Violence, racial harassment and council tenants: Reflections on the limits of the disputing process

Abstract

This paper outlines a recently completed study of racial harassment on council estates in an area of East London. The study is based on a wide ranging assessment of the effectiveness of anti-harassment procedures operating in the London borough of Newham, a borough in the forefront of innovation in anti-racism procedures in both the public and the private housing sector. The centrepiece of the study is an analysis of the experiences of a group of 30 families living in Newham council accommodation, through a series of open-ended interviews carried out by researchers from the ethnic minorities, attached to the project, over an 18 month period. The 30 families were members of diverse ethnic minoritiesPunjabi, Gujerati, Bengali, Afro-Caribbean -all of whom had experienced prolonged and serious racial violence in and around their homes. What the families shared in particular was a refusal to suffer in silence. Living in a borough with a strong commitment to protecting its tenants from racial harassment, and to punishing the perpetrators of such violence, they had all sought to use the council's grievance policy and procedures to the full, and furthermore to engage the specialist police unit, the Newham Organised Racial Incident Squad (NORIS), in protecting their interests. Our research reached the conclusion that in most respects, despite good intentions, the policies of the statutory agencies have failed. In this article, we provide an overview of the study, its background, and its methodology, and highlight some of the report's main conclusions.

UK Abortion Law: Reform Proposals, Private Members’ Bills, Devolution and the Role of the Courts

“…An amendment was moved, debated and withdrawn by Lord Molyneaux of Killead at committee, then moved again at the report stage, to add after the listing of the criminal law as a reserved matter the phrase 'but not the law relating to abortion'. 95 The effect of such an amendment would be to transfer competence in this area of law to Stormont immediately. Ultimately, the amendment was defeated, at 104 for and 160 against.…”

“…It was said that survivors of racial harassment turned their anger on local authorities' decisionmaking. 95 One study sought to appreciate why black and minority ethnic households had worse housing outcomes than other households in two local authorities, even though those authorities had anti-racism policy commitments to counter officer discretion. The authors found, first, that households that were most in need and could not wait for the better stock to become available would accept the worse quality stock; and black and minority ethnic households were disproportionately among those most in need and homeless: 'It was as if the financial logic of the homelessness crisis had, in spite of the efforts of the departments themselves, been able to work its way through the system'.…”