Racism in the United Kingdom has a long history and includes structural discrimination and hostile attitudes against various ethnic minorities. The extent and the targets have varied over time. It has resulted in cases of discrimination, riots, racially motivated murders and de facto segregation.
Among the populations targeted historically and today have been Jews, who have experienced antisemitism for centuries; Irish people and other subsequent subjects of British colonialism, black people, Romani people, migrants, and refugees. Some studies suggest Brexit led to a rise in racist incidents and hostility to foreigners or immigrants, adversely affecting Poles, Romanians and other European groups.
Levels of racist attitudes have increased in recent decades, and structural disadvantages persist and hate incidents continue.
History
Thousands of British families were slave owners in the 17th and 18th centuries. By the mid-18th century, London had the largest Black population in Britain, made up of free and enslaved people, as well as many runaways. The total number may have been about 10,000. Some of these people were forced into beggary due to the lack of jobs and racial discrimination.Banton, Michael (1955), The Coloured Quarter, London: Jonathan Cape.Shyllon, Folarin. "The Black Presence and Experience in Britain: An Analytical Overview", in Gundara and Duffield, eds (1992), Essays on the History of Blacks in Britain, Avebury, Aldershot. Owners of African slaves in England would advertise slave-sales and for re-capture runaways.
After abolition
Racism against black people grew after 1860, when race-based discrimination was fed by then-popular theories of scientific racism.Kale, Stephen. (26 February 2010). GOBINEAU, RACISM, AND LEGITIMISM: A ROYALIST HERETIC IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY FRANCE. Arthur de Gobineau. Cambridge University Press. Attempts to support these theories cited 'scientific evidence', such as brain size. James Hunt, President of the London Anthropological Society, wrote in 1863 in his paper, On the Negro's Place in Nature, "the Negro is inferior intellectually to the European...[and] can only be humanised and civilised by Europeans."
Following disarmament in 1919, a surplus of labour and shortage of housing led to dissatisfaction among Britain's working class, in particular sailors and dock workers. In ports, such as South Shields, Glasgow, London's East End, Liverpool, Cardiff, Barry and Newport there were fierce race riots targeting ethnic minority populations. During violence in 1919, there were five fatalities as well as widespread vandalism of property. One hundred and twenty black workers were sacked in Liverpool after whites refused to work with them. A modern study of the 1919 riots by Jacqueline Jenkinson showed that police arrested nearly twice as many blacks (155) as whites (89). While most of the whites were convicted, however, nearly half of Black arrestees were acquitted. Jenkinson suggests that the courts acknowledged their innocence and were attempting to correct for police bias.Jenkinson, Jacqueline. "Police and Court Responses." Black 1919: Riots, Racism and Resistance in Imperial Britain. Liverpool University Press, 2009. pp. 131–54. JSTOR. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt5vjd9g.10. Accessed 2 Mar. 2025.
Racial segregation existed throughout much of the country in the early twentieth century.J. Brown, An early history of British race relations legislation (09/07/18). House of Commons Library, Briefing Paper, Number 8360. The landmark case Constantine v Imperial Hotels Ltd (1944) established an important step in the development of modern anti-discrimination law and according to Peter Mason, it "was one of the key milestones along the road to the creation of the Race Relations Act of 1965."Mason, p. 99. Popular Trinidadian cricketer Learie Constantine was awarded damages at the High Court after being turned away from the Imperial Hotel in Russell Square, London in 1943. The proprietor believed his presence would offend white American servicemen staying at the hotel, as the United States Armed Forces were still racially segregated. Public and political opinion was in Constantine's favour over the case. In Parliament, then Under-Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs Paul Emrys-Evans said the government: "most strongly condemns any form of racial discrimination against Colonial people in this country."
Although racial discrimination continued in England, this case was the first to challenge such practices in court. Commentators regard it as a milestone in British racial equality, demonstrating that black people had legal recourse against some forms of racism.Mason, p. 97.
There were further riots targeting immigrant and minority populations in East London and Notting Hill in the 1950s, leading to the establishment of the Notting Hill Carnival.
1970s and 1980s
In the 1970s and 1980s, black people and south Asian people in Britain were the victims of racist violence perpetrated by far-right groups such as the National Front. During this period, it was also common for black footballers to be subjected to racist chanting from crowd members.
