Race is not an issue in the UK anymore

For the past decade Samir Shah has been chair of the Runnymede Trust, devoted to studying ethnicity. Now, he says, the real problem in Britain isn’t so much racism, but “cultural cloning”.

I first arrived in this country from Bombay in January 1960. Harold Macmillan had yet to make his Winds of Change blowing through Africa speech. Coronation Street hadn’t appeared on our television screens. As an eight-year-old child, I recall looking up at a huge advertising hoarding in Notting Hill Gate showing an attractive blonde offering very smart chocolates. I loved chocolates and they looked fantastic, but I was depressed. Why? Because I genuinely believed that those chocolates were for white people only.

Fast-forward 27 years and I was appointed head of current affairs at the BBC. Determined to get to know my new department a little better, I decided to see one of my staff — a senior editor — in his office. I walked over to his PA and asked for him. Her response was unhesitating. ‘Ah, are you the minicab driver? The editor’s busy at the moment, I’m afraid. Please wait in the car and he’ll come down when he’s ready.’ No, I replied, I wasn’t the driver. I left my name and asked her to let the editor know that his new boss had come round to see him. You won’t be surprised to hear that he was round in a flash — with his poor secretary with him, apologising profusely.

That was two decades ago. Television is still my business, but I have, for the last ten years, also been the non-executive chair of the Runnymede Trust. A think-tank devoted to studying ethnicity and diversity, born in the white heat of the 1960s, Runnymede has been pretty good at influencing debate about race relations for the last four decades.