From: WAKEUPLEFTIES@HOTMAIL.COM   
      
   Profile of a leading mover in the Left Wing Cultural Revolution.   
      
   The Sunday Times - Comment   
      
      
      
   May 02, 2004   
      
   Profile: Trevor Phillips: The racial weather vane changes direction   
      
      
      
   When Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality,   
   called recently for Britain to abandon 40 years of multicultural policies,   
   he was accused of performing a volte-face. But that is to misunderstand the   
   nature of a weather vane.   
   The former left-wing firebrand may have once listed "mischief" among his   
   recreations in Who's Who, but he has close links with senior new Labour   
   figures and has always come to the aid of the party in times of crisis. It   
   was Phillips who loyally yoked himself to Frank Dobson in the latter's   
   doomed race to become London mayor. So, with Tony Blair acknowledging voters   
   ' real concerns over immigration last week, never were his persuasive skills   
   more needed.   
      
      
   Phillips came out with all guns blazing. First he attacked politically   
   correct liberals for their "misguided" pandering to the ethnic lobby,   
   claiming that they were turning "a cultural blind eye" to problems because   
   they feared being branded racist. This caused some astonishment, if not   
   confusion.   
   Then he laid into Clive Wolfendale, deputy chief constable of North Wales,   
   for performing a rap at the inaugural meeting of his local Black Police   
   Association, which Phillips branded "patronising" and "demeaning". The   
   association's chairman feebly protested that the rap sent out "a strong   
   positive message" and criticised Phillips for "making a big thing out of   
   nothing".   
   Urbane, articulate and photogenic, Phillips, 50, admits that he "baffles"   
   some people. His critics say that he is not black enough, a charge he   
   denies. "In different incarnations and for different reasons I'm different   
   things," he said. "Culturally, I'm pretty used to moving from one guise to   
   another."   
   He is also able to morph easily among the influential circles he has   
   cultivated since his days as a student activist, broadcaster and politician.   
   The leftwinger - who once called Margaret Thatcher an "ayatollah" for her   
   refusal to be swayed by other opinions - sent his two daughters, Sushila and   
   Holly, to a private school near the family home in Highgate, north London,   
   claiming they would "suffer some disadvantage" in a state school.   
   This decision undermined his bid to become Labour's candidate in London's   
   mayoral election. He had already fallen out with Ken Livingstone, who won   
   the election, and unfairly accused him of being racist and patronising when   
   Livingstone offered him the post of deputy mayor.   
   Phillips's latest edict may have puzzled the public but it was safe to   
   assume that he was on message with No 10. A friend of Blair, Jack Straw and   
   Charles Clarke, he chose Peter Mandelson as best man at his 1981 wedding to   
   Asha Bhownagary, a child psychologist. He joked of Mandelson three years   
   ago: "Having shared a room with me on various trips, he wondered how my wife   
   was going to cope with my unpleasant personal habits. But I'm not divulging   
   any more than that."   
   Phillips first signalled a wind of change in British race relations last   
   month when he proclaimed that multiculturalism was "not useful". He told The   
   Times: "Multiculturalism suggests separateness. We are in a different world   
   from the 1970s. What we should be talking about is how we reach an   
   integrated society, one in which people are equal under the law, where there   
   are common values - democracy rather than violence, the common currency of   
   the English language, honouring the culture of these islands, like   
   Shakespeare and Dickens."   
   The nuances of this change escaped many people. For decades,   
   multiculturalists - including Phillips, say his critics - have argued that   
   not indulging cultural differences creates disharmony. But suddenly his   
   mantra is "Britishness", in which everyone is integrated into society, with   
   a strong emphasis on the common currency of English.   
   His new line follows a crisis of confidence in multiculturalism. Even in   
   liberal Holland, a recent all-party report to the Dutch parliament concluded   
   that multicultural policies pursued over the past 30 years had failed. It   
   argued for greater efforts to encourage immigrants to learn Dutch. In   
   Britain, David Goodhart, editor of Prospect magazine, dared to question   
   whether the welfare state could survive mass immigration.   
   But Phillips's recent utterances sounded like a deathbed conversion to the   
   likes of Ray Honeyford, the former headmaster who claimed that he was   
   vilified and "hounded out" of his mainly Asian school in Bradford in the   
   1980s for opposing multiculturalism and trying to insist that English should   
   be used as a first language in school.   
   Phillips is proud to proclaim his Britishness: "I get emotional about this   
   country." He was the last of seven children, born in a snowstorm in   
   Islington, north London, to Guyanese parents. His father George worked as a   
   British Railways clerk, having come to Britain from what was then British   
   Guiana (later renamed Guyana) in the 1950s. Marjorie, his mother, worked in   
   a sweatshop as a seamstress.   
   In the 1960s his parents moved to New York to better themselves but,   
   considering the city an unfit place to grow up, they dispatched Trevor to a   
   school in Guyana. Later he was shipped back to Britain, attending a junior   
   school in Haringey, northeast London, then a grammar. "There weren't many   
   like me in the school," he recalled. "There were only six of us." By the age   
   of 13 he was getting into "scraps, quarrelling".   
   "Out of control is not the right word. I was over-enthusiastic. And not   
   someone who knew how to sit in rows very well, or hush when asked to," he   
   said.   
   His next stop was Queen's College boys' school in Georgetown, Guyana. "Being   
   sent back was the making of me," he observed. This "Edwardian" experience   
   struck him as a commendable model: "The old-fashioned discipline of   
   Caribbean teachers - uniforms, detentions, tough lessons and, yes, even the   
   possibility of corporal punishment."   
   His older brother Mike, a crime writer, believes that his flexible skills   
   stem from his peripatetic childhood: "When you shuffle between countries you   
   get a kind of added maturity."   
   From Georgetown he went to Imperial College London to study chemistry. With   
   his beard and big hair, Phillips led countless sit-ins, espousing a mix of   
   Black Panther radicalism and socialism. According to Sir Tom Shebbeare, a   
   friend and contemporary, Phillips was a sophisticated student who would   
   rather seek "consensus than conflict".   
   Encouraged by Clarke, now education secretary, in 1978 he became the first   
   black president of the National Union of Students (NUS). He began to forge   
   enduring ties. He befriended Mandelson, then a member of the British Youth   
   Council closely connected with the NUS.   
   Then came Cuba. Phillips, Mandelson and Clarke travelled to the country as   
      
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