Equality Act 2010 and its Duties: How do you use yours?

At Nottingham Conference Centre today for "The Equality Act 2010 and its Duties: How do you use yours?" This is our conference for Voluntary and Community Sector organisations - and here's a list of such organisations represented here today. Most of these are live links to their website (in the East Midlands, if one is available). A small number don't appear to have any online presence, local, regional or national.

• Action Housing & Support
• Age UK
• Akwaaba Ayeh
• Amaani Tallawah
• Aphasia Leicester Group
• Barnardos
• Bassetlaw Mind
• Building Community Bridges
• Campaign for Tackling Acquired Deafness
• Carers Action
• Central Notts Mind
• Community Advice and Law Service
• Consultancy Works
• Corby Community Partnership
• Crown Prosecution Service East Midlands
• Derby ABEC (Asian Black Ethnic Community) Network
• Derby and Derbyshire Race and Equality Commission
• Derbyshire Coalition for Independent Living
• Derbyshire Friend LGBT Support Service
• Derbyshire Gypsy Liaison Group
• Derbyshire Learning & Development Consortium
• Derbyshire Rainbow Fringe Festival
• Develop a Dream
• Disability Direct
• Disabled People's Advocacy
• Enable Housing Association
• Genesis Links
• Glossop Community Transport
• High Peak Access
• Home Instead Senior Care
• Hostels Liaison Group
• Leicester Aids Support Service
• Leicester Deaf Action Group
• Mears Home Improvement
• Midlands Community Association
• NCC LGBT Staff Network Group
• New Basford Community Centre
• Northampton Volunteering Centre
• Northamptonshire Rights and Equality Council
• Nottingham Inter-Faith Council
• Nottingham Mencap
• Nottingham Regional Society for Adults and Children with Autism
• One East Midlands
• Rainbows Children's Hospice
• Remploy
• Repton
• Roads to Recovery
• Scope
• Sight ED
• Signing Network
• Social Housing Connection
• South Lincolnshire Mind
• Speak up 4 urself Children's Advocacy
• Step Ahead Alcohol Service
• Trans Resource Empowerment
• Urban Angel
• West Area Project

We have a large room that we use for exhibitions and promotional materials for organisations which are members of REDP's Core Reference Group. It's a varied and interesting display, which shows the diversity of our partnership in a more concrete form than I've ever seen it before. REDP's new set of leaflets is on show; they attract a lot of interest and several compliments.

In the morning, we have three speakers:

Katrina Lidbetter, Deputy Head of Strategy, Government Equalities Office: The Government's view: The New Direction for Equality and Diversity" 

Amanda Arris, Chief Executive, Equality and Diversity Forum: "The Equality Act 2010 in detail and the implications for NGOs"

Andrew Hogan, Barrister, Ropewalk Chambers: "What can be done when the Equality Act 2010 has been breached"

In the afternoon, we have four 50-minute workshops, each of which is delivered twice:

Crown Prosecution Service East Midlands

Regional Equality and Diversity Partnership

Strategic Health Authority

Unity Law

In the photo above are (on the left) Grace Moronfolu (Equality and Diversity manager, East Midlands) and Adele Clarke (Area business Manager, East Midlands) who led the workshops for the CPS.

Visit the website of Nottingham Conference Centre; follow them on Facebook and Twitter (@TheNCC).

REDP: stand by for action!

At Leicestershire Centre for Integrated Living (LCIL) this morning, where REDP's Core Partners are meeting, in preparation for our conference at Nottingham Conference Centre tomorrow.

The conference is on the theme, "The Equality Act 2010 and its Duties". We've had a rush of registrations at the last minute (as we were sure we would) and have good strong numbers).

