Introduction

The analysis of local politics and struggles for racial equality which makes up this paper has been developed on the basis of our involvement in local politics. The raw data of our political experience have been accumulated through our participation in and contact with local organisations (e.g. Community Relations Councils, anti-racist groups and the Labour Party), our contact with local officers and politicians, including our roles as members of formal local committees, and our involvement in local campaigns. Our research has been carried out in Liverpool and Wolverhampton over a six-year period, although our involvement in local politics in both areas dates back considerably beyond this. More specifically, our work has included campaigns to secure and implement an equal opportunity policy with Liverpool City Council and to alter racist housing allocations and management structures in the Council and major local Housing Associations; in Wolverhampton it has included race-related political interventions in the fields of education and youth provision.

In making sense of our political experience we have worked within and at times consciously outside a number of traditions and positions within the social sciences. A brief acknowledgement of these may serve to locate the analysis which follows. The first of these concerns the relationship between research and politics.