Trevor Phillips is a former chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
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This week: why don’t we know how many people are in Britain? How many people live in the UK? It’s a straightforward question, yet the answer eludes some of the nation’s brightest statistical minds, writes Sam Bidwell for the cover this week. Whenever official figures are tested against real-world data, the population is almost always
Whatever happened to the brilliant gay rights movement led by people like Ian McKellen, Simon Fanshawe, Matthew Parris and Angela Mason? For people of my baby boomer generation, one of the miracles of the late 20th century was the speed at which public prejudices against lesbian and gay people evaporated. Those prejudices haven’t disappeared; but
My great-great-grandmother, born on a Barbadian plantation and transported to what was British Guiana in the 19th century, gave rise to a tribe that has spread across the globe. Weirdly, Covid has brought us together (via Zoom) in a way that used to be reserved for weddings and funerals. My New Yorker nephew found a
Next year I will begin my fifth decade as a working journalist. As a writer, as an executive — and now as the chair of Index on Censorship — I have always tried to encourage honest, thorough and professional reporting and analysis of the UK’s ethnic and religious minority communities. Unless all our citizens share
It’s Powell week. I am due to speak at the site of his infamous ‘rivers of blood’ speech on Sunday, a rather clever idea dreamed up by my colleagues at the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Kamal Ahmed and Patrick Diamond. I must admit I had initial reservations about the proposal. After all, I am