TRIGGERnometry - Trevor Phillips: "We Live in the Age of Gangster Politics"

Episode Date: February 28, 2021

Trevor Phillips is a British writer, broadcaster and former politician. Join our exclusive community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/  OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Paypal: https://bit.ly/2Tnz8yq https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissin. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. What a terrific guest we have for you today. He's the former chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Trevor Phillips, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you very much indeed, Francis and Constantine. It's been a while getting here, but I'm glad we are here now.

As are we. As are we. You know, in doing the research, one of the things that shocked me the most is your age. You look so unbelievably young. It's unreal. But you've had a distinguished career. I love this show already. I love this show already.

Can we just repeat that bit for another, oh, 25 times? We can keep going on that topic. But you've had a distinguished career. And the question I really want to ask you is, how have you gone from being one of the most prominent anti-racist, activist and spokespeople to being where you are now, which is being one of the most prominent critics of identity politics suspended from the Labour Party and here talking to us on this very problematic show. How has that happened? The world changed, Constantine. The world changed.

I wouldn't say that, you know, I'm not one of those idiots who sits around and says, I stayed the same and everybody else changed. That's nonsense and that's both arrogant and also. the mark of somebody extremely dim. But it is also true to say that when I started on my journey in public life, which was as a journalist, really, the things that mattered most were, what's true, what do you know, what can you actually assert, as opposed to what do you believe, to a place where actually now I think what seems to be more important is the last one.

What did you believe? And therefore, what facts, quote unquote, will you select? And whose gang do you belong to? And I think if I were to give an answer to your question that made any sense, I suspect part of the problem in, if you like, my public image as you've described it, is that I don't really belong to a gang. So it's possible for anybody to say, oh, he thinks this, he thinks that, and he's wrong, mainly because he doesn't belong to our intellectual or political gang. Well, you know, that's life.

I was brought up to believe that you stand on what you think, you say what you think, you argue it out publicly. and you don't, you know, as we say in football, you don't play the man, you play the ball. I think we've now got to a place where most political and most public argument is about playing the man or woman and not being too interested in what it is they actually have to say.

So I suspect the straight answer to your question is that the way in which we talk about things in public and the way in which we deal with other people in public has changed. All of our ideas have changed because the world has changed, but the way we argue things out have changed. So whereas in, I guess, 1980, people would have worried about what is Trevor Phillips saying? What they're now talking about is, you know, how many kinds of bastard is Trevor Phillips, really?

Well, let's explore that very subject on this show, Trevor. But, you know, your use of the word gang is so fascinating to me, because I almost feel like the sort of brutal enforcement of conformity that happens within a gang. is kind of like one of the changes we've seen in politics as well. So, you know, I remember growing up in this country watching, you know, Kent Clark be in the Conservative Party and Dennis Skinner being in Tony Blair's Labour Party. And that was sort of the norm, like somebody who's completely on many issues

opposed to the leadership of their party, being prominent, being respected, you know, having their voice heard, to where we are now, where you have to tow the party line. Is that a big change that has occurred in our life? It's a huge change. It's poisonous. You refer to my position within or outside. At the moment, I'm a bit shredding as cat. I've been suspended by the Labour Party, but not expelled. And for the record, since I wrote to the Labour Party now, oh, 11 months ago, explaining or asking why I'd been suspended, I haven't had a single communication, not a text, not a phone call, not a letter.

You know, you never write here. Anyway, so I literally, somewhere in some kind of limbo. But the whole issue for me and of me has not really been an argument about whether I wrote something or said something that was right or wrong. The reason that I was suspended was because my very presence

is in some way regarded as polluting the party. Now, that kind of. comes to your point that we no longer seem to be able to debate different points of view within a political party. You either belong to the leadership faction or some other faction, and depending where you are, you are fair game, you are going to be attacked by the others, not because of what you believe or what you say you believe, but because you don't belong. Now, I personally, I mean, that's gangster politics. That's gangster politics. And I'm not having it. And Trevor, when did this culture begin to seep into the Labour Party, but also modern day politics as well?

That's a good and a very difficult question to which I'm not sure I entirely know the answer. I think there are a number of points at which you could name it. First of all, I think that the Blairite group of which everybody knows, I was a part, introduced the idea into British politics that you could have message discipline. That is to say that if you belong to a political party and it takes a view, then you have to be pretty fundamentally opposed to that point of view to go about saying that I think that the party is wrong. That is to say that there was some responsibility on you

as a party member as part of the organisation to stick to the line, really, unless you really, really had some very basic fundamental disagreement. And I think that, frankly, was a good thing. And it was a good thing for democracy because it meant that the citizen understands what the Labour Party or the Conservative Party stands for. What I think then happened was post-Toney Blair's leaving the leadership of the party

is that people interpreted message discipline as a sort of authoritarian imposition, not that you had to be persuaded or you had to believe in some way in what the party was saying. It was that if you remember the party, it doesn't matter what you think, as long as you go along with what the line is, then you're in. And I think part of the problem was that Labor itself forgot to try to persuade people and simply started to tell people what to do. And then others copied it. The Tories copied it when Cameron and Osborne were in government.

I think something else has happened, though, since then. And this is in a way, I suppose pretty much fundamental to my view of contemporary politics. When I was involved in student politics and in my early time in politics, you could always say that if you think of politics as a vehicle, as a car, that there were two people in the front. One was economics and one was identity and culture. And historically, economics had its hand on the steering wheel. You know, you decided where you stood depending on whether

you were for a big state, whether you're for a lot of spending or whether you were for, you know, deregulation and so on. And the identity questions, race, gender and so on, sort of went along behind that. I think over the last 10 to 12 years, maybe since the financial crash, something has happened in which a position has been inverted. And now identity has its hands on the steering wheel. And that's a problem because it's no longer, your position in politics isn't just determined by what you think, let's say, about race or about trans rights. It's also influenced by what you are and what you look like. So people who happen to be female have greater authority on issues to do with gender. People who look like me apparently have greater authority in the issues of race.

Well, this is all a bit bizarre, isn't it? Because the fact that I am black doesn't make me much of an authority just on race or racial equality. Why would it? I mean, the fact that I've got a liver doesn't turn me into a surgeon. I think something's happened in politics in which the virtue and the value of knowing stuff, of having an argument that you can sustain, has sort of disappeared in, and being subsumed under the prevalence of, for example, the jargon phrase now is lived experience.

If you can say, I've got this lived experience, it gives you some automatic authority, when frankly, as I say, you know, because somebody happens to have a brain, frankly, I'm not letting them take a scalpel to my head. You know, you need to know stuff. But Trevor, let me just push back on that idea. So wouldn't you say that your experience,

of racism and your opinion of racism is going to be more valid than mine because you're a black guy and you grew and you were around in the 80s and the 70s and you saw a real visceral hatred to black people that as a white person I've never experienced no why why would it no I mean the point is look I've experienced those things but there are two there are two issues here first of all, the fact that I experienced, you know, going on on leading demonstrations against the National Front in the 70s, doesn't tell anything about my knowledge and ability to deal with the ethnic pay gap in a large corporation. There is absolutely no particular

relationship between those two things. And the question you're having to have ask yourself is, does what which one of those things matters more today the national front doesn't exist we put the British national party out of business but what we do know is that some ethnic groups are about 50% behind others in in average pay which one of those things is most important right now well I would say it's a second it's a pay question and the fact that I might have marched against the National Front doesn't automatically give me any authority on that second question. It happens that I know quite a lot about it, probably more than most, but that's because I spend a lot of time studying charts. I've done a lot of the research. I've, you know, I have a couple

of companies. One is a big recruitment company. One is a smaller data analytics company, which sort of started as a hobby, but it's now a commercial enterprise. And we work with a lot of clients. So we know stuff. And it doesn't matter. The fact I've got the skin, the color I've got, isn't what gives me authority and knowledge there. It's the fact that I spend night after night trying to solve the problems of our clients on these issues. So this whole idea that being a thing gives you automatic authority over everything to do with that thing is just nonsense. And by the way, the other point is the fact that I might have had an experience as a black person doesn't mean every other black person's had the same experience.

That's the thing I hate most. The idea that once I've walked into a room, everybody thinks that they know exactly everything about me and that every other black person is exactly the same. Now, if you want to put the R word on anybody or any kind of thinking, that's it. True, you're giving me goosebumps here because it's such a refresh intake. And it's refreshing while simultaneously being, I feel like, the way we used to talk and think about these things. The facts matter, feelings less.

So, yeah, you can add a little bit of experience here or there to modify your view on things. But overall, what matters is our ability to look at reality. So how do we untangle this web that we've woven for ourselves, where who you are matters a lot more than what you actually know? and just this, everything is determined by your skin color. Like, it's regressive beyond belief to me. How do we get out of that? You've got to fight every battle every day. I mean, you know, to take a sort of apparently not very related example,

but you're asking about how you win an identity battle. Probably the biggest single political... Well, how you start playing the identity game is what I'm really asking. Yeah, well, let's... Let me just take what might appear to be a little bit of a diversion, but it's not very big one. The biggest single identity question in the United Kingdom today is probably the issue of Britishness, as opposed to the components of Britishness, and the political area in which that being fought out is over Scottish independence.

Now, our friends in the Scottish National Party will say that their nationalism is all civic, and it's all based on policy and all that. But actually, they know, and everybody else knows, that for 25 years, they have fought little battles every day, in every school, in every workplace, to have the idea of Scottish identity and ethnic identity recognised,

essentially tartanising Scottish life. Now, I'm not criticizing them for that, but in a sense I admire what they've done, because they have simply fought every battle to assert that Scottishness is significant, as a significant identity and should be part of people's decision-making about politics, about where they work, how they treat their neighbours and so on. And in the same way, I think the answer to your question is there isn't a sort of great, big, single answer.

I think this is an issue that was going to be fought on every single front on the issues of, let's say, statues, on the issues of what's in the curriculum, on the question of should you monitor ethnicity pay gaps or not. And at the heart of it from me, I mean, you know, I'm a geek. Basically, what I should have said right from the very beginning is, what you need to understand is I'm a guy who is happiest, not doing this, but worrying about spreadsheets,

running software to try to work out what the patterns are, where is the problem, and therefore where do we put the effort? So my big thing, to be honest, is I think we need more data, we need more fact, and we need to share that more with the public. At the moment, when we talk about race, it's all about feelings, it's all about my impression, even though the impression of an individual doesn't tell you very much about the whole group or indeed the whole country. So when we talk about race and identity, it's like the parallel I suppose I would sometimes make is that trying to read the political landscape with an impressionist painting rather than when what you really need is a Google map that is clear and sharp.

And Trevor, don't you think part of the problem is as well is that we ingest narratives. We all have narratives, whatever they may be, you know. Everyone who voted Brexit is racist. The EU is a universal force for good. Scottish nationalism is positive. English nationalism is negative. And like you said, we don't appear to be analysing the data. Why have we become so obsessed with narratives and not thinking for ourselves? Because it's way easier. It's way easier. I mean, the point about most politics is a very simple one. there is no good or bad in any political decision. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a decision.

I mean, you know, what idiot would say there's a good way to tackle the health service or COVID or the economy? And there's a bad way. Why do we choose a bad way, man? I mean, that's a more, I mean, that's just stupid. The point is, most political decisions are only political decisions because what you're actually doing most of the time is choosing between bad and worse.

And the way that you evaluate bad or worse to some extent depends on your character. It depends on the range of knowledge and data that you have available. And it depends by and large on your instinct. I mean, I've run big organizations. I've been in politics a long time. One of the things that I think most politics

hesitates to say is that almost every decision you take has to be taken on the basis of incomplete information. It's always great, and we've seen this a lot in COVID, that everybody knows six months down the line exactly what should have been done. The truth is, when you have to take the decision, almost always, you're having to take it on the basis of some data that you have available, but a guess or a projection on what might happen. And to some extent, that will depend on your experience. I won't get into the boring technicalities of it, but there's a sort of, a kind of analysis called Bayesian analysis, which, in which you use your experience of situations to try to predict what's going to happen next. And some of it, frankly, just depends on what your instinct and

preferences for the kind of society you want to live in are. So, for example, somebody like me who really values individual choice more, I think, than what you might call solidarity, which doesn't make me a Tory. It just means that I've grown up in a circumstance in which, frankly, I don't really like to be told what to do by the state, because that's mostly run by people who are not like me. So my tendency, generally speaking, is to go, yeah, okay, thanks very much. I'll make my own decision. I'm not going to depend on you. Somebody else might equally validly, who, for example, has spent their life and benefited from the health service or the education system, say, I trust government, I trust the state. That doesn't make them bad, but it means

they'll make a different decision to me. Now, I think part of the problem with politics at the moment is it just refuses to recognize that both of those positions can be equally valid, and the task of politics is to navigate and negotiate between those different views. I mean, it's a really, really, you know, really good way of summing it up, because it just seems at the moment that those two types of people, they can't agree on anything. They can't agree, whereas before we used to listen and go, well, look, I don't agree with what you said, but I can see the merits and the value of your argument. But now it just seems that we are two ships who are just simply drifting further and further apart. You're just talking about me and him. Yeah, well, I know the two of

you basically after this, you're just going to punch each other in the face. So I know that, I know how you lot have fun, so, but let's all go into that. I have the rosters round in a minute. But I think you're right up to a point, but one of the things I, when I was an editor and the executive producer, one of the terms that I basically banned was something you just said, we are like this or we are like that. And it's interesting.

See, I think that's not. now used very, very widely. What people usually mean by that actually is everybody I know is like that. They don't actually know the whole country is like that. They don't know that all men are like that. They just know that everybody they talk to is like that. I think this is part of the problem. You've discussed on this show, I know, the echo chambers that has been encouraged by social media and so on. I think that there's a big problem in this country and to some extent in the United States, that the we, that the decision makers, the opinion mongers, that, you know, what Vernon Bogdana, the constitutional historian calls the exam passing classes, when we,

when people like us use the term we, we actually literally mean people like us. But unfortunately, that's only 15, 10, 15% of the population. I think the truth is that 80% of the population don't have those kind of vicious knockdown, drag out, you're this, you're a fascist, though you're a kind of anarchist, lunatic argument. Most people, in most of the time, in most families, they might disagree about Brexit or, you know, or about whether we should have masks or not have masks.

But they will listen to each other with respect. And in the end, they'll say, look, Uncle, Jim, I hear what you're saying, but I'm just not convinced. most of this country, I think, doesn't participate in that sort of vicious rhetoric. And I think for myself, that is the biggest problem in politics. But the people who are having most of the airtime, who get most of the space, who get on shows like this, are busy shouting each other down and telling everybody else, he's a wanker.

Excuse me, forgive me, I know you don't like this kind of way. You can swear all you want to ever, go for it. He's a tosser. He doesn't know his ass from his elbow, whereas most people go, yeah, okay. But most things are a matter of judgment. They're not black and white, right or wrong. And we've simply, that the elite classes,

one reason I hate the political and media elite with a deep loathing, they have simply lost the skill or the desire to have that kind of conversation. Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting point you make. We do try and steer away from that as much as we can on the show. But obviously, you're going to get people coming through as well who have strong opinions about stuff, and it's a balance to be struck. In our defense, I would say...

