The publication of the annual stop and search statistics in July 2004 brought police relationships with minority ethnic communities to the forefront of political debate in the United Kingdom once more. The figures, which revealed a dramatic 36 percent increase in the numbers of Asians that were stopped or searched by police during the previous twelve months, brought condemnation from Muslim community leaders, who claimed that the rise was evidence of police “Islamophobia.” While these allegations generated headlines in national newspapers, the statistic that went relatively uncommented upon was the 38 percent increase in those subjected to stop and search procedures from a black background. Equally important, the data showed that the black population was more likely to be stopped and searched than any other ethnic group.

Whatever the causes of the disproportionality evident in the stop and search statistics, it was clear that, five years after the publication of the Macpherson Report in 1999, the relationship between the police and the African Caribbean population was still in an unhealthy state. Yet, while this relationship has been the subject of much academic analysis since the Brixton disorders of 1981, relatively little has been written on its development during the 1950s and 1960s, the decades that witnessed large-scale migration from the Caribbean to the United Kingdom. A significant number of these migrants settled in London and in many cases came into frequent contact with Metropolitan Police officers. It is the growth of mutual suspicion and hostility between these two groups in the immediate postwar decades that is the focus of James Whitfield's excellent and important book Unhappy Dialogue. As the author argues, it is only by gaining a clear historical perspective on the development of this difficult relationship that we can fully understand the contemporary situation.

Whitfield, himself an ex-inspector in the Metropolitan Police Service (Met), begins his work by assessing the social impact that immigrants from the West Indies had upon England's capital city. He contends that while the host population was initially unconcerned by the presence of this new black population, this indifference quickly turned to resentment and hostility. Yet the recipients of this racist harassment received little support either from politicians, who seemingly did not comprehend the challenges posed by immigration, or the Met, an organization riddled with prejudiced officers who were prone to stereotyping black males as disorderly and inherently criminogenic. Views from all “sides” are presented by Whitfield, who is careful to point out that, while there was evidence of both individual and institutional racism in the Met from the early 1950s, there was also suspicion and mistrust of the police among the West Indian population, many of whom had their views colored by the authoritarian policing that they had previously experienced in the Caribbean.

While the book is very good at assessing the implications of broader social and political factors, it excels in its analysis of the Met's own institutional subcultures. The author outlines a number of internal issues that affected the Met's policies toward the growing black population, including ineffective leadership from senior officers who refused to concede that the Met had played a significant part in the deterioration of relations with black communities. Instead, these officers considered the Met to be “good” at race relations and blamed the immigrant population for any problems that occurred between them.

This prejudiced view of West Indian communities, coupled with an inability to accept criticism from anyone outside of the organization, epitomized the Met's conservative and insular nature. Compounding this reluctance to change its ways was the Met's own view of itself as a “breed apart” from other police forces and yet undervalued by an ungrateful public. Its own unique status of being the only force that was not open to scrutiny from a police authority (the Met's policies and practices were open to assessment solely by the Home Secretary until the establishment of the Metropolitan Police Authority in 2000) merely exacerbated the problems. Whitfield is especially adept at assessing how these factors, coupled with an overarching “cop culture” that prioritized “action policing” over so-called social work policing activities, combined to marginalize community and race relations issues within the Met. These “woolly” aspects of policing were seen as “passing fads” and wasteful distractions from “real police work.”

Exemplifying the Met's disregard of the importance of community relations was, argues Whitfield, the lack of development of any meaningful training in that area. The author illustrates how training was focused upon “nuts and bolts” aspects of policing, such as police powers and legislative developments, and if an element of community and race relations was included it was usually brief, tokenistic, and greeted with contempt, and sometimes open hostility, from those attending the training. With the absence of any attempt to address existing prejudice within the Met, the racism experienced by the very small numbers of black officers, so vividly illustrated in several of the chapters here, was allowed to develop unhindered. The lack of recruitment of significant numbers of black officers during the two decades examined in Unhappy Dialogue and the reasons behind it are also comprehensively covered by Whitfield.

If there is a weakness in Unhappy Dialogue it is its implicit belief that community and race relations training can make a significant difference to the way that the Met polices the black population, which contrasts somewhat with the author's conclusion that it is only by fundamentally addressing all of the negative aspects of the Met's own subcultures that it can truly change for the better. Also, perhaps inevitably, there is also an element of repetition in the book. Despite these minor criticisms, Unhappy Dialogue is a perceptive, intelligently written, and often illuminating account that is a worthy addition to what has often been an emotive and bitter debate.