For Tony Woodley. Please give copies to Bill Morris and Bob Purkiss.

A splendid article by Tony Woodley on political alternative to New Labour in GUARDIAN 4 Sep but no mention Racism where Blair weakest and T & G strongest. Invasion of Iraq not only illegal, but worst aspect likely to prove imperialist act of invading country of brown people without support of ethnic majority people of world within international organisations. This racism applies to all Bush's so-called axis of evil countries.

Where ever discrimination and injustice arises in Britain ethnic minorties are first to suffer. T & G is the union catering for those suffering discrimination and injustice at the workplace and a splendid job it has done.

W.E.B.du Bois, the greatest African-Caribbean scholar of the nineteenth century, stated that the most important issue of the century was the colour line. For us in Wolverhampton this means our first priority in any discussion of the future of the city must start with the empowerment (or lack of it, at the moment) of our ethnic minority people, not least our black and ethnic women.

For the trade unions, led by the T & G we suggest it means greater emphasis on anti-racism, more power to T & G Black Groups, more support for Searchlight, Ken Livingstone in London and elsewhere, including Wolverhampton, to mount positive campaigns on the benefits of multiculturalism.

Above all, support for Doreen Lawrence who knows that support for Institutional Racism, popularised by the Macpherson Inquiry into the death of her son Stephen, is now on the wane. This is because racists have found it convenient to pretend to be antiracists. Or, as in Wolverhampton, much effort was genuinely devoted to publicly promoting antiracist campaigns by public bodies, but the progress made in increasing employment of EM people was insufficient to be able to rouse enthusiasm for another large scale campaign. Indeed it remains the case that public bodies such as Education are unwilling to disclose the ethnicity of their staffs, inspectorates pay only lip service to 'equal opportunities' and staffs in our Civic Centre range from those who are openly racist, hostile and question the need for race training for staff and mechanisms to ensure that race discrimination is prevented.

And all that in a local authority which is one of the best in the country for equal opportunities. There is every danger that race relations will deteriorate and pests like the British National Party grow.

Best of luck to the T & G in promoting a traditional Labour Party, It will have much support in Wolverhampton.

4 Sep 2003
Dr. George (Subversive) Barnsby
Spokesperson & Whistleblower
FRIENDS OF BILSTON COMMUNITY COLLEGE