Positive Action in Action

Equal Opportunities and Declining Opportunities on Merseyside

Robert Moore

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429821684
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Labour Economics
• Index: Economics

First published in 1997, this volume describes very clearly the various government policies to promote equal opportunity and the context of urban policy in which they have to be implemented. Robert Moore's important study addresses the key issue of equal opportunities through a case study of events when a change in government policy appeared to hold out the prospect of new jobs for a highly deprived inner city area. It is a model for all social research of this kind. The result is a very detailed and objective analysis of the problem of implementing equal opportunity policies in practice.

Chapter 1

This book tells the story of one organisation implementing an equal opportunities and 'positive action' programme in a local labour market. Previous studies have either surveyed a range of employers (Cross, 1991; Jewson, et al, 1990, 1995) or have reported upon the equal opportunities policies of specific companies. This is an account of a five year period in the history of a single civil service department, the VAT Headquarters of HM Customs and Excise.

An analysis which spreads over five years provides an opportunity to see the department developing its policies and to study the interaction of the department with other agencies and to understand the effects of the economic and political contingencies that impinge upon them all. Employment policies are not adopted and pursued in a vacuum but in real and changing circumstances over which a particular employer may have less control than they would wish. So this is a grounded analysis of the development of an agency's local policies. It is neither a snapshot of them nor a 'before and after' study. In the first two chapters we will explore the background to what was happening at Queens Dock, in Liverpool.¹ In later chapters we will look in more detail at the equal opportunities actions of HM Customs and Excise VAT Headquarters at Queens Dock. We will examine the impact of changes in the role and organisation of the department, at its equal opportunities initiatives and at the details of ethnic monitoring in order to explore some of the more technical problems encountered in implementing an effective policy.

The idea of 'race'

Customs and Excise had a very strong motive for ensuring that it recruited from amongst the black population of Liverpool, as we shall see. Actions were therefore taken to achieve particular outcomes with respect to race. But what is this term 'race' which is central to the study? Social scientists spend time criticising the use of the term and insisting that race is an entirely socially constructed set of categories. After offering this as a disclaimer they then proceed to use the term race as if it was real. The reason for this is that 'unreal' racial and ethnic distinctions (and the differences are often blurred in common usage) have real effects because people act as if they were real. There remains therefore a hazard in my own work and that of other sociologists that by using the term race we may give the idea a legitimacy it does not merit. The problem is encapsulated by Blakemore and Drake in their Understanding Equal Opportunities Policies:

The first and perhaps most important point to establish is that 'racial' and ethnic differences are socially constructed. That is, there are no hard and fast or scientifically objective distinctions between one 'racial' or ethnic group and another. Racial and ethnic distinctions are often of profound social and political significance and the evidence of increasing ethnic tension and conflict around the world confirms this. However, actual 'racial' differences between human being are superficial; the significance of'racial' and ethnic identity lies in the stereotyped images of one another that we have created or have learned from our traditions' (1996: 113)

We might dispute whether the significance of race only lies in 'learnt stereotypes' when so-called racial differences have been the bases of power, domination, exploitation and genocide in the 20th century. We need to go much further and recognise that race is a lethal idea, its use results in people being killed. But this also makes the idea of race especial important to the public and of particular interest to social scientists because it is an idea that is widely used in spite of these potentially fatal consequences.

Ideas of race and ethnicity need to be used with great care and only when their use outweighs the potential damage that might be done by legitimising the belief that there is more than one human race. Because I did not believe that governments acted in good faith on matters of race and because I believed that the categories proposed would lack utility I opposed the inclusion of a race question in the 1991 census, as I had opposed such a question in the 1981 census. But Parliament decided to include such a question in 1991. The 1991 census used ten categories in an 'ethnic group' question. The question asked respondents to allocate themselves to categories in a list comprising a mixture of skin colour, nationality and culture. This list of categories whilst intellectually incoherent has, in a sense, become normative. In the first instance people were required to place themselves in it but then the list came to be used by agencies when they monitored their workforce, customers or clients, in pursuit of non-discriminatory policies. Like the idea of race itself the categories of census Question 11 are taking on a life of their own and enabling people to place themselves in a set of 'stereotyped images' which are becoming normalised and 'real'. This also means that for the first time in their lives some people are obliged to see themselves as 'white'. Providing we recognise these images for what they are we may proceed to use them, with caution.

The list created by census Question 11 includes Black-Caribbean, Black African and Black Other (the latter being 19 per cent of the ethnic minority population of Liverpool). Black may refer to skin colour, but it is also a term widely used to describe those who experience or stand in relations of subordination or exploitation to others on the grounds of their socially defined race. Blackness defines a set of common social positions, common experiences. Even so the term black is highly contested by those in exploited positions who might not regard themselves as in any sense 'black' because they understand the term in its narrowly racial sense. Thus, for example, people of Asian origin may reject the notion that they are black, even if they are exploited. Other Asians may insist that in political terms at least they are black. It is a common experience for white activists to sit on the edge of a debate in which someone appeals to all the black people in the room to adopt a particular policy and then a person of Indian or Pakistani background objects to this description, to be contradicted by a young Asian or a person of Caribbean ancestry. The debate may be closed by an appeal for black people to argue in private and not in front of white people. 'We black people' is as problematic as 'You black people'.

