ABSTRACT
Criticism of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) can so easily be misunderstood or misrepresented that any informed discussion needs to begin with an open-minded examination of the broad principles on which its existence is based. The CRE also looks back to the humanitarian side of British imperialism. The chapter argues that the CRE has emerged from legislation which is rooted in essentially political, version of the function of the judiciary. The CRE is, or purports to be, about ensuring just and equitable treatment for all sections of the national community. An organisation founded to encourage good race relations, because it is founded on a defective understanding of the nature of rights in a free society—this same organisation finds itself doing the precise opposite. Social equality, rather than the equality of all under the law is the guiding principle of the 1976 Race Relations Act 1976, and of the bureaucracy charged with implementing it.
