(3) a desire to compromise, or a need to compromise, to ensure that major aspects of the draft statute get through the legislative process, and are not blocked by the opposition within, or external to, the government. In the Court of Appeal in Mandla v Dowell Lee, Lord Denning looked at the history of the word ‘ethnic’, charting its meaning and usage through three editions of the Oxford English Dictionary (1890, 1934, 1972). However, he always argued that words do not and cannot have a literal meaning and yet, here, in a highly contentious case, he traced the history of words. He noted that, in its original Greek form, ‘ethnic’ meant ‘heathen’ and was used by the translators of the Old Testament from Hebrew to Greek to mean nonIsraelite, or gentile. Earlier in this text, in Chapter 2, we considered the issue of the use of the phrase ‘the original Greek’. He identified the first use of ‘ethnic’ in English as describing people who were not Christian or Jewish. Lord Denning referred to the 1890 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary to confirm this etymology. He then referred to the 1934 edition, stating that its meaning had, by then, changed to denote ‘race, ethnological’. This is hardly surprising as the great anthropological expeditions of the 1920s and 1930s introduced the idea of ethnography as the descriptions of unknown groupings of people. His Lordship stated that the 1934 version indicated that ‘ethnic’ meant ‘divisions of races’ and, as far as he was concerned, this was right. This is, of course, a highly dubious and subjective viewpoint. But a judge has the power, via language analysis, to make a choice between what is, and what is not, right. Indeed, this is the judge’s task. The court has to decide. Finally, he referred to the 1972 version of the dictionary, which gave a wider definition of ‘ethnic’. It was this definition that was relied upon by the plaintiff’s counsel. Here, ‘ethnic’ was defined as relating to: …common racial, cultural, religious, or linguistic characteristics, especially designating a racial or other group within a larger system. Lord Denning then turned to discuss ‘origins’ for, as used in s 3 of the Race Relations Act, ‘ethnic’ appears in a small phrase including the word ‘origins’ (‘or ethnic or national origins’). Turning again to the dictionary, noting its usage with parentage he decides that it meant, as in previous case law, ‘a connection arising at birth’. ‘Origin’, he said, therefore meant a group with a common racial characteristic. His Lordship reconsidered the entire phrase as used in s 3: …a group of persons defined…by reference to…ethnic…origins. He concluded that the group must be distinguishable from another by a definable characteristic. Re-reading his judgment in the Court of Appeal, it is noticeable that he constantly used the words he is supposed to be defining in the definitions. Yet, Lord Denning’s normally preferred technique was the teleological, the mischief or the purposive rule. He may have reasoned in a manner more in keeping with the Race Relations Act if he had used his favourite technique of the purposive approach.