Down the decades
1948 First West Indian immigrants arrive on SS Empire Windrush at Tilbury docks on 22 June
1951 The Times thunders: 'The result [of immigration] can be measured directly in terms of more food for workers, more coal for vital industries, more cloth for export, more bricks for housing'
1952 Sprinter Emmanuel McDonald Bailey becomes the first black athlete to win an Olympic medal for Britain with a bronze in the 100 metres
1956 The peak year for immigration from the West Indies to Britain. That year 30,000 immigrants make the journey
1957 Cy Grant becomes the first black person to regularly appear on TV, singing the news in calypso on the BBC Tonight programme
1958 Riots orchestrated by white extremists hit Notting Hill and Nottingham
The Black and White Minstrel Show starts its 20-year TV run. Featuring white men with blacked-up faces it is indicative of lack of change in approach to TV programming
1959 The high arts find such change less difficult. The Theatre Workshop in Stratford East produces the play A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney which tells of a Salford girl made pregnant by her black lover
1961 The Army puts an upper limit on the proportion of ethnic minority personnel. This 'quota' (about 4,000) was never reached
1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act brings in first restrictions, cutting immigration from the New Commonwealth, thus clearly marking ethnic minority immigrants from others of white skin. Laws follow in 1968/71 and 81 restricting entry for non-whites
1963 Working men's clubs bar or place a limit on 'coloured' entry. Tories accused during elections of sending children around Smethwick in the West Midlands chanting: 'If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Liberal or Labour'
1964 Labour victory sees a more progressive government, prepared to embrace the new population of Britain
1965 First Race Relations Act is passed
1966 Roy Jenkins, Home Secretary, proclaims: 'I define integration not as a flattening process of uniformity, but cultural diversity, coupled with equality of opportunity in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance...'
1967 Rainbow City , a six-part BBC1 drama starring Errol John, is the first drama series to give a leading role to a black actor.
1968 Enoch Powell proclaims: 'I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see "the River Tiber foaming with much blood".'
1969 Sir Nicholas Learie Constantine becomes first black life peer
1970 Abdul Malik (Michael X), (leader of the Black Muslims and Racial Adjustment Society, calls meeting of all black militant groups in London including Black Panthers and Black Eagles. 'Black people are going to take matters into their own hands because we have been unable to get justice anywhere'
1971 Refugees from Uganda land at Stansted airport, after President Idi Amin expels the entire Asian population
1972 At Mansfield hosiery mills, Loughborough, 500 striking Asians say they are barred on racial grounds from the best-paid knitting jobs. This in a year when the trade union movement is accused of 'indifference to race relations'
1973 Trevor McDonald becomes ITN's first black reporter
1974 A bleak report finds failings at every stage in preparing young black people for adult life in Britain. Figures show twice as many blacks as whites jobless. David Pitt becomes first black chairman of the GLC
1975 Lenny Henry, aged 17, wins New Faces , the first black winner. Paul Wilson makes his debut for Scotland, the first and only Asian to play football for any of the home nations.
1976 Race Relations Act established 'to tackle racial discrimination and promote racial equality'. Commission for Racial Equality set up
1977 Race bias in the Civil Service revealed in a telling report. After interview stage, only four per cent of black people are offered a job compared with 15 per cent of white people
1978 Margaret Thatcher: 'People are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture...'
Nottingham Forest fullback Viv Anderson becomes the first black footballer to play for England
1979 Anti-racist protester Blair Peach is killed after being struck on the head with a police truncheon after a National Front rally in Southall. The first of what become 22,000 Vietnamese refugees arrive in Britain, fleeing the communist regime after the fall of Saigon. Thatcher welcomes the immigrants as people who love freedom and enterprise.
