Lord Mayor, Lady Mayoress, Distinguished Guests, Members of the Lunar Society. It gives me great pleasure to welcome our guest speaker tonight, Trevor Phillips.
Trevor is a Londoner by birth, but was educated in Georgetown, Guyana, before studying chemistry at Imperial College London. He had a distinguished undergraduate career and became president of the National Union of Students from1978 to1980.
He then went into broadcasting where he had a varied career, working initially as a researcher for London Weekend Television (LWT), before being promoted to head of current affairs. He is a director of Pepper Productions, founded in 1995, and with his brother, the crime writer Mike Phillips, he wrote Windrush: Irresistible Rise of Multi-racial Britain, which won the Royal Television Society documentary series of the year award in 1998. He has received many awards from the Royal Television Society for his outstanding contribution, being awarded an OBE for services to broadcasting in 1999.
He still maintains his links with broadcasting and the theatre as he is a board member of the Almeida Theatre in Islington and is a vice president of the Royal Television Society.
He is also a skilled politician, having joined the Labour Party, campaigning as mayoral candidate in London before being elected to the London Assembly in 2000. He is a tireless advocate on equality issues and has made a significant contribution to the voluntary sector. He has been the chair of the Runnymede Trust, an independent think tank on race relations and also a commissioner for a number of other charities.
In 2003 he was appointed the head of the Commission for Racial Equalities, and then in 2006 he was appointed the head of the newly merged organisation, the Commission for Equalities and Human Rights, which went live only recently in October 2007 and will promote a wide range of equality issues.
He is a vigorous champion of free speech. He is not afraid to ask hard questions about multicultural Britain particularly how to handle the consequences of migration so much at the centre of our economic and social life. These are important issues for us in the Lunar Society, matching one of our strategic themes, Youth and Diversity and our wish to broaden debate and catalyse change in our multicultural society, and ensure that tomorrow’s leaders reflect our own rich ethnic mix.
Trevor, may I now call on you to deliver your speech
Knowledge, Difference & Inequality: the potential for combustion.
Trevor Phillips speech can be read here.