A few years ago, I was in Britain on a nationwide speaking tour sponsored by Amnesty International. I had arrived in London only a few hours earlier and was riding on a subway train from the airport.

A mild-mannered Asian man was in my subway car preaching a Bible sermon. Suddenly, a white man in his 20s leaped toward the man and began to shove and hit him. "Shut the f---up!" he told him. "Shut up, you bloody Paki! Go back where you came from!"

The Asian man, visibly shaken, responded, "Bless you brother, bless you." "Shut up! I'm not your brother!" the white man yelled back.

The passengers, many of whom were black or Asian, watched silently. The white man was eventually convinced by a friend to leave the Asian man alone.

Instead of seeing the recent disturbances as part of a societal problem, Prime Minister Tony Blair has characterized the riots and clashes with police as "simple thuggery." Home Secretary David Blunkett, apparently unwilling to view the riots as part of a national crisis, said that "whatever the provocation from outside the area, it is overwhelmingly local people who have damaged their own community and its future."

But community organizations identify the British National Party and other neo-fascist groups as the agitators. The party, which runs candidates for parliament and other elective offices, has called for preserving a white Britain and a halt to nonwhite immigration.

Racism has been a long-standing problem in the country. Twenty years ago, Britain witnessed urban uprisings in black communities in response to police brutality and racial violence. In 1993, a black teen-ager named Stephen Lawrence was murdered by a gang of white youths in London. A botched police investigation of the murder -- and a failure to bring Lawrence's killers to justice -- resulted in a massive public outcry throughout the country.

There have been several prominent instances of hate-crime activity in Britain in recent years.

In April 1999, two bombings rocked communities of color in London. A bomb exploded in the crowded market section of Brixton, a multiracial community in South London. Thirty-nine people were injured, including a 23-month-old boy who had a 4-inch nail embedded in his skull.

The following week, another bomb exploded, this time in a busy section of a Bangladeshi neighborhood in London. Six people were injured in that blast. A neo-Nazi group called Combat 18 claimed responsibility for both incidents.

Combat 18, which is affiliated with a British National Party offshoot called the British National Front, was linked to a plot to send letter bombs to British athletes involved in interracial relationships. A recent inquiry into deteriorating race relations seems to confirm that the government has allowed racial problems to fester.

An 11-member panel -- commissioned by the Bradford city council and chaired by Sir Herman Ouseley, former head of Britain's Commission for Racial Equality-- blamed political leaders and the establishment for maintaining a "status quo of control and segregation through fear, ignorance and threats."

The report, released July 12, examined underlying problems, including discrimination against Asians, high youth unemployment, a struggling local economy, poverty and white middle-class flight from the city.

The report decries the system of "virtual apartheid" in secondary schools and condemns the prevalence of "Islamaphobia" -- an increased British intolerance of Muslims.

"If you look at the white Christian society in the United Kingdom, taking the north of England as an example, there's very little mutual understanding or desire to understand each other's beliefs," said Peter Clarke, professor of the history and sociology of religion at Kings College in London.

Now is the time for Britain's leaders to stop the cycle of hatred and violence in their country that threatens to tear the nation apart.

Love is a public interest scholar at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He contributed to the book "States of Confinement: Policing, Detention and Prisons" (St. Martin's Press, 2000). He can be reached via e-mail at pmproj@progressive.org.

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