2007 Annual Dinner: Trevor Phillips' speech

The Society Chair, Professor Deirdre Kelly, introduced Trevor Phillips as the 2007 Guest Speaker at the Society's Annual Dinner. He said:

My Lord Mayor, Lord Lieutenant, Chair, my Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for your warm welcome. Speaking after the break is a little daunting; it reminds me of a similar occasion at which I was the special guest at which the wine had been flowing and the conversation sparkling. I steadily shortened my speech as the gaiety grew, and to be honest, I almost decided to bail out when the organiser approached me and said "Mr Phillips, are you ready to speak or shall we let them go on enjoying themselves?". But tonight I'll press on.

It is a special pleasure to be here in Birmingham where no-one knows who I am but everyone is polite enough to pretend that they do. I am also delighted that two Labour movement giants, Sir Richard Knowles and Lord Morris have spared the time to be here; and though this was unexpected, I am thrilled to see my old — though much younger than me — undergraduate friend Professor Alison Halstead here, having recently been appointed the Pro-Vice Chancellor at Aston University.

But I am especially pleased to be addressing the Society, because it is an opportunity to share some thoughts with people who take ideas seriously. Ideas can take root and flourish in many forums; we can influence change through diverse channels. This society’s history is a testimony to that fact. Under the auspices of the Lunar Society in the 18th Century towering figures in the Industrial Revolution came together to share information about scientific discoveries, new working methods and commercial opportunities.

Those giants on whose shoulders we stand contributed to one of the most dynamic and innovative periods and regions of our scientific, industrial and intellectual history. But what is striking is the degree to which they were also concerned with social progress - what Jacob Bronowski called "material decency". They were committed to the principle that economic growth and scientific development should not come at the expense of fairness and human dignity.

In an age where global trade flourished on the back of slave labour, Joseph Chamberlain produced influential anti-slavery pamphlets and Josiah Wedgewood designed one of history’s most effective pieces of marketing: the ‘Am I Not a Man and a Brother’ medallion.

Today, just as in the 18th Century, we live in an era of transformation. But in the face of great progress and scientific advance, we too face great social dilemmas.

The challenges confronting mankind this century can be broken down into two main categories. One is the bundle of issues exemplified by global warming and climate change; the question of whether we can survive our own industrial and technological success. The other is the growing tension between on the one hand the right to assert our own special individual or group identities; and on the other the need bear our share of the responsibility for creating an integrated society.

These two great challenges can be summed up this way: in the twenty-first century how can we live with the planet; and how can we live with each other? The way we tackle these questions will determine what kind of world our descendants live in for generations to come.

Happily, in my role as Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission I am not required to tackle the challenges of climate change, a hot potato now out of the hands of last year's speaker David Miliband; the responsibility has been passed to Hilary Benn. But the question of how we live with each other falls entirely into the EHRC's domain. And it is a domain that is widening in scope and drilling down in depth at an astonishing pace.

It means that in just one week, we at the Commission – our Helpline, our staff and our Commissioners - can be asked to offer our views, clarify the law or give guidance on subjects as various as:

• how to tackle gang culture amongst young people;
  
• how better to ensure dignity and respect for people in care, both old and young;
  
• what constitutes discrimination against women, pregnant or otherwise;
  
• whether an employer can refuse to employ a hairdresser who wears the veil;
  
• what legal rights should be afforded carers;
  
• what books might or might not be provided in schools or places of worship;
  
• whether a town in England should be allowed to display 'No Popery' banners on Bonfire Night;
  
• whether a public authority should prioritise English translations or more English classes;
  
• what should be the human rights afforded to prisoners either foreign or domestic;
  
• what are the implications of the law on abortion for the way in which we discharge our duties to disabled people under statute;
  
• and looking forward, if insurance companies should be allowed to read your DNA and see whether you have a predisposition to some disabling condition, and if so whether they should be permitted to load your premiums for the risk that you might one day develop the condition that you don't currently have - or would this be yet a new dimension of inequality that should be outlawed?

