Hazel Southam previews this year’s Temple Address, which focuses on respect in equality and diversity...
Trevor Phillips, the chair of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights, is to host this year's Temple Address and Champions of Respect awards on 15 November at the Institute of Civil Engineers in London. The theme of this year's awards will be equality and diversity, focusing on race and religion. Last year's awards were presented by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams.
Mr Phillips took up the chairmanship of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) – which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year – three years ago. Following the terrorist threats of this past summer, he warned the Government to avoid "a recipe for policy making by panic".
While he welcomed Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Ruth Kelly’s call for an honest debate about racial issues within British society following the threats, he said that this "should not be an excuse for every anti-immigrant Muslim-baiting wingnut to hijack the debate and advertise their latest assault on some part of the community."
"Take for example the calls for religious profiling," he added, "We need to be straight about it. You can’t tell how someone worships by looking at them. So there is no such thing as religious profiling; it has to be racial."
He appealed to the Government to stick to what he called "an integration agenda ... based on equality, participation and interaction".
Fighting discrimination
"You can't tell how someone worships by looking at them"
Trevor Phillips
The CRE was established in 1976 in the wake of the Notting Hill riots with the aim of leading the fight against discrimination and promoting race relations. It has promoted the cause of minority groups, including gypsies and travellers ever since.
Mr Phillips has contributed to the debate on faith schools. Speaking at the Royal Geographical Society’s annual conference this year, he said, "The case is being made that if we want social integration, we can’t have faith schools. It’s true that, unlike Anglican and Roman Catholic voluntary aided schools, the few Muslim, Jewish and Sikh schools that exist tend to be mono-ethnic. But this is hypocrisy dressed up as a leftish concern for integration.
"Actually what the proponents of this view really want to say is one of two things. One, a perfectly valid view, is that religion should be banned from the public sphere and practiced only in private if at all. The other, not at all valid in my view, is that Muslims can’t be trusted to run schools like Christians have done for centuries."
Trevor Phillips was born in London in 1953. He was educated in Guyana and then studied chemistry at Imperial College London. He went into broadcasting, becoming head of current affairs at LWT in 1992, and was alternately editor and presenter of The London Programme. He received awards from the Royal Television Society in 1988, 1993 and 1998.
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