Countryside Alliance? An Assessment of Multi-Agency Responses to Racism in Rural Suffolk
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Countryside Alliance? An Assessment of Multi-Agency Responses to Racism in Rural Suffolk Jon Garland and Neil Chakraborti1 Recent debates surrounding racialised disorder, integration and multiculturalism have resulted in increased scrutiny of the extent to which anti-racism is incorporated into statutory and voluntary agencies’ working practice. However, the examination of agency responses to racism in a rural, as opposed to urban, context is often overlooked, as issues of rural racism tend mistakenly to be dismissed as relatively insignificant problems, due to the comparatively small populations of minority ethnic groups residing in rural parts of Britain. This paper uses the findings of a recent investigation into the nature, extent and impact of racist victimisation in a rural English county to highlight the pressing need for effective intra- and inter-agency working to counter the phenomenon of rural racism. It is argued that agency responses to racist incidents in a rural setting can often be constrained by a tendency to prioritise other problems that appear more visibly in official figures, as well as by other factors that detract from the effectiveness of co-ordinated multi-agency strategies. Unless and until combating racism is seen as a central component of rural community safety work, the process of victimisation suffered by minority ethnic groups in rural areas will continue to be compounded. Key Words: Rural racism; community safety; partnerships; victimisation; anti-racism Introduction The disorders in northern English towns such as Bradford, Burnley and Oldham during the summer of 2001 ignited fresh debates regarding ‘racialised disorder’ and the factors that may have contributed to it. The intensity of some of these disturbances was, for some, surprising, with the riots in Bradford being described by The Times (2001:11–13) as having returned ‘in a more menacing form than those of 1981’. The disorder also sparked a return to a discussion in the national media of the nature of ‘multiracial Britain’ and whether ‘multiculturalism’ was ‘working’. Part of this debate included an analysis of the nature of the integration of different ethnic groups with one another, following the assertion by the Home Office-sponsored Independent Review Team which investigated the causes of the 2001 disorders that the white and Asian communities in Oldham appeared to exist quite separately from one another. Interestingly, one aspect that came in for criticism was the implementation of anti-racist policies by local authorities, which, it seemed, had caused division and resentment in the communities living in inner-city Oldham. The report suggested that:
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Crime Prevention and Community Safety: An International Journal
The plethora of initiatives and programmes, with their baffling array of outcomes, boundaries, timescales and other conditions, seemed to ensure divisiveness and a perception of unfairness in virtually every section of the communities we visited. (Independent Revi
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