MAIL ONLINE: Britain risks a surge in Right-wing extremism if it fails to help its white working class weather the recession, the equalities chief will warn today.
Trevor Phillips will break with years of political convention to call for the law to be changed to enshrine positive discrimination in favour of disadvantaged whites.
His startling intervention in the race debate is a rebuke to Harriet Harman, who earlier this year trumpeted plans to make companies discriminate in favour of women and ethnic minorities.
Mr Phillips said ministers should allow councils and education authorities to introduce 'positive action' programmes aimed specifically at young whites unable to compete with highly skilled immigrants because the 'need is so great'.
And he warned that immigration has fuelled 'resentments that are real and should not be dismissed – resentments felt by white, black and Asian'.
The chairman of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission set out his thinking to the Daily Mail ahead of his appearance at a CBI event on immigration today alongside immigration minister Phil Woolas.
Mr Phillips said failure to help white families hit by the downturn could drive them into the arms of far-Right parties similar to those that have brought turmoil to Austria, Belgium and Holland.
He also warned that ministers needed to acknowledge the resentment by some whites over what they see as unfair help given to blacks and Asians. >>> By Benedict Brogan | October 28, 2008
MAIL Online: Financial Crisis Will Send One Million Immigrant Workers Home, Race Chief Says
Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, has said that one million migrant workers will be sent home due to the global financial crisis.
Mr Phillips said that without the departure of the immigrant workers, unemployment in Britain would be closer to 3 million than 2 million.
The mass exodus would be one of the largest since 300,000 people a year left the country during the first World War.
Up to 400,000 Polish workers in Britain and Ireland are expected to lose their jobs and return home where job prospects are better.
Polish government advisers recently predicted that around a third of the 1.2 million Poles currently in the UK could also move to another country to seek employment.
In a wide-ranging speech at a CBI conference, Mr Phillips predicted migrants would begin to send home more cash in remittances, as they sought to help relatives in other countries gripped by the crisis.
And he said that, while it was no longer racist to debate immigration, the terms must be 'realistic and sober', not 'apocalyptic'.
Mr Phillips warned: 'At a moment when as the Prime Minister says we need to focus ruthlessly on managing our way through the combination of financial crisis and economic adjustment that rightly preoccupies most of us today, anything that fans the flames of anti-immigrant hysteria is merely a dangerous, divisive, distraction.'
He also insisted the UK was not 'full', but needed migration to be better spread around. At present, it is concentrated in London and the South East. >>> By James Slack | October 29, 2008
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