Today's blog post is written by Runnymede's director, Dr Rob Berkeley

The report of the Communities and Victims Panel on the riots of summer 2011 makes a series of bold statements and recommendations to government in order to avoid similar levels of unrest in the months and years to come. Many of the recommendations are more forthright than was to be expected from a panel set up by government to sidestep a public inquiry into the events of last August. However, the report’s authors seem to have gone to extreme lengths to avoid discussion of structural and institutional racism and the role that it played in the riots. The avoidance of discussing racism is currently fashionable in policy circles, but in this case such avoidance serves only to obscure the analysis and misdirect the solutions.

The panel’s report highlights the levels of hopelessness in our communities, stemming, they argue from respondents’ views that they felt that common goals for their age group, such as getting a job or going to college were unachievable.

They also point to problems that have been identified over decades for young people from many Black and minority ethnic communities – exclusion from school, low levels of attainment, poor careers guidance, little contact with employers,  and patterns of intergenerational unemployment. Yet they do not articulate that these patterns for some are also often driven by structural barriers and patterns of discrimination which make some groups more vulnerable to exclusion from the labour market.

Today's blog post is written by Vastiana Belfon, a research associate at Runnymede

Researching the Runnymede archives for our new website “The Struggle for Racial Equality – An Oral History of the Runnymede Trust, 1968-1988” showed just how much has changed and, equally important, how much history will repeat itself – unless we take steps to make radical changes.

The language of race has certainly changed - witness recent media coverage of the use of the word 'coloured'. There's still a sense of unease when you read in 1969 of 'immigrant schoolchildren' with IQs that 'work out below their English contemporaries'. In 1971, Conservative MP Gerald Nabarro, addressed the Malvern Conservative Ladies' Tea Club, saying, 'We have enough black men in this country. I call a chair a chair. I mean black men, not immigrants. I don't mind Australians and South Africans or any other white immigrants, but I do object to more impoverished black men, Indians and Pakistanis, coming in.' It is unimaginable that today an MP would confidently say such things in public without fear of recrimination.

In our schools, black parents in the 1970s expressed their concerns about their children being labelled as 'educationally subnormal' or 'remedial'. By 1985, the Swann Report on Multiracial Education was arguing that the problem facing the education system was not how to educate ethnic minority children, but how to educate all children for life in a multiracial and multicultural society. Today, parental worries might focus on exclusions, bullying or school choice.

Today's blog post is written by our deputy director Sarah Isal

It is with great sadness that we learned of Ann Dummett death on 7 February 2012 at the age of 81.  Ann was the director of Runnymede from 1984 to 1987 but her involvement with Runnymede and in the field of race equality went far beyond those three years.

Ann’s anti-racist activities started in the 1960s when she and her husband Michael would go to various London airports to help migrants who were arriving into the UK and support them in achieving their most basic rights (sometimes as basic as right of entry). Ann was a great pioneer in promoting immigration rights and early on fought very hard against various pieces of immigration legislation which she found appalling, not least the Commonwealth Immigration Act of  1968. In the 1970s, she wrote several books, including A Portrait of English Racism in 1973 and Immigration and Citizenship which Runnymede published in 1976.

I had the pleasure of meeting Ann to interview her as a former Runnymede Director in the context of our Oral History Project. She spoke passionately about her initial work in Oxford as a Community Relations Officer, which she saw as crucial because of the harassment of black and minority ethnic people she witnessed then.

Our head of policy, Omar Khan, writes on the term 'gang' and the UK riots

Runnymede has been urging caution on speculating on the causes of the riots that are now hopefully over in London and other English cities. Politicians have been somewhat more careful in jumping to conclusions than our media, but today the Prime Minster showed less compunction in identifying the causes of the riots, an incaution that unfortunately spread across the government and opposition benches.

According to Cameron: "gangs were at the heart of the protests and have been behind the coordinated attacks". While there is some anecdotal evidence that some criminal gangs may have taken advantage of the riots on the second and third day of rioting,  the majority of rioters were obviously not gang members.

We have warned in the past about the explanatory usefulness of ‘gangs’. As we put it in a recent publication, ‘Rethinking Gangs', '"the gang" provides a potent shortcut to understanding youth conflict, offering Hollywood style images of urban chaos and random violence, threatening to spill out from inner city ghettos, in the place of more complex explanations exploring the realities of this phenomenon.’