Sorry to interrupt you. I have very strong opinions, as my children would say, I will start, not that I could, but I will start an argument in an empty room. But what I object to about what we're doing at the moment is that not only do we disagree, but we disrespect people with whom we disagree. And I think that's intolerable. I think that is the antithesis of a democratic society. Look, I spend a lot of time telling you what's wrong with the world,

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True. And by the way, getting your TaskMats scribble couldn't be easier. Not only is it available on Amazon, but you also get 15% off if you use our promo code, which is, of course, Trigger 15. That's Trigger 15. Hit the link in the description or search for TaskMack. scribble on Amazon and use the promo code trigger 15 and unleash a world of productivity and naps. Francis, how is your cyber security? I've got a virus from an unnamed website. Of course you do. You're not alone, Francis. During the pandemic, British online infrastructure has faced an astronomical rise in targeted cyber attacks, which is what I'm sure happened to you.

That is dreadful. What can I do to defend myself? That is where pockets seem come in. They offer businesses like ours a special solution that alerts us to hackers, crackers and malicious employees. Like Anton. Not only that, they are the only seam provider to offer pay-as-you-go cyber defence for companies. They're British-based. Absolutely. And they're from Doncaster, so they need the work. I mean, you say that. Actually, they have kept their prices flat during the pandemic to make sure companies can get the protection they need. Pocket Seam are offering Trigonometry fans a 10% discount.

All you've got to do is hit them up by email at info at pocketseem.com. And make sure the subject of that email is trigonometry, and they will give you your 10% discount for managed cyber security. That email again is, I-N-F-O at P-O-C-K-E-T-S-I-E-M dot-co.uk. And don't forget to have trigonometry in your subject line so you get your 10% discount. Can I just say if you need that spell, you really shouldn't be running a business. I think you're right. And we all, I think, particularly with social media, all of us can take responsibility. I certainly would include myself on this for sometimes, as you say, playing the man and not the ball.

So I take your criticism gratefully. But one thing we will say is the episode will be called Trevor Phillips called me a wanker. That would be brilliant. But listen, Trevor, I want to talk to. about identity. We started with it and you alluded somewhat to it. This idea, and we have mentioned it, but I want to go deeper into it, this idea that you should see yourself as part of a racial group as a tribe, as a member of a tribe, and I should see myself as a member of a different tribe, and Francis should see himself as a member of another tribe. Where does that lead us? Because,

you know, I've studied a little bit of history, and I'm not optimistic. What does that take a society, in your opinion? Well, it could take you into Rwanda or some of the worst excesses that we've seen in the United States. But it could equally take you, I think, in a modern society into a different place. I mean, you know, tribalism

we think of as automatically a bad thing because it has often descended into a competition for resources between people who look like me are related to me and people who look like you and are related to you. And I don't have to make any judgment about what you think, what sort of person you are, what your desires are, what your ambitions are. As long as you look like you look, you're the enemy.

I get that. I get that that is one outcome of tribalism. But maybe this is, in a way, coming back to what I was saying earlier on, about the influence of background. I come from a very big family. You know, I'm the 10th of, as far as we know, 10 of my father's children. And, you know, tonight, for example,

we're going to be on the Zoom. and there'll probably be 40, 50 of us. And that's just a bit, that's just a bit of the outfit. But we are a tribe. But in that tribe, there are doctors, there are lawyers, there are management consultants, there are people, you know, they're people who act as bailiffs.

There are people who are unemployed. There are people who do not go out to work. There's, I think there's probably a millionaire or two in there somewhere. They're all sorts, but there's something that brings us together. We all have, in this case, the same grandmother. And there are things that we share because of that. There are lots of other things we don't share because of that. But I value the things that we share. I mean, they are important to me. They're the things that make me the sort of person I am to a large extent.

That doesn't mean that were I to come on a similar gathering in the Kissin family or the Foster family, I would think, I'd automatically think, let's eliminate the Kissians,

let's eliminate the Fosters because they're not as good as us. What I'd probably be doing is thinking what are those guys got that we could copy? So my view about this idea of identity is that we should never

get into the place where what we're saying is identity is bad because we are all the same under skin, which is complete balls. Everybody knows that. We are not. Yeah. We are creatures of our environment. We are people who belong to, you know, I'm, I come from a religious background, a Christian background. I believe in it. And it's important to me. It gives me my values. That doesn't mean that I think somebody who has a different faith, is a worse person, actually. For example, there are many things from Islam. I wish we could borrow.

For example, attitude to alcohol. So my point about this whole issue of identity is there is nothing wrong with cleaving to an identity and regarding it as important. What is wrong is regarding everybody else's identity as somehow lesser than yours or wrong. And secondly, thinking that, that everybody who shares some aspect of your identity has to be exactly the same as you

and take the same outlook as you do. That's where we're going wrong with that issue. Well, let me add another point to borrow your family metaphor. The one thing that will unite your family is some sort of shared values, which while not explicit, will be there, right? There are things perhaps passed down by your grandmother to everybody else. And I wonder whether that is where we are going wrong, because you mentioned the issue of Britishness before. I can certainly tell you from my point as a first-generation immigrant, you know, I am surprised by how terrified people are, or even admitting that such a thing as British identity exists.

We can't seem to define what British values are. And again, when I say we, I do mean that the chattering classes. Of course I do. So there is that, that perhaps is an issue. Do we have enough holding us together when we're encouraged to focus a lot on our individual identities? Do we have enough as a society to hold us together? I absolutely think we do. And by the way, I mean, let's take this issue of first generation immigrants.