In this new world, we confront novel questions every day. And if we are to become the society we all want - one built on fairness, dignity and respect, confident in all aspects of its diversity, we have work to do. Above all, we must not allow difference to become an explanation for inequality.

Tonight, I would like to reflect on the increasingly complex relationship between knowledge, particularly scientifically derived knowledge, human difference and social inequality in modern societies. And I want to apply the test that your predecessors intuitively applied to innovation and discovery: will it make our world a fairer one - more just, more equal, more free?

This test is a vital one. More knowledge does not always lead to greater progress and greater fairness. And as we have found again and again - Darwinism, the eugenics movement, the elucidation of the structure of the atom - the combination of knowledge and difference can be combustible - all too often literally. So let me use a chemist's metaphor - after all the four years I spent hanging around the labs at the public expense should be put to use somehow.

In the chemical process of combustion, three components – broadly fuel, oxygen and a spark – produce energy. To draw an analogy - where human difference is fuel, knowledge is oxygen and social or demographic change is the spark – the social process of combustion can produce one of two outcomes. It can produce an uncontrolled blaze of energy which leaves our societies polluted by inequality, tension and segregation; or, it can produce a positive energy – creativity, dynamism and prosperity. But if my memory serves, this process usually needs the regulating input of a catalyst.

And to stretch this metaphor unmercifully, we need some catalysts to help us understand, monitor and manage the desperately unstable combination of different kinds of humanity that constitutes our country - and indeed most Western Nations - today.

That in essence is the job of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Age of Difference

So let me start by saying a few words about how we understand what is taking place. And I would like to explain in a little more detail what I mean by when I say we are living in a world of increasing diversity and difference.

Its most obviously unsettling manifestation today arises from differences based on ethnic, racial and religious diversity, though as I'll show, these are not the only or even the most serious lines of difference in our societies.

In today’s era of globalization, the speed, scale and impact of the movement of capital is now paralleled by the movement of people across the planet. 227 million pass through our airports, 30 million people staying to visit, study or work. Globally, the UN reckons that some 200 million people live and work outside the country of their birth.

Immigration has become today's litmus test political issue, because it so clearly reflects the rapidity of change in our world. Until about two decades ago, we used to worry about single groups of immigrants, usually from the old empire, distingushed by the fact that they were mostly dark-skinned, spoke English and thought of themselves as British people moving to their mother country. They arrived in discrete waves, one after the other. The signature wave would be the Windrush migrants like my own parents - Caribbbean nurses and later Indian corner shop owners.

In today's post-imperial, post Cold War world, we face migration that comes from all corners, in all colours and speaks many languages. And they are all arriving at the same time. The signature migrants now are the Polish plumber and the Filipino nanny.

You could say we have moved from serial and imperial immigration to parallel and polyglot migration.

And it all happens much faster than before. Half of all current migrants arrived in the UK in the last generation and a third in the last decade. Today, one in four babies born in Britain has a foreign parent. Latest figures from the ONS tell us that our population will increase to 65m by 2015 and to 71m by 2030, largely driven by immigration. The House of Commons science and technology select committee has gone further, saying that by 2030 the number could be 83m. It's worth saying that we have never before hit the estimates - but the trend is clear.

It is not only the volume but also the diversity of immigration that is significant. That is why even the 17 ethnic Census categories used in 2001 now look pretty crude, when we consider that a single category - African - covers Birmingham born sons of Somali herdsmen and Ghanaian barristers, another Polish electricians and South African doctors - unless of course the doctors are not white in which case they belong to yet another category.

Here in Birmingham, at the time of the 2001 Census, just over 70% of the population was White, which included those of Irish heritage and the catch-all 'White Other' category. 19.5% was counted as British Asian, just over 6% Black or Black British, just under 3% as mixed race, and 0.5% as Chinese. These figures compare to a national percentage of around 9% ethnic minority, expected to rise to 11% by the end of the next decade. 16.5% of Birmingham's population at the last Census was born outside the United Kingdom. These numbers are probably already out of date.

