This piece comes from the website of the Commission for Racial Equality but I can only find it via Google cache here. I am hoping that neither Lord Lester nor the CRE have any objection to Engage reproducing this piece of writing - DH

THIRTY YEARS ON - Anthony Lester

My involvement with the campaign for effective equality laws began in the early 1960s, when I was in the USA studying at Harvard Law School. In 1961, I saw at first hand the entrenched racism in the Deep South during the period of civil rights activism. In 1964, I returned for Amnesty International to report on racial injustice in the American South during the "Long Hot Summer". When I returned, inspired by Dr Martin Luther King, I joined Dr David Pitt and others to found a civil rights organisation in Britain, the Campaign against Racial Discrimination (CARD).

At that time I was a member of the Labour Party, and was one of the Labour Party lawyers lobbying the home secretary, Sir Frank Soskice, to introduce a broad and enforceable law to tackle racial inequality. We recommended that the law should give remedies, not only for racial, but also for sex and religious discrimination. We persuaded the home secretary to abandon his notion of making racial discrimination a criminal offence to be enforced by the attorney-general: Soskice accepted that the anti-discrimination part of the bill should be civil in nature. But we failed to persuade him to include employment, housing, education and the provision of services. The 1965 Race Relations Bill was confined to criminalising incitement to racial hatred and making it unlawful to discriminate on racial grounds in public places. It set up a Race Relations Board (RRB) and a process of conciliation. Only the attorney-general was empowered to bring legal proceedings.

Because the 1965 Act was fatally flawed, we campaigned for something better, together with Mark Bonham Carter and John Lyttle, the chairman and chief conciliation officer of the RRB, respectively, and a broad range of immigrant organisations. Roy Jenkins helped us behind the scenes as the then home secretary.

We were all much influenced by the experience of the United States. I helped Jenkins to write a memorable speech on racial equality in Britain, which he gave in May 1966, in which he defined integration "not as a flattening process of assimilation but as equal opportunity, accompanied by cultural diversity, in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance".

Our concepts of equality and integration were far removed from the muddled notions of multiculturalism which developed later. I wrote in Race and Law that it would

be entirely misguided for public authorities to tolerate the exploitation of children or the maltreatment of wives and daughters because such practices were condoned by a particular national, religious or cultural group. Prejudice and discrimination ought to be opposed with equal force, whether among white or black people, natives or immigrants; and cultural tolerance must not become a cloak for oppression and intolerance within the immigrant communities.

In 1967, Jenkins was able to announce that he had decided to extend the legislation (even though nothing in Labour's 1966 election manifesto had foreshadowed this). Unfortunately, he was fated not to implement the decision. Jenkins was soon succeeded at the Home Office by James Callaghan, who introduced the 1968 Race Relations Act after rushing through an unsightly bill to exclude British Asian refugees from East Africa from settling in the UK, their country of citizenship, later found by the European Commission for Human Rights to have subjected this vulnerable group of British citizens to racially degrading treatment. The 1968 Race Relations Act was wide in scope but deliberately weak in enforcement. It created a Community Relations Commission (CRC) to promote "harmonious community relations" by carrying out research, making recommendations to government, and helping to fund a network of community relations councils (later renamed racial equality councils).

In 1974, Roy Jenkins became home secretary again. I left the bar to work as his special adviser, developing new anti-discrimination legislation on sex as well as race. In the White Paper "Racial Discrimination", we explained the need for

a determined effort by Government, by industry and unions, and by ordinary men and women, to ensure fair and equal treatment for all our people, regardless of their race, colour, or national origins. Racial discrimination, and the remediable disadvantages experienced by sections of the community because of their colour or ethnic origins, are not only morally unacceptable but also a form of economic and social waste which we as a society cannot afford.

We referred to emerging evidence suggesting that "the problems with which we have to deal if we are to see genuine equality of opportunity for the coloured youngsters born and educated in this country may be larger in scale and more complex than had been initially supposed". We argued that it was the government's duty to prevent morally unacceptable and socially divisive inequalities from hardening into entrenched patterns. The White Paper recognised that a "fuller strategy to deal with racial disadvantage" would have to be deployed, and that there was a need for urgent action, including using government contracts as a tool for securing compliance with the law.

