UK armed forces accused of 'institutional racism'

The UK's armed forces are failing to recruit enough ethnic minorities because they are institutionally racist, a Labour MP claimed today.

John Smith, who spent four years in the RAF, said it was the only explanation for the fact that less than 10,000 of the UK's 200,000 personnel were from ethnic minorities.

He said it was time Parliament did something about it and called for positive discrimination to correct the anomaly.

"It is totally and utterly unacceptable that we have an ethnic minority population roughly just under 10% of the population of the UK, but the current figures for recruitment of ethnic minority military personnel in the three services is running at 4.9% of the population," Mr Smith told MPs.

"There are indications, sadly, that the recruitment of ethnic minorities is in fact in decline."

Mr Smith (Vale of Glamorgan) said the Government had taken action since 1997 to address this but to no avail.

The UK's record was particularly bad compared with the USA's, he argued.

Ethnic minorities there, excluding Hispanics, comprised 10 to 12% of the population, but their recruitment into the armed forces averaged between 15 and 18%.

"So not only do they achieve the objective of being colour blind, i.e. recruiting at least as many ethnic minority people as exist in the community, but they recruit half as much again and we should be doing the same."

Mr Smith cited the example of former US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who is of Afro-Caribbean origin and became chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, the highest military position in the US.

"That would be impossible in today's forces in this country because of the bars that exist to recruitment," he alleged.

Copyright Press Association 2007

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