chairman of a Equalities and Human Rights Commission
Comments (5)
Of course, the make up of parliament is exactly right, given the democratic system we have. Trevor Phillips knows very well that this is a system that, for all its faults, at least provides equal opportunities {to stand, to speak and to vote et al}.
He is also knows that his proposals, from his position of Overlord of Equality of Great Britain, are ones of tokenism and a distortion of democracy to favour political candidates because of their race. It is he who chooses the matter of race, to make the divides, then blames others for being divisive.
This follows (as discussed previously on Civitas) his pursuit of law changes to ensure a black victim is more a victim than a white one. He therefore knows that when he talks about the "creeping resentment" sweeping Britain towards immigration, and calls for debate, it wouldn't be one he would ever engage in. The concocted alterative universe he has invented even see him attempt to blame too much immigration in the UK on Enoch Powell, for Goodness sake!
Does anyone really believe Trevor Phillips is the slightest bit sincere? Does his modus operandi not shine through like a nasty little light?
Posted by Anthony | April 25, 2008 7:08 PM
Posted on April 25, 2008 19:08
Based on the logic of Trevor Phillips, is it not now time to get shut of the jocks who make decsions, in parliament, that affect England but not scotland.
Posted by mike | April 25, 2008 12:48 PM
Posted on April 25, 2008 12:48
There is nothing particularly Islamic about wanting to be governed by God's laws. Our Queen took a vow to uphold God's laws at her coronation. In fact it is the idea that human beings have the authority to make laws which is novel and some might say the source of most of the problems of the past hundred years or so - the totalitarian statism of fascism and communism for example not to mention the political correctness that is being imposed on us today.
“In the medieval world the primary concept was not the state but the law. This law was not made by politicians but was a part of the eternal order to be discovered by the study of custom and precedent. It was made by God and applied to King and peasant alike. . . . Without the revolutionary idea that valid law might be created by an act of will, and not simply discovered by an act of understanding, the modern theory of the state could scarcely have emerged. . . . The law-making state became the source of legitimacy for all other forms of social organization; as the locus of sovereignty it was unique.” [Benn SI & Peters RS , 'Social Principles and the Democratic State' (London: George, Allen and Unwin, 1959)]
Posted by william | April 22, 2008 11:37 PM
Posted on April 22, 2008 23:37
With regard to Trevor Phillips' comments, it should perhaps be pointed out to him that it is rather difficult to produce a Parliament which exactly reflects the wishes of a particular person. Look at all the time and effort Robert Mugabe has put into the attempt, and still the people of Zimbabwe keep trying to elect the wrong sort of people.
On the question of legitimacy, I understand that the most fundamental Muslim groups believe that God is the only person entitled to make any laws, and that no attempt by any ordinary person to do so can be considered legitimate - indeed, the fundamentalists consider such attempts to be blasphemous, in much the same way as they do educating girls or allowing homosexuals to live. I am not sure how Mr Phillips intends to overcome that obstacle, short of abolishing Parliament altogether. It certainly gives new meaning to the old saying: "Vox populi, Vox Dei" - "The voice of the people is the voice of God".
Posted by Peter Davey | April 22, 2008 5:14 PM
Posted on April 22, 2008 17:14
Is Trevor Philips saying that Parliament should numerically reflect the national ethnicity and those groups of people who have chosen the same belief systems ? If so, why does he not mention Methodists, Vegetarians and others who are also groups of people in this country who have chosen the same belief systems ? Is he saying that, unless parliament is representative of these groups it has no legitimacy ? Or does it only apply to people who hold the beliefs held by Moslems, or perhaps by people who are Black, or Chinese, or Polish. And what about left-handed people - as much an accident of birth as ethnicity , should they be a representative group in parliament - and if they are not - can they then rightly be expected to deny the legitimacy of parliament and would he support them in this denial ? If so, then I worry greatly about Trevor Philip's understanding of representative democracy.
Posted by Anonymous | April 22, 2008 2:54 PM
Posted on April 22, 2008 14:54