nov 1st 2006 -

A year or so ago we brought to your attention the writing competition being run by Penguin Books that was only open to ethnic minorities. The English were not allowed to enter. We made the point at the time, that if they could show us a struggling ethnic minority writer trying his or her best to come up with the next best seller we would show them ten from the English community. We also made the point that many of us had been brought up with Penguin Books, some would say they are a mainstay of English culture and it seems somehow wrong that although we had read them from childhood we were now barred, as are our children, from entering the competition.

We know many of you complained to the Campaign for Racial Equality and also to your local MP’s but despite our own efforts to contact CRE no one has ever got back to us. (We can’t help thinking that this would not have been the case if we were black and we were chasing up news on a discrimination case. It may be that these very same people who campaign every day against discrimination are actually themselves guilty about making a stereotypical judgment about us)

Anyway, one MP – Philip Davies (we’ve been on his website and although he’s one of Cameron’s lot he seems to be quite a decent bloke) took up the baton and himself questioned the legality of the literary prize with the CRE. He was recently quoted as saying “Section 35 of the race Relations Act in effect allows for positive racial discrimination to meet needs in education, training and welfare. The Arts Council claimed the prize fell under that part of the legislation, but the CRE chairman, Trevor Phillips, has finally got back to me, and agrees that artistic pursuits should not be included as an exception. As a result the whole initiative is under review. Given that the prize appears to have fallen foul of the law, I wonder what its patron, culture minister David Lammy now has to say”

We’ll have to wait and see what happens. The Decibel Prize seems to have gone quite at the moment but it just goes to show that taking a few minutes to complain can make a difference especially when it is done en mass. A couple of years ago this kind of discrimination against English people would had gone unchallenged and it is a positive move that big companies now have to think twice about bending over backwards to been see as “inclusive” especially when it is at our expense.

To thank Philip Davies for being one of the few people in Parliament with the courage to take an interest in discrimination against English people you can contact him via his website here. You could also ask him if there has been any further developments -TC