1980 Police raid on the Black and White Cafe in Bristol triggers one of the most serious riots in Britain since World War II
1981 Years of the Riots. In January 15,000 people march in London - the biggest black demonstration yet seen in Britain - to complain about press indifference to black deaths. Riots break out in Brixton in April after the Met launches Operation Swamp 81 to tackle burglary and robbery. In six days, officers stop 943 people, arresting 118. Violent distur bances follow in Liverpool's Toxteth over four nights in July and police use CS gas for the first time in Britain. Then 1,000 people besiege the police station at Moss Side, Manchester and new riots erupt in Brixton with disturbances all over UK
1982 First edition of The Voice, Britain's first black newspaper. An unprecedented six black players are chosen by Bobby Robson for the England squad to play a friendly against West Germany - described by the Daily Mail as 'Our Black Magic' .
1984 The Police and Criminal Evidence Act aims to provide a new code for police behaviour. It also sets up an independent Police Com plaints Authority in 1985 in an attempt to restore public confidence in the police
Daley Thompson becomes only the second competitor in history to win the decathlon at two Olympic Games
Bradford Headmaster Ray Honeyford suggests that white children suffer in schools with large Asian numbers, and that to become proper citizens of a western democracy, Asian children should be able to think, speak and reason in English.
1985 PC Keith Blakelock is killed during rioting on Tottenham's Broadwater Farm Estate
1987 In May's general election, three black MPs, Diane Abbott, Bernie Grant and Paul Boateng, and one Asian MP, Keith Vaz, are elected
1988 Black and White, a BBC documentary records the attitudes of people in Bristol to a black and white man of similar age and ability as they attempt to find a job, hail a taxi, and generally get on with life. The white man is more successful
1990 John Taylor is elected as Tory candidate for Cheltenham after being called a 'bloody nigger' by local party member Bill Galbraith and facing a vote of no confidence
1992 Taylor loses the seat in the general election - to the sound of cheers from his own party members
1993 Paul Ince is the first black player to captain England's soccer team.
Bhaji on the Beach is the first feature film directed by a British Asian woman, Gurinder Chada
Stephen Lawrence is stabbed to death by a gang of white youths as he waits at a bus stop in Eltham, South London
1994 Bernie Grant, the black Labour MP for Tottenham, proposes 'voluntary resettlement' whereby the government would give financial support to anyone making a move to the Caribbean country from which they originated or were descended. This year the Jamaican government estimates some 2000 people returned from Britain
1995 For two nights young Asians in the Manningham district of Bradford riot.
Joy Gardner, an illegal immigrant in Britain since 1987, dies when police overpower her, gag her with 13 feet of sticky tape and handcuff her
1996 Neil Acourt, Luke Knight and Gary Dobson deny murdering Stephen Lawrence in a private case brought by Stephen's parents. Evidence is ruled inadmissable, and the three men go free.
1997 The inquest into Stephen's death decides he was killed unlawfully.
At the general election, the number of Black and Asian MPs increases to nine.
Linford Christie retires, as Britain's greatest ever athlete, having won gold medals at all the major championships.
Supermodel Naomi Campbell claims that it is twice as hard for a black woman to make the cover of a fashion magazine than for a white model.
1998 The CRE is accused of wasting money on a deliberately racist advertising campaign. It commissioned three posters suggesting that black people are rapists, orang-utans and deserving of domination. The CRE says the posters were 'a teaser to test public attitudes about racist stereotyping'
1999 The Macpherson inquiry into the killing of Stephen Lawrence six years earlier states that the police is infected with institutional racism.
East is East, a film about British Asian life, takes more than £10m and wins Best British Film at the Bafta awards.
Nail-bomb attacks on three ethnically diverse areas of London: Brixton, Brick Lane and Soho. Three people are killed, and 139 injured. BNP member David Copeland later convicted of the attacks
2000 Jack Straw upholds a ban on Louis Farrakhan entering Britain on the grounds that the Nation of Islam leader expresses 'anti-semitic and racially divisive views'. The ban is overturned the following year by the High Court.
2001 Race riots hit Oldham, Burnley, Stoke and Bradford.
The race issue takes centre stage in the general election. Conservative MP John Townend remarks that immigration has allowed the 'mongrolisation of Britain'.
Racial tensions rise follow the 11 September terrorist attacks on America.
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"Tell the truth and shame the devil."
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