Britain's troubled record

THERE IS SOMETHING hauntingly familiar about the way the Tony Blair Government has responded to the recent outbursts of racial rioting in Britain. The decision to order a thoroughgoing inquiry into the state of race relations follows the violence that erupted on the eve of last month's general election in some predominantly Asian towns, the country continuing to experience the aftershocks. The response, which capped a series of shocking revelations of racial discrimination across a wide spectrum of activity, certainly falls short as is evident from the serious acts of rioting during the weekend. And judging by the outcome of earlier reviews of race relations, the inquiry is unlikely to do anything more than hold up a mirror to the society, reflecting the ugly sores that dot the multiracial mosaic. In the absence of a political consensus, and a readiness to acknowledge that race hatred is about more than electioneering, the malaise will continue to take an increasingly heavy toll.

Admittedly, Britain has been much less susceptible to racist politics than elsewhere on the continent where the far right has succeeded in garnering more and more public support. But the country's image as a liberal, multiracial society, underscored among other instances by the rise of an Asian to the captaincy of the prestigious national cricket team, has been receiving one knock after another in recent months. The Law Society, which represents nearly a hundred thousand solicitors, is the latest institution to be found guilty of bias based on race (and gender, in the present instance). It joins Britain's National Health Service, the police and the civil service where the prevalence of such discrimination has been acknowledged and documented by Government commissions and independent probes. The medical field has been the most conspicuous. Asian and black doctors and paramedical personnel have long been at the receiving end of this discrimination, of being treated by the NHS as less than equal to their white colleagues. The poison, it has been apparent for some years now, is spreading. The Government-ordered inquiry will specifically look into the role of public and private sectors in contributing to the sense of unfairness among the ethnic groups. Immigrant communities which have contributed substantially to the national wealth continue to find it difficult to pull themselves up from the bottom of the heap. Unemployment among immigrants, for instance, is officially said to be twice as high as among the whites.

If the emergence of an underclass of jobless youngsters in the immigrant community, ready to stake their claim, causes concern today, more worrisome in the long run should be the readiness of political parties to exploit the race divide. The wakeup call came during the election campaign last month from Oldham, the deprived Asian-dominated town and stomping ground of the racist British National Party which secured a disturbingly sizeable increase in voter support in the constituency. In the runup to the election, the Conservative leadership had deliberately raised the anti-immigrant rhetoric by exploiting the asylum issue, with a spokesman shamelessly questioning the qualifications of foreign doctors. It was a throwback to the late 1960s when Enoch Powell of the Conservative far right thrilled his partymen with a hateful ``rivers of blood'' speech in which he opposed a race relations bill. Today, after playing the race card with disastrous results, the Conservatives are ready to support Government action to extend legislation on racial equality that imposes new duties on public authorities to actively promote equality. What Britain needs is the political will to fight racist groups that thrive on the fringes of society. It is time the liberal core asserted itself strongly.

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Section  : Opinion
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