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Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia |
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- Phase
1: 1995-1997
- Phase
2: 2000-2004
Background
Phase
1 explored Islamophobia in Britain and, broadly, identified it as one
of the two sharp ends of racism. The other sharp end remains and is,
of course, anti-Black prejudice. It is no less urgent an issue for
being joined by Islamophobia as a major destroyer of community
cohesion.
Phase
2 of the Commission in 2000 took down and dusted off the 60
Recommendations of the 1997 Report of Phase1. With mainly new
commissioners it worked to enable implementation of those
Recommendations which are best addressed by a group of Muslims and
non-Muslims.
2003,
the final of the three years Phase 2 had set itself, saw the
disastrous doubling of Islamophobia following 11 September 2001. The
Commission came under considerable pressure not to close down, but
from individual British Muslims and from a number of Muslim
organisations to recognise new and urgent needs. However it was
probably right not to revive the Commission for more than three years
in recognition that most change that any group of people can achieve
is done in the first three years. After that the pace tends to slow
down. Certainly Phase 2 was beginning to run out of steam in its
final year.
However
the alarming new rise in Islamophobia in 2002 has forced the
Commissioners and colleagues to find new ways of addressing new
nasty, divisive anti-Muslim prejudices.
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Richard
Stone was on the panels of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, and of the
2003/04 David Bennett Inquiry into the death of a Black patient in a
medium secure psychiatric hospital in Norwich. He was previously
senior partner in a five-doctor group practice in Notting Hill and
Bayswater, Central London.
Vice-chair
of the Runnymede Trust he has spent 6 years on its Islamophobia
Commission, from 2000 to ’04 as chair. He is President of the
Jewish Council for Racial Equality, and founder and co-chair of
Alif-Aleph UK, a group of British Muslims & British Jews.
Current
projects of Richard Stone
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Charitable
Grants Programme
Principal grant making charitable trusts for
over twenty years have been the Lord Ashdown Charitable Settlement
and then The Stone Ashdown Trust (click here).
Richard
Stone has also been trustee of other smaller, family charitable
trusts:
Dr
Stone’s grants programme from these trusts has totalled over £1m
a year for more than twenty years. Despite stock market falls post
9.11.2001, he was able to maintain this rate of grant giving until
2003. At this point The Stone Ashdown Trust trustees commissioned a
review of grant giving and the role of the trust. They put all
significant grant making on hold and only in 2005 they decided on the
best way of using the capital to pursue the aims of the grant making
programme that had been pursued in the previous years.
In 2005
the trustees have implemented a restructuring of the trust and the
way it works. With a greater emphasis on partnership funding they
have also agreed to reopen themselves to making significant grants.
They have decided to focus on projects which they or their partner
organisations and individuals initiate which will be supported by
some capital grants as well as the usual revenue grants.
The
trust is not able to respond to unsolicited applications
In
particular a number of the projects will be those managed by one of
their partners, the Uniting Britain Trust.
The
principal areas supported are:
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Combating
racism with its special focus on the police (Recommendations of
the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry) and mental health services
(Recommendations of the David Bennett Inquiry).
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Community
Cohesion with a special focus on Islamophobia (focusing on
recommendations of the Reports of the Islamophobia Commission) and
anti-Semitism (with a particular focus on facilitating positive
contacts between British Muslims and British Jews – Alif-Aleph
UK).
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Human
Rights especially in the Greater London area.
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Anti-racism
Promoting implementation of Stephen Lawrence Inquiry
Recommendations and David Bennett Inquiry Recommendations.
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Islamophobia
Promoting new ways to address Islamophobia with people of
goodwill from whatever community informed by an awareness that the
responsibility for addressing Islamophobia lies more with
non-Muslims than with Muslims.
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British
Muslims and British Jews
Promoting positive contacts with
the organisation he has founded Alif-Aleph UK.
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This is a registered charity (no 298722).
The charitable purposes are:
Any purpose recognised by English Law as being exclusively charitable
or such purpose as the trustees shall in their absolute discretion
determine.
