It’s been a week of mixed messages for race relations in Britain. On Monday, violence broke out when 20 black activists stormed the inquiry into the racist murder of the black London teenager Stephen Lawrence. But on Tuesday night, gutted Britons of all colours watched England coach Glenn Hoddle embrace tearful black defender Paul Ince after he missed in the penalty shoot-out against Argentina.
Fifty years after SS Empire Windrush arrived in Britain with 492 Jamaican immigrants, there’s much to applaud in the current state of race relations - but much to criticise, too.
No-one knows this better than Sir Herman Ouseley, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality. He has patiently been trying to persuade the Teacher Training Agency to reinstate equal opportunities in its curriculum for student teachers. But this week he snapped, and, in an uncharacteristic outburst, accused the agency of “institutional inertia”.
Alongside the police, the armed forces, the Foreign Office and more than 160 other organisations, the agency signed up a year ago to the commission’s Leadership Challenge - which aims to radically improve equal opportunities. But, it seems, to little effect. Sir Herman believes he is not taken seriously as he is not an educationist. Now it’s up to the TTA to prove him wrong.