You know, if you, and this is where, you know, I'm a data guy. So I don't worry about what somebody told me in test. last week. I go and look at the data. So if you ask people in this country in general, do you think speaking English routinely is going to be an advantage to your children? 80-something percent, probably more, will say yes. And the people who are most hawkish on this issue are not white people who tend to go, oh yeah, well, we need to take into account the fact that all those Pakistanis speak some other funny language at home and no, no, no, no, actually the people who are most talkish are the immigrants. Why? Because our experience is, if you are going to

prosper in this society, which in many ways is hostile, you absolutely need to master this society's ways, starting with its language. So immigrant parents, and I defy you. I defy you. to tell me that this is wrong. Immigrant parents, of all backgrounds, will be saying to their children, you have to be twice as good as them to get half as far. So pass your exams. Don't get me any nonsense about you're going to be a musician or an actor or any of that kind of stuff. Go and become an accountant or a doctor or a lawyer. Get a job. And then you can play as much music as you like once you've got the job, right? That is the immigrant position. Immigrant. more than anybody else actually cleave to the idea,

the reality of what being British is like. That's why they come here. So this whole idea, this is somehow, you know, we've got to get all complicated and get ourselves in a state about British identity because otherwise the immigrants are going to feel a bit alienated only comes from people who have never met an immigrant, actually. Agreed.

Yeah. Agreed. But that's exactly my point, though, Trevor, which is it's the people who are the chattering classes who don't understand the impact of their actions on people like me and my children who are going to be telling them that they don't need to, you know, whatever it might be, whether it's to speak English or to understand the local culture. They don't need to blend in or settle in or they don't need to integrate. They need to just, you know, dive as deeply as they can.

can into the Russian Jewish identity or whatever other nonsense they come up with. Shall I tell you why? Shall I tell you why? And this is one of the reasons that all that lot, all that chattering class hate me. I frequently say that the one thing that white liberals most hate is a black man who doesn't owe them a favor and who they can't patronize. One of the reasons is they like the idea that, you know, we are outsiders. who suffer, who need to be looked after, who constantly need to be saved.

It's really important that we stay different and that we stay at the bottom of the pile because if we don't, two things are true. One is we don't need to depend on them to look after us. And the other thing that is true is that we might actually take their jobs. and of course one of the problems that we are going to see and at some extent seeing it already is that some minority groups particularly Indians and Chinese are earning in those cases something like 12 and 15% more on average per hour than white Brits now I don't sit inside the homes of white families but I bet you I bet you that there is a sneaking anxiety about all of these clever Indian doctors and accountants

somehow creeping up the ladder. We're seeing it in technicolor in the United States where whites are likely to become a minority. They're not that bothered, to be honest, about African Americans because they can always patronize African Americans because we're still, or not we, that African Americans are still. way behind. They really hate the Asian Americans, really hate the Asian Americans, because actually those guys have pitched up. They're the fastest growing population group. And you know what? They dominate some of the industries, particularly some of the new ones, the digitals. So one of the issues, I think, that we are all going to have to confront is the sense that

the old order of things in which, you know, elite white people sit at the top of society, they look down on us and can stroke our heads and tell us how much they care about us. And that makes them happy because that means everything stays saying,

that they are unsettled, particularly by anybody from a minority who says, no what, don't really need you to look after me, mate. I can get on with it. And you see that many, many times, particularly with first-generation immigrants who are openly conservative,

or black people who are openly conservative. You just see white liberals, they can't seem to get their head around it. Like my mother is, you know, a first-generation immigrant, you know, right-wing, voted, Brexit, you know, Latin American, whatever else. And my liberal friend, Well, actually, I don't have any more.

I was going to say, Francis, who is that? But when I had them, they couldn't seem to get their head around the fact that she would be in this particular mold. They just couldn't believe it. I mean, look, let us bear in mind that on average, some minority groups are less well off in relation to employment and education. Nobody, I hope, on this conversation is going to deny the existence of individual, personal bigotry and the fact that there are some cultural and what people these days, though they don't understand what they mean by this, there are some structural inequities which relate to race. You know, none of that, there's no point in arguing about that because...

Trevor, just clarify that for us, because I think it's an important. point, when you say structural inequities and you say that a lot of people don't know what they mean by that, could you explain to people who are open-minded, watching this program, who keep having this idea of structural inequality shoved down their throat by people who, as you say, don't really understand what they're talking about? What is the legitimate case for structural inequities in society? All right. Let me, if I may, a small mini-seminor on this. Perfect. I was very lucky because I was very lucky because I'm very old. I was very lucky to have met Stokely Carmichael, later known as Kwame Ture, who was one of the leaders of the radical end of the civil rights movement. He was the leader of the student on coordinating, nonviolent coordinating committee in the late 60s. And he would have described himself, did describe himself as a scientific socialist, a Marxist. He and the man called him. Charles Hamilton coined the phrase institutional racism because they wanted to make a distinction

between themselves and Martin Luther King. Stokely's argument was that you could have replaced the entire New York Police Department with an choir of black angels and it would still be arresting and beating black young people. that some of the symptoms of racial discrimination and bigotry were independent of what anybody, any individual, thought, and how good and how lovely they were. His argument was that King and others spent all their time trying to persuade white people to be nice

when actually that would only have a marginal impact on where black people lived, what jobs they got, their levels of education and so on. I, as it happens, agree with Stokely Carmichael and still do. Spin forward to today, some of the so-called radicals who, frankly, are not very radical at all, shout about structural racism. And when you test them, what they really mean is, why don't we pull down some nasty people, whether they are, they happen to be dead white men who are remembered in bronze,

or maybe somebody who's made some unpleasant remark. And what they mean by structural racism is some really bad individual bigotry. What I mean by structural racism is that, for example, when people of Pakistani Muslim background came here, they almost totally went to areas where industries with which they were familiar textiles were booming, and that's why they were brought in,

they were needed to work in those industries. What then happened was those industries died. That meant that the towns that they lived in died. Somebody once said to me, the point about Burnley is that the only reason for it still to exist is because it's got a football club. So the point about the problem for that group is not that everybody hates them because they're Pakistani Muslims. It is that structurally history put them in. in a place where they were at a disadvantage and generation after generation, for reasons that will be obvious, they remain at a disadvantage. And that's just there are parallels in all other

groups. By the way, some other groups, Indians I refer to, have had the reverse experience. They have followed in the professional path of some other groups. And actually, their culture, their background, their situation, to some extent, has helped them to prosper. So my point is that the people talk about structural racism and then put as a solution, let's get rid of person X or let's cancel person Y, literally don't know what they're talking about. They literally don't know what they're talking about. They are pursuing an old school conservative position that says, if only people, people would be lovely to her. then we would solve this race problem.

Actually, they're not the real radicals. The real radicals are the people who say we have to do something about history and geography and economics to solve this problem. Trevor, let me just ask one question. One question for a better understanding of what you're saying. So the only issue I have with what you've just said is if that structural difference has disadvantaged

Pakistanis, in your example, but advantaged Indians. Can we really call that racism? Isn't that just structural difference due to history and economic inequality due to poverty? Is it not inappropriate to describe that as racism? Probably if you use the word racism to mean personal dislike. But you see, I don't think of racism as personal dislike. I mean, let me absolutely clear. One of the reasons that I suppose I really get on these people's tits is that I don't really care what white people think about me. They care about it a lot. These people are obsessed with being liked and esteemed by white people. I literally do not care. What I care about is that I do not lose opportunities, which should be open to me, because a white person is prejudiced against me. I don't want them to

like me, but I want them to recognize me for what I am. So when we talk about racism, one of the reasons I criticize all those critical race theory nut jobs is that they're not radical at all. They talk about racism like it's a fashion statement. I think about it as a social and economic and cultural cage from which some people cannot escape. That to me is a serious conversation.

This whole idea that, you know, if we could get people to be nicer, it's pathetic. It's just pathetic. It's like the kid at the back of the class who really desperately wants the most popular kid in the class to like him and be his best mate. I mean, honestly, that's radical. Give me a break.

And we were talking about the structure and equality, but when you were talking about that, my pushback would be, but that also applies to a lot of white working class people as well, particularly communities in Cornwall or Wales, where, I mean, I taught in Cornwall. And when I, you know, first time I ever went there, it was holiday season.

And I thought, oh, this is lovely. And then I went to teach her, and I was shocked at the levels of poverty that these children were having to exist. not live, exist. Correct. I completely agree. I mean, one of the things that is saddest about what has happened in this country, you know, there's a great tradition here of seaside towns.

And when I was growing up, you know, a holiday to South End or a day trip to somewhere, you know, Wimbled and Dorset or somewhere was a really, for an inner city kid, this was, this is fantastic. These were special places. And I think the same would be true in the north, Harrogate or Blackpool. One of the saddest things I think that has happened over the last 20 to 25 years has been the absolute collapse of many towns which depended on a single industry, in those cases, tourism. but the same is true, say, about Coalfield towns or most of the steel towns. And one of the things that I am most interested in, I am really interested in,

is the fact that a lot of these towns, steel, shipping, coastal resorts, have died economically, and they have become quite sad places. We thought for a long time, the way to deal with this problem was just about jobs, and this was a labour issue. So we'd try and find people new jobs, and we'd create industrial estates and so on. One of the things I think we have completely missed,

and this is coming back to your point about white Britons, is that alongside being, for example, a coal miner, it wasn't just the job. You might spend six days underground, you know, and there you were in the heat, and you were knocking out coal, and everybody looked the same because everybody looked black and so on.