And there is one further factor that means that cultural differences which might have, in the past, disappeared within a generation may not now do so. Modern communications mean that migrants will never again have to lose touch with the land of their heritage. The average length of stay - which used to be over 20 years is falling rapidly as Polish and other migrants commute from Wolverhampton to Warsaw.And indeed it is the very ease of with which people and funds move that makes this new type of migration so much part of our new world.

In 2006, migrants worldwide sent home an estimated $269 billion in remittances - more than twice the official aid received by developing countries. Money transfers have turned Western Union - the company we know from cowboy movies because they used to send the telegrams to the next town saying "bad guys about to ride into Doge City" - into one of the most profitable companies on the planet, with revenues rising from $2.7 billion to over $4.5 billion last year. In the USA the level of remittances to Mexico alone has, according tot he Financial Times, reached $US23bn each month. And these figures only represent official, recorded amounts of money. They don't even begin to account for the money sent back through informal channels in internet cafes and grocery stores, which some studies estimate could raise the figure by a further fifty per cent.

Immigration has changed the colour and culture of our society and is changing it faster every year.

Modern migration has precipitated the phenomenon of the plural city – cities in which no one ethnic group holds the demographic majority. Plural cities are the urban societies of the future. Birmingham is set to become one of the first such cities in Britain, on some estimates by 2010, on others by 2024. People often call such cities majority-minority, in reference to the fact that the historical majority – that is, the white population – is becoming, in mathematical terms, the minority. But actually it's not the binary difference that matters - it is the range of groups present that actually has the greatest impact on policy making.

One positive change is that it has begun to decouple immigration from race.

Just two weeks ago, I gave a speech here in Birmingham in which I welcomed David Cameron’s statements on immigration earlier that week. His answer – to cap net immigration – was the wrong one. But the question - how to plan ahead for this new kind of diversity - was spot on.

We need to plan because these trends are not going to be wished away. It is clear that we need this migration to sustain our growth. But it is also becoming clear that the people who suffer the most from the pressures of population growth on our infrastructure are the poorest people, in the most deprived areas. That is unfair and why many ethnic minority Britons, who are still disproportionately poorer than average, are just as concerned about the consequences of parallel, polyglot immigration as anyone else.

But immigration is only one part of the dramatic change we are experiencing.

There are 9.4m people over the age of 65 now – there will be 12.4m by 2021. By 2050 the number of people aged over 80 will double.

Family structures are changing. There are more lone parents; 8% of households were headed by a lone parent in 1972. In 2005 the figure had risen to 24%.

There are more stepfamilies. And large families are becoming expensive commodities. Many postulate that this is the reason that the average number of children in a family today is 1.8, down from 2.0 in 1971. Without immigration, our population wouldn't meet replacement levels.

More of us will define ourselves as disabled over the coming years. There are around 10 million disabled adults and 700,000 disabled children in the UK. That latter figure will rise to over a million and a quarter within twenty years.

The role of knowledge in our Age of Difference

Today, our failure to get to grips with the consequences of change can leave whole groups of people marooned outside the mainstream. At worst, failure to get to grips with the changes can be lethal. We saw this here, in Birmingham, in Lozells, in 2005.

It is why above all we need accurate data and cogent analysis to guide our formulation of public policy. It is why we need to apply the scientific rigour I spoke about earlier. Bear in mind though that we are not collecting data for its own sake.

We want to address human difference because, we believe in a simple and powerful hypothesis: that in the end we are bound together more strongly by our common humanity than we are divided by our individual differences. But before we can draw on that common humanity we need to acknowledge our differences.

The opening up of debate about difference would be the most potent defence against all forms of bigotry. But we need to take this debate out of the realm of pure politics, or journalism. We need some help from disciplined minds used to dispassionate inquiry.

