Civic Leaders Call for Calm as Rumours Fly

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Civic Leaders Call for Calm as Rumours Fly

News article

By: Hugh Muir and Riazat Butt

Date: October 25, 2005

Source: Muir, Hugh, and Riazat Butt. "Civic Leaders call for Calm as Rumours Fly." Guardian Unlimited, October 25, 2005.

About the Author: Hugh Muir and Riazat Butt are writers for Guardian Unlimited, a news website owned by the British Guardian Media Group. The website contains most of the content of The Guardian and The Observer newspapers, as well as additional content and a rolling news service.

INTRODUCTION

The article reports on a race riot that broke out in Birmingham, England in October 2005, between the city's Pakistani and African-Caribbean communities.

The riot was sparked by an incident in which a teenage African-Caribbean girl was allegedly gang raped by several young Pakistanis. The situation spiraled out of control when the African-Caribbean community press urged black locals not to patronize Asian retail establishments. There were demonstrations against Asians over the course of the following week, which resulted in violent clashes between the two ethnic groups, during which an innocent young passer-by was stabbed to death. Although many local people took part in the demonstrations, it was claimed that race activists from other parts of the country were the main perpetrators. There were rumors, for example, that there may have been involvement by the "Yardies", or Jamaican-born gangsters, and by "The Nation of Islam," an association of Muslims who hold extreme anti-white views. The riots were soon quelled by the police, and did not reach the scale of those that had occurred in Handsworth, another area of Birmingham, twenty years earlier.

Race riots have sporadically broken out in some inner cities of the United Kingdom ever since the late 1950s, peaking in their frequency and intensity during the 1970s and early 1980s. They have usually been sparked by specific incidents, but more generally are believed to be related to dissatisfaction among ethnic minority youths about their relative economic disadvantage, racial discrimination against them in the labor market and other areas of life, and their harassment or perceived harassment by others in society, including the police and extreme right-wing activists.

Britain's inner cities have high proportions of ethnic minority people in their populations, and many of these experience economic disadvantage. Research has shown that young African-Caribbean men in the United Kingdom are twice as likely to be unemployed as young white men and that those in employment are generally paid less than their white counterparts. Pakistani and Bangladeshi young men are even more likely to be unemployed than African-Caribbean men. In Birmingham, where 18.5 percent of the 2001 population was from the Indian sub-continent, and 10.6 percent was from other ethnic minority groups, including African-Caribbeans, ethnic minorities were significantly over-represented in the low-income segment of the city's population.

Some of the worst race-related riots in Britain occurred in 1981 in Toxteth, Liverpool, and Brixton, South London. In these cases, violence was directed at the police by black youths, following recent police campaigns in which young black people had been stopped and searched by the police on the streets of these areas. In the same year, violence broke out in Southall, West London, when right-wing supporters of the National Front, which opposes all immigrants and non-whites in British society, attacked some young Asians, provoking angry retaliations from the Asian community. The Asians also attacked the police who were attempting to restore order, protesting that they were not doing enough to protect their community. The racial violence soon spread to other parts of the country, including Moss Side in Manchester and Handsworth in Birmingham, where violence again flared in 1985.

PRIMARY SOURCE

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SIGNIFICANCE

From the end of the 1980s race riots have been less frequent in Britain's inner cities, but continue to occur from time to time.

Britain's Race Relations Act of 1976, and Race Relations (Amendment) Act of 2000, make it unlawful to discriminate against anyone on grounds of race, color, nationality (including citizenship), or ethnic or national origin, and require public authorities to promote racial equality, particularly in the areas of jobs, education and housing. However, despite legislative efforts to increase equality among Britain's races, ethnic minorities are still concentrated in the poorest areas of the country and their members do less well at school and in the job market, overall, than the native white population. This creates underlying tensions that still sometimes emerge in violent demonstrations, particularly in response to attacks by other social groups.

Some observers have noted that race riots, particularly those of the early 1980s, have brought to public attention the situation faced by African-Caribbean and Asian communities in the poor inner cities, including poor housing and high levels of unemployment, and thus helped to promote the development of policies and legislation to improve their circumstances. The overall decline in racial violence over the past twenty years may reflect these positive developments, but the comparative peace is a fragile one, as shown by the ease with which violence broke out in Birmingham in 2005.