Trevor Phillips issues defiant Reform racism row warning: ‘We protect our children’

Trevor Phillips issues defiant Reform racism row warning: 'We protect our children'Source: Sky News

Transcript

00:00This week, we've seen activists bringing an ugly dollop of bigotry

00:03to their campaigning, caught out using racist and homophobic language.

00:08Well, this is hardly new news.

00:09We can go all the way back to the general election of 1964,

00:13exactly 60 years ago, when a candidate won the Smethwick seat

00:17with a slogan, I'm not going to repeat, on air,

00:20but which sounds like, if you want a tigger for a neighbour, vote Labour.

00:24This presents a dilemma for broadcasters.

00:27On the one hand, we need to report and debate

00:29what is said in plain language.

00:32On the other, we don't want to upset people unnecessarily.

00:36Personally, I dislike the use of euphemisms such as the N-word

00:40or the P-word, which I think simply trivialise the hostile intent.

00:45I prefer to call a spade a spade, as the Prime Minister did this week.

00:50In our family, we protect our children,

00:51not by hiding them from the reality of the world,

00:54but preparing them for a world in which such words

00:57are still regrettably commonplace.

01:00They understand from the get-go that the person with the problem

01:04is not them, but the racist.

01:07All that said, out of courtesy to some colleagues who feel differently

01:11and who may be distressed by the use of such words,

01:14we'll do our best to avoid them today.