EXCLUSIVE: THE OTHER SIDE OF GERRY GABLE – Praised by the Tory Press & the Morning Star for his ‘Anti-Fascism’ They Omit His Support for Zionism & Israeli Apartheid

The Death of Searchlight’s Gable Represents the Death of Bourgeois Anti-Fascism

Gerry Gable, the Editor of Searchlight Anti-Fascist Magazine from 1981 onwards, died recently. What is remarkable is that all the obituaries, from the Morning Star to The Telegraph and Times were both completely uncritical and almost identical.

According to Andrew Bell, a former Searchlight Editor in the Guardian Gable

was one of the most formidable and persistent figures in the postwar fight against fascism and the extreme right in the UK.

The genocide supporting, anti-Palestinian Jewish Chronicle said that Gable

remained consistent in his efforts to defend democracy and expose the dangers of far-right extremism.’

According to Steve Silver, former Campaigns Officer for the Israeli funded Union of Jewish Students, in the Communist Morning Star, Gable was ‘the most tenacious post-war anti-fascist Britain ever produced’.

The Telegraph described Gable as having ‘waged a 50-year war on British neo-Nazis’.

It is not often that someone can receive almost identical praise from the papers of the Communist Party and the Tory Party. And still they got it wrong. Not a hint of the criticism Gable received found a space in their eulogies. Although one must not speak ill of the dead it is also important to speak the truth.

Perhaps the reason for their praise is that Gable’s work against Britain’s neo-Nazi right not only posed no challenge to the British state but was often carried out in collaboration with it. These tributes tell one side of the story. There is another, darker and murkier side.

Part of the reason is that Gable was a racist not an anti-racist, a Zionist not an anti-Zionist. The real credit for Searchlight’s work during the 1970s when it played a key role in destroying the National Front as a political force should go to Maurice Ludmer, its Editor between 1975 and 1981, and not Gable. Unfortunately Ludmer died an untimely death in 1981 at the age of only 54 leaving Gable to align Searchlight’s political direction with his own.

Maurice Ludmer, unlike Gable, was an anti-imperialist

Whereas Ludmer resigned from the Communist Party because it was not sufficiently devoted to the fight against racism in the working class Gable resigned in 1962 because ‘it had begun to adopt an anti-Israel line’ [Jewish Chronicle 23.10.87]. Gable explained that:

Israel was a democracy and these (Arab) countries were not. I have always supported Israel on those grounds first and foremost because I have always been a Jewish trade unionist.

Therein lies the difference between Ludmer and Gable. According to David Edgar’s obituary for Ludmer

Maurice believed passionately that fascism could not be effectively fought without attacking racism as well; he believed, too, that black workers must play their full part in the struggle against the most extreme and virulent form of racism, the National Front and its allies.

Gable’s lack of socialist politics led to his collaboration with a British state that was racist to the core. This was also why the Anti-Fascist movement lost its trust in him.

Gable’s relationship with the British state and his trading information on neo-Nazis with Special Branch and MI5 in exchange for information on the Left led to a breakdown in relations.

Gable’s Memorandum to London Weekend Television

In 1977 Labour Home Secretary, Merlyn Rees proposed deporting American journalist Mark Hosenball and ex-CIA agent Phil Agee. Agee and Hosenball were targeted because they were exposing CIA activities and the existence of Britain’s electronic intelligence agency, GCHQ, which was then a secret.

From Left to Right - Campbell, Aubrey and Berry

While researching to defend Agee and Hosenball against deportation, Time Out journalists Crispin Aubrey and Duncan Campbell met with John Berry, a former Signals Intelligence employee, a whistleblower, to discuss the operations of GCHQ.

Hosenball and Campbell, had co-written an article for Time Out magazine titled "The Eavesdroppers" which detailed the work of GCHQ. This, along with Agee's work, led to them being deemed threats to national security.

The ABC trial  arose from the government's attempt to silence investigations into its intelligence activities. Aubrey, Berry and Campbell (ABC) were arrested on February 20, 1977, days after the deportation order was finalised, under the Official Secrets Act for collecting and passing on information regarding signals intelligence.

In November 1978 this trial collapsed with token sentences being handed out. During the trial and the campaign that preceded it, the security services had done their best to poison the media via corrupt and tame journalists. One such was Gerry Gable, a researcher with London Weekend Television.

On 2 May 1977, Gable sent a memo to his superiors at LWT regarding Phil Kelly who was active in the campaign to support the ABC defendants. Kelly later became editor of Tribune and an Islington Labour councillor.

The memo confirmed that Gable was working hand in glove with the British and Israeli secret services to smear the campaign to support Hosenball and Agee.

Gable alleged that Kelly had taken part in a PLO terrorist training camp. There was no truth in this allegation but lies came easily to Gable. According to the New Statesman (15.2.80):

The wording of Mr Gable's memo suggests clearly that he was engaged in a 2-way transaction with his security sources... The nature of the official material received and recorded by him suggests that much of it was coloured by phone-tap info and informer reports.  

As Time Out observed, the memo caused those who Gable mentioned, like Hosenball, who had previously considered Gable as a friend, to feel betrayed. (22.2.80)

It is something that people in anti-fascist politics have also experienced.  There is reason to believe that Campbell was also being monitored by Gable.

Brian Gentleman

Nine years later and Gable was up to his old tricks, this time for Channel 4's 20/20 Vision. Gable befriended, and took advantage of, a lonely low-level civil servant in the DTI, Brian Gentleman.  One day Gentleman found himself accused, live on TV, of being a Czech agent.

However the Police refused to prosecute. Gentleman was considered a Walter Mitty character whom Gable had entrapped. The Broadcasting Complaints Commission delivered a stern rebuke. It was also the subject of a question in the House of Commons from Gerald Howarth MP.

The Role of Searchlight

Searchlight Magazine played a crucial role in exposing the National Front in the 70s as a neo-Nazi organisation. Under Ludmer it was an effective weapon for the anti-fascist  movement. In the words of Unmesh Desai, now a right-wing Labour councillor but at the time an anti-fascist activist, ‘Searchlight was our bible’.

Once Ludmer had died Gable took the magazine in an overtly pro-imperialist direction. For years I helped sell the magazine but I stopped doing so when it became overtly pro-Zionist. One particularly absurd front page was the September 1987 issue ‘The New Axis’ featuring Ghadffi, Khomeini, Patrick Harrington and Louis Farrakhan. It was a precursor of George Bush’s ‘evil axis’.

This was followed up by the January 1989 issue ‘The Year of the Mad Dogs’ featuring Ghadaffi again. This fitted in with Reagan’s rhetoric against the Libyan regime. An equally demented graphic on the State of the British Right in January 1989 included Muslim fundamentalists, Black British activists, Arabs a plenty but curiously no mention of Zionist organisations such as the Jewish Defence League.

Searchlight had became a pro-Zionist rag and a mouthpiece for British Intelligence. It is little wonder that the Telegraph, not normally sympathetic to the fight against fascism or racism, gave such an adulatory obituary to Gable.

Anti-Fascist Action (AFA)

It is in his effect on the anti-fascist movement that Gable and Searchlight were most destructive. AFA was formed in February 1985 to take on a resurgence of violent fascism and groups like Blood & Honour, C18 and the British Movement.

Not only was Searchlight trading information with MI5/Special Branch but it was actively trying to split and destabilise the anti-fascist movement. When Zionist Board of Deputies attacked the newly formed Anti-Nazi League [ANL] Ludmer didn’t hold back in  attacking the BOD:

‘In the face of mounting attacks against the Jewish community, both ideologically and physically, we have the amazing sight of the Jewish Board of Deputies launching an attack on the Anti-Nazi League with all the fervour of Kamikaze pilots.’  [Searchlight November 1978]

Guardian journalist David Rose, described by Larry O’Hara as a ‘journalistic mouthpiece’ for the Met Police and Searchlight, smeared Class War as a fascist organisation. Allegations were made by Gable that their leadership, in particular Ian Bone, were supporters of the NF, that racism was endemic in CW, that they were police agent-provocateurs on demonstrations and that the NF & CW jointly planned the Stop the City demonstrations targeting Jewish businesses.

CW were never popular on the Left, their paper was often crude politically but no one doubted that they were anti-fascists. They attracted a young, punk periphery. They also appealed to a section of the working class including many miners during the 1984-5 strike. They were the perfect foil for Gable and MI5.  

At its Manchester conference in 1986, AFA narrowly took a decision to suspend CW from membership until an Inquiry looked into Searchlight’s allegations. When the Inquiry asked for evidence 

Searchlight was unable to supply any to support its allegations.

At this, AFA’s second conference I was elected onto AFA’s Executive. When a Commission of Enquiry reported, CW were exonerated but the damage to AFA had been done. The 1986 AGM nearly broke up in turmoil as a result of the allegations.

As the AFA Report into Searchlight Allegations Against Class War concluded:

Despite the leading role of Searchlight magazine in the affair, and despite many approaches to the magazine for evidence, the sum total of material from Searchlight to the enquiry was nil.  We are bemused by Searchlight's role in this affair.

In the course of the inquiry Gable had admitted to monitoring anarchists. For whom he didn't say. He had engaged in the destabilisation of AFA on behalf of the British state and his Special Branch and MI5 friends. None of his obituaries have even mentioned Gabel’s role as an informer for the British state.

See also my article for the Newsletter of Palestine Solidarity Campaign Undermining Anti-Fascists, Defending Zionism. I was heavily involved in the Anti-Fascist movement from the mid-70’s onwards. See my 2012 book on the History of Fighting fascism in Brighton and the South Coast.

Brighton AFA Letter to AFA Groups (24.6.93) and to Gable (16.7.93) and Gable Letter to Greenstein (13.7.93)

On 24 June 1993 I wrote on behalf of Brighton AFA to other AFA groups warning them about Gable and Searchlight. I referred to his targeting of Malcolm Astells, a member of Midlands AFA as a neo-Nazi infiltrator on the basis that:

‘every time he takes charge something goes wrong: either people get arrested or are led away from confronting the nazis on wild-goose chase.’

I referenced similar allegations against Class War and made the point that when false allegations are made against people

the result can only be to sow confusion and suspicion in our ranks. lt is a classic tactic of the secret state, the purpose of which is to destabilise and demoralise its enemies. It also means... that it is that much easier for genuine fascists to infiltrate our ranks.’

My letter stung Gable into sending me a rebuttal on 13 July 1993. Gable disguised his real reason for writing with the pretence that I  owed Searchlight money for copies of Searchlight that he had sent me to distribute. In fact I never heard again of his legal threats.

The rest of his letter was mere bluster, repeating claims that he had supplied evidence to AFA’s CW Inquiry. In the course of his rant, Gable accused me of being a ‘self-hating Jew’. Gable, also resented my comparison to Maurice Ludmer who had always taken the position that the issue of Zionism should not be allowed to divide the anti-fascist movement.

This was a time when some supporter of Israel, such as Miriam Karlin and Professor Geoffrey Alderman, had broken ranks with the Board of Deputies to sponsor the Anti-Nazi League. Today when the Zionists are holding hands with Tommy Robinson and supporting Genocide, such a position is clearly untenable.

In my response three days later I explained that the term ‘self-hater’ has a Nazi lineage. That was what anti-fascist Germans were accused of before going on to make the point that:

I have always found it difficult to oppose racism and fascism in Britain and then turn a blind eye to racism and fascism directed against Palestinians simply because the perpetrators are Jewish. You have no such qualms. Therein lies the reason for your political degeneration.

Black Activists Challenge Searchlight’s Racism

In July 1991, a coalition of black-led anti-racist groups published an OpenLetter in Labour Briefing that publicly criticised Searchlight. Searchlight of course had refused to print the letter.

This letter was driven by a series of long-standing disagreements, culminating in allegations of racist treatment of black anti-racists at an Ilford synagogue meeting. 

At the meeting Black attendees, were banned, searched, and physically intimidated by security guards. Newham Monitoring Group Secretary, Jasbir Singh, reported being subjected to a body search. All this was directed by Gerry Gable.

The letter represented a major public rift between Searchlight and Black anti-racist groups. It led to the formation of the Anti-Racist Alliance in November of that year.

Black activists questioned the magazine's methods and its collaboration with the state. This highlighted a rift between Searchlight and grassroots Black-led groups, such as NMP.

The Briefing letter alleged that Searchlight had fostered a hostile environment for black activists. Whilst Searchlight worked with the Police Black people were suffering from police racism. Searchlight was seen as the right-wing of the movement.

These tensions were exacerbated by the association with Herut, the political party that founded Israel’s Likud party led by Netanyahu. Although the letter said that their main differences were not over the Middle East it was inevitable that Searchlight’s support for Zionism had an effect on relations with Black activists.