We decided that the concept of unlawful discrimination should be extended to include not only direct discrimination (less favourable treatment on forbidden grounds) but also indirect discrimination (practices, procedures and rules which are equal in form but have a disproportionate adverse impact on a particular racial group, and which cannot be objectively justified). For the first time, alleged victims were given a direct right of access to courts and tribunals. We also decided to create the Commission for Racial Equality, which would have "a major strategic role in enforcing the law in the public interest". Working side by side with the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC), the CRE would be empowered, not only to support individual cases, but also to use new investigative and enforcement powers to tackle unlawful discriminatory patterns and practices. We also decided (contrary to my advice) to combine the new law enforcement functions with those of the CRC, which the bill abolished.

Jenkins left the Home Office in September 1976 and I returned to the bar. Our new strategy was not implemented as we had hoped. The Callaghan administration abandoned the promised use of government contracts to secure equal opportunity practices, and there was no effective implementation of the fuller strategy to tackle racial disadvantage. Those appointed as chairs and commissioners then and thereafter did not regard strategic law enforcement as the main priority for the CRE, and the organisation was not staffed with the degree of professional experience and skill required for that important role. The use of the CRE's investigatory and enforcement powers to tackle persistent and significant discriminatory patterns and practices were eventually all but abandoned. Individual cases were supported even though they were weak or unlikely to have any value as precedents within an overall strategy of law enforcement. And the incorporation of the role of the CRC blunted the CRE's cutting edge.

These broad generalisations do not do justice to the CRE's achievements, but it remains the case that the CRE, and to a lesser extent the EOC, did not carry out the mandate given to them 30 years ago. Perhaps it was unrealistic to have expected that they would do so, especially in a context in which the courts tended to doubt their legitimacy, and reviewed their actions excessively strictly when the commissions were challenged for allegedly abusing their powers. Perhaps they would have performed more effectively if subsequent administrations had given stronger political and financial support to their work. Once the brief liberal interlude of Roy Jenkins' second period at the Home Office had ended, there was never the same enthusiasm for strategic law enforcement - especially when legal challenges threatened government practices.

The 1976 Act remained unchanged for more than 20 years. The CRE recommended repeatedly and unsuccessfully that the Act should be amended to require public authorities to promote racial equality. In 1997, when New Labour won power, Bob Hepple and I tried to persuade the government to review the existing legislation, with a view to introducing a comprehensive, coherent, userfriendly single equality bill, and an equality commission. But there was no political momentum for reform, so we set up an independent review under Hepple's leadership. The report was published in July 2000 and a year later I introduced an equality bill modelled on the Hepple Report. It passed through the Lords, but died in the Commons for lack of government support.

Meanwhile, the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence and the subsequent report of the Macpherson inquiry persuaded Home Secretary Jack Straw to strengthen the 1976 Act by extending the prohibition against direct and indirect racial discrimination to public service providers, and by imposing a statutory duty on the public sector to promote racial equality. The way in which the duty has been implemented is excessively mechanical and bureaucratic, and the CRE is not well equipped to carry out the necessary monitoring.

The Equality Act 2006 provides the opportunity to create a new commission which combines equality and human rights, is independent of government control, and is fit for the purpose of using its powers strategically and effectively to secure compliance with the anti-discrimination legislation, and to seek judicial review of public authorities whose practices and procedures breach the Human Rights Act. Much will depend upon the appointment of the new commissioners and staff. Thirty years on, it is also essential for the single equality act, promised in New Labour's election manifesto, to contain a coherent, comprehensive, userfriendly and non-bureaucratic scheme. It should strengthen, not weaken, the existing legislation; and it should not be another incomplete and inconsistent patchwork. The time is over-ripe for effective new measures, and an effective commission able and willing to tackle the problems of persistent and entrenched patterns of discrimination.

Lord (Anthony) Lester of Herne Hill QC was an architect of the Race Relations Act 1976. His Single Equality Bill is a model for lawmakers in creating workable legislation that is effectively enforced

- Commission for Racial Equality, 2006

This piece comes from the website of the Commission for Racial Equality but I can only find it via Google cache here. I am hoping that neither Lord Lester nor the CRE have any objection to Engage reproducing this piece of writing.