But the thing that actually made your week was the fact that you were secretary of the miners' welfare. That gave you status in that community. One of the things that's happened with all of these towns, what you might call company towns, is that all of that has been destroyed. And we can't replace that by giving a man or a woman a job

on a sort of wind-swept industrialist state where he or she is working next to somebody who doesn't live in the same village as them. They have to drive to work or take the bus rather than walk to the work, the factory or the steelworks and so on. And that problem, actually, if you like to put it in these terms, is structurally a white problem. It is a problem for white Britons

who have that particular history. And we should recognise it as such because it's not just a straightforward economic problem. Remember what I said about what's taken over, identity taking over? What has really struck most people, and that's why people in the so-called Red Wall, I think, have defected from labour,

is that the Labour Party failed to recognise what working people in this country lost when those industries and those towns changed. They didn't just lose jobs, but they lost identity. So, for example, I stop ranting about this in a second, but I can't tell you how strongly I feel about it because I've met a lot of these people there. I have family who live in the Midlands.

one of the things that you see is a sadness of parents who lived in the same village as their own parents and worked in the same factory or mill or whatever it is whose parents worked in the same, lived in that village and worked in the same factory. So there's three or four generations. And now suddenly, their children are nowhere near them because they've had to move away to have a job in a city somewhere. If they want to see their grandchildren, they have to get in the car,

and drive an hour, whereas, you know, their own grandparents could just walk around the corner. I think we haven't yet grasped in this country the absolute trauma that the 80s and the 90s visited on many parts of this country. And that's the problem of the political and media elite who are busy yapping about, you know, the fact that their children can't do exams. this year and how terrible it is, when these people's whole history and identity

is crumbling in front of their faces. Sorry, I'm ranching on about it, but I can't tell you how strongly I feel about it. I'll be honest you, Trevor. I'm really, really glad that we talked about this because, like I said, I've worked in those types of communities. And it's something we simply don't discuss. We demonize these people.

They're thick, they're stupid. They voted Brexit. Blah, blah, blah, blah. and it's like you don't understand what it's like when everything that you value, your entire sense of community has just been eroded over time and the worst bit is no one cares.

No one cares. Because we're all based, all the liberal elite are all based in London and they don't address those problems because quite simply they don't concern them. But I think I would go even deeper than what you say. I think these people have felt

that their dignity has been stolen from them. And I think that's where a lot of anger comes from. Completely. And I will, if you don't mind, I will tell you how I got to this point. And it is partly the answer to Constantine's earlier question about identity and the commonality. I really got to this point of thinking, not by looking first at white communities, but looking at black communities in the United States. I was making a film about the preacher Al Sharpton, and I went round some part of the northeast with him.

I went to see him preach in a church in New Jersey, and hundreds of people came to hear him preach. He's fantastic preachers. He's great performer, so on and so forth. But the thing that most struck me, and it brought back my own child. in many ways, was that black American churches are very formal. They have a structure. There is a preacher, there are elders, there are stewards. And when people come out to church in black

churches, they've dressed in their best. It's an important moment of the week. And I remember talking to a guy who's actually the chief steward in this church, who I think most of the week is a janitor. But on Sunday, he is the chief steward of his church. Hundreds of people defer to him. You don't get to sit down unless he or his team sit you down. If you cause it, if the children need to go out to Sunday school, he's organising. He is numeral uno. And in that community, he's got identity. He's got status. So he can afford to, he doesn't mind the rest of the week that he's completely invisible to the white people who go in and out of the building where he's a janitor. Because on Sunday, he's the guy. And I,

I realized actually the clever people, the exam passing people, like us because our lives are fulfilled. We have status. We are deferred to, you know, people don't generally speaking overlook us. On this point, you're massively overestimating us. I'd like to find someone who defers to me. It hasn't happened yet. Oh, there you go. Anton does Anton? No, no, he doesn't. That will be the opening of the interview, Trevor, just a black man bowing to me. That will make me look great. I just assume that you have a large group of people who are not on camera who are simply, you know, in between coming in and brushing your face and, you know, rubbing your feet and all that. I mean, what is wrong with you?

Hands on, step your game up, Matt. You're rock stars of the medium. You should be treated as such. But I interrupted you. I take your point, of course, that what you're really talking about, I think, is the atomization of society. the destruction of community and the fact that people no longer have meaningful opportunities for status outside of

being on television, being on the radio, writing for newspapers, whatever else. But your word, I think your word dignity is more important than any of that, actually. I think you hit it right. It's about people's own dignity. And I think we haven't grasped. When I say we here,

I am talking about decision makers and opinion formers, because we haven't lost any of that, I don't think we have grasped how bigger loss it is for millions of people in advanced societies. Yeah, and it all goes back as well to globalisation, this idea that, you know, that we are one, you know, that we are all interconnected, that identity doesn't really matter because, you know, we're all European.

And it seems that that liberal elite just don't seem to be learning the lessons. They don't learn the lesson of Brexit. They didn't learn the lesson of Trump. And now with Biden elected, they think that that problem has gone away when all Biden is is a stink-graft on a festering wound. Nice. Nice. I wish I thought that phrase. He's used that line before he did very well. I tell you, I agree with that to an extent. I'll tell you what I think is an issue here.

I think a lot of us who are certainly in our 50s and 60s, who were the first in our families to go to university, la, la, la, all that stuff. We, and I'm hesitating because I never like to get into the amateur psychology game, but I think a lot of us are people who, in a way, got away from our family background. We escaped what we were. I mean, for example, in my case, pretty much everybody in my family, you know, my great-great-grandmother was a slave.

