"Yet another bigoted stereotype, I'm afraid."
Dave,
By all means tell me that in-built bigotry in Britain isn't your experience, but please don't tell me it isn't mine.
I can only speak as I have experienced on both sides of the fence.
Over my last 20 years of living in London it got such a stage that, to my eternal shame I just avoided discussions on race because of the inevitable arguments. What upset me the most was that it was automatically assumed by the people I was talking to that I shared their racist views.
I'm just old enough to remember the "No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish" notices in the windows of boarding houses in Liverpool; my father worked in a building industry where many of the firms operated a strict 'No Irish Need Apply' policy.
I was educated in a system which had me flag-wagging on Empire Day and singing racist hymns about keeping foreigners hands "from error's chain".
I remember the Kings Cross Colour Bar Strike and the Notting Hill riots. A few months ago I watched a re-run of Enoch Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech and the East London dockers marching in support of his racist policies.
When I moved to London in the sixties and started phoning round for work I was invariably asked where I was from, and on at least three occasions I was asked what colour I was.
If I was working on a site and the topic of conversation turned to race I invariably found myself on my own.
In the course of our work with Travellers I was once unfortunate enough to end up in The Blade Bone pub in the East End where they had a Union Jack hanging up behind the counter and a picture of a lynching in the American South on the wall.
The London I lived and worked in was an extremely racist city - please don't try to tell me it wasn't.
Racism is so endemic a part of British life that it has been necessary to create laws to counteract it.
Jim Carroll