<h2 class="wp-block-heading eplus-wrapper">Discrimi-nation?</h2>

Frank Hester was furious as he addressed a meeting at his HQ. He was criticising a female executive: "I try not to be sexist, but... It's like trying not to be racist but you see Diane AbbottThe first Black woman to be elected to the UK Parliament and one of the country's first Black MPs. on the TV and you're just like... you just want to hate all Black women because she's there, and I don't hate all Black women at all, but I think she should be shot."

Hester's Leeds-based company, TPP, is a tech firm which has been paid over £400m by the UK government since 2016. Most of this was for looking after 60 million NHSThe National Health Service, the publicly funded healthcare system in the UK. The NHS was founded in 1948. records. Hester paid himself dividends of £33.5m over five years.

Hester donated £5m to the Conservative PartyA British political party. Members are known as Tories. last year, and announced a donation of a similar amount this month.

His remarks about Abbott were made in 2019, but have only just come to light.¹ In the same year he told a staff meeting that although he made a lot of jokes about racism - "we take the piss out of the fact that all our Chinese girls sit together in Asian corner" - he said that he loathed prejudice and wanted everyone in the company "to be loving and accepting of each other".

People who have worked for Hester paint a mixed picture of him. On the one hand he imposes bizarrely strict rules, such as insisting that employees live within a certain distance of the office. On the other, he makes generous gestures such as giving them £300 for birthday meals.² But that will hardly help Abbott's hurt feelings.

A statement from TPP claims that he has tried to apologise to Abbott, that his criticism "had nothing to do with her gender nor colour of skin" and that he considers racism "a poison which has no place in public life... not least because he experienced it as the child of Irish immigrants in the 1970s".

The situation is complicated by the fact that Abbott was suspended from the Labour party last year for claiming that Irish people, Jews and Travellers were not affected by racism as much as Black people.

The government initially refused to call Hester's remarks racist, but later accepted that they were. Labour is now demanding that the Conservatives return his donations.

The incident raises some deep and troubling questions:

Immoral money Can politicians ever uphold proper standards when they defer to the very rich? Should there be limits on political donations?

Legal enlightenment Can laws eliminate racism? Britain banned all forms of discrimination in 1976, but it still persists.   

School rules Are teachers the best people to instil moral values? What happens if parents have different ones?

Bad jokes Should only members of a particular racial group be allowed to comment on their own ethnicity? How can that be reconciled with freedom of speech?

Blind bias? Can people be racist without realising it? Some say no, when race is such a hotly debated issue. Others claim that everyone is subconsciously racist.  

Generalising despising Some people conceive a hatred for a whole community because of an encounter with just one member of it. How can this be prevented?

Is Britain a racist country?

Yes: It clearly is when someone like Frank Hester can be accepted into the heart of the Establishment, welcomed as the Conservatives' biggest donor ever and awarded an OBEThe Order of the British Empire, a lesser honour than a CBE..  

No: If it were, Rishi Sunak would not be prime minister. A survey last year found that only 2% of Britons felt uncomfortable about the idea of living next to someone of a different race.

Or... It is hard to unpick racism from other forms of hostility. The Gaza crisis appears to have brought about an increase in anti-SemitismShowing hatred or prejudice towards Jewish people. from people who conflate Judaism with Zionism, as well as an increase in religion-based Islamophobia.

Diane Abbott - The first Black woman to be elected to the UK Parliament and one of the country's first Black MPs.

NHS - The National Health Service, the publicly funded healthcare system in the UK. The NHS was founded in 1948.

Conservative party - A British political party. Members are known as Tories.

OBE - The Order of the British Empire, a lesser honour than a CBE.

anti-semitism - Showing hatred or prejudice towards Jewish people.