Fighting rural racism

At first glance, there is little to suggest that Suffolk might be a key front in the long campaign for equal rights in the UK.

Yet underneath the carefully scripted tourist-friendly narrative of the Aldeburgh Festival, horse-racing at Newmarket and genteel villages is a tale of a small and cash-strapped organisation battling against corporate indifference and changing the rulebook as to how such corporate denial is addressed.

Demand for the services of the Ipswich and Suffolk Council for Racial Equality (ISCRE) is spiralling upwards with the charity dealing with 158 discrimination cases in the year to the end of March 2010 - more than double that of two years previously.

There is a four-week waiting list before cases can be heard, such is the surge in cases faced by the organisation.

According to ISCRE chief executive Jane Basham: "We know we are needed as our case work is just the tip of the iceberg, and certainly in terms of racial discrimination and harassment in the context of neighbourhood disputes for example. The situation is getting worse in Suffolk."

I met with Basham and Leon Hall, ISCRE's project manager, at their offices in the centre of Ipswich, which is increasingly depending on volunteers for it to function.

They emphasised that in parallel with the rise of racist incidents, especially in the rural parts of the county, there is an ongoing sense of denial on the part of the police and other authorities in how they deal with black and minority ethnic (BME) people, including over the use of stop and search powers.

Basham was clear: "Even though nearly 6 per cent of the Suffolk population and 12 per cent in Ipswich is BME in some quarters it seems as if Macpherson never happened, as if Suffolk has remained untouched by the murder of Stephen Lawrence.

"A few years ago, the Suffolk police seemed not to care that they had one of the highest rates of race inequality of all forces in England and Wales.

"By 2008 the situation had got so bad - with some rural parts of the county reporting that BME men were 22 times more likely to be stopped and searched than their white counterparts - that ISCRE decided to change its tactics in engaging with the police."

ISCRE won the backing of Suffolk's newly appointed chief constable to embed a researcher for six months at Ipswich police station, to evaluate how the force was using stop and search. The results were revealing.

As Hall explains: "It was clear that the disproportionate use of stops was not based on intelligence but on a stereotypical view of the BME population.

"It was reliant on myths such as more crimes being committed by drug dealers coming up from London (in fact only 1.7 per cent of those stopped had addresses outside of Suffolk - not necessarily the capital) or the laughable suggestion that stops take place when more BME people are out on the streets!"

The research also highlighted that there was no regular supervision of police officers and no regular training on race and community relations.

Yet for Hall "what is so tragic is that, even though our research showed 62 per cent of those who had been stopped and searched felt negative about their experience, a lot of the BME groups have become so ground down that they have started to believe the stereotyping. The injustices are so great and so ongoing that people just come to accept it."

Basham interjects to explain that the failings are not confined to the police with "these communities being systematically let down by public services, by councils who prefer ticking boxes to tackling under-representation of BME groups in their own workforces, by the education service, by health authorities and other criminal justice agencies.

"There seems to be a reluctance across organisations - particularly the statutory and public sector in this county - to acknowledge that there is any problem or that they need any help or advice to deal with it from specialists like us."

But ISCRE, like a David hurling slingshots against many institutional Goliaths, will never give up.

In a further innovative challenge to the Suffolk police, the charity recommended the establishment of a reference group to pull together members of the community and the police to regularly scrutinise stop and search forms and monitor the impact on the community of these police powers.

The idea was accepted by the police and since it was established 18 months ago the reference group has met across the county and queried no less than 250 BME stop forms.

It has also begun to see younger BME residents attending - the start, Hall believes, of real community empowerment.

Yet now the police seem to backpedalling. "We rarely get a chief officer attending and there are proposals from the force to reduce the frequency in which the reference group meetings are held," Basham notes.

Hall remains astounded at such an attitude. "This reference group has been recognised by the National Policing Improvement Agency as best practice and we have been invited to give talks in Europe about what is being achieved. Yet it hasn't been shown the same level of respect by the police here in Suffolk."

The irony is that police in Suffolk desperately need the support of the county's BME community to keep the Home Office off its back. The force has one of the lowest scores in terms of public confidence data according to the Home Office. This comes as no surprise to Hall.

"If only the police truly engaged with their own officers over this matter and focused on the needs of our increasingly diverse communities, improved awareness and training and developed a more constructive and intelligent approach to fighting crime and monitoring complaints of racism, then the chief constable wouldn't be sitting in the hot seat that he is," he suggests.

For Basham, who has seen ISCRE grow into a highly effective campaigning organisation three times its original size in terms of staff and volunteers, whether the police or other organisations see any mutual interest or not will not negate the need for the organisation.

"Clearly we hope that organisations will work with us, but we will not just wait for them. There is a need for visible social justice here in Suffolk and with the communities we serve we aim to be part of the movement that will deliver it - as long as it takes."

For more information about ISCRE and its campaigning and educational work in fighting for racial equality go to www.iscre.org.uk.