So this evening I would like to look at how an impartial, rigorous application of scientific knowledge can advance and improve our understanding of difference. We need, to start with, to isolate what difference is down to social construct, and what is intrinsic.

Knowledge, inequality and social constructs

To give you an example, three years ago in a lecture at the Royal Institution I asked the question “Is it true that white men can’t jump?” The point was not to outrage but to question the idea of the stereotype; to confront prejudice but not simply to dismiss it. Though I accept the hypothesis of UCL biologist Steve Jones that race as a set of genetic categories is flawed, I think it is equally unhelpful to pretend that there is no real significance to our belonging to an ethnic group; or that women, disabled people or lesbian and gay people do not experience the world, some of the time at least in different ways to men, non-disabled people or straight people.

Our real task is to work out whether those differences matter; and where they do, to decide whether we as a society need to do anything about it. Where those differences lead to inequality and isolation we have a moral and political duty to right that injustice. That is the role of public policy.

So let’s ask that question again: is it true that white men can’t jump?

I think the answer is the quantum mathematician’s answer to everything – yes and no simultaneously.

It is true that white men can jump; but as Voltaire suggested - first define your terms. Who do we define as white, given that if you go back far enough, we are all genetically speaking Africans; and when we say jump, do we mean horizontally – at which some kinds of black men excel - or do we mean vertically - at which many Europeans rule the roost?

But the question does raise some questions which hang around at the corner of a thousand conversations at dinner tables, in pubs and even in the groves of academe:

• Why is it likely that out of eight Olympic 100 metre finalists next summer in Beijing, six will be men of West African descent, and no matter which nation’s anthem is played the gold medallist is very likely to have a black skin? Since 1964, the first year, despite Jesse Owens, in which African Americans played a big part in their country’s Olympic effort, the gold medal has been won by a man of West African descent 8 out of 10 times.
  
• In the long jump, the dominance of African Americans and Cubans in the same period is broken only by the Welshman Lynn Davies, back in 1964 and the German Dombrowski – and that was 1980 when the Americans weren’t there
  
• On the other hand, if you’re jumping vertically, there’s a different story – lots of Russians, Germans, the odd Chinese winner - but not a single winner of West African descent other than the Cuban Javier Sotomayor; and his achievements were thrown into doubt after he unfortunately put the “high” into high jump when he tested positive first for cocaine, and later for anabolic steroids.
  
• Closer to home though there are virtually no black managers of English football clubs, the preponderance of top line black players is startling by contrast – in an Arsenal v Chelsea match at least a third of those on the pitch are of African descent. Ditto, unless my eyes deceived me, Sunday's match between Villa and City.

Does any of this matter?

Yes, it does if we care about fairness.

If we are going to tackle unfairness we have to understand which kinds of inequalities are socially constructed. For example, unless you genuinely believe that there is something about black skin that makes it less likely that a black player can make the transition from Steve Bruce or Martin O'Neill the player to Steve Bruce or Martin O'Neill the manager the only hypothesis available for the absence of black football managers is, in my opinion systemic discrimination. It is simply unfair.

And with respect to gender, the old chestnut that a woman with a child is less likely to perform in a demanding role means that, right now, women as a group still suffer an employment penalty of 40% - over twice that faced by a disabled person with a very serious impairment. Well, try telling Paula Radcliffe who recently won the New York marathon in a tight finish that her nine month old infant had somehow reduced her focus on the task in hand. Yet many decision makers still seem to believe the myth in 2007. That too is unfair.

And our failure to get to grips with human difference is not just about race or gender. The fact that a disabled person is twice as likely other citizens not to have any recognised qualification whatsoever appears to me to be not down to some congenital inability to learn or achieve, but to an education system that marginalises disabled pupils from the outset. That too is simply unfair.

So knowledge should be able to help us isolate genuine difference from social or environmental construct, and help us to understand when inequality is due to social and cultural differences; when it is due to environmental differences; and when it is genuinely due to some intrinsic, genetically defined difference. We need scientific method to test our hypotheses If we can understand the way prejudice works we can do something about it.

