A Rochdale cab firm boss compared choosing the race of a taxi driver to picking a ‘brand of Coca Cola’ in the shop in defence of his company sending white drivers on request.
Steve Campbell, who runs Car 2000 in Heywood, Rochdale, said his firm meets requests from the public to provide ‘local’ or Asian drivers.
Car 2000 took over Eagle Taxis, the firm which employed two of the nine men jailed in 2012 for their part in the Rochdale child grooming scandal.
Incredibly, Campbell compared the race of his drivers to ‘brands of Coca Cola’ bought in the supermarket, and accused people of making it a ‘racial issue’.
“I don’t see the difference if it was somebody asking us for a particular driver than or you going into a shop and asking for a brand of Coca Cola,” he told Radio 5 live Daily.
“People are making this a racial matter, they’re only considering the fact that people are asking for a white driver, and they forget people ask for an Asian driver.”
Campbell insisted what his firm are doing isn’t illegal, claiming the law that governs them, the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976, was simply ‘outdated’.
Defending his company’s policy, Campbell claimed they were simply ‘providing a certain service’.
“People ask us to provide a certain service and we do our best to provide that for them,” he said.
“If they ring up and ask for an Asian driver, we’ll send them one, if they ring up and ask for a local driver, if there’s one available, we’ll try and send them one.
“We also get people ringing up asking specifically by name, and we’ll try and do that as well.”
The taxi boss denied racial preference was something restricted to the taxi industry, and claimed ‘in all walks of life people have a preference’.
He added: “It just happens that we’re a service industry and they’ll ask us to provide the service and we’ll provide it.”
Image courtesy of Craig Sunte, with thanks.
