The Race Relations Acts, 1965–1976: Changing the Law Against Discrimination

A promise with boundaries

The Race Relations Act received royal assent on 8 November 1965 and came into force a month later. It made racial discrimination unlawful in specified public places. A person refused service because of their colour could now challenge conduct that Parliament had expressly prohibited. Yet the measure left major areas of everyday life outside its protection. Its significance lay both in establishing a principle and in prompting demands to apply that principle more widely. Further Acts followed in 1968 and 1976, each responding to shortcomings that the earlier legislation had failed to resolve. ¹

Campaigning before the first Act

The demand for legislation had a history before the government introduced its bill. A petition preserved in the Parliamentary Archives, dated 1962, called for action against racial discrimination and the public promotion of racial hatred. It belonged to a period in which the racist violence of 1958 in Nottingham and Notting Hill had demonstrated the consequences of leaving prejudice unchallenged. Petitioning offered campaigners a way to place protection before Parliament as a public responsibility. The document also challenged the idea that someone’s colour or ancestry could reasonably become grounds for exclusion: these were aspects of a person’s identity, not misconduct requiring punishment. ²

Fenner Brockway repeatedly tried to turn such demands into legislation. Introducing another bill in January 1964, the Labour MP told the Commons that this was his ninth attempt. His proposed measure would cover discrimination on grounds of colour, race or religion, as well as public incitement to hatred. The repeated attempts matter because they show that the eventual Act did not arrive through a sudden discovery of the problem. People had already identified discriminatory practices, organised support and asked Parliament to act. Brockway described growing backing for legislation, but persistence alone had not yet secured a law. ³

What the government thought the law should do

When Home Secretary Frank Soskice introduced the government’s bill at its second reading in May 1965, he presented it partly as a measure to prevent social conflict. He argued that people who had settled in Britain should be treated as full members of society, while also defending immigration controls. These positions appeared together within the government’s account of race relations. Protection against discrimination did not mean that ministers were abandoning restrictions on who could enter the country. ⁴

The bill’s early form proposed criminal penalties for discrimination in public places. Its proposed criminal approach raised a substantial question about enforcement: should the state prosecute a discriminatory act, or should an official body try to secure an agreement and prevent its repetition? The debate also exposed the narrowness of the proposed coverage. Employment and housing were central to people’s lives, but the government was not yet proposing a general prohibition across either field. The resulting legislation therefore represented a negotiated and limited intervention. ⁴

The protections Parliament actually passed

The 1965 Act applied to Great Britain, rather than generally extending to Northern Ireland. Its list of public places included hotels, restaurants, cafés, pubs, cinemas, dance halls, sports grounds and regular public transport services. Discrimination on grounds of colour, race, or ethnic or national origins was prohibited in access to these places and their facilities. There was also a narrower housing provision: racial grounds could not justify withholding consent to the transfer of certain tenancies. That was different from a general ban on discrimination when letting or selling homes. ⁵

The Act did not make every discriminatory refusal a criminal offence. Its principal mechanism for public places was conciliation, with possible court action to restrain persistent conduct. Separately, it created a criminal offence of inciting racial hatred through specified threatening, abusive or insulting publications or public words. The original offence required both an intention to stir up hatred and material likely to do so. Discriminatory treatment and incitement were therefore addressed through different legal routes. Keeping that distinction clear helps explain both what the Act offered and why complainants could find its response disappointing. ⁵

A board and a network of local committees

The new Race Relations Board gave the legislation an institutional home. In February 1966, Home Secretary Roy Jenkins announced its initial membership: Mark Bonham Carter as chairman, Sir Learie Constantine and Manchester’s Lord Mayor, Alderman Bernard Langton. Constantine’s inclusion placed a prominent Black public figure within the new machinery. The appointments began the practical task of turning legislation into an institution able to investigate complaints. ⁶

Local conciliation committees operated across England, Wales and Scotland. The Board’s first report, preserved by Parliament, records work centred on bringing the parties together and obtaining assurances against further discrimination. Public houses featured prominently among the complaints. A refusal of service could be an ordinary event in the working life of a pub, but for the person excluded it could publicly mark them as someone entitled to less than other customers. The committees provided an official route through which that treatment could be challenged. ⁷

Their preference for settlement also shaped the outcome. An assurance that discrimination would not happen again was different from a prosecution or an award compensating someone for what they had experienced. The institution sought to change behaviour through agreement. Its early work therefore raised a question that would follow later legislation: how could the authorities know that a promise had produced a lasting change? ⁷

