The former Tory party chair, Sayeeda Warsi, has hit out at the government’s new commission on racial inequalities, saying she fears it will result in a “whitewash”, and criticised controversial comments made by the No 10 adviser setting it up.
Lady Warsi, who was Britain’s first female Muslim cabinet minister and has been a leading campaigner against Islamophobia within the Conservative party, warned that the commission is likely to provide its instigators with “the answer that they want to hear: there’s no such thing as racism”.
The Tory peer also railed against comments made by Munira Mirza, the head of the No 10 policy unit, who is leading much of the work to form the commission.
Mirza, a key figure behind the scenes at Downing Street, has previously cast doubt on the existence of institutional racism and condemned previous inquiries for fostering a “culture of grievance”.
In other comments unearthed by the Guardian, Mirza wrote in a 2010 piece for Prospect magazine, headlined “rethinking race”, that “emphasis on disadvantage among different groups seems to have entrenched differences and feelings of victimisation”. In the same piece she also argued: “The more we seek to measure racism, the more it seems to grow.”
In a separate article for Spiked in 2004, headlined “How ‘diversity’ breeds division”, Mirza was critical of diversity training in workplaces. She also claimed diversity policies made race relations worse, arguing that the BNP had capitalised on “the racial divisions flowering under official policy”.
Warsi is criticical of Mirza’s views but focused her ire on the government. “This issue isn’t about an individual. This issue is the approach taken by the Conservative party and the government,” she said. The party is deflecting from the issue “by suggesting because it has members of the cabinet who are from ethnic minorities, it’s fixed the race issue or by individual members of cabinet speaking about their experiences of racism to invalidate other people’s experiences of racism.
“Or, for that matter, trying to put together a whitewash commission – which I fear this is going to be – and structure it in such a way with people in it that will effectively give them the answer that they want to hear: there’s no such thing as racism.”
Asked about Mirza’s comments arguing that emphasising disadvantage has apparently entrenched “feelings of victimisation” and her claim that “the more we seek to measure racism, the more it seems to grow”, Warsi said: “Calling out victimisation doesn’t reinforce disadvantage. Victimisation itself causes the disadvantage.
“When people start talking about an issue and calling it out, whether it’s racism or domestic violence, or child abuse, we see a spike in cases being reported because people finally feel they’re being listened to. That doesn’t make the situation worse; it’s the first step to making it better.
“No one would say measuring domestic abuse or violence is a bad thing. So why would you argue against measuring racism? If what we have done over the years through legislation, and policy and a pushing of public discourse, is encourage people to speak out more against racism in workplaces, education or their daily lives, that doesn’t mean we’re encouraging division. What we’re encouraging is the start of sorting the problem out.”
Mirza’s use of the word “victimisation” appeared to mirror the language controversially employed by the prime minister on Monday when announcing the commission, a response to the Black Lives Matter protests against racial injustice in the UK. Boris Johnson said that he wanted to end the “sense of victimisation”, a phrase that was described by Labour as “condescending” and by Lord Woolley, chair of the government’s Race Disparity Unit, as “an unnecessary distraction”.
Mirza has criticised findings of previous inquiries into racism and of the Race Disparity Unit, set up by Johnson’s predecessor Theresa May. Many have argued that the work of those inquiries and the unit make the new commission redundant. Nero Ughwujabo, former special adviser to May on social justice, said: “I believe strongly that the government should prioritise the race disparity audit, which already has all the data necessary to move towards bold and ambitious policy responses, which is what communities want to see.”
But others have backed Murza’s involvement in the commission, including former chancellor, Sajid Javid, who leapt to her defence, writing on Twitter: “Munira Mirza is smart, compassionate and deeply committed to social justice. One of the sharpest minds inside No10. No wonder the Left don’t like her.”
Downing Street said it would not comment on remarks made by Mirza before she was in No 10.