The suggestion that US police familiar with handling gang violence will be asked to advise on responding to these riots goes against consistent findings that there is no evidence of US-style gangs in the UK. But the idea that policy should tackle gangs more directly is not limited to importing a US police official, nor is it simply a Conservative fascination. Indeed, policymakers’ likely definition of a ‘gang’ will probably flow from that defined in a 2009 Act passed by the previous government. It defines ‘gang related violence as follows:

Thirty years ago on April 11 we saw the riots, or uprisings, in Brixton. Thankfully those now seem to be distant days and the chances of another summer marked by racialised violence appear to be remote (though not many predicted the riots of 1985, 2001 or 2005).

What the riots made clear was that ignoring discrimination and social exclusion is not a recipe for building harmonious communities. We pride ourselves on the progress made since 1981, in terms of legislation and political representation, but is that progress as great as we would like?

After all, much has changed in the past 30 years, right?

• In 1981, black youth unemployment was estimated at a shocking 55 per cent. Last year we saw unemployment among black 16-24 year olds reach 48 per cent.
• In 1981, there was an 18 point gap in achievement of 5 or more higher level CSEs or O-levels between white students and black Caribbean (West Indian) students. Last year there was an 18 point gap between the achievement of black Caribbean boys and white boys.
• In the mid 1980s, black Caribbean men made up 8 per cent of the prison population. Last year that figure had nearly doubled to 15 per cent of the prison population.

It is a testament to the speed and depth of government reforms that most organisations we work with are only now coming to terms their massive impact. More than £83 billion is to be cut from public spending during the course of one parliament. It is only now as the NHS, local authorities, charitable trusts, and quangos let voluntary sector organisations know about what budgets are available that the penny drops. Or does not, as many are discovering.

I recently attended a meeting of the London Minority Ethnic Elders Forum where local and national politicians sought to defend the cuts that are being made. The organisations represented at the meeting reported that services to support the most vulnerable were being put at risk.

This post was also published on Left Foot Forward

So we’re back to what is becoming an old chestnut; as the latest senior politician condemns multiculturalism. On Saturday, David Cameron took his place, behind Tony Blair, Jack Straw and Trevor Phillips, arguing that “state multiculturalism” has encouraged “different cultures to live separate lives” with a particular Cameron twist – that the UK needs a stronger national identity to prevent people turning to extremism. Surely, such a panoply of senior politicians should have been able to organize the end of so-called state multiculturalism by now – unless of course it never existed in the first place, they do not really mean it, or the alternatives are simply too unattractive to countenance.

A key problem in debates around multiculturalism is that the term means different things to different people. Some believe that multiculturalism actively promotes separate religious and ethnic identities at the expense of common values, whilst others believe that it simply means the existence and recognition of different identities in a shared political space within a framework of human rights. Runnymede’s understanding of the term has always been the latter.

Written by Runnymede's director, Dr Rob Berkeley. This post was also published on Left Foot Forward

So we’re back to what is becoming an old chestnut; as the latest senior politician condemns multiculturalism. On Saturday, David Cameron took his place, behind Tony Blair, Jack Straw and Trevor Phillips, arguing that “state multiculturalism” has encouraged “different cultures to live separate lives” with a particular Cameron twist – that the UK needs a stronger national identity to prevent people turning to extremism. Surely, such a panoply of senior politicians should have been able to organize the end of so-called state multiculturalism by now – unless of course it never existed in the first place, they do not really mean it, or the alternatives are simply too unattractive to countenance.

A key problem in debates around multiculturalism is that the term means different things to different people. Some believe that multiculturalism actively promotes separate religious and ethnic identities at the expense of common values, whilst others believe that it simply means the existence and recognition of different identities in a shared political space within a framework of human rights. Runnymede’s understanding of the term has always been the latter. This is why the insistence that multiculturalism is the root of all evil has always been confusing to us. On an everyday level, the people of these islands generally accept that different identities exist and for most, thankfully, this is trivial – what people choose to eat, what music they listen to, how they choose to dress, are not generally seen as controversial in this country. The notion of a shared political space and the protection of individuals’ human rights however seem to be more problematic – and the inability to deal with these issues may explain why this debate so often generates more heat than light.

Download my speech to the Human Rights Council's Forum on Minority Issues in full by clicking on the pink link below.