The words we use may therefore be over-loaded with political meaning. In Liverpool the issue of racial identity is a hotly contested one (Small, 1991) and members of minorities will, in conditions of conflict, seek to impose identities upon others whom they claim are 'black' like them. An especially vicious feature of such debates in Liverpool is the covert assumption on the part of some African or Asian people that 'Liverpool black' people are 'half-caste', culture-less and inferior.

In the 1991 census, we find that the number of people in Liverpool not answering 'White' to Question 11 was small, about 18,000 people, or just under 4 per cent of a population of 450,000. Thus if an employer was to offer jobs, such a small population spread over all age groups could not generate large numbers of applications. If employers had 400 applicants for a job they might, in a Liverpool free of discrimination, ideally expect about 10 applicants from people who are not white. If the social scientist studying these applications was then to divide the applicants into the ten groups used by the census he or she would be using categories containing very small numbers, all in single figures and entirely unamenable to statistical analysis. Thus in one sense the problem of what terms to use has been solved by the numbers. In this book people are divided into White and Black. But this still leaves unanswered the problem of how the term Black should be understood. I have used the term 'Not-white' whenever I am presenting simple numerical data; the people who are not white are those who did not put themselves down as 'white' on a census form or a questionnaire. But when I use the term black it not only means 'people who do not define themselves as white' but 'those who have historically been excluded on racial grounds from economic and political opportunities in Liverpool'. In part I have been forced by the numbers to adopt the more radical term, 'black', and I am content with the ambiguities of my usage although in other contexts I would perhaps contest it, much as I contested the simplistic categories used in the census.

Exclusion and the paradox of equal opportunities legislation

The analysis presented in this book concentrates on economic opportunities, specifically employment. The first step of the analysis is to present an account of the background and development of equal opportunities policies in employment in the UK. Black people have historically been denied equal educational opportunities, excluded from economic opportunities and have in addition been the target of racial abuse and violence. If my usage of the term black is ambiguous, government responses to the people described as black are both ambiguous and paradoxical. The state has practised increasingly harsh strategies of exclusion in its immigration policies. These policies have violated the family lives of people who may have been settled in the UK for many years, by, for example, denying relatives even temporary entry for holidays, funerals, weddings or family celebrations. Political parties have been eager to show how tough they are on immigration (by which they mean black immigration) and are willing to play 'the race card' before general elections. In the 1960s and 1970s I argued (Moore, 1977a, 1977b, 1989) that the political debate created a climate of rejection for minorities in the UK and encouraged wider hostility against them. One measure of the deterioration of the situation since I made these predictions is that it is now a criminal offence to offer sanctuary to a person whose right to be in the UK is challenged by the state. Charities aiding refugees may find themselves close to breaking the law. It must be rare for a social scientist to regret so deeply that he or she was correct. The wider hostility to black people is seen not only in immigration policy but in the administration of social security, in the criminal justice system, in black deaths in custody and in the practices of police forces precipitating unrest in cities (Dummett, 1980a, 1980b, Lambeth, 1981, Institute of Race Relations, 1987, 1991). In addition the hostility feeds and is fed by both organised and casual street violence on the part of sections of the white population.

As the European Union seeks to open Eastern Europe to the forces of the market and the whole world to free trade, so it closes its borders to those dislodged by the political and market forces it has unleashed. 'Fortress Europe' is embarked upon the development of very British policies. The UK's mistakes will become Europe's mistakes; we are seeing a convergence of member states' cruelty and repression in European Union immigration policy.

Whilst pursuing hostile policies towards potential or imagined immigrants successive governments have nonetheless tried to square the circle by saying that exclusionary immigration policy is a precondition for good race relations. In other words we can only treat people with justice in the UK if we are unjust when they or their relatives try to come to the UK. How may we interpret this paradox? One way is to see legislation designed to improve race relations in part as a concession to liberal opinion or a minor attempt to balance the impact of cruel and oppressive immigration policies. In the case of the Labour governments that have enacted the Race Relations Acts they may also be seen as attempts to salve the consciences of Cabinet Ministers who knew that they have behaved discreditably in return for short-term political advantage. The first Race Relations Act of 1965, for example, followed Harold Wilson's notorious White Paper Immigration from the Commonwealth which became the cornerstone of British state racism. The 1968 Race Relations Act coincided with Enoch Powell's 'rivers of blood' speech and preceded the even tighter restrictions on Commonwealth immigration introduced in 1969 by James Callaghan.

The idea that equal opportunities legislation is intended as compensation for oppressive policies is well-founded. But it can not be the whole story because successive governments promoted the practice of equal opportunities with an enthusiasm that exceeded that required by token gestures or cosmetic politics. Extensions of the provision have been made with the support of two of Ministers on the Right of the Conservative party who have otherwise shown considerable hostility to black people. Even though the budgets of the EOC and the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) have been cut governments have not sought to dismantle the legislation, even if they have made implementation harder by imposing the cuts. The exclusion of black immigrants was defended on the grounds that it would enable those already here to be integrated and included in British society. Both parties therefore had a commitment to, and as we will argue later, an interest in, the formal incorporation of black residents into British society. Indeed this idea featured in a 1992 Conservative election poster which suggested that to Conservatives a black man was British, whilst to Labour he was black.

It may be argued (Moore, 1977a) that black people have always been integrated into the British economy in position of subordination, where their 'race' enables them to be exploited. But it is also the case that the wholesale exclusion of black populations from employment and the exclusion of young, often British-born, blacks from occupational advancement raises problems both for the state and for employers.

The employment of ethnic minorities in the UK is geographically and occupationally specific and mainly derives from an earlier pattern of labour demand and immigration. Pakistani textile workers came to Yorkshire and parts of Lancashire, West Indians came to Birmingham and Indians to the Black Country to work in engineering and metal manufacturing, Indians came to Leicester where they were employed in textiles and light industries. London has the largest minority population, employed across a wide section of public service industries ranging from Heathrow airport to London Transport and the NHS. Most black teachers, bus drivers, nurses, accountants and civil servants are employed in the South East because half the black population is to be found there. The fact that most black civil servants are to be found in the South East constituted a problem for Customs and Excise in moving to Liverpool, as we shall see in the next chapter.

Black workers have suffered disproportionately from unemployment because many were in traditional industries that suffered most heavily in the wave of industrial decline and restructuring from the 1970s onwards. A recent report to the TUC, based upon data in the Labour Force Survey showed that the unemployment rate for black workers is more than double that for white workers and that the gap between black and white workers was widening (TUC, 1995). Black workers were shown to be more likely to be long-term unemployed and less likely to find work on completing training. Unemployment among young (16 to 24 years old) black men was more than fifty per cent. Can this be explained by reference to black workers being under-qualified, new arrivals or 'strangers' in the UK?

Black people entering the labour market can no longer be characterised as people without a British education, with language difficulties or misplaced expectations. Whereas just under half (45 per cent) of black people between the ages of 16 and 65 were born in the UK over 85 per cent of people aged 16 or under were born in the UK. If the latter come disproportionately to lack educational or other qualifications it will be because the system of education and training has disproportionately failed them. Where black people do have qualifications they are, in fact, more likely than their white counterparts to be unemployed. Black graduate unemployment, for example, is twice white graduate unemployment. Liverpool is a city of high unemployment and deprivation but the long-established black population suffers even higher levels (Liverpool City Council, 1993; Moore 1995). The 1965 Race Relations Act outlawed discrimination in public places, but not in employment. Direct discrimination which excludes people from employment opportunities by virtue of their race, ethnic origin or nationality was made unlawful by the 1968 Race Relations Act. Whatever their origin or skin colour every individual offering themselves for employment must be treated fairly and judged according to their suitability for the job. Employers who state in job advertizements that they are equal opportunity employers are simply stating that they do not break the law.

The legal provisions were extended and the administration of race relations legislation unified by the 1976 Race Relations Act. The most important extension of the law in 1976 was to cover indirect discrimination. Previously it had to be shown that a 'racially' motivated actor had discriminated against a specific victim (or 'complainant'). After 1976 it was no longer necessary to have a complainant or to show motivation. All that needed to be at issue was the outcome of an employer's policies for specific groups. These outcomes could be tested by investigations carried out by the Commission for Racial Equality acting either on its own initiative or on the basis of a specific complaint or in response to a pattern of complaints.

Indirect discrimination may take many forms, for example by an employer demanding linguistic skills, educational qualifications or previous work experience that are not directly related to a job. These would comprise indirect discrimination if certain racial and ethnic groups were less likely to have the qualifications. It does not matter why they are less likely to be qualified; reasons might include lack of on-the-job experience resulting from previous exclusions, discrimination in education or employment, or job applicants having settled in the UK too recently to have acquired the required qualifications. Discrimination occurs in such cases because everyone is treated equally by having equal conditions imposed upon their employment when members of minorities are less likely to be able to meet these requirements. There are a number of ways of dealing with this problem, the first would be to remove unnecessary and potentially discriminatory qualifications for employment. Nonetheless some requirements are appropriate; for example competence in the English language would be an entirely reasonable qualification for a clerical job. A degree in English would not be an appropriate qualification because it certifies skills and knowledge far in excess of those required for a clerical job. More importantly, it would be indirectly discriminatory because people of (for example) ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• List of Plates and Maps
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Bibliography
• Index