I get first sight of the new leaflets that I helped produce at the end of last week - and mighty fine things they are too. Everyone seems pleased with them, I'm glad to say. There's one for just about each of the Protected Characteristics: Age; Disability; Gender Reassignment; Race; Religion or Belief; Sex; Sexual Orientation (as well as a generic one we've called "Brief Definitions"). In the end, we didn't have time to do leaflets on the remaining two protected Characteristics: Marriage and Civil Partnership; and Maternity and Pregnancy. We've got a new leaflet for Leicester Council of Faiths entitled "Religion or Belief: A Protected Characteristic in the Equality Act 2010" (Leicestershire Centre for Integrated Living and the Leicester Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Centre also have new promotional material linking them to their Protected Characteristics in the Equality Act).

How can divisions between communities be closed?

Here's an interesting feature from today's SocietyGuardian which touches on several strands of interest to REDP:

'It’s not a matter of putting white, working-class people into a room with some Muslims and laying on a few ­samosas,' says author Matthew Goodwin, who talks to Chris Arnot. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

How can divisions between communities be closed?

Matthew Goodwin, the author of a new book on the British National party, talks to Chris Arnot about building stable communities

Matthew Goodwin was born around the same time that the British National party (BNP) evolved from the remnants of its forerunner, the National Front. It was the year after the riots in Handsworth, Toxteth and Moss Side – three decades ago next month – exploded on a national consciousness already reeling from unrest in Brixton.

Goodwin, who lectures in political science at Nottingham University, lives in Manchester and has been advising local authorities in former mill towns in the north-west on ways of breaking down the antipathy between communities from different ethnic backgrounds.

He knows that the electoral defeats visited on the BNP in May's council elections do not mean that the attitudes underpinning the party's appeal have been dissipated. Far from it. For his recently published book, The New British Fascism: Rise of the BNP, he undertook face-to-face interviews with more than 50 party activists, including leader Nick Griffin and the few surviving councillors, which suggest that these are people preparing for a race war or "a clash of civilisations," as Goodwin puts it.

"A lot of people that I interviewed believed that the white British group was in danger of becoming extinct unless they take action," he says.

Which begs the question: what sort of action? If their only viable organisation has failed to garner enough support at the ballot box, where do they channel their grievances?

"One option is the English Defence League," he suggests. And certainly there are signs EDL has stepped up its campaign of intimidation and violence in recent months, attacking not only Muslims but also anti-racist groups. 

Lone-wolf activism

"The other worrying development," he goes on, "is what you might call lone-wolf activism. I'd find it difficult to say for certain how widespread the problem is. But there have been a number of cases of individual activists being caught stockpiling potential weapons." He quotes a couple of examples before adding: "Until 9/11, the worst atrocity committed on United States soil was by Timothy McVeigh [the far right-winger behind the Oklahoma City bombing] so there are good reasons to take the issue seriously."

For his book, Goodwin interviews two Jewish members of the BNP who say they support the party, despite its Holocaust denial, because it was the only one "prepared to take on what they saw as the threat from Islam", says Goodwin.

BNP support is now highest in areas with large Muslim communities. "That's a major change in the landscape since the riots of 30 years ago. The Muslim issue [Islamophobia] then was nowhere near what it is now. So the party is capitalising on anxieties about a community that is already settled here and is making a valuable contribution to British society, despite suffering significantly higher-than-average levels of deprivation," he says.

Boosted by what he maintains are Islamophobic columns in tabloid newspapers, those anxieties have spread far beyond the BNP heartlands. "A survey by YouGov in 2009, the year that Griffin was elected to the European parliament, suggested that 44% of all respondents agreed with the statement that even in its milder form, Islam posed a threat to western civilisation," he says.

"That debate has been played out in the Netherlands and France, but has yet to penetrate British political discourse to any great extent. Admittedly, David Cameron has claimed that multiculturalism isn't working and has tried to flesh out his notion of muscular liberalism."

This appears to take the form of withholding funding for groups with "un-British" views. Does Goodwin agree with this new approach? "It's difficult because some of the groups that he's talking about excluding were the only ones providing linkage into Muslim communities. My questions to Mr Cameron would be: what's the alternative to multiculturalism and what does muscular liberalism mean for local authorities?"

