Some cultural attitudes and practices need to be tackled as part of a revolution in equalities because our children deserve nothing less, says Joy Warmington.

If there was any doubt that a new approach to equalities is required, two reports published last month surely quash this.

The first was the revelation from a group of MPs that some Birmingham schools had refused to display a poster raising awareness of forced marriage because it might upset some parents. The second, a report from the NSPCC revealing that some cases of domestic violence and abuse had been quietly overlooked by police officers, education officers and social workers because they haven’t felt qualified enough to deal with Asian victims. Rather than risk taking the wrong action they instead take no action, hiding behind the cloak of political correctness or ‘respect’ for cultural differences.

From my experiences with public service professionals, this confession is likely to chime with many. Undoubtedly, many police, health, education and social service professionals can recall a story similar to that of a healthcare professional visiting a south Asian mother over a year to provide her with support for her newborn twins. There were four other children in the family including a 15-year-old girl who was always at home whenever the health visitor happened to arrive.

Naturally, the healthcare professional’s suspicions were raised, but crucially, she did not report this to the local authority for fear of appearing to interfere with the family’s cultural practices. It transpired later that her father didn’t want his daughter to go to school or get an education and was planning to force her into a marriage when she turned 16.

Some newspapers inevitably succumbed to the easy temptation to label such incidents as proof of ‘political correctness gone mad’, but the truth is a little more complicated than that. It is not political correctness that stops otherwise dedicated and experienced public sector workers involving themselves in culturally sensitive cases. It is, rather, the fear that such interference will be labelled racist. It’s not the fear of disrespecting cultural ‘sensitivities’ – who genuinely thinks domestic abuse constitutes a legitimate cultural practice? - but the fear of appearing ignorant, indifferent, or dismissive.

It is easy to see why this is the case. Traditional approaches to equality have focused on the idea that people are different, be it because of their ‘race’, religion, or any other factor. The NSPCC’s response to the report typifies this ideology. It calls for better training and support for professionals working with Asian victims of domestic violence so they can handle cultural sensitivities better. However, cultural sensitivities training will only reinforce the idea that ‘culture’ or ‘race’ is a lens through which we should judge people’s actions.

The time has come to tackle people’s fear and the root cause of it: uncertainty. Uncertainty about what ‘treating people equally’ means. And, most importantly, uncertainty about how to explain to communities that the rights of individuals are not ‘trumped’ by tradition and cultural practices.

‘Cultures’ don’t stand still and they need to change with the times, in some cases cultural practices need to be challenged to allow people to enjoy basic human rights. Depriving a child of their education goes against Article 26 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the first Protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights, and the first Protocol of the Human Rights Act. There seems little uncertainty in that.

The situation we find ourselves in today is similar to old-fashioned attitudes to domestic violence. It used to be the case that the policemen refused to get involved in suspected cases of domestic abuse because what went on between a husband and wife was private: an attitude that relied on a sharp distinction between private actions and public concerns. It took over 30 years of campaigning for society to see through its cultural conventions to the violence underneath, to see the abuse for what it is, without excuses or caveats.

So today let’s choose to see domestic abuse for what it is, regardless of who commits it. Instead of encouraging support workers to be aware of cultural differences, let’s train them to have the confidence to tackle injustice wherever they see it. Dealing with cases of forced marriage and domestic abuse inevitably requires tact and diplomacy. But let’s train people so they know how to apply that sensitivity within the framework of the law. I know from experience how liberating it can be for public sector workers simply to be told that ‘race’ is not a prism through which they should see actions, that everyone really is equal before the law.

Which brings us back to the report written by the Home Affairs Select Committee. I notice that in it some people have argued that creating a new law against forced marriages would send a powerful message to the communities that engage in that practice. But how much more powerful would it be, I wonder, if we continued prosecuting forced marriages using existing laws, to show those communities that their ethnicity and culture was irrelevant to the pursuit of equality.