The letter’s authors took issue with Searchlight’s approach to racism which emphasised cultural differences rather than seeing economic and political discrimination as being at the heart of state racism, a term that Searchlight barely recognised.

The signatories also took issue with the equation by Searchlight of anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism given that many Black people oppose Zionism because it is an apartheid ideology. Most prominent Black anti-racist groups in Britain signed this letter.

There followed a heated correspondence in Briefing itself. This clearly angered Searchlight which had always taken care not to print critical letters in the Magazine.

When the Campaign Against Racism & Fascism [CARF], which had produced its own separate section in Searchlight from 1979 until 1990 split over political differences such as the magazine’s pro-Israel stance and its prioritisation of anti-Semitism over state racism and its pro-imperialist politics, they sent in a letter explaining why they were parting. Searchlight refused to print it despite CARF having produced a section of the magazine for 11 years. See Powerbase for a timeline of the split.

Searchlight however could not ignore the letter that was printed in Labour Briefing given the support it had in the Labour Movement and from several MPs like Corbyn and McDonnell. Searchlight acolytes had no option but to defend it but Gable stayed silent.

In the September 1991 issue Ray Hill, a former Searchlight mole in the British Movement, who had become Deputy Leader, penned a letter which avoided virtually all the accusations. He did though insult the Black organisations who had signed the letter as ‘three men and a dog’. Daphne Liddell, of the New Communist Party, contributed a more emollient letter.

In the October issue Larry O’Hara, an independent anti-fascist researcher penned an article which I am told made Gerry Gable spit blood. O’Hara rehearsed all the allegations of Searchlight’s links and work for the secret State. O’Hara, although he didn’t always get things right, had been a thorn in Searchlight’s side for years. Gable had become obsessed with him.

In the February 1992 issue Graeme Atkinson, Searchlight’s European Editor, contributed an article but added little that was new, referring to the ‘hoary old 1977 ‘Gable Memorandum’. That was the best he could do because it was difficult to explain Gable’s admission of working for the security services. Graeme accused Briefing of using ‘knife in the back’ tactics in printing O’Hara’s article. Graeme has since broken with Searchlight.

Finally in March 1992 I had a long letter in Briefing responding to Atkinson and also explaining the political problems that anti-racists and anti-fascists now had with Searchlight. The full correspondence can be found here.

Winter 2015 Searchlight Suggests that the Labour Party expel 'Jew hater' Tony Greenstein

Searchlight Support for the Labour Party ‘Anti-Semitism’ Witchhunt

It was not therefore surprising that Searchlight and Gable would lend their support to the ‘anti-Semitism’ witchhunt of socialists and anti-Zionists in the Labour Party. In its Winter 2015 issue there was an item ‘Anti-Semitism’ which asked

‘How is it that nobody appears to have looked into the background of Tony Greenstein, a Brighton antifascist and pro-Palestinian activist’ before going on to call me a ‘Jewish Hater’.

In fact I was suspended in March 2016 and I was the first Jew to be suspended and then expelled from the Labour Party as part of the ‘anti-Semitism’ witchhunt. The article makes it clear that it thoroughly approved of this right-wing attack on socialists and anti-Zionists in the Labour Party. 

Below are links to a number of documents referred to in this blog.

Tony Greenstein

AFA Report into Searchlight Allegations Against Class War

Black activists challenge Searchlight July 91 and here

Gerry Gable Again – Black Flag – the Brian Gentlemen Affair and here

Spy Trial By Television and here

The Eavesdroppers – Duncan Campbell and Mark Hosenball, Time Out  and here

Powerbase Article on Searchlight

Searchlight 'anti-fascist magazine joins forces with Labour’s ‘anti-Semitism’ witchhunt

The Death Agony of Searchlight Anti-Fascist Magazine

Searchlight & the State – Kate Sharpley

Destabilising the Decent People – Duncan Campbell, Bruce Page, Nick Anning

Searchlight Obituary for Gerry Gable

Jewish News Frazer Article

Morning Star Obituary for Gable

Jewish News  Obituary

Gable Memorandum transcript

Our Searchlight Problem – Lobster Magazine

Letter – Tony Greenstein, Brighton AFA to supporters 24 June 1993

Letter – Gerry Gable to Tony Greenstein 13 July 1993

Letter -Tony Greenstein to Gerry Gable 16 July 1993

Obituary -:Gerry Gable (1937-2026), architect of modern British anti-fascism – Andy Bell

Even Tommy Robinson praises Trevor Phillips, ex-Chair of the EHRC, and his anti-Muslim bigotry

According to Phillips, Muslims “see the world differently from the rest of us” – why has he not yet been expelled from the Labour Party?

Imagine that someone had said that the genocidal actions of Israel can be traced to the fact that it is a Jewish as opposed to a Christian state and it is because of the ‘ideology’ of the Jewish religion? Who can doubt that this would be anti-Semitic? Yet this is what Trevor Phillips has been getting away with for years in regard to Muslims.

I think there's little doubt that it's the extremist adherence of one particular faith - Islam - who have created a major fault line in this country”.

When I was a student activist I knew Trevor Phillips. Not personally but politically! Apart from being a delegate to National Union of Students Conferences between 1975 and 1981 I was also a member of NUS’s Polytechnic’s Committee for 2 years (all the Polytechnics converted to universities from 1992 onwards) so I frequently came into contact with him.

I had a number of battles with Phillips since the Polytechnics were considered to be a bastion of the far-left unlike the right-wing universities. I was also at the time Vice-President of Brighton Polytechnic.

My impression of Phillips was that he had no fixed principles other than self-advancement. It was clear that he was using the fact of being Black for career purposes even though he never had anything positive to say about fighting racism.

Phillips was a member of the ruling Broad Left/Left Alliance which included such ‘socialists’ such as David Aaronovitch of the Communist  Party, (yes it is true!), Charles Clarke, the Bunterish President who at the time was strong on the civil liberties such as supporting the defendants in the ABC trial concerning breaches of the Official Secrets Act. When Clarke became Home Secretary under Blair he was one of the most illiberal people to occupy that office. And of course Jack Straw, the first ‘left’ President of NUS who as Foreign Secretary presided over the extraordinary rendition of people who were kidnapped for a spot of torture in places such as Libya and Morocco.

Phillips impressed me most because of his complete indifference to the fight against racism and fascism. Most younger people don’t realise the battles we had against the resurgence of fascist parties in the 1970s and 1980s.

