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Immigrants often found themselves under attack, especially at times of general hardship. Sometimes the attacks were from British workers who saw immigration as a threat to their own jobs. At the end of World War One, soldiers returning to the port cities from the horrors of war were in conflict with Asian, Arab, West Indian and African seamen who had also been in the thick of war, bringing convoys of supplies across the Atlantic. Violent riots broke out in 1919 in Liverpool, Cardiff, Glasgow and South Shields which resulted in some deaths. In some cases, mobs stirred up with racist taunts attacked the seamen’s lodging houses, and they fought back.

At times, groups directly targeted immigrants. The British Union of Fascists (‘Blackshirts’) in the 1930s focussed on Jews; the National Front in the 1970s and 1980s targeted black and Asian people; and the British National Party and the English Defence League in the early 2000s campaigned against British Muslims. Where these groups were active, incidents of hate crime rose.

From the 1960s onwards, relations between the police and many black people, especially youth, deteriorated. It was felt by some black British people that they were unfairly picked out and harassed, that racist murders were not properly investigated, and that police were directly responsible for some deaths in police custody but were not called to account.

Two speeches criticising levels of immigration by leading politicians - Enoch Powell in 1968 and Margaret Thatcher in 1978 - had the effect of polarising public opinion, with a rise in the numbers expressing anti-immigrant views.