Anger at abolition of Commission for Racial Equality (CRE)

The biggest shake-up of equality provision in Britain for a generation has been met with wide spread opposition from over 100 Black and anti-racist organisations and prominent individuals such as Doreen Lawrence and former trade union leader Bill Morris.

The new Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR) is to be set up without a specific Race Committee, and with no ring-fenced funding or guaranteed black representation among its commissioners, despite two years of lobbying from Black organisations and MPs.

Disability rights groups, who successfully secured the inclusion of a disabilities committee in the legislation and provision to ensure that at least one commissioner will be a disabled person, supported the demand for stronger race equality provison within the CEHR.

Diane Abbott MP supported the amendment for specific provision on tackling racism, saying ‘people can read about issues of discrimination and even do dissertations on them, but unless they have lived them and felt them, they will not be able to give them the emphasis that only living them gives’.

A coalition of Black organisations is calling for a boycott of participating in the CEHR until it puts such structures and funding of race into legislation in place.

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