Trevor Phillips has always been part of the New Labour project; he was a close friend of Peter Mandelson, working with him at London Weekend Television and Peter Mandelson was his best man at his wedding. He only joined the Labour Party so as to campaign to be London Mayor but went on to become Chair of the London Assembly. Trevor Phillips was a great champion of Multiculturism, so it upset many of his fellow travellers on the left of British politics when he said in 2004 (extract is from the CRE website
link here) that Multiculturalism was born out of a desire to recognise that diversity is a good thing, and to appreciate the many qualities newcomers brought to Britain. But he stressed that today we face new challenges that simply can’t be answered in the old language of race relations: My quarrel is not with those who like diversity. It is with those who want to make a fetish of our historical differences to the point where multiculturalism, as it is practised, becomes ridiculous, or worse still, a dangerous form of benign neglect and exclusion.
This was a strange article to write as it seemed to go against so much of what he had written and said in the past. In 2003 he wrote
an article where he said "from Rome, through Constantinople to Venice and London, our (European) nations have a history of peacefully absorbing huge, diverse movements of people, driven by war, famine and persecution; and there is no history of long-term ethnic segregation of the kind one can see in any US city." A statement that any trip to Southall, Brixton, Tower Hamlets or many northern British towns would render negated.
In 2006 Trevor Phillips was appointed head of the Commission for Equalities and Human Rights, which was to be the great organisation promoting equality issues across the full raft of ethnic, gender, sexual-orientation, disability and other minority interests.
So what was Trevor Phillips thinking when he said at a Labour conference fringe meeting that British history should be rewritten to make it "more inclusive". He said Muslims were also part of the national story and "sometimes we have to go back into the tapestry and insert some threads that were lost". He quoted the example of the Spanish Armada, which was held up by the Turks at the request of Queen Elizabeth I. "It was the Turks who saved us," Mr Phillips told a Labour fringe meeting. You can read more about this
here with the usual high level of BBC journalistic critical coverage. Now Mr Phillips studied Chemistry at Imperial College, London and I do not know when he stopped studying history. So here are a few facts to help him with the story of the defeat of the Spanish Armada...
1) There was no Turkey in the 16th century, I think he must be thinking of the Ottoman Empire, except all empires are bad so best to say Turks
2) Maybe Trevor Phillips is thinking of the battles of the early 1570's between the Ottoman Empire and the Spanish, the Spanish defending against the rise of the Islamic Ottoman empire's expansionism. Maybe someone has told him about the Battle of Lepanto in 1571.
3) The Ottoman Empire was at war with Spain in the late 16th century as were England but the causes were not the same.
4) Did you notice I said England (above)? That's because there was no Britain in the 16th century, the Kingdom of Great Britain only coming into existence under the 1707 Act of Union. Yes they did share a monarch from 1603 but they were separate countries, a bit like now after devolution...
5) Trevor Phillips theory comes direct from Dr Jerry Brotton, who postulates about a letter sent by Elizabeth 1 "The letter, ordered the ambassador, William Harborne, to incite the Turks to harry the Spanish navy. It was written in the mid-1580s"
Thank you
Conservative Party Reptile for helping with this bit, 16th Century wars and politics not being my speciality. "It was actually written in 1584 or 1585, 3 or 4 years before the Armada, and had no impact on Turkish policy, because they were busy at the time in the Balkans."
6) I believe the Spanish Armada along with their Portuguese allies were defeated by an English navy with assistance from some of the Dutch navy, no Ottoman navy were noticed off of the coast of England or Scotland at that time.
Since Trevor Phillips is so concerned with emphasising the relationships between England and the Ottoman Empire, will he also push for the following subjects to be taught at school:
1) The life and times of
Kurtoğlu Muslihiddin Reis2) The campaigns of
Admiral Barbarossa3) The story of
Malta and the Ottoman Empire4) 1683 - When a 140,000 strong Ottoman Empire army arrives at Vienna in June and started to besiege the city. The siege was broken at the Battle of Vienna on September 12 with the arrival of a force of 70,000 Polish, Austrians and Germans under the Polish-Lithuanian king Jan III Sobieski, whose cavalry turns their flank. Considered to be the turning point in the Ottoman Empire's fortunes. Maybe this story wouldn't fit the "narrative" of evil Christian Crusaders and gentle Ottoman's defending their lands that we are encouraged to believe.
5) The story of
The Coming Of The Corsairs and how Ottoman corsairs took the number of Europeans enslaved 1530-1780 at 1.25 million.
UPDATE:
Laban at
Biased BBC has just posted an excellent digest of this story, take a look there.