In the early 1980s, societal racism, discrimination and poverty—alongside further perceptions of powerlessness and oppressive policing—sparked a series of riots in areas with substantial African-Caribbean populations.Q&A: The Scarman Report 27 BBC Online. April 2004. Accessed 6 October 2002. These riots took place in St Pauls in 1980, Brixton, Toxteth and Moss Side in 1981, St Pauls again in 1982, Notting Hill Gate in 1982, Toxteth in 1982, and Handsworth, Brixton and Tottenham in 1985.A Different Reality: minority struggle in British cities University of Warwick. Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations. Accessed 6 October 2006 ° The 1981 Brixton riots "The Riot not to work collective". "...What has changed since last year's riots". London 1982. Accessed 6 October 2006
21st century Racism in Britain in general, including against black and south Asian people, is considered to have declined over time. In 2019, the prevalence of perceived racist harassment toward people of African descent in the UK was found to be the second lowest among the 12 Western European countries surveyed, and formal discrimination against Afro-Caribbeans no longer exists. Social distance, measured using questions from the British Social Attitudes survey, declined over the period 1983–1996 with much of this change happening in the 1990s.
Nevertheless, research continues to show widespread social and economic disadvantages for racial minorities. Studies published in 2014 and 2015 suggested racist attitudes were on the rise in the UK, and in 2023, 88% of Black people in Britain reported racial discrimination at work, 79% believed the police unfairly targeted black people with stop and search powers, and 80% definitely or somewhat agreed that racial discrimination was the biggest barrier to academic attainment for young Black students. Earlier studies showed the British school system undermined self-confidence in black children, and maligned the culture of their parents, while just 0.1% of active professors in the UK were black women, compared with 68% being white men. Black women professors had also faced discriminatory abuse and exclusion throughout their careers.
In the year ending March 2024, recorded hate crimes in the UK fell by 5%, with police in England and Wales recording 140,561 hate crimes, 70% of which were racially motivated.* * * * * There was also a 147% increase in antisemitic offences in that year.* * * * In England and Wales, 3,282 alleged antisemitic offences were recorded in the year ending March 2024, more than double that of the previous year, while allegedly anti-Muslim offences rose by 13%.* *
In 2020, The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities (CRED) was established in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests following the murder of George Floyd in the United States. The then Conservative government's brief for the commission was to look at questions of race relations and disparity, and to examine why such disparities persisted.
By ethnicity and religion
Black people
Black immigrants who arrived in Britain from the Caribbean in the 1950s faced racism. For many Caribbean immigrants, their first experience of discrimination came when trying to find private accommodation. They were generally ineligible for council housing because only people who had been resident in the UK for a minimum of five years qualified for it. At the time, there was no anti-discrimination legislation to prevent landlords from refusing to accept black tenants. A survey undertaken in Birmingham in 1956 found that only 15 of a total of 1,000 white people surveyed would let a room to a black tenant. As a result, many black immigrants were forced to live in slum areas of cities, where the housing was of poor quality and there were problems of crime, violence and prostitution. One of the most notorious slum landlords was Peter Rachman, who owned around 100 properties in the Notting Hill area of London. Black tenants sometimes paid twice the rent of white tenants, and lived in conditions of extreme overcrowding.
Historian Winston James suggests that the experience of racism in Britain was a major factor in the development of a shared Caribbean identity amongst black immigrants from a range of different island and class backgrounds.
In the 1970s and 1980s, black people in Britain were the victims of racist violence perpetrated by far-right groups such as the National Front. During this period, it was also common for Black footballers to be subjected to racist chanting from crowd members.
Racism in Britain in general, including against black people, is considered to have declined over time. Academic Robert Ford demonstrates that social distance, measured using questions from the British Social Attitudes survey about whether people would mind having an ethnic minority boss or have a close relative marry an ethnic minority spouse, declined over the period 1983–1996. These declines were observed for attitudes towards Black and Asian ethnic minorities. Much of this change in attitudes happened in the 1990s. In the 1980s, opposition to interracial marriage were significant. Nevertheless, Ford says:
The University of Maryland's Minorities at Risk (MAR) project noted in 2006 that while African-Caribbeans in the United Kingdom no longer face formal discrimination, they continue to be under-represented in politics, and to face discriminatory barriers in access to housing and in employment practices. The project also says that the British school system "has been indicted on numerous occasions for racism, and for undermining the self-confidence of black children and maligning the culture of their parents". The MAR profile on African-Caribbeans in the United Kingdom suggests "growing 'black on black' violence between people from the Caribbean and immigrants from Africa". Martin Hewitt of the Metropolitan Police has said that murders using knives are given insufficient public attention because most victims are black people from London.Slawson, Nicola (21 March 2018), "Knife deaths among black people 'should cause more outrage, The Guardian. ."Police: Are black knife deaths being ignored?", BBC, 21 March 2018. .