Using the law and questioning its institutions

The Indian Workers’ Association’s papers in Birmingham reveal how campaigners engaged with this new system. Correspondence involving Jagmohan Joshi and the Race Relations Board concerned alleged refusals of service at West Bromwich pubs in November 1966. The organisation also questioned the appointment of Oscar Hahn as chairman of the West Midlands Conciliation Committee because of his business connections with South Africa. Challenging discrimination meant scrutinising the people chosen to investigate it as well as making complaints about particular incidents. ⁸

These records include a meeting with the Board’s secretary, John Lyttle, and discussion in January 1968 of producing explanations of the Act in Indian languages. Such details show the practical work required to make a legal protection usable. People needed to know what conduct the Act covered and where a complaint should go. They also needed confidence in the institution receiving it. Campaigners were not simply waiting for official bodies to act: they brought cases, questioned appointments and pressed for information that could reach the people concerned. ⁸

The evidence for a wider law

The Board’s caseload exposed the scale of the omissions. In 1966–67, 224 of the 309 complaints it received concerned matters outside the Act’s scope. More than seven in ten complaints therefore fell beyond its legal reach. Housing and employment were especially important gaps. An institution could acknowledge that exclusion existed while lacking the power to address the circumstances that someone actually brought before it. The figures made the limitations measurable, rather than leaving them as a general objection to the law’s narrow design. ⁹

Research supplied another form of evidence. Geoffrey Bindman, who advised the Board, later recalled a Political and Economic Planning study using applicants with comparable qualifications but different backgrounds: a white British person, a white migrant from Eastern Europe and a Black Caribbean person. Comparing their experiences helped reveal unequal treatment that an employer or landlord might otherwise deny. The method tested what happened in practice, instead of relying only on assurances that everyone received the same consideration. ¹²

Campaign organisations continued pressing Parliament. A 1968 letter from the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination, chaired by David Pitt, proposed amendments to the new Race Relations Bill and encouraged supporters to write to their MPs. Preserved in the Parliamentary Archives, it shows that welcoming legislation and demanding stronger legislation were compatible positions. Pitt and his colleagues were concerned with the content of the law, not merely the announcement that another bill existed. Parliamentary debate was one part of a wider process in which organised campaigners tried to influence wording, coverage and enforcement. Their intervention belongs within the history of the Act itself. ¹⁰

The broader reach of the 1968 Act

The 1968 legislation prohibited discrimination across a much wider range of activities. It covered employment, the provision of goods and services, and the disposal and management of premises. Its employment provisions addressed recruitment, promotion, training, dismissal and working conditions. The services listed included banking, insurance and credit. Trade unions and employers’ organisations were also brought within the scheme. These were institutions through which people obtained wages, housing, financial security and opportunities to advance. ¹¹

The wording identified less favourable treatment and expressly treated racial segregation as less favourable. It also restricted discriminatory advertising. Yet coverage remained qualified. Small employers initially benefited from exemptions, while certain arrangements involving accommodation shared with a resident landlord were excepted. A broader law did not mean that every unequal encounter was now actionable. The change was nevertheless substantial: subjects largely excluded in 1965 had become central to the law. ¹¹

Why enforcement remained difficult

The machinery still disappointed many who used it. Bindman recalled that employment complaints passed through arrangements involving employers and trade unions, with delays and inconclusive results. Court proceedings could be lengthy, while damages might be very small. His account came from the Board’s own legal adviser, making it particularly valuable as evidence of frustration inside the system. Declaring conduct unlawful was only one stage. Investigation, access to proceedings and the eventual remedy all affected whether a person could obtain a useful result. A legal right could lose much of its force if pursuing it consumed time without producing an effective response. ¹²

By the early 1970s, the Board was recommending further changes, including protection against indirect discrimination. A government review followed in 1974, and a White Paper set out proposals in 1975. The Sex Discrimination Act 1975 supplied an important model for the next race relations measure. Reform was increasingly concerned with the way a rule operated, not simply whether an individual openly expressed racial prejudice. It also addressed who could bring a case and what an enforcement body should investigate. ⁹

Recognising indirect discrimination

The 1976 Act, which received royal assent on 22 November, distinguished direct discrimination from indirect discrimination. The latter concerned a requirement or condition applied equally in form, but with which a considerably smaller proportion of a particular racial group could comply, which could not be justified independently of race, and caused disadvantage because the complainant could not comply. The definition recognised that an apparently uniform rule could produce unequal exclusion. A claimant did not always have to point to an openly discriminatory instruction to identify a legal problem. ¹³

