Throughout my life, I’ve been called many things, most of which I wouldn’t want to repeat in front of my mother.
But one epithet I wear with pride is this newspaper’s description of me, some years ago, as the ‘Pope of Political Correctness’.
It was referring to my role as the founder chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), responsible for enforcing Britain’s anti-discrimination laws.
As the public face of the EHRC for over six years, I was forced to spend many hours on TV and radio, wearily opining on whether it was racist to use the word ‘coloured’ (Amber Rudd can be reassured it isn’t, and people of colour have many better things to be offended about); or whether schools with some Muslim pupils could celebrate Christmas with a crib containing the baby Jesus (almost every British Muslim would join in the celebration of someone they regard as one of humankind’s great prophets).
But the Commission’s real work has always risen above this kind of silliness and in doing so it has transformed many lives.
Trevor Phillips, founding chairman of the equalities watchdog and a Labour Party member for 30 years, has said he's proud Corbyn's fanatics will face a reckoning
When we came into being in 2007, the EHRC was the first body anywhere in the world given the mandate to seek out prejudice of all kinds and to eliminate it.
And no one should be surprised that Britain was the first country to take such a bold step; you’d have to travel a long way to find a nation as wedded to the idea of fair play.
That’s why yesterday’s courageous decision by the Commission to investigate the Labour Party was a proud moment for me.
I know that EHRC lawyers would have considered the decision with the utmost thoroughness, and I am sure the Board would have weighed the risk of controversy carefully. And then they did the right thing – just as you’d expect a pioneering body empowered to attack injustice without fear or favour to do.
On the other hand, it was a moment of utter shame to find a political party of which I’ve been a supporter and member for more than 30 years, for which I’ve stomped the streets and felt the breeze of a hundred doors slamming in my face, was in the dock for harbouring the oldest prejudice of all: anti-Semitism.
It is not the first time the Commission has found itself in the awkward position of having to decide whether a political party has broken the law.
Back in 2005, as a relatively new chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality (a EHRC forerunner), I was confronted with dozens of complaints about the Conservative Party’s anti-immigration election poster with the slogan ‘Are You Thinking What We’re Thinking?’
It wasn’t unlawful, but it was ugly, borderline racist, and the new leader David Cameron wasted not a minute on dumping the message.
Four years later, we took the British National Party to court over their constitution: it is unlawful for a political party to exclude people from membership because of their race. The BNP’s legal defeat presaged their financial and political collapse – an act about which I have never had a moment’s regret.
The Labour Party, however, is different.
In 1963, after the state-run bus company in Bristol refused to employ black or Asian conductors – white female passengers were said to be too frightened to travel with them at night – residents of the city mounted a four-month boycott.
In the end the owners backed down on this blatantly racist policy. But it was Harold