There's all sorts of things about my family, which, you know, are humiliating and awful and so on. And pretty much everybody in my parents, my mother worked in a sweatshop, my father basically worked in uniform, railway man, postman, all that, most of his life. And the expectation was that we would all be in some kind of uniform, actually. I was the last, I've never been in the uniform. I escaped all of that, except when I was in the Salvation Army. I've escaped all of that. You know, and I live a life that wasn't just, isn't just different from my parents. It was unimaginable to my parents. It was unimaginable to my

They didn't even know people like me existed, if you should I mean. So I think the problem is that people in our class, because we escaped our past, in a way, tend to treat other people who think their past is important and are still embracing it. So, you know, they go around to their mum around the corner and so on. And that is really important to them. we kind of think that's all a bit a bit quaint, it's a bit old-fashioned, a bit backward. But actually, that's what most people want for their lives. And I think your point about globalization is important,

but in a different way, I think the problem is that the deracinated folks of our class basically think people who aren't like us are essentially a bit backward. When in fact, I think we are the, ones who've suffered loss. Maybe I feel differently about this because as I started this conversation by saying, I come from a very big family, I love it to pieces. A lot of them think I'm a, you know, disagree with me politically and think, why has you gone over to the dark side? But they would never

for one second, never for one second, disrespect me or hold me at a distance because that thing, that grandmother, great-grandmother, great-great-grandmother holds us together. And that's more important than any difference we might have about the way the world works. I think that the big losers at the moment, actually, are the people who run things because they've lost that feeling. And they try to impose their way of thinking,

which they say is modern. you know, the woke thing on everybody else. And everybody else is saying, no, don't fancy it. We can be perfectly civilised and like other people. And, you know, we have gay brothers and sisters and nieces and sons and daughters. That doesn't mean we've got to go all kind of mad about it. In fact, in a way, it's the people who are making a big deal of this, who are the mad ones, the people who say,

okay, such and such is going to, you know, my niece is going to bring her wife around and nobody blinks an eyelid. That is what equality looks like. Not, oh my God, we've got to have something that we'll make sure that D feels comfortable. What will make D feel comfortable is nobody talking about the fact that D's a lesbian.

Right, right. So I get a, you know, I'm really enjoying our conversation, I wish we had more time and hopefully when the lockdown is over, we can get you in the studio. I'm ranting on. No, on the contrary, Trevor, I just wish we could talk to you for much longer. I get a sense that you're quite optimistic about the future, are you? Yeah. Yeah, I'm a believer.

And see, well, I'm about to say something, which I did not start this interview meaning to say. and it's a tribute to your skill as interviewers because I've sat in your seat and not been able to do this. But I'm very optimistic. I'm a great, I'm a believer in lots of different ways. I was brought up in the church. I'm not about to give you a sermon,

but I was brought up in the church. And one of the fundamental things about being our type of Christian, particularly, I suppose, if you come from our kind of background, slavery, colonialism, so on, is that faith is not some sort of, you know, warm, fuzzy blanket where you hide from reality. It's exactly the opposite. Faith is entirely tied up with hope.

I was brought up believing that there is a better world. and that actually part of our business is to realize that better world as far as we can right here in this world. And that if you don't believe that, that there can be that better world, what possibly incentive is there for you to want to bother to make things change? Well, I'm a great believer. Not only that it's your business, it's your duty, to try to create that better world, but that actually it's entirely possible.

I mean, that's what I've always believed, and I guess I will go to my grave believing that. I don't, it's one of the reasons that when, you know, we're talking about race, I just absolutely don't buy this nonsensical, supposedly critical race theory idea that all people of a particular colour are intrinsically evil. You can never get rid of racism, or its effect, rather.

You can never do anything unless, I don't know, you get rid of everybody who you don't like. I think that's just, that is the council of despair. You know, might as well just go and slash your wrist to me. I'm a... I always argue with my Labour Party friends. Why are you a socialist? If you don't believe in something, in the possibility of a better future, why are you a socialist?

I mean, why are you bothering? Why do you just stay at home? You've got to believe that it is possible for things to change. Otherwise, why bother to try to do anything about where we are? Sermin over. No, it's, look, Trevor, it's been an absolute honor having you on. As I say, I hope we can get you back once the, the lockdown's over because there's so much more we could talk about.

But we are out of time. We are out of time. It's been a genuine pleasure. And I know that both I, Francis, and I, but also a lot of our audience will appreciate the balanced and sensible view you have on many of these issues. I really fundamentally believe that. But we've got one more question before we let you go. Which is, what is the one thing we're not talking about, but we really should be?

Yeah, well, you know, I write for the time. I mean, you know, my day job is I run some businesses, and that's really great, fun. And I'm trying to get people to apply science to politics. So maybe, you know, if I were a serious person, I'd give you a lecture about all that. But actually, the things, and I know, I have this reputation for being supposedly controversial. I think that's all nonsense. I'm sure I've said something that somebody will regard it as controversial. But the things that really matter, here is the thing I've written about in the last.

last year, which I think is the most controversial thing, which nobody seems to want to talk about. Was Miles Davis a better trumpeter than Winton Marsalis? Now, this is a thing that people could and should get into a fight about, because that's a serious question. A lot of these other things, but that is a reality. Miles threw Winton off the stage at a jazz festival because he just hated this little upstart. But though Miles Davis is one of the greatest musicians ever,

Winton is probably the greatest instrumentalist of the last hundred years. Discuss. Well, there you go. We're finishing the interview on a very divisive note. Trevor Phillips, thank you so much for coming on the show. And thank you all for watching at home. We will see you very soon with another episode like this one. Absolutely. And they all go out at 7pm UK time.

Take care and see you soon, guys.