Mr Trevor Phillips made Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur

Ambassador’s speech

London, 13 September 2007

There are today many reasons to pay tribute to you.

Firstly not only because you are a very successful person but because your success has always been achieved in pursuit of an ideal:

- as President of the National Union of Students. The ideal was to defend students;
- as a journalist and producer, where you were highly regarded in the field of news and current affairs, you made documentaries, some of which won awards. Your ideal was to inform and enlighten people.
- as a member of the Greater London Authority, then as its chairman, the ideal was to represent and serve the interest of Londoners.
- and of course as Chair of the Commission for Racial Equality in 2003 and then of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights which has just been set up, the ideal is to defend the fundamental value of equality, to fight against discrimination and for human rights.

Second reason: you were a ground-breaker in the essential debate on the importance of national cohesion. One of the key problems our societies face is to find how to reconcile diversity and national cohesion. In your job as head of the Commission for Racial Equality, you lost no time in expressing your strong views. In several interviews you drew attention to the need for integration, equality before the law and respect for common values. You said to "The Times" in 2004: "What we should be talking about is how we reach an integrated society, one in which people are equal under the law, where there are some common values". You criticized practices which encourage "separateness" between communities. At the time, you were one of the first to say this. Since then you have never stopped repeating it. Indeed, in your Manchester speech in autumn 2005, you alerted people to the need to take care to avoid "sleepwalking towards segregation". It was a courageous and clear position. You broke new ground in a debate which is still continuing today. This debate is not relevant only to the United Kingdom. We face a similar challenge in France and elsewhere. For instance when we had to defend the Republic’s common values in our state schools, by passing an Act on secularism, one which was in fact enforced sensitively, thereby taking the heat out of a tense situation. A quite different challenge arose when youths living in some of the poorer areas surrounding French cities rioted in autumn 2005. They weren’t demanding recognition of a different religious, cultural or any other identity. On the contrary, what they wanted was to put an end to discrimination, they wanted to be treated the same way as any other French citizens. They wanted to be fully French. This debate is fundamental since our societies’ cohesion is absolutely essential for two reasons: first in our difficult and dangerous world, our governments will have to take more and more tough decisions. For these decisions to be accepted and effective, there has to be a strong consensus and therefore national cohesion. Second, only people and nations which have confidence in what they are can be opened to the world and to modernity and can share their sovereignty in the Europe we shall continue to build, because it is our common interest and our common fate.

Third reason: you are the man who succeeded in opening a very necessary dialogue on the subject of discrimination, integration, cohesion between France and the UK. You have strong personal ties with France. Your wife, Asha, is French and you often cross the Channel. You know our country well, which explains why, on your appointment as head of the Commission for Racial Equality, you immediately decided to launch some substantive Franco-British exchanges. And it was in this capacity that you met the present French president, before his election - a very shrewd anticipation - in a conference on social justice in December 2005. Since then there have been several other contacts and events: Azouz Begag’s visit to London in June 2006, the Franco-British Council seminar on the challenges of diversity, which you co-chaired with Pierre Joxe in London in November 2006 and, then, two weeks later, and the invitation of a French keynote speaker to open the Race Convention. These were opportune initiatives. Never before had big names in France and the UK discussed these issues so constructively or had the two countries realized the similarity of the challenges we face. Before then, when we looked at the situation in each other’s countries, we generally confined ourselves to the fruitless exercise of caricaturing and contrasting two so-called models.

This experience must serve as an example for everything else in our relationship. France and the UK are, at one and the same time, so different and so similar. Indeed it would certainly be paradise if we could combine France and Britain’s qualities. I let you imagine what it would be if we were to combine France and Britain’s failings.

These are few reasons for honouring you. What these three reasons have in common is that you are a man of principles, a man of courage, a man of vision, and in addition, a real friend.

Trevor Phillips, au nom du Président de la République et en vertu des pouvoirs qui me sont conférés, nous vous faisons Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur.