Time to abolish those commissions for race, opportunity and disability

'I do not believe that race or sex discrimination are more worthy of state intervention than others'

Bliss is it, in this dawn, to be alive. We should have had fireworks and street parties, surely, to herald the Human Rights Act, which came into force on the 1 October, making the European Convention of Human Rights enforceable in our courts. I am not surprised that all the big guns on the right are queuing up to sound off against it. Simon Heffer, Ann Widdicombe, Ruth Lea of the Institute of Directors, understand only too well what happens when laws are brought in to protect small people against the growing power of the mighty. The culture changes. Deference will become harder because people can no longer think of themselves as subjects or objects. It will not happen overnight, but a fundamental transformation of public attitudes is now inevitable.

Bliss is it, in this dawn, to be alive. We should have had fireworks and street parties, surely, to herald the Human Rights Act, which came into force on the 1 October, making the European Convention of Human Rights enforceable in our courts. I am not surprised that all the big guns on the right are queuing up to sound off against it. Simon Heffer, Ann Widdicombe, Ruth Lea of the Institute of Directors, understand only too well what happens when laws are brought in to protect small people against the growing power of the mighty. The culture changes. Deference will become harder because people can no longer think of themselves as subjects or objects. It will not happen overnight, but a fundamental transformation of public attitudes is now inevitable.

The implications of this are massive, which must explain why the Government is running scared of its own bold achievement. In October last year The New York Times commented on how "quietly, doggedly, somewhat nervously, Britain is preparing itself for a constitutional revolution". Jack Straw himself has made compelling speeches stating he wants a new relationship between the citizen and the state. But for any of this to have substance we need to imagine radical new ways of dealing with injustices and of promoting equality and a civil society. This is surely the moment, the greatest opportunity we will ever have, for assessing whether our existing equality institutions fit this new landscape or are, in fact, blots on it.

Is it time, I wonder, for us on the centre left, to consider whether we need to abolish the Equal Opportunities Commission, The Commission for Racial Equality and the Disability Rights Commission and to replace these with one umbrella Human Rights Commission? Don't get me wrong. I am not joining in with Tory wolves who have been howling at the gates of these institutions ever since they were first set up. Remember that Margaret Thatcher was totally hostile to the 1976 Race Relations Act, as were a number of her cronies.

I believe that Gurbux Singh, the Chair of the CRE, and Julie Mellor, Chair of the EOC, are two of the finest leaders the organisations have ever had. I am well aware, too, of how long it has taken disabled people to get their own commission and that Mr Straw has done well to tighten and extend our race relations legislation. But all of this belongs to the last century, not to this one, and that is the point.

In this complex world with new groups finding themselves victimised, it is unwise to cling to old ways just because the new is so scary. I simply do not believe that race discrimination and sex discrimination are more worthy of state intervention than, say, age discrimination or the violation of children. A Mori poll carried out in 1998 found that 47 per cent of those questioned thought older people needed more protection and 41 per cent thought children should have their rights looked after better. The unemployed were next down the list followed by "ethnic minorities" and women. It is a shame and shameful that various oppressed groups prefer to huddle in enclaves where they can focus on their own problems without being distracted by other people's pain.

Absurdly, their one cause band only plays in an exclusive clubs for the under-privileged of a certain sort. Not a week goes by without someone bringing up the spurious argument that if black and Asian people support a Human Rights Commission, "race discrimination will lose out" as if we should be in constant competition with other excluded groups and race is all that black people care about. Such a position makes people morally short-sighted, too.

In a few days time on the Channel 4 programme, Words of Fire, which I mentioned recently, a Muslim leader tells the country that he went to Iran and asked Ayatollah Khomeini to pass a fatwa against Salman Rushdie because of Islamaphobia. This man of God (I hope the police watch the programme) believes he can incite murder with impunity because he is a victim of prejudice. Another example would be forced marriages. Asian families who have become over-conscious of how much prejudice they face (and they, we, do) think that, therefore, they have the right to coerce their young into marriages using any means necessary. How can our existing race and sex discrimination laws can deal with these last two situations?

A Human Rights Commission would force all of us to engage with the plight of others and work towards a shared understanding of injustice and discrimination. More people would feel connected to the issues because they would see the commission as an institution they might need one day. At present many Britons remain disengaged from the CRE and EOC, which in spite of some good work, are regarded as ghetto institutions, irrelevant to the needs of most people and too limited in scope.

Where does a gay victim of discrimination go for redress? Or a Scottish convert to Islam who finds herself dismissed for wearing a hijab? And to whom will all of us oldies complain when twentysomethings grab our jobs for no good reason but that they are young? Does a black or Asian woman go to the EOC or the CRE if she faces discrimination, and how do we determine whether it is race or gender which has been the "problem"? Can an asylum seeker discriminated against by the state go to the CRE or EOC? No. A recent review of our law in this area carried out by Cambridge professor, Bob Hepple and others (Equality: a New Framework) concluded that for negative and positive reasons, it makes absolute sense to have a single Equality Act and a single Human Rights Commission.

There are many other reasons, too, to back this recommendation. A human rights culture is a live thing, with constant negotiations about which right prevails in any given situation. And this, as Francesca Klug points out in her ebullient new book, Values for a Godless Age, is what makes the new Act so inspiring: "After a century of failed utopias", she writes, "there is an openness to fresh ideas most of us have not seen in our lifetime... a developing conversation is taking place on a global scale..." And it is a conversation the CRE and EOC must join even if it leads to the mercy killing of the two bodies in the end.

y.alibhai-brown@independent.co.uk