Goodwin believes that local initiatives to build stable and sustainable bridges between communities can have a positive effect. "It's not a matter of putting white, working-class people into a room with some Muslims and laying on a few samosas," he insists. "You have to be prepared to have difficult conversations about sensitive issues, such as the allocation of public housing. It can be highly charged and incredibly fragile and you have to bring in mediators to manage these conversations.

"But 50 years of research in areas from the US to South Africa to Northern Ireland suggests that these initiatives can work if they're done well."

Social engineering

But Goodwin is under no illusion that such programmes are a high priority for a Conservative-led coalition government seeking deep spending cuts. "In the Conservative mindset," he says, "there is a sense that attempts at social cohesion are at best fluffy and at worst social engineering. These initiatives are often the first things to go."

Meanwhile, the political argument about which party has been most successful in managing immigration goes on in front of an increasingly sceptical public. "Competence on immigration has become one of the most important issues for voters over the past de cade," says Goodwin. "Since 2007, it has been viewed as being as important as public services." At the same time, he points out, politicians have far less leeway than they like to pretend when it comes to looking as though they're "getting to grips" with the issue.

One major drawback for those seeking to look tough on immigration is the law allowing migration between the countries within the European Union. Another has been a UK Border Agency officially declared "unfit for purpose" by the Commons home affairs select committee. A third would seem to be the far right's apparent success in portraying as "immigrants" the descendants of Muslim families who won the right to settle here generations ago.

It was Goodwin's grandfather, who had lived in the East End of London during the 1930s, who helped to feed his growing interest in the politics of race. "As soon as I mentioned the BNP to him and my grandmother, they both said: 'Oh yes; they are just like the Blackshirts.' Since then, I've thought that their reaction says a lot about the BNP's failure to connect with the vast majority of British people," he says. "We're a country that defines ourselves by our key role in the defeat of Nazi Germany. It's so ingrained in our national psyche."

Mencap blasts police for failing victims of disability hate crime

This article is published in today's Nottingham Post:

Mencap blasts police for failing victims of disability hate crime

A report which draws upon evidence submitted by Notts police and 13 other forces has concluded that officers are not doing enough to tackle disability hate crime.

The report published today by learning disability charity Mencap, entitled Don't Stand By, also draws on public opinion and suggests there is a general lack of police understanding of disability hate crime or a strategy to tackle it.

It cites the tragic deaths of Fiona Pilkington and Francecca Hardwick of Leicestershire in 2007 and David Askew of Greater Manchester in 2010 as two examples where low-level harassment ignored by police escalated into sustained abuse with fatal consequences.

Notts police have acknowledged the report's findings and today backed a new three-year campaign by Mencap against disability hate crime.

A police spokesman said: "We will be fully supporting the campaign, fully recognising that there are vulnerable people in the community who are victims of hate crime and that these incidents are not often reported to the police.

"We recognise this is not always easy for people so we have developed an easy-read leaflet and plan to work closely with our partners to ensure officers engage better with learning-disabled people.

"We also plan to work closely with partners including Mencap by reviewing hate incidents regularly together. We are providing our officers with more information and awareness about disability hate crime and we will continue to work hard to reassure victims that we take them seriously."

The Mencap report canvassed the opinion of a group of people with learning difficulties who had experienced a hate crime.

They reported that police officers were often rude and dismissive when they came to report hate crimes.

The report concluded that: "All participating police services claimed that the level of reported disability hate crime is much lower than that of actual disability hate crime, which is worrying as it means that police services cannot make properly informed decisions about effective resourcing."

Mencap chief executive, Mark Goldring, said: "It is estimated that as many as nine out of ten people with a learning disability are verbally harassed or exposed to violence.

"Today's report proves that police have not got to grips with disability hate crime, let alone crime against people with a learning disability. Early intervention is vital if people with disabilities are not to live in fear."

The launch of Mencap's three-year campaign against hate crime coincides with Learning Disability Week which started today.

Learning Disability Week

It's Learning Disability Week (Mon 20 - Sun 26 June). Mencap is promoting a campaign to end Learning Disability Hate Crime. To find out how you can join in, check out the website: www.mencap.org.uk/campaigns/learning-disability-week

Disabled people 'failed by police'

Today's Leicester Mercury carries an article of interest and importance to everyone concerned with the protection of vulnerable disabled people.

Disabled people 'failed by police'

Disabled people are being failed by the police and left to suffer violence, harassment and abuse, according to a report published today by Mencap.

The charity, which is also launching a three-year campaign against disability hate crime, said there was a "general lack of police understanding" of such crime, and no strategy to tackle it.

In its report, it cites the case of Fiona Pilkington, from Barwell, who killed herself and disabled daughter Francesca Hardwick in 2007, following 10 years of sustained abuse and harassment from yobs.

Read the full article, along with reader comments (and the chance to leave your own) on the Leicester Mercury website: http://www.thisisleicestershire.co.uk/Disabled-failed-police/story-12802300-detail/story.html

Tory MP Philip Davies: disabled people could work for less pay

From today's Guardian, reported by Allegra Stratton, Political Corresppondent:

Tory MP Philip Davies: disabled people could work for less pay

Shipley MP describes criticism of his remarks that disabled people could work for less than minimum wage as 'leftwing hysteria'

A Tory MP has sparked anger by suggesting that disabled people should work for less than the minimum wage to increase their chances of being taken on by employers.

Philip Davies told the Commons: "If an employer is looking at two candidates, one who has got disabilities and one who hasn't, and they have got to pay them both the same rate, I invite you to guess which one the employer is more likely to take on.

Read the full article, along with reader comments (and the chance to leave your own) on the Guardian website: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jun/17/tory-philip-davies-disabled-people-work

School's ban on boy's cornrows is 'indirect racial discrimination'

Article by Matthew Taylor in today's Guardian.

School's ban on boy's cornrows is 'indirect racial discrimination'

High court rules against London secondary school after boy was refused entry for breaching ban on 'gang-related' hairstyles

An 11-year-old boy who was turned away on his first day at secondary school for wearing his hair in cornrows, has won his case at the high court after a judge ruled the school's policy resulted in "indirect racial discrimination".

Read the full article, along with reader comments (and the chance to leave your own) on the Guardian website: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jun/17/school-ban-cornrows-indirect-discrimination

Core Reference Group meeting

It's the regular bimonthly meeting of the Core Reference Group of the Regional and Equality Diversity Partnership (REDP). We're meeting at Leicestershire Centre for Integrated Living (LCIL) this afternoon - and as well as our hosts (representing disabled people), the meeting includes representatives of organisations working in the protected characteristics of faith or belief, older people, race and sexual orientation. There's a smaller torunout today than we've been used to at previous meetings; many of our regular attendees are caught up in tortuous negotiations with funders at the moment.

The following items are on our agenda this afternoon:

cuts in funding and support for equality-focused groups in East Midlands

our collective response to the Coalition's consultation on reforming the Equality and Human Rights Commission

our response to the Coalition's Red Tape Challenge to the Equality Act 2010

planning our conference: "Equality Act 2010 and its Duties" in Nottingham, 30 June

our current and future relations with English Regions Equalities Network

At the end of this month, REDP comes to the end of the second year of our initial three-year funding. We've been talking for several months now about how to make the partnership sustainable and a number of irons are in the fire. it struck me today, while discussing our plans for the next 12 months that our project could be described in the format of a three-act summer action-adventure movie (with each act akin to a year of our funding):

Act 1: You're given your mission

Act 2: Assemble and train your team for the mission

Act 3: Carry out your mission

Doesn't sound like much of a movie, perhaps, but I'm sure the bare bones are recognisable. In Act 3, REDP has to make its big impact. Our name has to be seen all over the place - and has to be associated with strong, positive outcomes. I've been put in charge of REDP's social media and am looking forward to using that to advance our cause.