United Kingdom

Early Migration

The surge in migration during the 1950s and 1960s, brought about mainly as a result of labor shortages within the United Kingdom, resulted in extensive public unrest and an ensuing raft of legislation spread over the course of several decades designed to limit the growth in, and perceived threat of, “colored” immigration. Race relations were at an especially low ebb during these years, and researchers have observed how the prevailing suspicion of ethnic minorities, in particular African Caribbean communities, as “undesirable” or “disorderly” was largely a result of a process of deviancy amplification and demonization of the United Kingdom's Black communities on the basis of their supposed criminogenic cultural tendencies.

Strains between these groups and the police increased as a result of continued negative stereotyping and the politicization of “race” and crime, culminating in a series of violent confrontations between predominantly Black communities and the police across urban Britain during the early to mid-1980s. The graphic images of widespread rioting and the observations of the Scarman Inquiry into the causes of this unrest emphasized the importance of improving police-minority relations to ensure the maintenance of order in the ethnically diverse communities of urban Britain.

Contemporary Relations

Depictions of disorderly ethnic minorities had tended to overshadow their status as victims of prejudice and their vulnerability to racist attack. However, a more pronounced emphasis on problems of racist victimization began to emerge following the murder of Stephen Lawrence in southeast London in 1993. Although many racist murders have taken place in the United Kingdom over recent decades, the unprovoked killing of this middle-class African Caribbean teenager of unblemished character received unprecedented media attention, largely because the characteristics of the victim and the failure to convict his killers appeared to resonate with people of all backgrounds, not just those from minority communities.

The subsequent inquiry into the flawed investigation of the murder has been widely described as a watershed in the policing of racism in the United Kingdom, and its findings, as detailed in what became known as the “Macpherson Report,” have had a profound effect upon Britain's “race” agenda. Arguably, the most significant development to have emerged from the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry relates to the acknowledgment of institutional racism within the police service.

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