Former equalities tsar likens Oxford academics to Stalin

OXFORD academics who criticised their colleague’s research into the British Empire have been likened to Stalin by Trevor Phillips, the former equalities tsar.

Earlier this month, over 50 professors, lecturers and researchers signed an open letter in which they launched a stinging critique of Professor Nigel Biggar, who suggested that people should have “pride” about aspects of their imperialist past.

Prof Biggar, regius professor of moral and pastoral theology, is leading an Oxford University project on Ethics and the Empire, which will analyse the impact of Britain’s imperial past. Now Mr Phillips, the former chairman of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, has waded into the row.

He said that the academics who signed the open letter, criticising Prof Biggar for asking “the wrong questions, using the wrong terms” are using “an attack line of which Joseph Stalin would have been proud”.

Writing a letter to The Times, Mr Phillips said: “I spent the first three years of my life under a colonial state of emergency, with soldiers in the streets. Relatives and family friends were jailed and charged with sedition.

“Hence, I have no reason to defend colonialism. But we should constantly reappraise its consequences – one of which is today’s multi-ethnic Britain.

“It may be that the 58 Oxford academics would prefer to inhabit the largely mono-ethnic, pre-windrush Britain (a population mix somewhat preserved in their own university), but it is a fact that we are only here because you were there.”

A spokesman for Oxford University said the Ethics and Empire project is a “valid, evidence-led academic project, and Professor Biggar, who is an internationally-recognised authority on the ethics of empire, is an entirely suitable person to lead it”.