Tribune – Comment, news and reviews from Britain's democratic left – Join the Conversation

Following a heated debate with a Tory on the old chestnut of whether it’s possible to legislate for equality, I attempted to download Boris Johnson’s Equal Life Chances for All from the internet. After conducting a Google search for this, the second London mayoral report into life chances in the capital, a prompt appeared on my screen asking whether I meant to search for “Unequal Life Chances for All”. Well no. However, judging from the furore the Mayor’s report has ignited in the Conservative Party, I might as well have done.

It turns out that, even before the report was published, Hammersmith and Fulham Tory councillor Harry Phibbs penned a declamatory article on ConservativeHome.com arguing that Johnson has been “shamefully allowing Ken Livingstone’s ideology of quotas, interest groups, thought crime and racial separatism to remain largely intact”.

Now I know Harry Phibbs quite well. We used to share a desk at the London Evening Standard. I have eaten and drunk with him and been a guest at his home on more than one occasion. Harry is not, in fact, homophobic, racist or misogynistic. Can the same be said for many of his colleagues who do not represent an urban ward and have no minority votes to worry abouut?

But his tirade against London’s Conservative Mayor and his implicit criticism of the man who helped to put him there, David Cameron, speaks volumes about the ideological divide between the Tories and Labour. It confirms Harriet Harman’s contention that the Tories “are just against equality”, despite attempts by Cameron to convince us otherwise.

Phibbs and many others who took up his cause on a variety of right-wing websites attacked City Hall’s intention to “eliminate institutional discrimination, including unwitting prejudice” and to “reflect the diversity of London” through “responsible procurement”. Presumably Phibbs and company hope inequality will disappear magically without any intervention by the Mayor being necessary. It won’t. You only have to read the report in question to realise that.

So long as the educational achievement level of black boys (those pupils gaining five or more GCSEs at grade A-C) remains at just 41.5 per cent – 17.8 per cent below the national average for all pupils – it is only right that the Mayor should allocate additional resources. I would even advocate positive discrimination to employ more black male teachers as role models in order to prevent a generation of unemployable young black Londoners leaving school disadvantaged for life. When only a quarter of Bangladeshi women of employment age are actually in work, it would seem obvious to ask why.

Legislating against discrimination, as the Government’s Equality Bill seeks to do, may sound easier than legislating for equality, which requires all of us to overcome deeply-held prejudices. However, unless the Government intervenes to create a climate where equality is made to matter and where deliberate discrimination is punishable by law, we cannot hope to progress towards a more equitable society.

When Londoners were asked whether their city was a tolerant place in which to live if you were gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered, only 4 per cent of respondents (and 9 per cent of LGBT respondents) said no. This figure is significantly lower than it was just three years ago and suggests that, as pro-equality legislation took effect with the repeal of the hated Clause 28 that prohibited any positive discussion of homosexuality in local authority schools, followed by the Civil Partnership Bill, which allowed gays and lesbians to play a fuller, fairer and (many would argue) more meaningful role in society, discrimination decreased accordingly. In turn that suggests it is possible to legislate against discrimination – or at least the “causes of discrimination”.

It seems absurd that anyone, even Tory councillors, would wish to repeal the Equal Pay Act of 1970 or the Race Relations Act of 1976. Yet, in the parliaments which voted for them, both faced what must have seemed like insurmountable opposition.

Decades later, there is almost no area in British life, not even the higher echelons of the Tory Party, which is not significantly better off because Labour drove anti-discrimination legislation through Parliament – as it must now do again in the face of Tory opposition.

The Government must also do more to highlight the reactionaries who surround Cameron. So far, he has managed to keep most (but by no means all) from blowing the Tories’ cover with the promise of a job following what many see as his inevitable victory at the next general election. Perhaps if we were to blow their cover for them, a Tory triumph might not seem quite so inevitable after all.

Even if the Equality Bill is granted royal assent early next year, the Tories would almost certainly seek to repeal it. That would be bad news for millions of voters who broadly agree with the equality agenda.

Equal Life Chances for All solicited the views of Londoners on what it was like to live in the world’s most culturally and racially diverse metropolis. Almost a third questioned (29 per cent) said it was diversity that made London great. Just 5 per cent said diversity was a bad thing – presumably the same 5 per cent who voted for the British National Party. Clearly, there is scope here for any leadership bold enough to take on the fight.