He also gave us employment case law for years:
Freda Burton and Sonia Rhule, who are both black, were employed as casual waitresses at De Vere's Pennine Hotel in Derby on 1 November 1994, working at a dinner organised by the City of Derby Round Table. The Round Table had booked Bernard Manning as the speaker. On duty that evening was the hotel manager and two assistant managers.
The two women went into the banqueting hall to clear the tables during Mr Manning's performance. They heard him make jokes about the sexual organs of black men and their sexual abilities. He used words such as "wog, nigger and sambo". When Mr Manning spotted the waitresses, he remarked "very nice, that's how I like my cocoa". He then said words to the effect that "darkies were good at giving blow jobs". Although the women were considerably upset and offended, they carried on working. When the show was over, one of the guests asked Miss Rhule "what a black woman's vagina tasted like". She complained to an assistant manager. Meanwhile, another guest tried to put his arms round Miss Burton and made racially and sexually offensive remarks to her. The assistant manager saw this and brought the incident to an end. He apologised to the two women for what had happened. However, they took the view that if the management had vetted Mr Manning and his material, they would not have been placed in such a "prejudiced atmosphere". They brought complaints under the Race Relations Act 1976.
The industrial tribunal dismissed the complaints. The tribunal said that it was "in no doubt whatever" that the employees had suffered a "detriment" within the meaning of the Act. "It was not, however, the respondent which subjected them to it."
Held (allowing the appeal):
An employer subjects an employee to the detriment of racial harassment if it permits harassment to occur in circumstances in which it can control whether it happens or not. Where the harasser is a third party and not an employee for whose actions the employer would be vicariously liable, the tribunal should ask itself whether the event in question was something which was sufficiently under the control of the employer that it could, by the application of good employment practice, have prevented the harassment or reduced the extent of it. Therefore, the industrial tribunal erred in holding that the employer had not discriminated against the appellant black waitresses by subjecting them to racial harassment in the course of work from Bernard Manning, the guest speaker at a Round Table dinner, and from some of the diners, since it would have been good employment practice for the manager to warn his assistants to keep a look-out for Mr Manning and withdraw the waitresses if things became unpleasant.