Knowledge is the ammunition we need to do something about social and cultural behaviour which produces unfair outcomes .

Knowledge, inequality and intrinsic differences

But what about the more difficult territory in a diverse society: areas where there are real, intrinsic differences. What challenges do they pose? And how can we be fair to some people without being unfair to others?

I mentioned at the start of my remarks this evening that the Commission’s opinion has been sought on whether insurance companies should be allowed to examine your DNA to see if you have a genetic propensity for certain disabling conditions.

The Human Genetics Commission has argued that genetic differences cannot provide a basis for his type of discrimination. Just as it is unlawful to mistreat people because of their race or gender, so should genetic discrimination be outlawed.

Part of their concern is that the discrimination is based not on current fact but on future potential: the genetic predisposition that certain people may have to develop a certain disease, even though they may be clinically healthy and there is no guarantee that their genetic make up will lead to disease. In other words, there is no current, independent justification for discrimination in insurance premiums, merely a weighting of probability – which I guess has always been the currency of insurance.

However, it's not a simple matter. Though it may be fairer to those with a predisposing gene not to discriminate - should we ask those who don't carry the problem gene to share the cost of a risk they don't themselves don't carry? After all, because we know that young drivers are more likely to have accidents, we still load the premiums of competent 20 year olds, whilst allowing discounts to nervous, short-sighted middle aged males. We discriminate in favour of women drivers because they are, on average, safer drivers. Is this fair?

As technologies improve and access to genetic information increases, we can expect new opportunities for unfairness to emerge. For example, at last count 3.4 million samples were held on the national DNA database, representing over one in twenty of the UK’s population.

Black men are four times more likely to be on this database than white men, so you can see further potential for discrimination. And those on the database are more likely to be inspected, even if only, as the police often say, to rule them out as suspects.

But of course if you can discriminate for the worse you can also discriminate for the better. For example, the same analysis of an individual’s genetic propensity to develop a certain disease could also provide a valuable guide in the lifelong healthcare of that individual.

The main challenge is that if intrinsic differences exist, we need to decide whether they matter for public policy, or whether they are a purely private matter.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the arena of health care.

Every year scientists make clearer the significant differences between different population groups in the UK.

• We know that men of Irish background die of heart attacks more frequently than English men; should we just leave them to it?
  
• We know that the babies of mothers born in Pakistan are twice as likely to die before their first birthdays as the average; do we need to act on that knowledge? Or simply accept that this is the nature of things?
  
• There are inherited conditions – cystic fibrosis, relatively common amongst whites, rare amongst black Britons; or sickle cell anaemia the reverse; should we provide special services or concentrate specialist services in districts dominated by whites and blacks respectively? Or would this discriminate against the few black people living in “white” areas, or vice versa?
  
• We know that girls are statistically less likely to be diagnosed autistic than boys, but scientific research suggests that this is because traditional symptoms manifest differently in girls rather than being some particular characteristic of the male X chromosome.

How should we take account of all this? How do we avoid confusion between the intrinsic and the environmental, and how far should we try to compensate for inequality that arises from either?

In principle it’s clear that if we want everybody to get the best out of the NHS, we will have to respond to different needs in different groups and in different areas. Is this what we should understand by equality?

For me the answer has to be yes. But to others, this sounds like social engineering. I would say that if we want everyone to contribute to society we need to treat them according to their needs, rather than saying that if their bodies or mentalities don’t fit, they can’t be cared for; but not everyone will agree, I know.

Let me turn finally to the most controversial area of all: difference which is intrinsic, but for which no social remedy is possible. And this is best demonstrated once again in the sports arena; specifically running, where expensive kit, and the need to be part of a team have relatively little significance.

The Kalenjin people of Kenya come from an area the size of the Lake District. Yet they have emerged as the greatest long distance runners the world has ever seen. And when I say they , I mean they – not just a few , but dozens. In 2004, twelve of the world’s top twenty distance runners were not just Kenyan, but Kalenjin.

