Raghib Ahsan took the Labour Party to an industrial tribunal on the grounds of racial discrimination. He won his case but the Labour party appealed and it went all the way to the House of Lords. The Law Lords unanimously ruled that the Labour Party was indeed guilty of racial discrimination under the 1976 Race Relations Act.

It took a ten year battle with the Labour Party before Raghib won. Guido has not noticed this well reported elsewhere. The full Law Lords ruling is here [pdf].

Lord Hoffman was absolutely damning of the Labour Party defence proffered, before he resigned, by Peter Watt –

…it seems to me unacceptable. It is nothing more than the old plea that you have nothing against employing a black person but the customers would not like it. In essence it is a defence of justification based on political expediency. It may salvage the purity of the personal motives of the selection panel but it does not in my opinion satisfy the terms of the 1976 Act, which does not allow any justification for “direct” discrimination. It simply says that one shall not discriminate on racial grounds.

Last month the Labour Party was found guilty of deliberately discriminating in favour of a white candidate because of the sensitivities of the constituency. A white Briton got the job over a brown Pakistani Briton. So is this what Gordon means by “British Jobs for British Workers”?

Perhaps this story was lost in the uproar about Donorgate and the loss of 25 million bank account details by the government. Guido can’t help thinking that if the highest court in the land had just found the Conservative Party guilty of racial discrimination, that Alex Hilton, Kevin Maguire, Polly Toynbee, Roy Hattersley, Jackie Ashley together with the leader writers of the Guardian and Independent would all be working overtime. The silence is deafening.