LABOUR leader candidate Diane Abbott was plunged into a new race storm last night after calling for black public-sector workers to be shielded from job cuts.
The Left-wing MP claimed ethnic background and gender should be considered when drawing up hit-lists for redundancy in the Government’s austerity drive.
But that sparked fury with critics warning that putting white men at the front of the queue for the sack risked inflaming racial tensions.
Miss Abbott’s outburst came as the increasingly hard-fought Labour leadership battle nears its climax.
She told Radio 4’s Today programme: “Black people and ethnic minorities are predominantly employed in the public sector, particularly women.
“My concern is that the progress black and ethnic minority workers have made in employment is relatively recent and if there have to be big cuts, it will be ‘last in, first out’.
“These cuts will fall disproportionately not just on women but on black and ethnic minority workers. I think that could lead to a degree of instability.” Asked what action she would like, Ms Abbott said: “You could make local authorities, Government, quangos mindful by making them monitor the gender and ethnic distribution of people losing jobs.
“The public sector cuts have the potential to set back race relations and black and ethnic minority communities by a generation.”
Critics last night warned that measures to protect certain workers from redundancy on the basis of their skin colour or sex was bound to breed resentment and undermine race relations. Tory Philip Davies, MP for Shipley, said: “This is the sort of politically-correct garbage Diane Abbott has become famous for.
