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. 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. 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. A 2014 study by the Black Training and Enterprise Group (BTEG), funded by
Trust for London, explored the views of young Black males in London on why their demographic have a higher unemployment rate than any other group of young people. According to participants, racism and negative stereotyping were the main reasons for their high unemployment rate. In 2021, 67% of Black 16 to 64-year-olds were employed, compared to 76% of White British and 69% of British Asians. The employment rate for Black 16 to 24-year-olds was 31%, compared to 56% of White British and 37% of British Asians. The median hourly pay for Black Britons in 2021 was amongst the lowest out of all ethnicity groups at £12.55, ahead of only British Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. In 2023, the Office for National Statistics published more granular analysis and found that UK-born black employees (£15.18) earned more than UK-born white employees (£14.26) in 2022, while non-UK born black employees earned less (£12.95). Overall, black employees had a median hourly pay of £13.53 in 2022. A 2023
University of Cambridge survey which featured the largest sample of Black people in Britain found that 88% had 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.
Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people Racism against
Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people is widespread in the United Kingdom, with surveys indicating that levels of prejudice against GRT people are higher than against any other group. A 2022
YouGov poll found that 45% of people would be uncomfortable living next door to a Gypsy or Traveller, 38% would be uncomfortable with their child playing at GRT child's house, 33% would be uncomfortable with their child marrying a Gypsy or Traveller, and 34% would be uncomfortable with a Gypsy or Traveller visiting or working on their house. Racist comments against Gypsies and Travellers are common on social media and newspaper websites, these frequently include incitement to violence against GRT people, wishing death upon them, and even calls for
genocide.
Xenophobia in modern Britain is also tied to
Islamophobia and
Hinduphobia, and the growing hate crimes against those within these minority groups. This is fuelled by groups such as the
English Defence League (EDL) that target ethnic minorities from countries where Islam is the major religion. This is directly related to the racist notions that have been perpetuated throughout British history. The current hate against these groups can be shown to reflect the attitudes in the 1960s by politicians such as
Enoch Powell and are still prevalent today in debate and discussion. Historians noted that during the British Empire, "evangelical influence drove British policy down a path that tended to minimize and denigrate the accomplishments of Indian civilization and to position itself as the negation of the earlier British
Indomania that was nourished by belief in Indian wisdom." In Grant's highly influential "Observations on the ...Asiatic subjects of Great Britain" (1796), he criticized the Orientalists for being too respectful to Indian culture and religion. His work tried to determine the Hindus' "true place in the moral scale" and he alleged that the Hindus are "a people exceedingly depraved". Grant believed that Great Britain's duty was to civilise and Christianize the natives.
Lord Macaulay, serving on the Supreme
Council of India between 1834 and 1838, was instrumental in creating the foundations of bilingual colonial India. He convinced the Governor-General to adopt English as the medium of instruction in higher education from the sixth year of schooling onwards, rather than
Sanskrit or
Persian. He claimed: "I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native
literature of India and
Arabia." He wrote that
Arabic and
Sanskrit works on medicine contain "medical doctrines which would disgrace an English Farrier –
Astronomy, which would move laughter in girls at an English boarding school –
History, abounding with kings thirty feet high reigns thirty thousand years long – and
Geography made up of seas of treacle and seas of butter". One of the most influential historians of India during the British Empire,
James Mill was criticised for prejudice against Hindus.
Horace Hayman Wilson wrote that the tendency of Mill's work was "evil". Mill claimed that both Indians and
Chinese people are cowardly, unfeeling and mendacious. Both Mill and Grant attacked Orientalist scholarship that was too respectful of Indian culture: "It was unfortunate that a mind so pure, so warm in the pursuit of truth so devoted to oriental learning, as that of Sir
William Jones, should have adopted the hypothesis of a high state of civilization in the principal countries of Asia."
Paki-bashing (1960s1990s) Starting in the late 1960s, and peaking in the 1970s and 1980s, violent gangs opposed to
immigration took part in frequent attacks known as "
Paki-bashing", which targeted and assaulted
Pakistanis and other
South Asians. "Paki-bashing" was unleashed after
Enoch Powell's inflammatory
Rivers of Blood speech in 1968, Powell refused to accept responsibility for any violence, or to disassociate himself from the views when questioned by
David Frost in 1969, arguing that they were never associated in the first place. These attacks were usually referred to as either "Paki-bashing" or "skinhead
terror", with the attackers usually called "Paki-bashers" or "
skinheads". He was an Indian
shift engineer looking for houses. Upon seeing an advertisement for a house in Huddersfield, he was informed by the CEO of the company that they did not "sell to
coloured people". Upadhyaya complained to the
Race Relations Board the same day (13 December 1968), and they filed a
civil action against the company in June 1969, the first of its kind in the country. In September, the judge in the case ruled that the company had engaged in unlawful discrimination under the Race Relations Act, but failed the case on a technicality.
Muslims The
Muslim community in the United Kingdom has faced significant racism and religious discrimination, particularly since the late 20th and early 21st centuries. While Islamophobia existed prior to this period, global events such as the
9/11 attacks and the
7/7 London bombings intensified
anti-Muslim sentiment. This has led to a marked increase in hate crimes, verbal abuse, and discriminatory practices against Muslims, especially those who are visibly identifiable, such as women wearing
hijabs or
niqabs. Historical records suggest that Muslims first arrived in Britain through trade and diplomacy as early as the 16th century. However, Muslim migration to the UK increased significantly in the mid-20th century, particularly from former
British colonies in
South Asia, the
Middle East, and
Africa. In the years following 9/11, anti-Muslim rhetoric became more widespread, with
far-right groups and media outlets often portraying Muslims as "a threat" to
British society. The rise of the
English Defence League (EDL) in the 2010s and other extremist groups led to public demonstrations that frequently targeted Muslim communities, contributing to social tension and incidents of violence. Politically, Islamophobia has been a point of controversy, especially within the
Conservative Party. There have been numerous reports of
discriminatory comments and behavior toward Muslims, leading to internal reviews and external pressure for the party to address these issues. The
All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims has worked to introduce a formal definition of Islamophobia, although this has yet to be fully adopted by the
government of the United Kingdom. In recent years, hate crimes against Muslims have spiked following events such as
terrorist attacks in Europe or heightened tensions in the Middle East. The
Tell MAMA project, which tracks Islamophobic incidents, reported a significant increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes following the
2017 Manchester Arena bombing and the
2019 Christchurch mosque shootings. In these instances, Muslims reported feeling targeted both online and in public spaces. Following the outbreak of the
Gaza war in 2023, there was a notable rise in Islamophobic incidents in the UK. Similar to the rise in antisemitic incidents, public sentiment became increasingly polarized, with Muslim communities expressing concerns over their safety and well-being. In 2024,
riots erupted in England, fueled by false claims circulated by far-right groups that the perpetrator of
a stabbing incident in
Southport was a Muslim and an
asylum seeker. These riots were driven by broader Islamophobic, racist, and
anti-immigrant sentiments that had grown leading up to the protests. The disorder included
racist attacks,
arson, and
looting.
Jews Since the arrival of Jews in England following the
Norman Conquest in 1066, Jews have been subjected to discrimination. Jews living in England from about the reign of
King Stephen experienced religious discrimination and it is thought that the
blood libel which accused Jews of ritual murder originated in England, leading to
massacres and increasing discrimination. An example of early English antisemitism was the York pogrom at
Clifford's Tower in 1190 which resulted in an estimated 150 Jews taking their own lives or being burned to death in the tower. The earliest recorded images of anti-semitism are found in the royal tax records from 1233. The Jewish presence in England continued until
King Edward I's
Edict of Expulsion in 1290. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the number of Jews in Britain greatly increased due to the exodus of Jews from
Russia, which resulted in a large community of Jews forming in the
East End of London. Popular sentiment against immigration was used by the
British Union of Fascists to incite hatred against Jews, leading to the
Battle of Cable Street in 1936, at which the fascists were repulsed by Jews, Irish dock workers and communists and anti-fascists who barricaded the streets. In the 20th century, the UK began restricting immigration under the
Aliens Act 1905. Although the Act did not mention Jews specifically, "it was clear to most observers" that the act was mainly aimed at Jews fleeing persecution in Eastern Europe.
Winston Churchill, then a
Liberal MP, said that the Act appealed to "insular prejudice against the foreigners, to racial prejudice against the Jews, and to labour prejudice against competition". However, outbursts of antisemitism emanating from
far right groups continued, leading to opposition by the
43 Group, formed by Jewish ex-servicemen, which broke up fascist meetings. Far-right antisemitism was motivated principally by
racial hatred, rather than
Christian theological accusations of
deicide. Following an escalation in the
Palestinian-Israel crisis in 2021, the number of antisemitic incidents in London increased by 500%. London Rabbis reported a general sense of fear in the community, and four people were arrested for racially aggravated
public order offenses whilst brandishing Palestinian flags. On 20 October 2023,
The Guardian reported that according to the Metropolitan police, there has been a 1,350% increase in hate crimes against Jewish people since the
Gaza war started. In December 2023, a poll done by the
Campaign Against Antisemitism found that nearly half of British Jews have considered leaving the UK in response to increased antisemitism following the
October 7 attacks. Of the 140,561 hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales between the
Gaza war's outbreak and March 2024, antisemitic offences more than doubled vis-à-vis the previous year, while allegedly anti-Muslim offences rose by 13%.
Chinese people Michael Wilkes from the British Chinese Project said that racism against them is not taken as seriously as racism against African, African-Caribbean or South Asian people, and that a lot of racist attacks towards the
British Chinese community go unreported, primarily because of widespread mistrust in the police.
Chinese labourers From the middle of the 19th century, Chinese were seen as a source for cheap labourers for the building of the British Empire. However, this resulted in animosity against Chinese labourers as competing for British jobs. Hostilities were seen when Chinese were being recruited for work in the British
Transvaal Colony (present day South Africa), resulted in 28 riots between July 1904 to July 1905, and later becoming a key debating point as part of the
1906 United Kingdom general election. This would also be the source of the 1911 seamen's strike in Cardiff, which resulted in rioting and the destruction of about 30 Chinese laundries. While Chinese were recruited to support British war efforts, after the end of the
Second World War, the British Government sought to forcibly repatriate thousands of seamen in a
Home Office policy
HO 213/926 to "Compulsory repatriation of undesirable Chinese seamen." Many of the seamen left behind wives and mixed-race children that they would never see again. A network has also been established for families of Chinese seamen who were repatriated after the Second World War.
2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak Government reports in early 2001 highlighted the smuggling of illegal meat as a possible source for the
2001 United Kingdom foot-and-mouth outbreak, some of which was destined for a Chinese restaurant.
Chinese catering businesses owners claimed a drop of up to 40% in business, in an industry which had some 12,000 Chinese takeaways and 3,000 Chinese restaurants in the United Kingdom, and made up about 80% of the British Chinese workforce at the time. Community leaders saw this as racist and xenophobic, with a
scapegoating of the British Chinese community for the spread of the disease.
COVID-19 pandemic On 12 February 2020,
Sky News reported that some
British Chinese said they were facing increasing levels of racist abuse during the
COVID-19 pandemic. It was recorded that hate crimes against British Chinese people between January and March 2020 have tripled the number of hate crimes in the past two years in the UK. According to the London
Metropolitan Police, between January and June 2020, 457 race-related crimes had occurred against
British East and Southeast Asians. Verbal abuse has been one of the common forms of racism experienced by British Chinese. Just before the lockdown in February 2020, British Chinese children recalled experiences of fear and frustration due to bullying and name calling in their schools. According to a June 2020 poll, 76% of British Chinese had received racial slurs at least once, and 50% regularly received racial slurs, a significantly higher frequency than experienced by any other racial minority. Racism during the pandemic has also impacted a number of Chinese-owned business, especially within the catering business, as well as an increase in violent assaults against
British East and Southeast Asians.
White people Prominent examples of racially-motivated crimes and discrimination against white British include that of
Richard Norman Everitt, in 1994, a 15-year-old
white English teenager, who was stabbed to death in London. After
ethnic tensions in his neighbourhood,
Somers Town, Everitt was
murdered by a gang of
British Bangladeshis who were seeking revenge against another white boy. A judge described the killing as "an unprovoked racial attack". In 2001,
Ross Parker, a 17-year-old white English teenager, was murdered by a gang of Pakistani men in a racially motivated attack in
Peterborough. In 2004,
Kriss Donald, a 15-year-old white
Scottish teenager, was
kidnapped and murdered by three Pakistani men in
Glasgow "for being white". In 2018, Ella Hill, a survivor of the
Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal, said she faced serious racial abuse by her attackers. Race was suggested as one of the factors involved in the failure to address the abuse. Another victim said she was told that being raped "is what white girls were for" when she was attacked as a teenager in Rotherham, the court jury heard. In 2011, Rhea Page, a white British woman, was assaulted by a group of four women of Somali descent in
Leicester. According to reports, the attackers shouted anti-white racial slurs during the assault. The incident gained significant media attention, particularly because the judge decided not to charge the attackers with racially aggravated assault. Instead, they were given suspended sentences, with the judge citing cultural differences and difficult upbringings as factors in his decision.
Employment and recruitment In 2019, an employment tribunal found that Cheshire Police rejected a "well prepared" potential recruit because he was a white heterosexual male. The force was subsequently found guilty of "direct discrimination on the grounds of his sexual orientation, race and sex". The tribunal said that "positive discrimination" could only be used to choose between two equally qualified applicants, and that the police force had not shown that this was the case. In 2023, the
Royal Air Force's former head of recruitment said that 160 white men were discriminated against when the RAF prioritised applicants who were women and ethnic minorities. Chairman of the defence select committee Tobias Ellwood said that the RAF's attempts to improve diversity through positive discrimination could have a significant impact "on the RAF's operational performance".
Grooming gangs Since the 2000s, there have been several high-profile cases where groups of men, known as
grooming gangs, have targeted girls for sex and prostitution. In many cases, the men involved were of South Asian heritage and the girls were white, including the
Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal, the
Rochdale child sex abuse ring, the
Halifax child sex abuse ring, and the
Keighley child sex abuse ring. An investigation in Telford found that up to 1,000 girls were abused and that cases were not investigated because of "nervousness about race". Several
Conservative and
Reform UK politicians have described these cases as racism. The judge presiding over the case in question ruled that the girls were not targeted for their race. In 2023, then Home Secretary
Suella Braverman was criticised when she said the perpetrators in high-profile grooming gang cases were "almost all British-Pakistani" men, which critics said was using a "dog whistle" and perpetuating stereotypes. The Home Office said her comments referred specifically to three cases in
Rochdale,
Rotherham, and
Telford. In 2025, former Home Office minister
Robert Jenrick said that group-based child sexual exploitation is "perhaps the greatest racially motivated crime in modern Britain", and said it was covered up by the British state to protect community relations. The British media has been accused of perpetuating
Islamophobia by "conflating the faith of Islam with criminality, such as the headlines 'Muslim sex grooming'", as well as pursuing sensationalist coverage. A number of academics have described the controversy as a
moral panic. Media outlets including
The Times,
The Daily Mail's
Mail Online,
The Guardian and
The Telegraph have been accused of boosting the moral panic by turning South Asian men into "
folk devils", especially in the wake of various high-profile sex abuse scandals.
Italians Central and Eastern Europeans , 2011 Following
EU enlargement in 2004, the UK experienced mass
immigration from Poland and other Central and Eastern European countries. There has been a sharp increase in xenophobia against Central, Southern and Eastern European immigrants. In 2007, Polish people living in Britain reported 42 "racially motivated violent attacks" against them. The far-right
British National Party (BNP) expressed anti-Polish sentiments in their political campaigns, and campaigned for a ban on all Polish migrant workers to Britain. In 2009, the
Federation of Poles in Great Britain and the
Polish Embassy in London with
Barbara Tuge-Erecinska raised a number of formal complaints – including with the Press Complaints Commission – about news articles in the
Daily Mail, which the Federation claimed "displayed anti-Polish sentiment".
