CITIZENSHIP: FROM RIGHT TO PRIVILEGE racial equality (which in this context includes equality for Muslims)72 has been deprioritised by government: > Official commitment to ‘multiculturalism’ gave way in the 2000s to an agenda of ‘community cohesion’, with Muslims accused of ‘self-segregation’; > In 2007, the official race equality body, the Commission for Racial Equality, was merged with the Disability Rights Commission and the Equal Opportunities Commission to form the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), severing the CRE’s ties with local BME communities;73 > The EHRC’s first chair, Trevor Phillips, diluted the focus on combatting racism, and his comments on Muslims led to his suspension from the Labour party;74 > The EHRC’s funding was cut by over 70 percent between 2010 and 2015, resulting in a huge reduction in the number of discrimination cases it assisted, investigations and other work, and its budget was subjected to Cabinet Office approval, severely compromising its independence; > The EHRC has consistently failed to investigate anti-Muslim discrimination in state institutions and government, despite many and repeated calls from Muslim and race equality groups over issues including the Trojan Horse affair, the Prevent programme and Islamophobia in the Conversative party.75 ‘Fairness not favouritism’ Since Boris Johnson’s government was elected in 2019 with a large majority on the manifesto ‘Get Brexit done’, it has adopted an increasingly aggressive stance on racial and religious equality: > Controversial appointments have included, in November 2020, David Goodhart as EHRC commissioner, a man who ‘supports the hostile environment, decries ‘overdiversity’, writes off Muslims for their ‘grievance culture’ and insists that the white working class are now the most marginalised’;76 > In the same month the parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights pointed out that the failure of the EHRC to step up forcefully meant that ‘at national level there is no organisation whose priority it is to champion race equality and lead the drive for progress’;77 > The appointment of right-winger William Shawcross, who had described Islam as a ’terrifying problem’, to review the Prevent programme resulted in key human rights groups and hundreds of Muslim groups boycotting the review;78 72 73 74 75 See Awan and Zempl, We fear for our lives, above. See Jenny Bourne, ‘From CIAC to EHRC’, IRR News, 23 November 2020. See ‘Trevor Phillips suspended from Labour over Islamophobia allegations’, BBC, 9 March 2020. See John Holmwood and Peter Oborne, ‘Trojan Horse, Prevent, Islamophobia: how the EHRC failed British Muslims’, Middle East Eye, 24 July 2020; 76 Jenny Bourne, ‘From CIAC to EHRC’. 77 JCHR, Black people, racism and human rights, session 2019-2021, paras 92, 100. 78 ‘Hundreds of Islamic groups boycott Prevent review over choice of chair’, Guardian, 17 March 2021; ‘Quarter of Charity Commission inquiries target Muslim groups’, Guardian, 16 November 2014. 20