Anti-fascists opposing the National Front demonstration in The Battle of Wood Green in April 1977 - Phillips and people like Sue Slipman opposed physical confrontations with the fascists

One issue dominated NUS during the 1970’s. It was a time when the National Front was kicking its way into the headlines. They achieved 16% in the West Bromwich by-election in 1973 with Martin Webster, their neo-Nazi leader, as candidate. In 1977 in the Birmingham Stechford by-election Andrew Brons, another neo-Nazi (later to become a BNP MEP) beat the Liberals into 4^th place.

For the first time since the war a neo-Nazi holocaust denying party was talked of as a legitimate political party. It was a time of mass anti-fascist activity.

Leon Trotsky's advice to anti-fascists was to acquaint the heads of the fash with the pavement

We remembered the advice of Leon Trotsky that ‘If you cannot convince a Fascist, acquaint his head with the pavement."  In other words we had to operate a No Platform for Racists and Fascists policy, to drive them from the streets. Not because we were opposed to freedom of speech because we recognised that allowing fascist groups to control the streets threatened the freedom of Black, Jewish and other minorities to walk down those streets.

It was also a time when the Establishment Jewish Board of Deputies launched an attack on the Anti-Nazi League, formed in 1977, because it was set up by anti-Zionists. The Board had never participated in any anti-fascist activity or been interested in combating racism or fascism.

The Board of Deputies posted this in the Jewish Chronicle to Jews to keep indoors and NOT oppose the fascists

In the 1930’s the BOD had opposed Jewish participation in anti-fascist activity and in particular the mobilisation to stop Moseley’s British Union of Fascists marching through the East End in the Battle of Cable Street in October 1936. Instead they posted a notice in the Jewish Chronicle telling Jews to stay at home.

The Police were frustrated in their desire to force the fascists through the Jewish East End in October 1936

The ANL, which was a mass anti-fascist movement, together with Rock Against Racism helped destroy the NF with their mass rallies and concerts. The Editor of the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight, Maurice Ludmer, which was not unsympathetic to Zionism wrote:

"In the face of mounting attacks against the Jewish community both ideologically and physically, we have the amazing sight of the Jewish Board of Deputies launching an attack on the Anti Nazi League with all the fervour of Kamikaze pilots... It was as though they were watching a time capsule rerun of the 1930's, in the form of a flickering old movie, with a grim determination to repeat every mistake of that era. " (Issue 41, November 1978)

Anti-fascists built street barricades at the Battle of Cable Street in 1936 to stop Oswald Moseley's fascists marching through the Jewish East End - the Board of Deputies opposed Jews taking part in a genuine fight against anti-Semitism

The key debate in NUS was over No Platform for Fascists & Racists. The National Organisation of Labour Students (NOLS), which was dominated by Stalinists including the SNP’s Tommy Shepherd MP, had just decided, after heated debates to support No Platform. What was Phillips reaction? He told NUS Conference that he was so disgusted that he would never join the Labour Party!  Unfortunately this was one more promise he broke.

Uncle Tom Phillip signed this letter to the Guardian alongside Tories like Maajid Nawaz, Frederick Forsyth, Fay Weldon and other Islamaphobes

Phillip’s Suspension

According to the Jewish Chronicle

“the former head of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission has suggested his shock suspension from Labour Islamophobia allegations are linked to him speaking out about “leadership’s failure to tackle antisemitism in the party.”

In other words poor Uncle Tom Phillips has been penalised, not for anti-Muslim bigotry but his commitment to fighting ‘anti-Semitism’, which as we know is about Zionism and the Palestinians.

Just imagine, dear reader, that someone had said about Jews that ‘they see the world differently’ from non-Jews. I’ll take a bet with anyone that they would have been fast-tracked out of the Labour Party.

As Sayeeda Warsi noted amongst the things that Phillips has said are that “Muslims are not like us”; that Muslims “see the world differently from the rest of us”; and that British Muslims are “becoming a nation within a nation”. It is little wonder that he has received the stamp of approval from Tommy Robinson no less.

One of Phillip's supporters is Tommy Robinson - says everything there needs to be said

According to Richard Littlejohn, who has the accolade of the most racist journalist in Britain today (I don’t consider Katie Hopkins a journalist), Trevor Phillips only agreed to Chair the EHRC in order to close it down! Given he neutered its legal and campaigning work there is much truth in this.

For these tweets, about Israel or the privileging of 'anti-Semitism' a Labour Party member was expelled under the fast track procedures, i.e. without a hearing, 

Not surprisingly those who campaign so vociferously against anti-Zionism by labelling it ‘anti-Semitism’, have leapt to Phillip’s rescue.

John Ware revealed that Uncle Tom Phillips wanted to destroy the EHRC - which he nearly did!

John Ware, another Islamaphobic bigot who sees much merit and rationality in Islamaphobia, presented the propaganda Panorama programme ‘Is Labour Anti-Semitic?’ leapt to his defence in an article Cancelling Trevor Phillips. Is Labour Anti-Semitic? was the most dishonest programme I have ever seen. It deliberately refrained from interviewing anti-Zionist Jews and hid the identity and affiliations of all those Jews who did complain of ‘anti-Semitism’ (they were all officers of the Zionist JLM).

The anti-Roma bigot and ‘anti-Semitism Czar’ Lord John Mann described Phillip’s suspension as ‘Orwellian’. The reaction of the media and those who were involved in allegations of Labour ‘anti-Semitism’ to Phillip’s suspension demonstrates conclusivelythat the ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign was not about anti-Semitism or racism.

Below is an excellent and well researched article from Koser Saeed of Spotlight Magazine.  I have lightly edited it and my additions are in bold but the original is here. It is well worth subscribing to at £5 a month to keep these valuable alternative news channels available.

Tony Greenstein

EXPOSÉ: Jennie Formby was right to suspend Trevor Phillips, he's a rampant Islamophobe!

Earlier this week, the Mirror reported that the Labour Party took the decision to suspend Trevor Phillips (former head of the Commission for Racial Equality and chair of the Human Rights Commission [EHRC] over allegations of Islamophobia.

Phillips has been suspended over remarks about Pakistani Muslim men sexually abusing children in northern British towns and for saying that Muslims “see the world differently from the rest of us”.

He’s also been reported for boasting about being nominated as “Islamophobe of the year” by a UN body, while chairing a controversial event at the Tory party conference last year entitled “Challenging Islamophobia” The event disintegrated into a farce when attendees shifted the entire debate toward how to deal with extremists and why they should avoid defining Islamophobia, just in case it 'restricts free speech' and so it can't be 'weaponised' against them. The Mirror printed the full transcript of the event.

