Racial Equality and '1992

Underlying all British discussions of the European Community are two major difficulties. One is a near-universal British ignorance of the Community's character, structure and purposes. The other, which is particularly important in discussions of rights and opportunities, is the large difference between British constitutional law, legal habits of thought and political history and the political and constitutional norms of Continental countries. Of course the latter differ among themselves, but there is still a marked difference between British habits of thought on these matters and Continental thinking in general. Because Britain came late into it, the Community's laws and structures are entirely of Continental formation, and as a result there are continual misunderstandings between disputants from Britain and from other countries about the very bases of their discussions. Add to these difficulties a dash of British insularity, and a taste of conviction that British ways are best, and one has a potent recipe for getting nowhere. It is only over the last two years, at most, that ethnic minorities in Britain have become concerned about the consequences for them of British membership of the Community. Like others in Britain, they took little notice of'Europe', as the EC is frequently and misleadingly called, until government propaganda about the single market and 1992 became pervasive. The first reaction was alarm. In the seventies, there was already resentment that Britain had cut old Commonwealth ties for the sake of closer ties with the EC. Now, with talk of a single external border round the Community and a common visa policy, there were fears of a white man's Fortress Europe in which oppression of blacks would worsen and from which blacks might be forcibly expelled. Another anxiety is that blacks in European countries have little or no protection against racial discrimination. There are legal bans on discrimination but, except in the Netherlands, the machinery for enforcing such bans is thoroughly unsatisfactory. Moreover, the British Race Relations Act which protects everyone in the jurisdiction is very different from constitutional and legal guarantees in certain other

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• Towards a Multicultural Europe

  Open Access•Kum-Kum Bhavnani, Kum‐kum Bhavnani•Feminist Review•1993

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