Medios de Protección Individual

The introduction of neoliberalism (free market capitalism with limited state regulation, along with the privatisation of manufacturing goods and services) is significant because it was declared the best way to run the economy. It began with the election of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister and the start of Thatcherism in 1979 (Lentin and Titley, 2011). Thatcher believed that the Commonwealth immigration to Britain was not a sudden move with unsure motives, but a well-calculated act based on the notion that people felt threatened by unwanted foreigners. Thatcher’s approach to policy, known as Thatcherism, was a fusion of neoliberal economic policies and the rise of the new right. As Evans (2013: 3) argues, Thatcher believed in “individual rights, particularly in economic matters; private enterprise within a free market; firm, sometimes authoritarian, leadership; low levels of personal taxation; union and vested-interest bashing; simple, unqualified, patriotism” . Jessop et al. (1988) further expanded on the notion of Thatcherism and its roots in setting right-wing populism by indicating that it is a combination of neoliberalism and neoconservatism which brought in distrust of the big government, support for traditional values, and freeing of the economy from the control of the state. As Hay and Farrall (2014: p92) argue, Thatcherism supported reliance on the market as an efficient mechanism for resource distribution while ensuring that there is “an associated normative commitment to the sanctity of the individual and individual choice”.

privileged nation of ‘good citizens’ and ‘hard workers’ against a contained and subordinate nation. He argues that Thatcherism supported an image of social division based on a single vertical division, which divided the state into productive and parasitic. He argues that:

Tory populism is taking the form of a unification of a privileged nation of ‘good citizens’ and ‘hard workers’. In general, the productive sector is held to comprise those who produce goods and services that can be profitably marketed without the need for state subsidies. The parasitic include not only the various pauper classes (the unemployed, pensioners, the disabled, etc.) but also those whose economic activities in the public or private sectors are unprofitable in terms of capitalist forms of accounting. Only those state employees are excluded whose activities are essential to the minimal nightwatchman role of the state—the police, armed forces, tax gatherers, etc. (Jessop et

al., 1988: 87–88).

These views further encouraged the argument that there were some members of the society who remained unproductive and non-engaging who did not need the support of the government.

In the 1970s, there were more modifications in the legislation with respect to immigration. During the 1970 election, the Conservative Party pledged to minimise the number of people who immigrated. Eventually, the 1971 Immigration Act was passed and was known for its differentiation of British citizens and its colonies (patrials) from the non-patrial population. The patrials had their birthright in Britain while the non-patrials had to request permission. As Solomos (1993) argued:

…the new Act was rightly seen as racist because it allowed potentially millions of white Commonwealth citizens to enter under the partiality clause and settle in Britain, a right denied to almost all non-white Commonwealth citizens (Solomos, 1993, p. 69).

It is clear that the three major legislative Acts that happened between 1961 and 1971 aimed to prevent the immigration of Blacks into Britain. Although the wordings in these Acts are different and the definitions of British citizens and the conditions for entering another country vary, the inference is that the Acts did not include the Black immigrant population, and hence increased racial institutionalism.

The policies favouring racism were modified after the election in 1979, when the Conservative party led by Margaret Thatcher emphasised the threats faced. The argument made by the government was that if there were an increase in the number of immigrants, it would seriously threaten the underlying quality of life. Non-white immigrants were mostly referred to as the enemy of the British culture and its underlying social values. In the Thatcher administration, many changes were included in the immigration rules that resulted in strict control of immigration. It was primarily the 1981 British Nationality Act which classified residents as British citizens, British overseas citizens and British dependent territories citizens. However, the second category (British overseas citizens) did not account for the British people who hailed from Asia and, as MacDonald (1999) reported, the Act of 1981 did little to address prevailing racial discriminations under the immigration law system. The impact of Black immigrants on British society has been extensively discussed (Holmes, 2015; Chessum,2017; Miles, 1993). There are two main aspects to be considered: firstly, the attitude of Whites towards the Black immigrants, and the negative thoughts they have about the issues in housing and labour due to the increase in Black immigrants that followed; and secondly, the views of the Black immigrants who felt insulted and unaccepted by the British culture and faced severe discrimination everywhere they went in Britain (Cole, 2009). The importance of local engagement in racial equality assessment soon evolved as an important agenda. In the 1980s, there were a number of theoretical debates and contentions about the racial problems and the involvement of local governments. It is not feasible to comprehend the social relations without considering the local inputs. It was then identified that racial issues should be added in the urban politics and the local authorities should act

in the light of racial inequality. Researchers argued that the local authorities should be answerable to the problems of racial inequality by addressing micro- level needs and challenges. As Solomos (1993, p. 97) argued:

As late as the 1970s, a common complaint of activists and community groups was that local authorities had failed to develop an adequate policy response to the increasingly multiracial composition of their populations (Solomos, 1993, p. 97).

The British society passed through various changes in the light of racialisation after the 1960s and 1970s, and the local context of race was a core theme in contentions about the immigration. This led to local authorities solving issues faced in social services, education and even housing. The major topics were the effect of race on both national and local politics, and how media played a role in this case in response to the impact of racialisation. The solution for this issue is that the local authorities should be engaged actively in discussion on racial politics and there should be an emphasis on the politico-socioeconomic aspects of such racist trends.

4.6.1 Racial Riots

When looking at the riots, the ethnic minorities might be observed to be the victims of white racial discrimination. Hall (1993) contends that riots which involved Black people were a direct result of a lack of equality and equity engagement. He contends that:

For all practical purposes, the terms ‘mugging’ and ‘Black crime’ are now virtually synonymous. In the first ‘mugging’ panic, as we have shown, though ‘mugging’ was continually shadowed by the theme of race and crime, this link was rarely made explicit. This is no longer the case. The two are indissolubly linked: each term references the other in both the official and public consciousness (Hall, 1993, p. 327).

According to Stuart Hall (1993), the official statistics state that the Black presence increased the incidences of mugging. However, he also asserts

that it was not primarily the presence of Blacks but increased due to the social conditions that were prevalent within the community. Wild (2015) also contends that this lack of framing and assessment of interrelated concepts further contributed to inherent challenges. Another fact was that there was brewing hostility between the local authorities and Blacks that led to perceptions of harassment and rising frustrations contributing to the riots. Another aspect was the increase in financial recession, with an impact of cuts in public expenses and high rates of unemployment (Olusoga, 2016),

Layton-Henry and Rich (2016) argue that crisis evolution and rioting were predominantly linked to lack of employment options, education options and overall access to socio-economic development aspects. The policing of the Blacks was given priority as it was believed that unemployed Black youths were the root cause of the trouble. The issue of policing or monitoring Blacks turned out to be a group of other issues. This is attributed to the argument that the Black community rioted due to lack of opportunities to advance and improve their overall wellbeing. Betts (2018) claims that although the Black community living in the inner cities was considered to be a social group that was described by poverty, social exclusion/racial discrimination in the perceptions of whites always results in violence and crime, and the concept of race was a gateway to social conflicts. Hall (1993) disagrees with the notion that an increase in violence derives from the question of race, as it portrays wider social aspects that resulted in the crisis of British society.