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Tackling Discrimination and Hate Tackling Discrimination is at the heart of our work. The original focus was on improving race relations but over the years we have widened our brief and now, directly and indirectly respond to people in all their diversity. Specifically we support people in all of the ‘protected characteristics’ groups: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation.
We work through specific, targeted projects and also with individuals, giving help and advice when we can, as well as signposting to and networking with statutory and voluntary organisations.
Race Relations Act. The brief for the position was to tackle racial discrimination, later widened to other forms of discrimination. However the dedicated post was lost when funding came to an end in 2004.
Tackling racial harassment/ discrimination
We worked mainly on discrimination concerning employment, race and religion and later worked with Gypsies and Travellers. We worked at County level with the Gypsies and Travellers Group, meeting Gypsy families, hearing about their treatment by authorities and general public. Even today, the prejudice against Gypsies sadly continues.
A full-time post was funded by the Commission for Racial Equality (now known as the Equality & Human Rights Commission) in the late 70s following the
Case study One lovely Gypsy family we worked with had applied to settle in the area where they spent most of the year. The Council would not rent them a house as they were not permanent residents. They bought a plot of land and applied for permission to build on it. This too was refused. We looked at the reasons for refusal and found they were not valid by the council’s own rules. We wanted to fight the case but the family decided to leave, probably because of the hostility shown to them.
