The UK’s Monstrous Equality Act

The Telegraph recently headlined a report titled ‘Monstrous’ Equality Act has gone too far, warns Lord Sewell. It seems that conservatives in the UK believe the Equality Act 2010, which is based on the same principles as civil rights legislation in the United States, has “gone too far.”

They are calling for it to be repealed on grounds that “it has replaced ‘individual freedom with collective victimhood.’” Their argument is that this legislation is basically good but has unfortunately gone astray.

At what point should the displacement of liberty be acknowledged to have gone far enough? How much displacement of individual liberty would be acceptable, in the Tories’ view?

Framing it as a case of good intentions gone wrong dooms their own calls for repeal from the outset—if the legislation is well intentioned and fundamentally sound, why repeal it? Surely all it needs is a few “tweakments” to get those original good intentions right back on track? That is the logical response to the way they framed their complaint.

This is a timely reminder of Murray Rothbard’s insistence that egalitarianism should be rejected altogether, not just given an institutional makeover. 

The Tories have labeled the legislation a “monster.” As they see it, the power of the state under this law has spiraled out of control—therein lies the monstrosity. They believe the “architecture” of anti-discrimination law is sound, but the problem is the “ideology” underlying it: “We have embedded a flawed ideology into our legislative architecture itself,” says Lord Sewell. He explained:

We built a monster. The original intent of anti-discrimination law was to give citizens legal recourse against discriminatory acts.

Instead, we created something far more ambitious: a framework that grants sweeping powers to the state and its agents to actively enforce equality.

The Telegraph adds that, “Lord Sewell, the Tory peer, said the legislation had given the state too much power to ‘actively enforce equality’ and had done so unevenly.”

Unevenly? In that case, why not just even it out? If the problem with giving the state legislative power to equalize everyone is that “equal opportunities” end up being interpreted as “equal outcomes,” why not just scale the law back down to “equal opportunities”? That is what Sisyphus would do.

Lord Sewell also undermined the force of his own complaints by saying that discrimination on grounds of class, and discrimination based on geography, are not “protected” by this legislation. The poor, and those from deprived parts of the country, suffer disproportionate economic disadvantage. This leaves vulnerable groups outside the protective scope of the law. And, as Lord Sewell said, it shows unevenness of application.

The Telegraph illustrated their article with a picture of Henry Nowak, the white British boy who was murdered in circumstances very similar to those in the case of Austin Metcalf in Texas. Their point is that if the anti-discrimination premise is sound, then white boys merit the same protection as other protected groups, and all should be brought within the protective embrace of the state.

But this complaint about uneven coverage is not grounds for repealing the law—on the contrary, if the argument is that all deserving groups should be protected, that could equally well be taken as a case for expanding the law. As I have previously pointed out, that argument is often advanced by critics of the Equality Act who believe it should go even further:

For example, it is often argued in the UK that the main problem with the equality legislation is its failure to protect the poor, those in remote northern geographical locations, or poor white boys, the idea being that by encompassing all suffering groups within its protective fold the legislation will acquire legitimacy. 

Many people—both conservatives and progressives—already campaign for the law to be reformed along those lines. They certainly do not want the legislation to be repealed, as they believe they can wield it to achieve better results. The tenor of many comments on the Telegraph article is similar. One reader commented: “It is not the law—the trouble is that it is administered unequally. It is the administrators that need to be replaced.”

This is a very common conservative reaction to Leviathan. Why not just fire the administrators who are behaving badly? Hire better administrators. Rein in this unruly beast. The beast itself is not the problem, the problem is the “new duties” such as the Public Sector Equality Duty which requires police to perform community relations duties. In that case, why not just exercise the “new duties” and let the beast carry on?

Lord Sewell complains that under this legislation “discrimination is assumed to be the norm.” He believes that most British people do not discriminate against others. The state does not, therefore, need such “monstrous” power to be able to deal with the few bad apples. The Tories’ real complaint is that the scale of discrimination in the UK has been exaggerated by the socialists as an excuse for them to expand the scope of their equality enforcement.

That complaint is well founded. An example of the same thing is the SPLC resorting to paying people to pretend to be far right, to help create grounds for their own efforts to stem the rising hate they keep warning us about.

But the Tories have consistently conceded the socialists’ premise that such laws are needed to fight against discrimination. Their only concern is that identity politics and grievance culture have now (predictably) started to “run rife.”

Claire Coutinho, the Conservatives’ shadow equalities minister, said:

“When the Equality Act was drawn up, it brought together decades of anti-discrimination legislation, but it also created new duties which have allowed identity politics and grievance culture to run rife.”

These complaints are very easy for progressives to dismiss. They will simply accuse the Tories of not caring about those who are suffering from “rising hate.” Further, since the Tories insist that state eradication of discrimination is well-intentioned, their call for repeal is patently irrational—if the substance of their complaint is merely the “new duties” and the “unevenness” of its operation, then why call this law a monster? Nothing they have said in support of their complaints depicts the law as monstrous, by their own lights. At most, they are essentially asking for some tightening of what they themselves have depicted as a few loose ends in a well-intentioned law.

The bigger problem is that the Tories do not see that giving the state power to stamp out discrimination virtually guarantees that the state will maximize its social engineering power.

One might argue that trying to scale back the power of the state is at least a step in the right direction, and that by calling for repeal the Tories might, at least, raise public awareness and help to trigger the reform process. But unfortunately, their own logic also supports the progressive case for expanding the law to cover more groups.

Suella Braverman—described as “the equalities spokesman for Reform”—complains that this legislation was “thrust upon [the UK] by a dying New Labour government, under the influence of distant European judges and lawyers.” But she fails to mention that the law came into force under a Tory Government—of which she herself was at one point Home Secretary—who enforced it during their 14 years in power and never took any steps to repeal it.

If this latest Tory attack on the monstrous Equality Act has any impact, both sides will ultimately claim victory—the progressives because state power to equalize everyone will remain entrenched, and the conservatives because they will assure everyone that this monstrous law will at least be somewhat less monstrous and should now “work better.”

The Tories are always looking for ways to ensure that progressive legislation works more effectively. Their Equality Act antics call to mind the 1871 words of Robert Lewis Dabney. While Southern conservatives consistently rejected the civil rights legislation, Northern conservatives, like the British Tories, did their best to keep up with the latest progressive principles.

This [Northern conservatism] is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader.