Britain is very sensitive to the complaints of racism, especially after the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence in 1993, but the racist incidents, mostly against ethnic minorities have not abated.
The racist murder of 18-year-old Lawrence at Eltham, southeast London, led to an official inquiry over the failings of the police and in 1999 it found the Metropolitan police to be “institutionally racist.”

The severe indictment led to far-reaching changes in the way in which the police forces across the UK dealt with racial discrimination. “Stephen Lawrence’s murder was a turning point for Britain; it changed us all. Most people today see racial prejudice as a secular sin that is not to be tolerated,” Equality and Human Rights Commission chief Trevor Phillips says.
However, London-based Institute of Race Relations has calculated that at least 96 people have lost their lives to racial violence, an average of five per year, since the 1993 murder of the black teen, who finally got justice last week with the sentencing of two white men for his murder. The Runnymede Trust has put this number at over 100 murders.
The victims of racist attacks have been described by the IRR as overwhelmingly Asian (45 per cent); Black (18 per cent); Migrant workers (10 per cent) and men are usually the victims of attacks (80 per cent). IRR has also revealed more than 90 per cent of perpetrators are white, 85 per cent are male, and 60 per cent are perpetrated by children or young adults under 25.
In the UK, a racist incident defined as “any incident, including any crime, which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person.”
Even, the complaints of racism against the UK police have risen by almost a third in four years.
“Racist violence continues to be a serious problem in Britain. In 2010/11 more than 51,187 racist incidents were recorded by the police in England & Wales, of which 9,464 (18 per cent) occurred in London and the British Crime Survey estimates that the actual number of such incidents is around 200,000 annually,” Runnymede Trust says.
Even Prime Minister David Cameron admitted that Britain still had a problem with racism after the first convictions in the Lawrence murder case last week. “I think we are a less racist country but we have still got a problem with racism. We have still got a problem of people from different racial backgrounds being disadvantaged in Britain. I think the country has come a huge way since that dreadful murder, but there is still a lot more to be done,” Mr Cameron said.
The police has only classified 23-year-old Indian student Anuj Bidve’s murder in Salford last month as a hate crime, but the anti-racism organisations are already classifying it as a racist crime.
Bidve’s murder has strong parallels with the 2009 murder of an Indian merchant navy officer, 30-year-old Kunal Mohanty, in Glasgow in a racist and unprovoked attack. His attacker, an unemployed white Briton, was sentenced to 18 years in prison. However, it is only after Bidve’s attacker trial, will the details of whether his murder was racist will come out.
In 2010, 26-year-old Indian visitor Nachchattar Singh Bola was murdered in a racially-motivated attack in Scotland. In 2003, Rajkot resident 23-year-old Rushi Kamdar, who was in the UK on a work visa, was battered to death in a drunken and racist robbery in Coventry in 2005.
The biggest racist controversies in the last few months in the UK have actually been linked to the behaviour of footballers on pitch as England and Chelsea football club captain John Terry is facing criminal charges next month for allegedly racially abusing footballer Anton Ferdinand of Queens Park Rangers during a match in October.
Liverpool striker Luis Suarez was banned last month for eight matches and fined £40,000 for racially abusing Manchester United defender Patrice Evra in a Premier League match. Oldham footballer Tom Adeyemi was allegedly abused by fans during an FA Cup game against Liverpool, leading to a contrite apology from the Liverpool football club and arrest of one person. Former England striker Stan Collymore, who now is a commentator, was also hit by a series of racially abusive tweets and the police arrested one person.
Ironically, one of the most successful anti-racism campaigns in Britain has been the campaign, Show Racism The Red Card, which uses top footballers to educate against racism.
The House of Commons select committee on sport, media and culture will investigate the issue of growing incidents of racism in football. “It is worrying that there does appear to have been a number of incidents recently,” the committee’s chairman, Tory MP John Whittin-gdale, said. “The hope that racism on and off the pitch in football was a thing of the past has been shaken by some of the incidents that have occurred. This is obviously something we regard very seriously,” he said, adding: “The committee felt it was right to look at the whole issue to establish what is being done to counter (racism) and what more might be done.”
The racist rows were not just confined to football as senior Labour MP Diane Abbott had to apologise for her tweet, “White people love playing ‘divide & rule.’” She apologised for making a sweeping generalisation about any race, creed, or culture.