At Channel 4's 20th-anniversary celebrations, I met Mark Thompson, the channel's chief executive. I asked for a meeting with him. He immediately said yes. I did not believe him; I thought it was a brush-off. I was wrong. His secretary called to make an appointment and I met him the other day. I was not touting for work; I merely wanted to help the channel for which I have worked and which has shaped so many of my ideas in journalism. I particularly wanted to support Thompson, who has abolished the multicultural department and thus ended the ghettoisation of black programming.
Shortly after the meeting, I was in a minicab, listening to the BBC radio news. And I heard how Gurbux Singh, the former head of the Commission for Racial Equality who was forced to resign in disgrace after a drunken altercation with police officers at Lord's cricket ground in the summer, wanted more money.
Singh was fined £500 by magistrates after he admitted head-butting one officer and threatening him and his colleagues, saying (in foul language): "Don't you know who I am? I know Blair [Ian Blair, the deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan Police]. I'll have your jobs." He made his position untenable because he holds quasi-judicial powers of investigation, including over the police. Singh was on £120,000 a year. The CRE offered him six months' severance pay; he wanted two years'. In the end, he got a year's money, an amount criticised by Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, as "an improper use of taxpayers' money".
There is a hint in Singh's claim that he thinks he was racially discriminated against. That angers me. He had been at the CRE for only two years. Apart from being David Blunkett's poodle, he contributed nothing. Not an idea fell from his pen; he failed to provide any leadership when Asians rose up in the northern towns. He was showboating, being more concerned with power than with any programme or policy.
Singh does not consider penitence or the possibility that he can wipe the slate clean and make a contribution on racial issues, even voluntarily. His attitude is "pass the money". He should not be given even the time of day.
