As the last three chapters have emphasised, CCETSW's initiative came up against significant barriers within the social work profession: antidiscriminatory policy was not fully implemented or supported in any real sense; dominant agency practices and norms operated in a range of institutionally racist ways; there was a lack of adequate service provision for the black community and under-representation of black staff; practice teachers were generally unwilling or unable to implement anti-racist practice; there was a professional culture within which students raising anti-racist concerns – and black students in particular – were dismissed or even racially abused. In the early years of its operation, CCETSW's policy faced significant internal hurdles. But the anti-racist initiative also came under increasing scrutiny and met hostility from a range of groups outside of the academy and CCETSW's core policy group. Opposition came from the media, government (both national and local) and from inside the profession itself. The anti-racist initiative was increasingly dismissed as a Left-wing, politically correct dogma with no place in social work education, training and practice. By 1992/93 there was an all out backlash against CCETSW and Paper 30. This chapter deals with these events.

As social work education and training attempted to address the issue of structural and institutional oppression in society, it found itself at the forefront of a political debate about the nature of Britain, racism, social welfare and ‘political correctness’ (PC). In 1992, Virginia Bottomley, the then Health Minister, took CCETSW to task for too great an emphasis on anti-discrimination in qualifying training, and this set the tone for a series of attacks on CCETSW. Things came to a head in August 1993 when several articles attacking CCETSW appeared in the national press. As Jones (1993) states:

These articles led to intervention by both politicians and social work practitioners. There were mixed responses in the letters page of The Observer (8 August 1993) to the debate.