Click the pink link below to read the draft recommendations from the Human Rights Council's Forum on Minority Issues, which come as an output of the conference.

Draft recommendations on minorities and effective participation in economic life

There is likely to be further focus on access to finance in the final recommendations, as I and a few other contributors in Geneva raised in our presentations.

This morning I heard speeches on making land rights and properties rights effective for minorities in the US, Bangladesh, Israel, Colombia, post-conflict Eastern Europe and Africa. It's good to share experiences and also to discover some good policies, however few.

Thinking about effectively ownership rights made me wonder how we ensure that everyone benefits from the UK Coalition Government's proposed community right-to-buy schemes...

I arrived in Geneva for the Minority Issues Forum at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

In the afternoon session I heard horrific stories and saw brutal photos of minorities in the north of Uganda being tortured. We also heard a women's rights campaigner...

Labour peer Lord McKenzie pressed the government to respond to Runnymede’s argument that black and minority ethnic people will be significantly affected by cuts to savings policies.

Runnymede’s research was quoted in the remaining House of Lords stages of the Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Bill. This Bill effectively scraps both the Child Trust Fund and Saving Gateway schemes, both of which enable those on low incomes to build savings. Runnymede submitted a response to the bill at an earlier stage of its passage through parliament.

Labour MP Kate Green drew attention to Runnymede research into savings in a parliamentary debate last week. Speaking in a debate on the Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Bill – which repeals the Savings Gateway Accounts Act 2009 -Green called the government’s equality impact assessment of the bill “thin in the extreme”, adding that Runnymede research shows that “at least 60% of Asian and black British families have no savings at all”. She went on to state that “the fact that that is twice the number of white households in the same position should concern us greatly”.

Runnymede’s financial inclusion research team has previously highlighted the potential impact of scrapping the savings gateway and the child trust fund – both policies which encourage saving – on BME groups. Given the fact that BME people are less likely to save, they are particularly in need of policies which encourage and improve saving. Runnymede is currently preparing evidence for the House of Commons Public Bill Committee on the issue which will shortly be available on our website.

Westminster’s only All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) dedicated to race equality was formally re-established this morning after being inactive since 2005.

The group – for which Runnymede acts as secretariat – today held its AGM and was attended by thirteen parliamentarians across all three major parties including the group’s chair and Labour leadership candidate Diane Abbott MP.

Other attendees included deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats Simon Hughes MP and Conservative peer Lord Sheikh. Former ministers David Lammy MP and Jim Fitzpatrick MP were also among the attendees, as well as new Conservative MPs Gavin Barwell and Richard Fuller. Thirteen parliamentarians attended in total.

At the meeting, parliamentarians discussed possibilities for the future work of the group. Ideas for areas of focus included right wing extremism, islamophobia, implementation of the Equality Act and social policy issues such as education and social care.

Future meetings of the group will be confirmed shortly. Full details of the group and a list of members is available on our dedicated APPG on Race and Community page.

The new coalition government introduced a raft of new legislation in yesterday’s Queen’s Speech which promises to bring radical change to the country. Whilst the full details of the new legislation have not yet been published, below are some early thoughts on what it could mean for race equality.

Given the unequal attainment levels of different ethnic groups, the pupil premium included in the Education and Children’s Bill may have a positive impact on those BME children in lower attaining groups. However clarification will be needed on how the pupil premium will be allocated – will, for example, being a child from an ethnic group with the lowest attainment levels (such as Gypsy, Roma and Traveller groups, or Black Caribbean Children) result in receiving pupil premium funding? In addition, it is important that the amount allocated through the premium is enough as to act as a sufficient incentive for schools to accept them as pupils.

The slimming down of the curriculum could be a concern if citizenship classes and other multi-cultural initiatives are scrapped – however it is not yet clear whether this will be the case.

The emphasis on increasing patient choice in the Health Bill may impact some BME people differently from other groups. Previous research by Runnymede on school choice found that BME parents find it difficult to exercise choice, and therefore downgrade their options prior to selecting schools. Further research would be needed to consider whether this would be the case in heath, but it is worth considering the school choice example

Former Shadow Equalities Spokesperson Lynne Featherstone MP has today been appointed as a Junior Home Office Minister with responsibility for equalities.

The Hornsey and Wood Green MP will work under Theresa May MP - the new Home Secretary and Minister for Women and Equality - although the full details of her role have not yet been made clear.