History of the Trust
The trust is described on its letterhead as "Continuing part of the
grants programme of the Joe Stone Charitable Trust and the Lord Ashdown
Charitable Settlement". In essence it is a continuation of grant making
programmes of which Richard Stone has been the lead trustee. For nearly
twenty years this was mainly about fifty per cent of the programme of
the Lord Ashdown Charitable Settlement which was set up by his father’s
brother, Sir Arnold Silverstone (later Lord Ashdown of Chelwood).
The trustees of the Lord Ashdown Charitable Settlement were three
members of Arnold Silverstone’s family. In the late 1990s they began to
recognise that the trustees increasingly needed advice and support for
their specialist programmes. If the advice was to be given on a basis
of an equal voice for beneficiary communities, then it would be
necessary to bring in new trustees. However those trustees would be
responsible not only for those parts of the programme in which they had
special knowledge and experience, but also for the programmes of the
other trustees whose programmes they would not necessarily have the
expertise sufficient to be able to accept responsibility.
As a result the trust was broken up into three capital sums. Richard
Stone put his 1/3 into the Joe Stone Charitable Trust which he and his
mother had set up in memory of his father (later Lord Stone of Hendon).
Richard Stone and his new trustees decided to change the name of the
trust to recognise the memories of both Joe Stone and his brother
Arnold to produce the name "The Stone Ashdown Trust".
At the start of this new phase of the trust, the trustees were:
- Richard Stone (chair)
- Leroy Logan MBE (chair of Metropolitan Black Police Association)
- Lutfur Ali (then head of Equalities at the NHS Executive in Leeds)
- Francesca Klug OBE (Reader in Human Rights at King’s College and later at LSE)
In 2004 Francesca Klug came under increased pressure of time due to her
involvement in advising Government on its developing Human Rights
strategy. Among the many projects she had to drop at this stage was her
trusteeship of The Stone Ashdown Trust, much to the regret of the
remaining trustees.
The Stone Ashdown Trust website can be seen here:
http://www.stoneashdown.org
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Uniting Britain Trust (UBT) |
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This
is a registered charity (No. 1063484).
The
charitable purposes are:
To
promote such purposes as are now or may hereafter be deemed by
English law to be charitable and in particular but without prejudice
to the generality of the foregoing:
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To
work towards the elimination of racial discrimination.
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To
promote equality of opportunity between persons of different racial
groups.
The
founding trustees were Herman Ouseley and Richard Stone in response
to a need for the Commission for Racial Equality to have an
associated independent registered charity.
There
were projects and research which the commissioners might need to
support the work of the Commission. As a government funded quango
the Commission could only spend money which it received from the Home
Office.
It
was important that the charity should be independent of the
Commission for Racial Equality. Even though the chair of the
Commission and some commissioners were trustees, the chair of the
trust was quickly handed over to Richard Stone as totally independent
of the CRE and the main work of the Commission was driven by him,
mainly supported by another of the independent trustees, Pranlal
Sheth CBE.
The
principal project of the trust was the “Threads in the Tartan
Festival” held in Scotland during the International Year Against
Racism (1996).
The
other main project has been the second phase of the Commission on
British Muslims and Islamophobia (2000-04).
In
1997 the CRE commissioners decided that they wished to sever any
links with associated organisations, one of which was UBT. Pranlal
Sheth and Richard Stone agreed that there was no need to close down
the charity. As the sole remaining trustees they appointed new
trustees with whose help they have been able to facilitate a number
of projects. These include:
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The
final years of the Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia
and the publication of its two Reports in 2004.
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Payback
– a three year project to educate the public and people within the
criminal justice system of the benefits of non-custodial sentences
for non-violent offenders. This was the brainchild of Marion
Janner, director of Payback.
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Alif-Aleph
UK
- Mapping Project
- Limmud Conference
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Muslim-Jewish Manifesto
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Greater
London Human Rights Project
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RAISE
Project
The
current trustees of the Uniting Britain Trust:
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Richard
Stone
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Kaushika
Amin
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Nivene
Powell
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Selina
Ullah
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