Imagine what would happen if I announced, as publicly as possible, that no woman should consider working for The Sunday Times, because it was a hotbed of bullying and institutionalised discrimination against women. Perhaps I should quickly point out that it isn’t; The Sunday Times is a marvellous employer. But imagine that I did go public with such an accusation and went on to say, while continuing to work here and draw a salary, that I would use my journalistic network to discourage all women from applying for work here, calling for a “boycott”.

The rest of the press would, of course, gleefully pounce with headlines such as: “Machismo alive and well at Wapping”, and so on. And the editor would sack me, rightly.

Public disloyalty like this is unacceptable to any organisation; it is profoundly damaging. If things were that bad, if independent employment tribunals had failed to satisfy me, if the generous anti-discrimination laws had not found in my favour, then the only honourable public course for me would be to resign. My staying in my job would reek of hypocrisy.

This ought to be obvious. It stands to reason and to rule. Yet somehow the rules seem to be different for “black” officers in the Metropolitan police.

Last week the London branch of the National Black Police Association (NBPA) urged black people and those from ethnic minorities not to join the force, and announced a boycott of any recruitment drive by the Met to attract candidates from ethnic minorities. It felt it would be wrong to encourage them to join a “hostile and racist environment” and would “actively discourage them from doing so through its extensive community network”.

So BME police men and women – BME is the fashionable abbreviation for black and minority ethnic – are appealing to other BME people to stay away from the Met because it is institutionally racist. I am afraid this will make some of them look rather silly on the beat, as if they themselves are willing to put on the uniform of racist abuse they are warning everyone else against.

Besides, if anything is institutionally racist, in the strict sense of the term, it is the existence of the NBPA itself: it is a separatist union for officers who call themselves black. This is in itself highly tendentious. The term “black”, according to its website, “does not refer to skin colour. The emphasis is on the common experience and determination of the people of African, African-Caribbean and Asian origin to oppose the effects of racism”. Why, in an integrated force in a multiracial city, should any ethnic grouping define itself as separate? And by grievance?

It would, after all, be illegal for white men and women to set up a White Police Association, and I cannot help feeling that it is or ought to be illegal for other ethnic groups too. Yet such is the guilt-ridden bad faith within public services that such organisations have been encouraged.

It’s hard to think of anything more damaging to race relations than the announcement by senior black police officers that the Met is not safe for black people. And if it’s not safe for Muslim police to associate with fellow officers, what – the unspoken question must be – is it like for ordinary Muslims on the street?

What makes all this much worse is that the president of the NBPA (not just the Metropolitan branch) is Commander Ali Dizaei of Scotland Yard, who is not only black (according to the loose NBPA definition) but a Muslim. This must send a clear message to all Muslims that they cannot trust the police. To call this inflammatory is to put it mildly. Yet nobody has been sacked.

We have become too soft, too inured to this kind of stuff, even to notice it.

It’s true the country has been preoccupied with the international financial crisis, but in its way this is a serious matter too. So is the fact that Dizaei is suspended from duty, for the second time in his career, pending the investigation of three allegations against him. The proper time for Dizaei’s NBPA to come out with its accusation against the Met would be after, not before, he had been found innocent of the charges – if that is what happens. For him, as NBPA president, to involve himself with such serious allegations of racism against the Met at such a time seems to me improper; it must be against the interest of good race relations inside and outside the police, and it will incline sympathisers to think, should any of the allegations against him be upheld, that this must be just another racist stitch-up.

Race relations in the Met have turned nasty. Dizaei’s close confidant, Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur, Britain’s most senior Asian officer, has also been suspended on “gardening leave” after publicly airing his racism grievances against the Met on television. A cabinet minister would be sacked for doing that but somehow Ghaffur, like Dizaei, felt the rules weren’t for him. Ironic, as the recently ejected Sir Ian Blair put a great deal of effort into improving race relations. But that is, sadly, the point.

The best efforts of well-meaning multiculturalism have led precisely and disastrously to this state of affairs.

The more people are encouraged to see themselves as separate from others, the more they will form separate identity groups, with separate interests.

The more they are encouraged to see themselves as special-interest groups and – sometimes – as victims of oppression, the more a grievance industry will develop. And the more powerful and pervasive the grievance industry, the more grievances there will be. It’s a vicious multicultural circle.

Such groups have indeed sprung up like mushrooms – the Met’s BPA branch was launched in 1994, and the Met also has the Association of Muslim Police, the Christian Police Association, the Metropolitan Police Sikh Association and the Metropolitan Police Hindu Association. That all sounds nice and inclusive, but actually it is divisive and yet another sign of contemporary decadence.

There are more than enough independent organisations and laws to protect the oppressed in this country. There are proper ways for the Met to be examined for racism and proper ways for victims to be compensated. None of this should be entrusted to the self-appointed hotheads and subversive activists of the grievance industry.

minette.marrin@sunday-times.co.uk

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