Harry and Meghan: Sir Trevor Phillips claims Britain is NOT racist

No one in Britain cared about Meghan’s race… She and Harry had a golden chance to make things different for millions and it is UNFORGIVABLE that they chose not to, says Sir Trevor Phillips as he marks 75 years since The Windrush arrived

• Sir Trevor Phillips says that Britain is the most welcoming country in Europe
• He says Harry and Meghan ‘squandered a golden opportunity’ to inspire change 

Today is Windrush Day — 75 years since 800 immigrants from the Caribbean stepped off HMT Empire Windrush to feel the chill of Tilbury Docks, the gloom of London’s grey skies and an uncertain, often hostile, reception.

But Britain has come a very long way since 1948. And according to Sir Trevor Phillips, writer, businessman and former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, we have plenty to celebrate.

‘Most people would agree that we are not a racist society. We are the most welcoming country in Europe and most of the world,’ he says.

‘Britain is not perfect, but it is a very different country to the place I was born into. Very different even to the country I became an adult in, even, because everything has changed.’

Three-quarters of a century after Windrush, Britain has embraced a multi-racial society. We don’t care what colour someone’s skin is. We don’t give a fig about interracial marriages. One in six of us has a foreign-born parent.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle ‘constructed this completely ridiculous and unpleasant story about how maltreated they were — which, frankly, no one believes. No one cared about Meghan’s race,’ said Sir Trevor Phillips

‘Most people would agree that we are not a racist society. We are the most welcoming country in Europe and most of the world,’ Sir Trevor Phillips (pictured) says

There are more black and ethnic minority people in high ministerial office here than in the EU put together. Our Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, is a proudly practising Hindu. The Scottish first minister, Humza Yousaf, is Muslim.

READ MORE: MEGHAN MARKLE IS ACCUSED OF FAKING INTERVIEWS FOR AXED SPOTIFY PODCAST 

Of course, it’s not all plain sailing and no one is suggesting there is no racism in Britain, but it is light years from the difficulties faced by the Windrush generation.

Trevor puts our progress, and his optimism for the future, down to a national curiosity — an interest and warmth about other people that, perhaps ironically, dates to the days of Empire. And also an attitude of being accepting of others — under certain conditions.

‘You’ve got to look like you’re doing a fair day’s work, that you want to get on with your neighbours and that you won’t tell them how they should live their lives,’ he says. ‘And don’t let your hedge grow over my lawn, thank you very much.’

Such an open attitude may explain why last week a survey by the think-tank British Future revealed 80 per cent of those from ethnic minority backgrounds consider our country a better place to live than any other in the West.

‘Can you imagine having a law in England about what a woman could wear on her head?’ says Trevor. ‘It’s just not going to happen.’ (Several countries on the Continent ban headscarves in certain contexts.)

On top of all that, Britain’s black society has changed beyond recognition since the early immigration of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.

The British African population of 1.5 million is now more than double the British Caribbean population and brings an extra pizzazz.

‘Black Africans have a different mentality,’ he says. ‘They don’t see their skin colour as a burden.’

The British liner ‘Empire Windrush’ pictured in dock on March 28, 1954

He says they are bursting with energy and ambition and success. No wonder we have such amazing role models — Oscar-winning actor Daniel Kaluuya, England footballer Bukayo Saka, rapper Stormzy — from all over, in music, drama, sport, literature.

READ MORE: PRINCE HARRY AND MEGHAN MARKLE ARE CALLED ‘GRIFTERS’ BY SPOTIFY EXECUTIVE 

There’s a lot to be proud of. Which is why Trevor is still hopping mad with Harry and Meghan and all their self-indulgent silliness.

‘They could have been a beacon of discovery and reconciliation! Not just to Britain, but the whole world,’ he says.

‘Instead, they completely squandered a golden opportunity to show everyone what this country is really like in matters of race — a country where no one disturbs themselves about a marriage across the lines of race and ethnicity,’ he adds, getting crosser and crosser.

‘But they constructed this completely ridiculous and unpleasant story about how maltreated they were — which, frankly, no one believes. No one cared about Meghan’s race. They could have made things different for millions of people and they chose not to. That’s unforgivable. In my book, that’s a sin.’

In 1948, however, people did care, very deeply, about the colour of the skin of the Windrush immigrants.

The British Nationality Act had given the right of settlement in the UK to all British subjects and so they had travelled 5,000 miles, ready to help with our post-war recovery, filling jobs in industry, public service and the NHS — full of hopes and dreams and proud to be part of the British Empire.

None of it was as they’d expected.

‘Britain is not a paradise,’ the Labour MP Tom Driberg said in 1948 to a group of newly arrived immigrants. It was far worse than that.

Many were barred from accommodation, pubs, clubs and even churches because of the colour of their skin.

They had to contend with ‘Keep Britain White’ signs, Enoch Powell’s rivers of blood speech, race-hate nights by teddy boys in Nottingham and London, and appalling prejudice. Right up to the Home Office’s debacle in 2018 — when people were detained, denied their rights and even deported.