At times, attendees and even Trevor Phillips were blaming Muslims for the attacks on Mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand (which resulted in the killing of 51 Muslim worshippers) and Finsbury Park (resulting in the death of one man with 10 others seriously injured). Rather than condemning the attacks, they were arguing that these attacks were a natural response to 'the Muslim threat.'

Phillips was challenged by BBC Radio 4's Today programme and accused of hypocrisy when he appeared to be happy to make generalisations about Muslims while, at the same time, condemning Labour's supposed failure to properly tackle anti-Semitism, accusing Jeremy Corbyn of “embracing anti-Semites as comrades” and declaring that he could no longer vote Labour. Phillips defiantly held to his opinions and argued that Muslims are part of a group with “a particular set of values”

The Guardian reported that former Tory Party chair, Sayeeda Warsi said, of Phillips, that his

“understanding of race, racism and the barriers to integration has sadly been flawed for many years... Phillips cannot treat Muslims as a homogenised group when it suits him, then later deny they are racialized”

Naz Shah MP, the Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities and Vice Chair of the all-party parliamentary group on British Muslims, pointed out that “Some of the things he has said on public record would not be acceptable to any minority community,”

How does a man who claims to be a champion for marginalised communities and who has held prominent positions such as Head of the Commission for Racial Equality and Chair of the EHRC align himself with overtly Islamophobic and racist views against Muslims and even find it humorous to ridicule Muslims?

Phillips was very proud of his nomination as Islamaphobe of the year by the Islamic Human Rights Commission

What does it say about the EHRC that it was headed by a racist and Islamaphobe?

Phillip's CV : Phillips was also chairman of the Runnymede Trust (a race equality think tank) from 1993 to 1998 and currently Phillips is the Deputy Chairman of the board of the National Equality Standard (NES). NES sets clear Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) criteria by which companies are assessed.

Phillips is a close personal friend of Peter Mandelson and was best man at his first wedding. He signed up to the 'New Labour' agenda and became friendly with Tony Blair. Blair honoured Phillips with an OBE.

In May 2000, after Ken Livingstone won the Mayoral contest the Labour Party put Phillips forward as a 'top-up' candidate for the London Assembly. Phillips served as Chairman of the Assembly until February 2003. The primary role of the London Assembly is to scrutinise the activities of the Mayor of London. Suffice to say there were a number of clashes between Livingstone and Phillips during this time. One of the key reasons for their disagreements was down to Phillips' rejection of multiculturalism. Phillips opposition to multiculturalism colour much of his attitude and opinions.

In April 2004, Phillips called for the government to reject multiculturalism. He claimed it legitimised “separateness” and proposed that the government should “assert a core of Britishness” instead.

In Sept 2006, Livingstone accused Phillips of “pandering to the right” and said that he had “an absolutely disgraceful record” at the Commission for Racial Equality. He accused Phillips of turning the CRE into “a vast press department” and claimed that under Phillips stewardship, the CRE “wound down all the legal work.”

Six EHRC commissioners resigned citing concerns over Phillips' leadership and probity during his tenure as Chair of the EHRC, leading to a breakdown of trust and confidence in the chair.

In July 2009, two former commissioners accused Phillips of “divisive leadership” Kay Hampton said his leadership style was “better suited to a political organisation rather than a human rights one”. Sir Bert Massie asked “How do you manage to alienate that number of people?...it's quite a skill. These are not people who are rebels for the sake of it.” Massie, a leading disability rights campaigner who had sat on government bodies and committees for 30 years, went on to explain how he and his fellow commissioners often learned of policy announcements through press releases.

Days later, Ben Summerskill (of the gay rights group Stonewall), also resigned as commissioner. Summerskill said that Phillips' style of leadership had “unnerved” many commissioners. Summerskill seemed to imply that Phillips' personal ambition or agenda was taking precedence over the important work that the commission should be doing in trying to help victims of prejudice.

Following a spate of resignations, the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) decided to investigate the EHRC. Fearing the JCHR report would paint him in a bad light, Phillips contacted three of the Peers involved in the investigation, allegedly in the hope of discussing the draft report. The JCHR then raised concerns that Phillips was attempting to influence the views of some of the committee members, prior to the publication of the report. However, the Lords Privileges Committee who subsequently investigated Phillips conduct concluded that Phillips was not in contempt of Parliament and that it was merely inappropriate and ill-advised of him to have contacted three members of the JCHR committee and ask for some of the evidence to be redacted and to express his unhappiness over the fact that the JCHR report was critical of his conduct.

In March 2015, Channel 4 aired an opinion piece produced by Phillips called 'Things we wont say about race that are true' It was packaged as a documentary peppered with a few broad statistics, some anecdotal data and selected remarks made by a few prominent individuals. In this piece, Phillips tried to argue that racial profiling is justified but instead of inviting a broad debate or investigating causality, Phillips produced a self-indulgent monologue expressing 'his' opinion. For example, in Phillips world, there are disproportionally more black people in prison because they have a higher propensity for a type of criminal behaviour. No consideration is given to racial profiling by the police or the fact that black kids frequently get tougher sentencing than their white counterparts.

Phillips argues that because black kids are more likely to be killed and typically their killers are more likely to be black then this too has to be black criminal behaviour. He completely side steps the socio-economic factors that push kids from deprived neighbourhoods (who tend to be predominantly black kids) into criminal behaviour. Phillips openly argues that isolated or segregated Muslim communities were a hot bed for “an ugly perversion of Islam” that bred terrorism and that most communities, left to themselves, actually prefer segregation.

Phillips gives absolutely zero consideration to the lack of equal opportunity, lower paid jobs, racism and racial abuse and physical attacks if you move to a white area or the fact that white people are more likely to be able to afford to move out to more affluent, usually white, areas.

Phillips also tries to make the case that segregation stokes terrorist behaviour - not deprivation, not persecution, not racial abuse, not foreign policy etc. By making this argument, Phillips implies that segregated communities express deviant behaviour but then he shies away from including segregated white communities in this assessment.

Phillips further bolsters his argument of deviant behaviour in segregated Muslim communities by talking about Asian grooming gangs as if grooming or deviant sexual behaviour was somehow predominantly perpetrated by Pakistani Muslim men. He fires off a few statistics: Between 1997 and 2010, there were 17 court cases linked to street grooming gangs with over 200 victims. 56 men were convicted but only 3 were white and 40 were Pakistani heritage Muslims. Phillips concludes from this that there has to be a cultural factor to this behaviour (another disguised attack on multiculturalism).

