Trevor Phillips, one of the likely candidates for the new mayor of London, visited North Finchley to promote his new book. He spoke to LAURA BENJAMIN about private schools, the media and multicultural Britain.

Broadcaster Trevor Phillips came to North Finchley last week and hit out at claims that he cannot stand as a Labour candidate for Mayor of London because his children go to a private school in Edgware.

He was signing copies of his new book Windrush: The Irresistible Rise of Multi-Racial Britain, co-written with his brother Mike, at Barnet's multicultural resources exhibition on Wednesday last week.

However, Mr Phillips also took time out to answer questions about the possibility of his standing as Mayor of London. Recent newspaper reports have suggested that the Labour party rejected Mr Phillips, who lives in Stanmore, as one of its potential candidates because he sends his two daughters to private school -- North London Collegiate in Edgware.

He said: "I have not said that I would stand for any political office but if I did I would not be offering my children up for election, but would be offering myself.

"My children have gained admission to one of the best schools in London. We wanted them to go to an all-girls school, and North London Collegiate is the nearest one to us. No-one who cares about their children would turn down the opportunity to send their kids there."

He added: "I still have two years to decide whether or not I want to stand as Mayor of London. I don't know why or how all this media frenzy about my nomination started. I suppose when I was first asked if I would consider standing for the post I could have said 'no, never', but why should I?

"We will have to see what the job entails when the legislation is passed."

Mr Phillips is a presenter of LWT's The London Programme and an ITV executive who runs his own production company. His brother is also a journalist and academic and the award winning author of several books and screenplays.

Windrush: The Irresistible Rise of Multi-Racial Britain charts the experiences of the first 100 West Indians who came to Britain on the Empire Windrush 50 years ago. Windrush is the theme of this year's multicultural resources exhibition, which is Britain's biggest trade fair of teaching aids for multicultural education.

Mike Phillips said: "We believe that events like this are very important. If you go back to the history of minorities in England, you would see that we would try to do things like this in the 1970's but couldn't.

"We want to encourage people to take more of an interest in what and who we were and to encourage the English population to try and pass on their understanding to their children in schools."

The idea behind the book was first conceived two years ago and was turned into a successful television series before the book was published. Trevor took one year to complete all the interviews, and his brother wrote the bulk of the text.

"Collecting the interviews involved quite a lot of work but it was not that difficult because we know a lot of the people we spoke to anyway. I have been reporting on this area for 20 years now."

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