Is equality really fair?

Today like Harriet Harman, a number of critics would like to see fixed
quotas for Black and Asian officers to ensure that there is a good
representation of ethnic minority groups especially when it comes to
promotion to senior ranks. Organisations will have to by law put
forward a certain number of Black and Asian staff for promotion. It's
what many on the left call 'positive discrimination'.

This comes in the wake of high profile discrimination cases against
the police.

Only last week an Assistant Commissioner, Tarique Ghaffur
announced he was going to sue his bosses at the Met for denying him
promotion.

At the same time Harriet Harman insists that the police must ensure
that all candidates - Black, White and Asian - are treated fairly.

Now 'fairly' is not the same as 'equally'. In my opinion 'equality' is
used rather too loosely in today's politically correct world. We're
all 'equal', we're told as if it's a fact that cannot be challenged or
disputed.

A few months ago whilst sitting as magistrate in our local court, we
were discussing this very thought - how certain ideas are presented to
us if they're the whole truth like the gospel. I remember a colleague
of mine stating that although we must treat people fairly we don't
have any obligations to treat them as our equals. Fairness is one
thing but equality is a different ball game.

And it's true. On a basic level, it's clear that people are not equal
because we have different skills, cultural values, morality, ethics,
skills and personality traits. Surely a skilled person, for instance,
is not equal to an unskilled one. An unemployed university educated
person with a degree in engineering is not equal to person who has for
no good reason lived on social benefits and has neither a skill nor an
education.

But more importantly, what's right in the eyes of one person might not
be so in the eyes of another. It's all a matter of perspective -
about our background and upbringing - about the way we see right and
wrong.

For instance, some people - perhaps not unlike myself - might find the
idea of a carrying weapon to defend oneself nothing but abhorrent. It
wouldn't even cross our minds and yet, there are young people - girls
as well as boys - for whom carrying weapons such as blades is part and
parcel of everyday life. I'm sorry but they are not equal to us no
matter what anyone might say.

In particular, what being a magistrate makes clear - and perhaps this
is the case for police officers too - is that we are living in
different worlds. Criminal behaviour - which most of us would reject -
is common in some quarters of our society, almost as common as fish
and chips on a Friday night. Driving a car without a licence, or
insurance or an MOT might seem unbelievable to many of us but there is
a sizeable, reckless element in our wider community who have no regard
for their own safety - let alone other road users. Clearly we're not
equal. Their standards of decency, respect and good behaviour do not
coincide with ours.

A group of young thugs who stab a hard-working family man outside his
own home because he complained to them about their rowdy, anti-social
behaviour are not in my opinion, his equals. Or a burglar who gets
shot whilst carrying out a burglary in a dwelling place of an elderly
man, is not his equal. Similarly a psycho-path who throws chips at a
young couple on a bus and then fatally stabs one of them, is not their
equal. And hooded thugs who rob a promising, hard working a solicitor
and stab him to death - all for the sake of a mobile phone and twenty
odd quid - are not, I'm sorry, his equals.

It would be a travesty of justice if we thought that a primary school
pupil, a young girl who is a part-time carer of her disabled single
mother in a wheel-chair, who cooks and cleans for her and looks after
her general welfare, is nothing but equal to some of her peers who
can't even boil an egg.

We must not get wrapped up in a politically correct social philosophy
of thinking we're all equal irrespective of sex, gender, race
education and training. But fairness is very different.

Unlike Harriet Harman and our left wing critics, I don't want people
promoted purely on the basis of the colour of their skin - call it
'positive discrimination', minority quotas, equality procedures or
whatever semantics are in vogue at the moment. To me that's rather
patronising - as if Asians and Blacks are a little more than token
staff to appease the CRE. I'm sure Assistant Commissioner, Tarique
Ghaffur would agree. Similarly, I would argue, promotion should not be
viewed as an automatic right - it has to be earned not based purely on
the length of one's service.

Now I'm not saying that there isn't any truth in Tarique Ghaffur's
case. There might be and he, therefore, has every right to take his
bosses to court on the premise that they haven't treated him fairly.

Other than that, I would like to see the best men and women for the
job not solely because they've been at their post the longest. And
quite often it seems that political correctness gets in the way of
common sense. How many times have I seen diminutive police officers -
voluntary and professional - walking about in the streets not much
taller than children in our local primary schools? It does not fill me
with confidence to know that when tall, burly dangerous thugs - well
armed - are rampaging our cities at least the police authorities are
regarding all candidates as equal and giving everyone the opportunity
to wear the uniform.

We have to be lead by common sense and a compulsion to exercise
fairness but not by a legislative imperative to regard everyone as an
equal. That would merely fuel the clichéd notion of political
correctness gone mad.