Trevor feels strongly that nothing from the past should be sanitised. Nothing dabbed clean by ‘elite narcissists who feel the need to doctor and soften language because people will feel hurt and offended.

The couple recently announced they will stop making documentaries and tell-all books as they have ‘nothing left to say’

‘These people are so wrapped up in themselves that they are happy to wipe out the history of black men, or women.’

So he fought hard to keep the use of the word ‘black’, instead of ‘people of colour’, in the re-release of Windrush: The Irresistible Rise Of Multiracial Britain, written with his brother Mike and first published in 1998. And to retain the most shocking language.

READ MORE: Harry and Meghan ‘are FINALLY going to stop writing books, making documentaries and sitting down for interviews to bash the Royal Family’ claim insiders

‘It has to hurt. It has to sting. You can’t shove it all in a cupboard and pretend it didn’t happen,’ he says.

Trevor’s own family arrived from British Guiana in 1950. ‘My father had to walk the streets looking for somewhere to sleep,’ he says.

The youngest of ten, Trevor was born in 1953 and lived with his family in two rooms in a house in Finsbury Park, London, with another family upstairs, until his over-stretched mother sent him and a couple of siblings back to an aunt in British Guiana until he was six.

When aged 11 he won a scholarship to an elite London school — now City of London Boys — his headmistress advised his parents not to send him. ‘He’ll feel out of place,’ she advised. ‘He will not be comfortable there. Send him to the local school instead.’

So they did. ‘Today one would be outraged. But I liked her. I kept in touch with her. She thought she was doing the right thing. But 40, 50 years ago, they were still putting us in a different box,’ he said.

When interracial couples married, families and friends on one side were appalled. ‘ “Think of the children! Your children won’t be white and life’s going to be terrible for them,” they’d cry.’

Somehow none of it held Trevor back. He studied chemistry at Imperial College London, where he became president of the student union. He has been a writer, politician, broadcaster and dogged racial equality campaigner.

So he knows a thing or two about race relations, the impact of immigration and the casual, covert racism that still creeps in — ‘in America they are clear they don’t want you, whereas here it can be quite artfully disguised’.

He also knows how best to ask about someone’s origins — listen carefully, Lady Susan Hussey.

‘It is important to be clear what was wrong in that case, because it was not wrong to ask someone where they came from, at all. It is good to be curious, and people from minorities do that all the time,’ he says. ‘The problem was, she framed it in a way that [was] to suggest the lady must have been lying to her.’

Today, he is fully aware that there are still difficulties. But he feels the Black Lives Matter movement and the tsunami of emotions and outrage — the great ‘awokening’ — that swept across the Atlantic in the wake of George Floyd’s 2020 murder in Minneapolis were out of kilter with their emphasis on white guilt and structural racism.

‘Suddenly everyone under 40 thought things had never been worse,’ he says. ‘But if you want to know what worse is, go talk to your parents and your grandparents.’

In many ways, the BLM movement — its language, its slogans about gun-carrying police — jarred here. Not just because our police are usually unarmed. But because, as Tomiwa Owolade argues in his highly praised book, This Is Not America, published this week, it’s a fundamental mistake to conflate American society, where everything is about race, with how we do things here.

‘You can stand on pretty much any street in any city in America and know if it’s Jewish American, or Italian American,’ says Trevor. ‘It is very fragmented. And it’s very big, so you don’t have to get on with each other.’

Here, race is only one aspect of our identity and we have a different approach.

‘It’s the British ability to accommodate. Yes, we expect new arrivals to change a bit, to accommodate our peculiar ways. But the natives change a bit, too,’ he says. ‘We embrace the new — the music, the food — take the best bits, change them to suit us (think chicken tikka masala) and make them part of our nation, so everybody shares.’

We also embrace the newcomers. We marry. By the million.

As a result, over the past 75 years, our society has boomed and blossomed and been enriched in every way — sport, arts, culture, government, society — by immigration from Africa, India, Europe.

Right now, the biggest group is Indians, says Trevor. ‘Very clever, successful, finance and tech professionals. And they’re going to change a lot about how we feel about leadership and business and finance. Rishi isn’t unusual.’

So what about the dismay caused by the small boats crisis — why have they become such a political hot potato?

‘What disturbs people, rightly, is not necessarily the numbers, but the sense of disorder and lack of justice,’ he says. ‘Seventy-five years ago, it was the colour of their skin. Now people worry they’re cheating the system. And the most hawkish about this are the last wave of immigrants who did it by the book.’

Today is a special day, to celebrate the extraordinary contribution of the Windrush generation to our society. But also how we have adapted and changed and benefited.

‘When I think of what my daughters and now my grandson expect out of their lives, I think 40 years ago I wouldn’t have thought that possible for a family like ours,’ says Trevor.

‘It wouldn’t have even been in our imagination. This country has been pretty good to us.’

n Windrush And Us, presented by Trevor Phillips, airs on Sky News on Saturday and Sunday at 9pm and is also available to watch on Sky Documentaries On Demand. Windrush: 75 Years Of Modern Britain by Trevor and Mike Phillips is published by Harper.

Source: Read Full Article