Is anyone listening?

• Racial Consciousness by Michael Banton
  Longman, 153 pp, £12.95, October 1988, ISBN 0 582 02385 8
• Beyond the Mother Country: West Indians and the Notting Hill White Riots by Edward Pilkington
  Tauris, 182 pp, £10.95, September 1988, ISBN 1 85043 113 2
• Under Siege: Racism and Violence in Britain Today by Keith Tompson
  Penguin, 204 pp, £3.99, September 1988, ISBN 0 14 052391 X
• A Pakistani Community in Britain by Alison Shaw
  Blackwell, 187 pp, £19.50, August 1988, ISBN 0 631 15228 8
• Behind the Frontlines: Journey into Afro-Britain by Ferdinand Dennis
  Gollancz, 216 pp, £12.95, August 1988, ISBN 0 575 04098 X
• Black Youth, Racism and the State: The Politics of Ideology and Policy by John Solomos
  Cambridge, 284 pp, £27.50, October 1988, ISBN 0 521 36019 6
• Integration or Disintegration? Towards a Non-Racist Society by Ray Honeyford
  Claridge, 309 pp, £15.95, November 1988, ISBN 1 870626 80 X

Many observers of race relations in Britain have felt that this country’s postwar experience has been quite distinctive when compared with that of other countries in Western Europe. There has, however, been less agreement about what it is that marks Britain out. One approach has been to draw analogies with the economic situation of immigrant workers in France or the Federal Republic of Germany: this approach has emphasised variations in economic integration and pointed to the different sectors of the labour market to which these groups of workers were drawn. Another view claims significance for the different civic experiences of black Britons by comparison with those of immigrant workers in most Western European countries (e.g. access to the franchise), although it is worth pointing out that in the Netherlands settlers from former colonies have been more favourably received than the immigrant-worker population.