The Act also prohibited victimisation connected with bringing proceedings, giving evidence or making allegations under the legislation, subject to its provisions concerning false allegations made in bad faith. This addressed a further obstacle to enforcement: a person who challenged discrimination might be treated adversely for doing so. Protection had to encompass the act of asserting a right as well as the original incident. Otherwise, the process intended to offer a remedy could itself create another vulnerability. ¹³

New routes to a remedy

Explaining the 1976 bill, Jenkins described a stronger national body with a strategic role. The Commission for Racial Equality would replace the Race Relations Board and Community Relations Commission, combining work against discrimination with the promotion of equality and good relations. It could investigate wider practices, undertake research and pursue persistent breaches. The intention was to look beyond a succession of isolated complaints towards the conduct of institutions. ¹⁴

Individuals would also gain direct access to industrial tribunals for employment complaints and to the courts for other covered matters, rather than depending on the Board’s exclusive control of proceedings. The new Commission could assist complainants, although that did not mean automatic representation for everyone. Jenkins acknowledged that help for individuals and the Commission’s wider responsibilities had to be balanced. The reform therefore joined two approaches: enabling a person to pursue their own complaint and giving a public body powers to address discrimination whose effects extended beyond one case. Both were needed if enforcement was to reach further than the earlier conciliation system. ¹⁴

Responsibility beyond individual complaints

David Pitt argued in the Lords for a clear duty on local authorities. Drawing on his experience of community relations work, he challenged councils that claimed there were no racial problems in their areas. Liverpool, he said, had initially adopted that position but had subsequently changed its approach. His argument concerned the consequences of official denial: if a council refused to recognise a problem, the people experiencing it could struggle to obtain action. ¹⁵

Pitt also wanted close cooperation between councils and the new Commission. The debate was contentious, and peers questioned whether a general duty would be enforceable. These exchanges reveal a continuing disagreement about responsibility. Should public authorities wait for an individual complaint, or should they examine their own activities and make arrangements to promote equality? Pitt’s contribution placed local government within the story of civil rights, alongside employers, landlords and national institutions. It also insisted that experience gathered through community work should inform the design of legislation. ¹⁵

The Act as passed required local authorities to make appropriate arrangements for their functions to be carried out with due regard to eliminating unlawful racial discrimination and promoting equality of opportunity and good relations. ¹³

Across the three Acts, the principle established in 1965 acquired wider coverage and stronger means of challenge. That development was neither immediate nor complete. Campaigners, complainants and officials had exposed weaknesses and pressed for changes. Remembering the laws together therefore means remembering the work that made their limitations visible. The achievement was a growing public responsibility to confront discrimination, accompanied by a continuing demand that a legal promise should produce a practical remedy. ¹

Sources

[1] UK Parliament, Parliamentary Archives. Race Relations Act 1965; Undated; document dated 8 November 1965.

[2] UK Parliament, Parliamentary Archives. Racial Discrimination Petition, 1962; 1962.

[3] Hansard, UK Parliament. Racial Discrimination and Incitement, House of Commons debate; 14 January 1964.

[4] Hansard, UK Parliament. Race Relations Bill, House of Commons second reading; 3 May 1965.

[5] UK Parliament; legislation.gov.uk. Race Relations Act 1965, as enacted; 8 November 1965.

[6] Hansard, UK Parliament. Race Relations Board, written answer; 17 February 1966.

[7] UK Parliament, Parliamentary Archives. First Report of the Race Relations Board; 1967.

[8] Library of Birmingham, Archives and Collections. Correspondence between the Indian Workers Association and the Race Relations Board, MS 2141/A/4/4; 1966–1968.

[9] House of Commons Library. Jennifer Brown, An early history of British race relations legislation; 9 July 2018.

[10] UK Parliament, Parliamentary Archives. Campaign Against Racial Discrimination; 1968.

[11] UK Parliament; legislation.gov.uk. Race Relations Act 1968, as enacted; 25 October 1968.

[12] openDemocracy; originally New Law Journal. Geoffrey Bindman, Race relations after 50 years; 8 December 2015.

[13] UK Parliament; legislation.gov.uk. Race Relations Act 1976, as enacted; 22 November 1976.

[14] Hansard, UK Parliament. Race Relations Bill, House of Commons second reading; 4 March 1976.

[15] Hansard, UK Parliament. Race Relations Bill, House of Lords debate; 5 October 1976.

Sources checked on 23 October 2026.