Phillips conveniently side steps facts like how the vast majority of sexual grooming of young children is done online by white men. A Home Office Report on Cyber Crime, published in October 2013 revealed that between 2004 and 2013, the number of sexual grooming offences recorded by police in England and Wales was 2,778.

It also quoted several studies on the characteristics of offenders. In one study of 633 UK males convicted of IIOC offences (Indecent Images of Children) it found that their average age was around 39 years, over 80% were either single or divorced and 93 per cent were convicted of making as well as consuming images. Another study covering 97 cases of offenders who committed IIOC and contact sex offences against 246 children between them found that most offenders were white unemployed males, aged between 19 and 45 years and that those who were employed predominantly worked in schools or care work and over a half lived with children.

Another study hoping to compare traits of online against offline offenders also concluded that online offenders were “broadly younger than offline offenders; more likely to be White, and have greater victim empathy and sexual deviancy than offline offenders.” ...

So, can Phillips identify the cultural factor that explains why the vast majority of online IIOC offenders and groomers are white and how does this fact support his argument for eradicating multiculturalism?

In April 2016, Phillips produced another documentary for Channel 4 called “What British Muslims really think”. The program opens with Phillips painting a picture of large swathes of Muslim men as terrorist who leave the UK to go and fight abroad and who, he says, “may return to take up arms here”. He then goes on to make an explicitly racist statement.. “I think there's little doubt that it's the extremist adherence of one particular faith - Islam - who have created a major fault line in this country”.

Once again, using a subjective monologue, rather than a formal investigation or a broad debate, Phillips attempts to paint a picture of a community of people as 'other', 'abnormal' even 'savage' - a community Phillips knows next to nothing about. Phillips argues that extremist views within Muslim communities are the norm and not the exception. The program is largely Phillip's interpretation of an ICM Survey on Muslims, commissioned for Channel 4. ICM undertook face to face interviews with 1,081 Muslims, over the age of 18, between 25 April and 31 May 2015 and compared it to 'a nationally-representative control group' of 1,008 adults, over the age of 18+ who they interviewed by telephone between the 5 and 7 June 2015. The full report is no longer available on the ICM website so it's impossible to check what questions were asked or how they were phrased but there are references to it in the 'review of survey research on Muslims in Britain', which was carried out by Ipsos MORI in February 2018

Despite the sample size being just 1,081 people, Phillips starts his argument by claiming that the methodology employed by ICM was meant to produce data representative of half of all British Muslims. The reconstruction video used for dramatization purposes shows a young Muslim woman interviewing an angry looking Muslim man.

One of the questions posed in the survey was to ask if it was acceptable to use suicide bombing as a way to fight injustice. According to the results of the ICM survey, 4% of the Muslim group agreed it was acceptable, compared to 1% of the control group who supposedly represented the wider population. The ICM spokesperson then extrapolates that to the British Muslim community at large and claims that this represents just over 100,000 British Muslims. He neglects to mention that 1% of the wider population extrapolates to approximately 678,860 non-Muslims.

It's also unclear if there was any context to the question that might have directed a certain response. For example suicide bombing in London is a clear act of terrorism whereas a suicide bombing in Israel is clearly part of an ongoing struggle against the colonisers. In Israel it has to be placed in the context of the repeated bombing and attacks on civilians and Palestinian homes.

Cross referencing the Ipsos review we discover that the question posed was “To what extent do you sympathise with or condemn people who commit terrorist actions as a form of political protest”

Which begs the question, ‘What is terrorism?’. Who defines ‘terrorism’. Was for example the IRA terrorist? Catholics never accepted Partition or the Ulster statelet would say ‘no’ in large numbers. During ‘the Troubles’ Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political wing, elected MPs and captured seats like West Belfast.

The response showed only 1% of Muslims completely sympathised. Another 1% said they partially sympathised and 3% said they didn't sympathise but didn't condemn either.

So, in truth, only 2% of Muslims showed any sympathy at all with terrorism, however defined. This was not all that much different to the wider population. The Ipsos review also pointed out that another survey on non-Muslims, undertaken by YouGov, showed that a higher percentage of ordinary British people believed terrorism would be justified under occupation (54%), or if you were fighting an oppressive regime (52%), or if you were fighting for independence (42%). Which is the position of the Palestinians. However, Phillips chooses to take the data exclusively from the ICM survey and then deliberately frames it in a way to imply that Muslims have a higher propensity for terrorist behaviour.

Phillips then goes on to express an unqualified personal opinion suggesting that there aren't enough “liberal and reforming British Muslim voices” to counter, what 'he' perceives to be, the Muslim propensity for terrorist behaviour. Phillips effectively manufactures a problem with Islam, provokes fear of Muslims, implies Muslims are incapable (or perhaps unwilling) to deal with 'the problem' and sets up the argument for government or police intervention. It is a straw man argument.

The program also repeatedly dips back into the ongoing theme - the perils of multiculturalism - arguing that British Muslims do not wish to integrate. He acknowledges that they are happy to socialise with and work alongside non-Muslims but they rarely make the effort to visit a non-Muslim house, although the program does acknowledge that community segregation plays a big part in this as white and non-Muslims communities are equally unlikely to make the effort to integrate.

Anyone with any sense of history will know that all communities under attack from racists self-segregate for their own protection. That is exactly what happened with Jewish immigrants to Britain. They congregated in the East End and racists like Phillips then complained that they weren’t integrating!

Phillips goes on to express another unqualified personal opinion. He shockingly claims that there's a  “clear cultural gap between a significant section of Britain's Muslims and the wider population”. As Phillips himself frequently likes to point out, Islam is a religion, not a race or ethnicity and therefore not a cultural identity. Muslims are as diverse in their cultural heritage as Christians. You wouldn't assume that the majority of white British Christians with historical roots in the UK would have much in common culturally with Christians in India or South America, for example.

Phillips' objective appears to be to set Muslims aside as 'other' to every other religious, racial and cultural group in the UK. If that wasn't bad enough, he assigns traits. According to Phillips, Muslims do not value “equality of women, social tolerance, freedom of expression” and they do not “embrace same sex marriage”. He implies by this that other religions value women's equality and freedom of expression and approve of social tolerance and same sex marriage - despite data showing quite the contrary.

