A Local Response to Racial Violence

Abstract

From the limited material available on the subject of racial violence in Europe, it appears that the British government recognised the problem as a specific form of crime some time before many of its European neighbours (Evrigenis, 1985; Ford, 1990; Read and Simpson, 1991). By the time that other European countries started addressing the problem in the early 1990s, official policy had been developing in Britain for almost a decade. This is no cause for complacency on the part of British policy-makers, however. Surveys and research reports indicate that the problem is as chronic as it was at the start of the 1980s, that ethnic minority communities remain under the fear and threat of attack and that effective action to combat racial violence is still lacking (House of Commons, 1986; Home Office, 1989; Dunhill, 1989; Gordon, 1990). This is cause for concern and requires that continued attention be paid to shortcomings in the existing practice of statutory agencies.

An earlier, shorter version of this paper appeared in the Home Office Research Bulletin, no 32 (1992).