Brexit-related racism Since
Brexit, there has been a noticeable increase in xenophobia towards Eastern Europeans, especially Poles, Romanians and Bulgarians. After the Brexit referendum resulted in the UK leaving the EU, many Poles reported that they had been verbally abused in public.
Romanians living in northern England also reported racist abuse in public and expressed fears they were being stereotyped as 'Gypsies', despite Romanians not being Roma. There are also reports of members of minority groups of European descent reporting racist abuse to police, with the police not taking action.
Irish people Since the
formation of Northern Ireland in 1921, there have been tensions between Protestants, who tend to refer to themselves as British, and Catholics, who tend to refer to themselves as Irish. This has been called a form of racism by some international bodies. In 1923, the
General Assembly of the Church of Scotland approved a report entitled
The Menace of the Irish race to our Scottish Nationality, which called for "means to be found to preserve Scotland and the Scottish race and to secure in future generations the traditions, ideals and faith of a great people, unspoiled and inviolate." In 1934, the writer
J. B. Priestley published the travelogue
English Journey, in which he wrote "A great many speeches have been made and books written on the subject of what England has done to Ireland... I should be interested to hear a speech and read a book or two on the subject of what Ireland has done to England... if we do have an Irish Republic as our neighbour, and it is found possible to return her exiled citizens, what a grand clearance there will be in all the western ports, from the Clyde to Cardiff, what a fine exit of ignorance and dirt and drunkenness and disease." In 1937, ten young men and boys, aged from 13 to 23, burned to death in a fire on a farm in
Kirkintilloch, Scotland. All were seasonal workers from
Achill Sound in County Mayo, Ireland.
The Vanguard, the official newspaper of the
Scottish Protestant League, referred to the event in the following text: :The Scandal of Kirkintilloch is not that some Irishmen have lost their lives in a fire; it is that Irish Papists brought up in disloyalty and superstition are engaged in jobs which should belong by right to Scottish Protestants. The Kirkintilloch sensation again reminds the People of Scotland that Rome's Irish Scum still over-run our land. According to a 2004 report published by the
Irish Department of Foreign Affairs,
Irish soldiers serving in the
British Expeditionary Force (BEF) during World War I were treated more harshly in
courts-martial because "British military courts were anti-Irish". In the post-
World War II years, signs which read "No Irish need apply" and "No Irish, no blacks, no dogs" or similar reportedly appeared in the
United Kingdom. In 2002, English journalist
Julie Burchill narrowly escaped prosecution for
incitement to racial hatred, following a column in
The Guardian where she described Ireland as being synonymous with "child molestation, Nazi-sympathising, and the oppression of women". She had expressed anti-Irish sentiment several times throughout her career, announcing in
Time Out, "I hate the Irish, I think they're appalling." In July 2012,
The Irish Times published a report on anti-Irish prejudice in Britain. It claimed that far-right
British nationalist groups continued to use "anti-IRA" marches as "an excuse to attack and intimidate Irish immigrants". Shortly before the
2012 Summer Olympics, British athlete
Daley Thompson was shown an image of a runner with a misspelt tattoo and said that the person responsible for the misspelling "must have been Irish". The BBC issued an apology. On 25 June 2013, an Irish flag was burned at an
Orange Order headquarters in the
Everton area of
Liverpool. This was seen by members of Liverpool's Irish community, which is the biggest in the UK, as a
hate crime. In March 2021, the
Equality and Human Rights Commission said it had investigated British holiday park operator
Pontins after a whistleblower revealed that Pontins maintained a
blacklist of common Irish surnames to prevent
Irish Travellers from entering its parks.
Between minority groups Both the
Bradford riots and the
Oldham Riots occurred in 2001, following cases of racism. These were either the public displays of racist sentiment or, as in the
Brixton Riots,
racial profiling and harassment by
police forces. In 2005, there were the
Birmingham riots, derived from
ethnic tensions between the
British African-Caribbean people and
British Asian communities, with the spark for the riot being an unsubstantiated
gang rape of a teenage black girl by a group of
South Asian men. ==By constituent country==