It's worth pointing out also that the ICM Survey did not compare Muslim attitudes with those of members of other religious groups - it compared Muslim attitudes with those of the wider mixed population which would have included people of many religious backgrounds and of none. We can therefore only speculate as to how Muslim attitudes might have compared with Catholic or Jewish Groups.

It would be interesting to see if Phillips can find an Orthodox Jewish Synagogue prepared to marry two gay men. I suspect he will be looking for a long time! The Church of England refuses to ordain gay men, still less marry them. Nor has the Catholic Church changed its position on gays or abortion. Organised religion has always been backward socially. Islam is no exception.

At one point, Phillips touches on British Muslims attitude towards Jews. No data was provided on Jewish attitudes towards Muslims or societies attitude towards Muslims in general or any of the reasons why some Muslims might harbour negative attitudes towards Jews, Zionism and Israel. I have no doubt that if a survey of Jewish attitudes were undertaken, then the results would show a high degree of both anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bias.

The Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR) recently undertook a wider study on Antisemitism in Great Britain, which also revealed that British people held more negative views about Muslims than they did about any other religious group.

One suspects that Phillips wouldn't be in the least bit interested in doing a documentary about rampant Islamophobia in wider British society. JPR also revealed that 28% of the British population agreed with at least 1 Antisemitic statement. [health warning – not all of the statements are anti-Semitic]

It also found that 24% believed that Israel is committing mass murder in Palestine and 21% believe Israel is an apartheid state.

At some point, the program made a conscious decision to deviate away from investigating “What British Muslims really think” and decides instead to investigate Islam's treatment of women. It focus's particular attention on an Islamic tenet that a wife should obey her husband and that polygamy is tolerated under certain circumstances. Phillip attempted to argue that subservience to husbands is a purely Muslim attitude and yet in Christianity there are clear instructions on how  women should be subservient to their husbands....

Ephesians 5: “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.  23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.  24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.”

Colossians 3: “Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.”

I Peter 3: “Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives... ... They were submissive to their own husbands, 6 like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her master.”

It has clearly escaped Phillips' mind that traditional Christian marriage vows for women include the words “Love, honour and obey” and Phillips also missed the bit in Colossians 3 that instructs slaves to obey their masters “with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord”.

Most religions share many of the same backward values and do not sit well with contemporary attitudes. It is worth noting too that Polygamy  is not forbidden in the Old Testament and Judaism. The Lutheran Church and the Anglican Communion also tolerate it under certain circumstances. So too does Mormonism which only very reluctantly was forced to abandon it in the United States. In Hinduism, the Rig Veda states that a man could have more than one wife and the Dharmashastras allow men to marry women of lower castes provided that the first wife was of equal caste. Common people (i.e. lower castes) were only allowed a second marriage if the first wife could not bear a son. In Judaism, the Torah states

“If he take another wife for himself; her food, her clothing, and her duty of marriage, shall he not diminish” and that

“a man must award the inheritance due to a first-born son to the son who was actually born first, even if he hates that son's mother and likes another wife more”.

Clearly, many popular religions tolerated Polygamy so why make the case that this is somehow exclusively Islamic?

Phillips introduces a statement by Elham Manea, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Zurich University, who has been researching the treatment of Muslim wives in Britain. Manea identifies the attitudes of some Muslim men towards their wives...

·                   Threatening their wives that they would leave them and get another woman if they don't do what's expected of them.

·                   Threatening to get another women if he can't have children with the first wife

·                   Expecting the wife to fulfil his sexual needs even if she doesn't want to - refusing to recognise rape within marriage.

Of course if we were to undertake a study of non-Muslim men in British society or, better still, ask non-Muslim British women, one wonders how many of them might reveal that their husbands have threatened to beat them up or leave them if they don't do what's expected of them and how many of their husbands demand sex as a marital right? Anyone who has worked in domestic violence services would be able to give you a pretty good picture. To imply that these are exclusively Muslim traits is simply outrageous.

Phillips tries to argue that many British Muslims generally don't want to change and refuse to adopt some of the behaviours of wider society. Phillips again redirects the debate towards multiculturalism being a bad thing and that integration can only be achieved through migrants losing their cultural and/or religious identity and being assimilated. He then attempts to present the opinions of a small number of Muslims who do hold extremist views about introducing Sharia Law into the UK as if it were mainstream opinion amongst British Muslims. In fact, Islam actually instructs Muslims to obey the law of the authority they live under (which is exactly the same as Jewish law!).

In other words, any adherence to Sharia instruction cannot conflict with the law of the land. Sharia courts are notoriously unfavourable towards the rights of women (as any court founded in religious doctrine might be) but that does not mean that they are allowed to enforce a ruling and they certainly do not have the power or the right to challenge British law.

Phillips then makes another wild claim. He asserts that the ICM survey for Channel 4 revealed that Muslim communities who “hankered over a separate life” (i.e. those who live in segregated communities) were more sympathetic towards violence and extremism. He alleges that when asked what action they would take if they knew someone who was supporting terrorism in Syria, only 34% said they would report it to the police. Phillips then claims that this could be because the majority of Muslims might be sympathetic to the cause of would-be jihadists. The ICM representative does however explain that the question posed was framed in a way to ask if they had any “sympathy” for them, rather than specifically asking if they were 'supportive' of the actions.

Phillips rephrases the question and manipulates the data in order to conjur up a frightening image of British Muslims. By contrast, the Ipsos MORI review of survey research on British Muslims reveals that 71% of Muslims said they have no sympathy with young Muslims who leave the UK to join fighters in Syria and they also point out that “sympathy” is an ambiguous term so it's not clear how the respondents might have interpreted the question. It's possible that they were expressing sympathy for “young Muslims” in general, rather than sympathy for their motives.

The Ipsos review also found that 94% of Muslims say they “would report it to the police if they knew someone in the local community was planning an act of violence”

Shockingly, even though Phillips is forced to admit that the ICM report shows only a small minority of Muslims actually 'sympathise' with violent acts abroad, he still insists on trying to find links between minority extremist sympathies and wider community behaviour. The ICM researcher then responds to this question by attempting to argue that respondents who expressed feelings of “lack of social capital” or a desire not to integrate or an aspiration to follow (what he terms as) a more “fundamentalist Islamic lifestyle” or to follow “Sharia Law” are somehow proving there is a correlation between mainstream attitudes and more extreme views.

Not only does Phillips make a complete leap interpreting the information, he wrongly implies that the desire not to integrate, and the aspiration to follow a so-called “fundamentalist Islamic lifestyle” is mainstream thinking for British Muslims. Phillips then adds that those Muslims who have expressed some sympathy for violence are twice as likely not to want to integrate into wider society.

