The appellant, an Indian teacher had applied unsuccessfully for the post of head of history at Holloway School. He complained of race discrimination.
Held: Browne-Wilkinson P said: ‘As has been pointed out many times, a person complaining that he has been unlawfully discriminated against faces great difficulties. There is normally not available to him any evidence of overtly racial discriminatory words or actions used by the respondent. All that the applicant can do is to point to certain facts which, if unexplained, are consistent with his having been treated less favourably than others on racial grounds. In the majority of cases it is only the respondents and their witnesses who are able to say whether in fact the allegedly discriminatory act was motivated by racial discrimination or by other, perfectly innocent, motivations. It is for this reason that the law has been established that if an applicant [claimant] shows that he has been treated less favourably than others in circumstances which are consistent with that treatment being based on racial grounds the industrial tribunal [ET] should draw an inference that such treatment was on racial grounds, unless the respondent can satisfy the industrial tribunal that there is an innocent explanation’ and
‘we are very conscious of the great dangers of opening too widely the ambit of an inquiry under the Race Relations Act 1976. If this is done and not controlled, industrial tribunals will be faced with numerous issues on matters only indirectly relevant to the main issue. This in turn would lead to long and complicated hearings and great expense and inconvenience to the respondents. It is not in the best interests of those who are being racially discriminated against that the protection of their rights before tribunals should become a matter of great expense and complication. The end result of so doing would be to render the legal redress they have difficult and expensive to obtain. In the circumstances there is a very heavy burden on legal advisers, the Commission for Racial Equality and the Equal Opportunities Commission to ensure that matters of the kind that we have had to consider in this case are not introduced into a case, except where they are satisfied that there is a real probability that they will affect the outcome. This judgment should not be treated as a charter for wholesale allegation of subsequent events.’
Judges:
Browne-Wilkinson P
Citations:
[1981] IRLR 487, [1982] ICR 132
Statutes:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Dicta not approved – Strathclyde Regional Council v Zafar; Zafar v Glasgow City Council HL 16-Oct-1997
The absence of any other explanation for the unfair dismissal of a black worker, does not of itself and inescapably lead to finding of race bias, or racial discrimination. He had been dismissed following complaints of sexual harassment, later found . .
Cited – Ugiabe v Tower Hamlets Primary Care Trust (Race Discrimination : Direct) EAT 9-May-2013
EAT RACE DISCRIMINATION – Direct
The Claimant’s appeal argued that the Employment Tribunal had failed to follow through the inferences that it had drawn as to the conduct of the Medical Director of the . .
Discussed – Khanna v Ministry of Defence EAT 1981
EAT The applicant, who had been born in India, had made twenty-two unsuccessful applications for promotion. On the last occasion he brought proceedings alleging unlawful racial discrimination and relying on the . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Discrimination, Employment
Updated: 28 April 2022; Ref: scu.180906