In defence of Camden
Tony Craig
No one took very much notice when, on 11 January, Camden Council in London unanimously and unceremoniously adopted a draft policy statement entitled 'Equal employment opportunities for . ethnic minorities'. Until, that is, Friday of last week when both The Times ('Council plans to discriminate against whites') and the Daily Telegraph ('Discrimination on jobs to aid race minorities') decided that the new policy was of such significance that it merited long front page news stories more than a fortnight late. The London Evening Standard was not far behind, splashing its racing edition with the inflammatory headline 'Blacks first in jobs queue'.
A Telegraph leader, in one typical extract said: 'One could hardly imagine even the most dedicated Socialist advocating the employment of unqualified brain-surgeons, airline pilots or even train drivers, at least not for his own use and his family's. Do Camden's masters therefore imply that the competence with which their services are dispensed does not really matter?'. The Guardian's leader, while taking an opposing viewpoint, was no less absurd, describ
ing the policy as 'racist. .and right'.
What, amidst all the brouhaha, I have seen no reference to is the fact that Camden's Tories not only supported the new policy, but — with one or two minor qualifications — praised it. Councillor Julian Tobin opposed that part of the policy which involved keeping records of employees' ethnic origin for monitoring purposes, and Councillor Huntly Spence declared that the literary standard of the policy statement was not good enough. But, Mr Spence went on to say: 'I think we are right in doing this, because somebody must take a lead. . . and we are as suitable an employer as any. In that sense I very much welcome it. The real battle in this field must be fought in the hearts and heads of man, and we must encourage the right sort of attitudes among the entire staff.'
It is a shame that Mr Spence and his colleagues have made no attempt to defend publicly the policy in the light of the mainly unfounded attacks which have now been launched. For the three-page policy document does not at any point imply that a less qualified black person will be preferred to indigenous citizens when it comes to filling job vacancies. What Camden's policy — the result of discussion over more than eighteen months — does attempt to do is to overcome in the words of its architect Alan Evans, 'the systematic or institutional type of discrimination which shows itself in seemingly objective decisions, but the result of which is the screening out of disproportionate numbers of racial minorities — and women — from better job opportunities'.
Camden's policy, in other words, is to promote genuine equality of opportunity in job selection, irrespective of ethnic origin, rather than the so-called general nondiscrimination which has led Britain to a position where, in 1976, 79 per cent of white male graduates held professional and managerial posts as opposed to only 31 per cent of ethnic minority graduates; where' only 21 per cent of white male graduates were in white collar jobs, as against 48 per cent of minority men with degrees; and where 21 per cent of graduates from the ethnic minority community were forced to do manual work.
No doubt Mr Evans, who is leaving the council in May and will not be responsible for implementing the policy, was less judicious than he might have been in some of his Press statements, though he denies absolutely ever having made the reported statement: 'If there was a post in the housing department where there were not any Sikhs, Gujaratis or Bengalis employed, and we got a white applicant along with a Beng all with the same qualifications, we would give the job to the Bengali.' He did, certainly, write (in a letter in The Times on Tuesday) that if two candidates of equal qualifications presented themselves for the same post, and one of them belonged to a minority group 'it might well seem to us (since a decision one way or the other has to be taken) that preference should be given to that candidate.'
But, in my experience, jobs have never been filled on the bald basis of 'qualifications'. The purpose of an interview, surely, is to assess the comparative qualities of different candidates, each of them onthe-surface qualified to fulfil the requirements of the job, and to decide — there must always be a subjective element — which individual person, as opposed to which set Of paper qualifications, is the most suitable. The fact that (as the national figures I have quoted above suggest) this subjective element — Alan Evans's 'systematic or institutional type of discrimination', however subconscious — should now come under closer scrutiny is a very different thing from that suggested by the Daily Telegraph in its leader. And although he didn't realise it, Conservative MP Kenneth Baker's letter in Monday's Guardian shows that the real tenets of the Camden policy are not so out of line with conventional liberal Tory thinking. 'If there are many Bengali-speaking council tenants then it is surely sensible for Camden Council to employ people who can understand their language, their attitude and their customs,' he wrote. 'It is crude and clumsy to say that when a white man and a Bengali apply for such a job, that if in all Other respects they are equal [which is, as I have already indicated above, a nonsense], the Bengali should get the job. The very fact that the Bengali has certain advantages in dealing with other Bengalis that the white man can't have means that in all other respects they are not equal.'
The Camden policy has been a brave initiative directed solely at putting some meaning into the words 'equal opportunity'.
The statement that will accompany the job advertisements — 'All applicants will be considered solely on the basis of their suitability for the requirements of the post' — applies as much to whites as to blacks.
To make that statement more than mere words, interviewers will undergo special training to help ensure that a lack of under standing of different cultural and behavioural patterns does not lead to the under-assessment of a black person's poten
tial. The council will actively seek applications from members of ethnic groups
(while still actually selecting the best poten tial employee), and it will provide training Opportunities, open to all employees, to help individuals, from wherever they have come, to realise their full potential — for the benefit of themselves, of the council, and of the community. This is the antithesis of racism and discrimination — positive or otherwise — and Camden and Alan Evans, pilloried by the bigots, have deserved better.
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