Danish scientists have done some experiments which show that this cluster is not the result of some social conditioning – running to school every day – or of the environment – altitude or diet for example, but is down to some genetic inheritance in this particular group.

Remember this is not a racial thing, and it’s not a general advantage for all Africans; it’s about a particular group in a particular kind of competition

The question is – does it matter? And is it fair?

Well to the organisers of the Boulder, Colorado marathon it did. In 1997, Kenyan runners took six of the first eight places. The following year the organisers decided that the biggest prize, no matter who broke the tape first should go to the first American home. The underlying idea was that because of the Kalenjins’ apparent intrinsic advantage, there was no longer a level playing field when it came to the distribution of prize money, and they should in effect be treated as though they had taken a banned drug.

I need hardly say how the Kenyans reacted. But the issue for us is this: if we are to guarantee fairness - what should be the rules? As we discover more and more about human difference what impact should it have on our attitudes to equality?

At present I can’t give you a complete answer. For that we need to know more and think harder. It is in part a job for scientific minds.

But I can suggest some principles by which scientific inquiry might help us to find some answers:

• First, there should be no barrier on scientific or dispassionate academic inquiry; the more we know the better we can deal with these difficult questions. What politicians and the rest of us do with the fruits of scientific discovery is one thing, but that should never stand in the way of basic science and rigorous intellectual discipline
  
• Second, all data should be available to everyone; if we are going to argue about the relationship between difference and equality we all need to argue from the same platform of knowledge
  
• Third, we need to include the scientists in the potential dialogue about the implications of their findings; and they need to accept they will be part of the debate; the researchers cannot hide from the meaning of their work behind the laboratory doors
  
• Finally, we need to remember that all that science provides us with is the evidence as to the strength of any particular hypothesis. We can say that such and such an outcome is on average likely about people with this or that characteristic -but no true scientist would ever infer that this gives a licence to judge a particular human being on the basis of some single characteristic - race, gender, age, sexual orientation, disability, even faith, without knowing them. So if we are going to use scientific knowledge, we should stick to the scientific conventions and not use them to justify prejudice.

Today there is still too much confusion and misinformation about difference. That confusion is fed by in the darkness of ignorance; it needs to be dispelled by the light of knowledge.

This is the great challenge of the 21st century. The debate about what kind of society this should be is currently the property of people who, frankly, lack the rigour and intellectual capability of you and your predecessors of the Lunar Society. I hope that your invitation tonight presages your determination to take on this most difficult 21st century challenge with the same mix of energy wonder and pragmatism that Preistley, Watt, Boulton, Darwin and others applied to the dilemmas of their time.

If you are, then look forward to a bumpy ride - but what an adventure you'll have.

Erasmus Darwin wrote of the meetings of the Society, damning an illness that made him miss one :

"...what invention, what wit, what rhetoric, metaphysical, mechanical, and pyrotechnical will be on the wing, bandy'd like a shuttlecock from one to another of your troop of philosophers"

Well, Birmingham will face the demands of dealing with difference earlier and more fully than most. I entreat you to put your considerable skills - your professionalism, your intellect, your enthusiasm - to working out here, in the one of the nation's great laboratories of diversity, how we should confront this 21st century challenge.

This is no longer a local issue. It is global. You here, in this room, with your ingenuity and your energy could in the years ahead, become a beacon to the world.

Thank you.

---

Born in London, Trevor Phillips went to secondary school in Georgetown, Guyana before returning to London to study chemistry at Imperial College London where he was president of the students' union. He was elected NUS President in 1978. Since then he has had a varied career in both media and politics. He was elected to the London Assembly on 4 May 2000 and served as chair until February 2003, when he resigned his seat to take up the Chairmanship of the CEHR . He has been chair of the Runnymede Trust and commissioner for a number of other charities. With his brother, the crime writer Mike Phillips, he wrote Windrush: Irresistible Rise of Multi-racial Britain.