Introduction

The Labour Party 2005 General Election manifesto summarised the key elements of its approach to community safety under the heading ‘Safe communities, secure borders’. Citing its record to date, it also set out its view of the issues it would continue to prioritise. These linked measures to address antisocial behaviour and reduce crime with the need to tackle illegal immigration and the threat of terrorism.

This chapter explores the implications of these commitments for ethnic minorities in Britain. It starts by charting the development of ethnic diversity, not least in order to unpack some of the complexities often neglected in discussion and largely ignored in available statistics. Next, evidence regarding the effect of ‘community safety’ issues on the two largest minority ethnic groups up to the election of the New Labour government of 1997 is reviewed as background to developments since then. In the light of this, the impact on minorities of the government's current approach to community safety is considered. The chapter concludes by discussing the implications of continuing to pursue this approach in future.

Ethnic minorities in Britain

Most discussion of ethnic minorities’ experience in Britain as victims of crime (and as offenders) has focused on groups with origins in the migration to Britain from its former colonies following the Second World War.

Only in 1962 were restrictions first imposed on Commonwealth citizens coming to Britain; and, although progressively tightened from 1968 onwards, they were applied selectively. Citizens of ‘Old Commonwealth’ countries (mainly Canada, New Zealand and Australia) were largely unaffected until rights of entry were reframed in the new Nationality Act of 1981. The main targets for control were people from the ‘New Commonwealth’; and the largest numbers of these in the post-war period had come first from countries of the Caribbean in the 1950s and 1960s.