Featherstone, who was Equalities Spokesperson for two years, wrote a paper for Runnymede in February outlining her party's race equality policies. In the paper she called for the introduction of a "name blank" application policies in employment and accused the Labour government of  "badly managing" the Equalities and Human Rights Commission. Featherstone also criticised the over-representation of the black population on the DNA database.

Watch senior politicians debate race equality in a 12-minute video of our Norfolk United event.

At the "Question Time"- style discussion a cross-party group of politicians, including Charles Clarke MP and Norman Lamb MP, went head to head on the state of race equality in Norfolk.

Other panelists included Conservative councillor Antony Little, Green Party councillor Samir Jeraj, community activist Gita Prasad, and panel chair and BBC reporter Clive Lewis.

The debate, held on in February 2010 and organised by Runnymede in association with the Norwich and Norfolk Race Equality Council, was the first in a series of regional question time events debating race equality in the UK.

Runnymede would also like to thank CMedia for putting the video together.

Following the ippr’s findings that immigration does not increase BNP support, the Guardian has published a letter today calling for the three main political parties to publicly declare that racism has no place in politics.

Signed by 17 high profile activists – including Runnymede’s director Rob Berkeley, journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Operation Black Vote director Simon Woolley – the letter argues that due to closely fought nature of this election, there will be the temptation to make concessions to placate supposed racist voters. In addition, the letter adds that whilst the three main political parties all oppose racism, it “is not enough”.

Highlighting that some sections of the media are “unrestrained in their anti-immigrant and anti-asylum-seeker rhetoric”, the letter argues that we are drifting towards the normalisation of racist discourse. Its adds that “those who would like to promote racist policies towards asylum seekers…have learned to disguise their views in emollient and euphemistic words”.

Those of you who read my posts last week on the party manifestos will have noticed that aside from immigration and civil liberties they included few direct policies on race equality. The notable exception to this rule was of course the Lib Dems who released their own race equality mini-manifesto.

Readers may therefore find it useful to read a collection of papers written for Runnymede by the three main parties specifically on race equality. Released earlier this year, the papers were written by Communities and Local Government Secretary John Denham MP (Labour), Shadow Justice Secretary Dominic Grieve MP (Conservative) and Liberal Democrat Shadow Equalities Spokesperson Lynne Featherstone MP.

The government’s controversial Crime and Security Bill received Royal Assent last week. Of particular interest, the bill allows DNA profiles of convicted offenders to be kept indefinitely and for the profiles of those who have been arrested but not convicted to be kept on database for a fixed period of time.

The bill also introduces a mandatory parenting needs assessment when young people aged ten to 15 are being considered for an antisocial behaviour order (ASBO) and parenting orders where they have breached their ASBOs.

Runnymede recently held an e-conference on ethnic profiling in the criminal justice system, which touched on issues including the DNA database, ASBOs and stop and search. Of particular interest, Shadow Immigration Minister Damian Green MP wrote an article as part of the conference calling for a smaller and more targeted DNA database, whilst Lib Dem Shadow Home Secretary Chris Huhne MP outlined his thoughts on stop and search. You can still access the e-conference on our website.

I recently noticed that Lib Dem peer Lord Avebury has written a letter to the Conservative Party regarding its policy on Gypsies and Travellers. The policy, outlined in a green paper earlier this year, states that the Tories will provide stronger enforcement powers to “tackle unauthorised development and illegal trespass”.

In his letter, Avebury – an ardent campaigner on the rights of Gypsies and Travellers – argues that in its paper the party has expressed "no acknowledgement of the exclusion suffered by Gypsies and Travellers due to a national shortage of sites" and accuses their policy of being under-researched. He also argues that their stance will provoke community tensions in the run up to the election.

Criticism of the policy comes weeks after the government launched guidance encouraging local authorities to use ASBOs against Gypsies and Travellers. The Irish Traveller Movement in Britain wrote to the government criticizing the decision, a letter which was supported by Runnymede.

Further to my previous post, it is worth pointing out that Runnymede submitted written evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry into the UK Border Agency (UKBA) which was published in its final report yesterday.

In our response – also available on our website – we argued that there is a lack of transparency and accountability in the UK’s immigration system, and suggest that Louise Perrett’s accusations regarding the UKBA (detailed in an earlier post on this blog) reveal a culture of openly expressed racism in the organisation.

