More equal than others?

Richard West

According to a recent book on Berlin in the 1920s, an American visitor once threw down dollars on to the floor of a restaurant, having Made the proviso that these notes could be Picked up only by naked women; since the dollar was then worth some trillion marks, 1Tlost of the ladies present stripped off to get a share of the money. The Equal Opportunities Commission, soon to be one year old, is busy in Manchester but one of the co-chairwomen, Lady ,1°`.ve, has been heard to say recently : 'I It. °Pe you are not one of those dreadful Journalists who think that cutting public expenditure means putting me out of a job.' These two snippets of information might not at first seem related; indeed they did not relate in my mind until, chancing to be in Manchester, I called at the Commission's headquarters with the idea of writing an drticle on its first year's progress. The Organisation occupies three floors of a building in Quay Street, close to the Free Trade "all, and I observed that the notice board on the lowest floor carries several appeals by Ine Society of Civil Servants, saying 'Fight the Cuts, Save Jobs.' They would say so, we they, as Mandy Rice-Davies once observed in another context. Next to the notice board is the Enquiry °ffiee, beyond which I never succeeded in Pdssing. After explaining who 1 was to a Pleasant lady behind the desk, I was met by

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a r Bob Platt, who told me he worked in the Information Unit. The Unit, Mr Platt explained, was responsible for receiving certain dignitaries such as the head and deputy of the Northern Ireland branch of the Equal Opportunities Commission, who had been in Manchester on the previous day, but it did not provide information to journalists. 'My hands are tied,' Mr Platt told me gravely. Who could I then speak to? 1 went on, for nothing so whets the inquisitiveness of reporters as finding that nobody wants to talk to them. I was told: 'Our Press Officer, Bobby Vincent-Amory, who is in London.'

'When is he coming back to Manchester?'

'It's a she. She's permanently in London. Haven't you come across her? She seems to know everybody in London.' I said that no, sadly, I hadn't, and went on to explain that I wanted to speak to people working in the headquarters in Manchester. (1 was interested to know how civil servants from London enjoyed being dispersed into the provinces.) At last Mr Platt telephoned London— 'Hello Bobby, this is Bob'—to explain who I was and what 1 wanted. At one point in the telephone conversation he turned to me, said, 'She wants to know if you're a freelance,' to which I said, 'Yes, I am.' He said, 'Yes, he is,' and then, turning to me, 'She thought you were.' I felt that in some odd way I had been found out in a misdemeanour. Then Bob handed over the phone to let

me talk to his London colleague Bobby.

Bobby impressed on me the great range and complexity of the work of the Equal Opportunities Commission. She said that 1 really needed a thorough briefing about its work but this was difficult to arrange as they were short of staff in their publicity department. 'I don't want to sound rude,' she said, rather unsuccessfully, 'but there are thousands of people waiting for interviews and we'd prefer to give priority to a paper with a bigger readership than the Spectator's.'

Undaunted, I explained that I was interested in the activities of the Commission in Manchesterand nearby. Bobby said that they were now engaged in the Tameside Inquiry (on the decision by that North Cheshire local authority to resist the replacement of grammar by comprehensive schools), presumably over allegations that not enough girls got grammar school places. However, Bobby explained that as an inquiry was under way, any comment upon it could lead to a fine of £400.

The telephone conversation ended when Bobby said that I might be granted an interview with a Mr Nandi of the Commission in Manchester, provide,d I first wrote a letter to say what kind of questions I meant to ask. Since no reporter should ever agree to an interview on those terms, I sadly gave up the attempt to find out what the Equal Opportunities Commission has done during its first year of existence.

From the outside it would appear that the Commission's main achievement has been to inject a statutory inflation into the advertising of jobs in newspapers. 'Blacksmith/Chainsmith, male or female,' and 'Striptease, female/male topless Go-Go dancers/comics required' are the kind of advertisements that are now found in the Manchester Evening News. A few firms ignore the Equal Opportunities Act, advertising for an 'experienced warehouseman/ packer for importers of household textiles; good job for the right man.' Other firms, that wish to abide by the law but discourage applicants of the wrong sex, pay extra to indicate their intentions. For instance, an engineering company advertises for 'men and women' as skilled electrician mechanics, instructing applicants to ring a number and ask for 'male personnel.' The Manchester Free Press (sole heir to the great tradition of the defunct Manchester Guardian) has calculated that extra words in the small ads, inserted to meet the demands of the Equal Opportunities Act, have given a bonus in revenue to the Evening News of £20,000 per annum.

The cost in advertisements of the Equal Opportunities Act is small when compared with the cost of salaries and expenses for those employed full-time by the Commission. Some forty professional civil servants and many auxiliaries, most of them holding guaranteed jobs and awaiting inflationindexed pensions, are employed in Quay Street and local offices. It is this that makes one expect, indeed fervently hope, that the Equal Opportunities Commission is to be shut down as part of the country's effort to reduce public expenditure.

To say this is not to sneer at the aims or ideals of those who framed the Equal Opportunities Act. Of course it is desirable that women should get jobs and pay com mensurate with their talents; prejudice

against people because of their sex is as bad as prejudice against people because of their

race. The question is. can such prejudice be removed by Act of Parliament ? There are wise people who think that legislation designed by a 'nanny state' to make people nicer to one another is not only vain but may have consequences the reverse of those intended.

If the Equal Opportunities Commission was ever a useful body, it is patently 1101 wanted now, with public spending and inflation driving this country to collapse. Indeed the Commission symbolises the folly of those who created it. For if the pound sterling collapses, imports cease and manY million people are unemployed, there will be no jobs, equal or unequal, for most of Britain's women workers.

And this brings me back to the tale of the arrogant Yank throwing his dollars onto the floor of the Berlin iestaurant. Already, with inflation at 15 per cent and sterling so cheap to the foreign tourist, Britain, and London in particular, has become the world s brothel. As I observed a few weeks ago in a hotel in Newcastle, a middle-aged and not very attractive prostitute can demand £100 for a short time from rich Scandinavian tourists. A young, attractive girl working in West End London hotels can easily earn £2,000 a week, tax-free, paid cash in dollars, piastres or marks. Already, in even poorer countries than ours, rich tourists get fun Out of making the locals expose themselves. Tile West German magazine Stern has carried photographs of the village in West Africa where once a week all the young women and young men strip off to be photographed IV coach-loads of white tourists. Indeed, sine most of the tourists are ladies, the men are in greater demand from the prurient sightseers. When the crash comes, and laughing Germans scatter their marks on our res; taurant floors, there will still be equality 01 the sexes as Bob follows Bobby and LaclY Howe in tearing his clothes off.