Phillips concludes that, in his opinion, Britain's 'Live and let live culture' provides fertile ground for extremist thinking to flourish and creating “a nation within a nation”, proving once again, that Phillips is happy to draw wholly unfounded conclusions and stoke up fear of 'the other' all in the name of eradicating multiculturalism.

Not content with pretending to be interested in “What British Muslims Really think”, he then poses a new question.. “What are we going to do about it?” In other words, What New Racist Measures Should We Introduce?

There's a nasty whiff of Nazi ideology permeating through this argument. Where there once was a 'Jewish problem' that needed 'a solution' now there's a 'Muslim problem' and Phillips asks the viewer 'what should be done about it'? He calls on Britain's to turn away from tolerance and reject our 'Live and let Live' ideals and he claims that this is somehow a 'liberal' viewpoint?

Phillips then makes the case for creating a set of policies that promote integration and produce a number of clear red lines that his version of Utopia will not compromise on and that all Muslims must abide by and he demands that we support liberal trends in all parts of society (although it's hard to imagine what Phillips means by Liberal trends when he's already written off the fundamental liberal trend of Live and Let Live).

Phillips proposes legislating to force schools to have targets for admitting children of different ethnic backgrounds in order to encourage greater integration. Of course schools tend to serve catchment areas and if a catchment area is predominantly white and Christian then meeting quotas of ethnic or other religious groupings is going to be almost impossible - unless you adjust the quota according to the local catchment area (which rather defeats the object).

Phillips cites an example of a new school that was built specifically for the purpose of integrating two catchment areas - one predominantly white the other predominantly Asian which, the program notes had some success at encouraging integration between the groups. However, it's wrong to assume that simply mixing in schools or at work or even when socialising is actually going to break ground and solve the problem of integration between communities.

Phillips also proposes looking at the ethnic mix in social housing and setting quotas to encourage mixing. It's interesting why Phillips specifically mentions social housing because it demonstrates that he recognises that Muslim communities have largely been ghettoised and deprived. After all, you don't have many Muslims families who are able to afford to live in wealthier neighbourhood. Perhaps, if Phillips is genuine about encouraging integration, he might have chosen to focus more of the program on how factors such as deprivation, inequality, lack of opportunity, racism and Islamophobia create segregation and alienate an entire community and how all these factors might contribute to the reason why some Muslims hold some of the opinions that they do?

In 2016 Civitas published “Race and Faith: the Deafening Silence” by Trevor Phillips in which he tries to argue that ethnic and cultural difference pose a danger to society and makes the case for “active integration” as opposed to “organic integration”. He starts by painting a vivid picture of an Islamist threat with “Islamist terrorism” apparently “firmly camped on European shores” and criticises European elites for not wanting to debate the “consequences” of “ethnocultural diversity”. Phillips seems to argue that the only way to mitigate the 'dangers' of ethnic diversity is to attack multiculturalism and force migrants to turn away from their cultural roots and instead be forcibly 'integrated' (i.e. assimilated) into 'British culture'.

Phillips deliberately chooses not to recognise that Islam and Judaism are religions and not cultural identities or, more importantly, that British culture is a mixture of cultures - the food we eat, the music we listen to, the clothes we wear, the words we use... (colonialism has a lot to answer for).

In this book, Phillips argues that multiculturalism is responsible for all the strife between communities and for sexist aggression – implying that ethnic minorities introduced sexism and aggression towards women into British society. Phillips imagines a world where white British women had equal opportunities and had never been beaten or deprived of opportunities or raped, a world before migrants landed on British shores. He further claims that if we choose not to address the pink elephant flying around his padded cell, then we're suppressing 'his' freedom of expression (and those like him) and we're risking reversing hard-won civil liberties.

Over the years, Phillips has repeatedly argued for his own freedom of expression and has called for society to conform to what he considers to be 'liberal values', while at the same time denying anyone else's freedom of expression and discarding, bastardising and ridiculing the values of other community groups. Smells of fascism to me?

The Trevor Phillips suspension is exposing the British media for the shyster it is

The Labour Party has suspended Trevor Phillips over allegations of Islamophobia. The response from British media outlets and figures is a sight to behold. Because it’s a far cry from their coverage of alleged antisemitism in the party.

Islamophobia

The Times first reported on Phillips’s suspension, describing him as a “pioneering anti-racism campaigner”. The ex-head of the UK’s equality watchdog has a checkered past when it comes to comments on Muslims, to say the least. One Telegraph headline in 2016, for example, read:

British Muslims becoming a nation within a nation, Trevor Phillips warns

That same year, the Daily Mail reported that Phillips said Muslims are ‘not like us’. Who exactly Phillips was referring to in his amorphous ‘us’ is unclear.

Meanwhile, the Times reported:

Comments by Mr Phillips about the failure by some Muslims to wear poppies for Remembrance Sunday and the sympathy shown by a substantial proportion in an opinion poll towards the “motives” of the Charlie Hebdo killers also form part of the complaint.

Phillips has been energetically talking up the differences between ethnic groups for a long while now, though. That’s made him somewhat of a favourite among Britain’s right-wing press. Because highlighting the differences between people along ethnic lines – rather than what unites them – is a pet topic for these rags, of course.

Same thing

On the other hand, these same right-wing rags – along with the rest of the mainstream media – have spent the last four years rallying against these sorts of views in relation to another religious group: Jewish people.

So why are they giving Phillips ample airspace to defend his views, while criticising his suspension?

There are a number of reasons. Firstly, as already mentioned, racism isn’t hard to find in the British press. Islamophobia in particular is a regular feature in content. Indeed, it’s very prevalent in politics too, particularly in the Conservative Party. So it’s unsurprising that figures in Britain’s largely Tory-supporting press are keen to brand Phillips’s views as unproblematic. Conceding they are would be like holding up a mirror to their own faces.

Furthermore, Phillips has publicly criticised Jeremy Corbyn over alleged antisemitism in the party. He was a signatory to a letter that accused the Labour leader of being “steeped in association” with the prejudice. So condemning Phillips won’t reflect badly on Corbyn; it can’t be used as a stick to beat the Labour leader with. Although one Daily Mail columnist did try to turn the suspension into an argument against Corbyn’s leadership:

Shysters

In short, Phillips’s suspension has exposed Britain’s media for the shyster it is. Not all prejudices are equal in its world. And the ones which get short-shrift are the ones the media can’t use to attack political foes.