The issue of immigration was raised today in the final Prime Minister’s Question Time before the general election – highlighting that the topic is likely to be political football throughout the coming campaign.

Tory shadow immigration minister Damian Green MP questioned Gordon Brown on his previous claim that Labour aims to provide “British jobs for British workers”, to which Brown responded that net migration has fallen under Labour. He also criticised the Conservatives’ proposals for a quota system for immigration, adding that a points-based system will be more effective.

In light of the attention likely to be given to immigration throughout the election campaign, it is worth pointing out recent research published by Runnymede which suggests that it is not the amount of new migrants in an area that causes tension between different communities, but rather a failure to manage integration properly.

Liberal Democrat peer Lord Dholakia spoke on ageing and ethnicity in a House of Lords debate last Thursday. In his speech he focused on the high levels of poverty amongst BME older people and highlighted the greater need for specialised care and support.

He mentioned that minority and voluntary organisations are increasingly supplying various supporting services such as home care, day care and social support, adding that they are to some degree acting as primary providers of specialist care, rather than complementing mainstream services.

Runnymede will be launching a research programme on BME older people in the Summer – watch this space for further details.

Our patron Lord Parekh spoke on the impact of the recession on ethnic minorities in a House of Lords debate on the economy yesterday. Highlighting Runnymede research that BME people are more likely to be rejected for loans, he also focused on how unemployment has hit ethnic minorities harder than the rest of the population.

He suggested that there has been “high incidence” of discrimination when redundancies take place, and also argued that the fact that the public sector is “no longer as sheltered as it was in the earlier stages of the recession” has had an impact on BME people.

What does yesterday’s budget mean for BME communities? As Runnymede’s recent report on asset inequality found, 60% of Black and Asian people have no savings, and recommended that the government should therefore do more to build up assets for everyone. In light of this, the scrapping of stamp duty for homes costing below £250,000 is a welcome move as it will to some degree encourage home ownership among all communities, particularly first time buyers. In addition, as BME people are more likely to live in deprived areas with low cost housing they will be more likely to buy homes costing under £250,000.

The government’s headline “financial inclusion” policy in yesterday’s budget was the guarantee of bank accounts for all. This is a positive move as it makes concerns around identity requirements (such as having a British passport) less relevant. However more could be done to improve money advice for BME communities. Research by Runnymede to be published next week found that BME communities are at risk of exclusion from the government’s new money advice service despite the fact that given the prevalence of serious money issues in these communities they are in more need of the service.

Finally, increased support for small businesses (SMEs) will help benefit BME communities as most BME entrepreneurs run SMEs. In addition, given past evidence of there being discrimination against BME Small and Medium Enterprises' (SME) access to credit in the UK (see Runnymede’s Financial Inclusion and Ethnicity report) the government announcement that RBS and the Lloyds Bank Group will be compelled to provide £94bn in small business loans is a welcome move.

I will be publishing a post on Runnymede's thoughts on today's budget tomorrow morning. In the meantime, for those of you interested in the relationship between financial inclusion and ethnicity take a look at some of Runnymede's recent work on the topic, including our recent report on asset inequality. Readers may also be interested in our 2009 report on ethnicity and cash machines which found that BME people are more likely to live in areas where they have to pay fees to access their money.

The government has today called on local councils to make use of ASBOs and other powers to tackle antisocial behaviour explicitly "associated with Gypsies and Travellers". In new guidance published today, the government states that perceptions that the communities are treated differently from the rest of the population “damages public confidence about fair treatment for all”.

It is worrying that the government has singled out an ethnic group in this way for differential treatment in relation to crime prevention measures. This is especially concerning given that Runnymede found in its 2006 report on ASBOs that there is currently no systematic ethnic monitoring of antisocial behaviour tools and as a result, it is impossible  to tell whether these tools are being used in a discriminatory way.

It is also a concern that by portraying the Gypsy and Traveller communities as a particular problem the government could potentially be legitimising a backlash against these groups.

Higher Education Minister David Lammy MP will be speaking on black fatherhood today in an event hosted by Runnymede. A full report of the event will be posted on our site shortly, but check out some media coverage so far in the Independent and on the BBC website.

Alongside the event Lammy has made a video on the issue featuring Trevor McDonald, Rapper Tinie Tempah and playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah. A preview of the video is available on youtube, with the full film available soon.