In England, Birmingham has one of the largest Jamaican communities outside London. The recent rioting there between West Indians and Pakistanis reveals that relationships between the two groups are at an all-time low.

During the riots, shops were attacked, cars set on fire and hundreds of police in riot gear were confronted with bricks and bottles. Four people were stabbed, including a 23-year-old black man, who later died in hospital.

Political fragmentation, poverty and economic marginalisation of minorities will lead to more riots like the ones that we have seen in Birmingham, England.

A police officer was shot in the leg with a ball-bearing gun, one of 12 gunshot incidents. It may seem mild compared to similar incidents in Jamaica, but it is shocking stuff for Britain. Yet there has been relatively little comment in the British press. White journalists do not seem to know what to make of it.

The trigger for the rioting was the alleged rape of a young Jamaican girl by a Pakistani shopkeeper. The story was that three young girls had been caught shop lifting in a Pakistani-owned store selling black beauty products.

The owner then, allegedly, locked them in a cupboard and rung up his friends. Then, allegedly, he and his friends gang-raped one girl who was only fourteen. The rumour circulated by word-of-mouth, via the internet and on pirate radio. There were peaceful demonstrations by black people outside the shop for a week.

Then the rioting erupted. The talk-show host Warren G, who aired the allegation on his radio programme and then took part in the demonstration, said, "I demonstrated because I firmly believe that something happened. I have no proof and no facts, but I believe there are witnesses out there.

They know who they are." Apparently, the three girls concerned are illegal immigrants from Jamaica who feared that they might be deported. This, it is believed, is why they did not go to the police. Maxie Hayles, a prominent black community leader in Birmingham said: "Ninety-nine-and-three-quarter per cent of the Afro-Caribbean community believes it took place and that is why passions are running so high. We believe that the person involved has been traumatised and we are told it is not the first time that it has happened."

Whatever the truth of the story, the fact that it could so easily trigger rioting points to underlying tensions. Birmingham has always had a solid and cohesive black community, which historically was largely West Indian.

But they faced unyielding institutional white racism. Twenty years after black MPs were elected in London; there are still none in Birmingham, the second largest West Indian community in the country.

There is similar under-representation in other institutions. In the meantime, the Pakistani community has moved into what were black areas of Birmingham. There are Pakistani-owned bookshops, cash-and-carry groceries and jewellery stores. Above all, Pakistanis have moved into sectors which were traditionally dominated by black businesses, selling Afro-Caribbean foodstuffs and black hair care products.

And an Asian, Khalid Mahmood, became a Birmingham MP in 2001. Consequently black people in Birmingham feel angry and marginalised. Maxie Hayles again: "Afro-Caribbean people have been spending money in Asian shops for many years now, but they do not give them enough respect. They do not employ black people in their shops and it is about the way they treat their customers. The way they look at them."

Nationally, ethnic minority communities are more fragmented than ever. The fragmentation was more understandable in the 1950s and 1960s when the different communities had fairly recently arrived in Britain from very different parts of the world and were divided by language.

But it is alarming that third generation black and Asian youths, who speak the same language and live a few streets from each other, should be such bitter enemies. I became politically active in the 1980s when the American civil rights activism and the Black Power movement were a big influence.

In that era Afro-Caribbean and Asian activists worked closely together. Then politically conscious members of the Asian community were happy to describe themselves as 'black'. But over time the Asian community began to insist on distancing itself from Afro Caribbean people and rejected the term 'black'.

Now Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs are all asserting their separate political identities, and distancing themselves from each other. I am all for people being proud of their cultural identity. But I do not believe in allowing white people to play divide-and-rule, the oldest game in the colonial box of tricks.

So I believe that people of colour in Britain should unite politically because the issues we have in common are more important than the issues that divide us. Unless we do come together, increasing political fragmentation combined with poverty and economic marginalisation will lead to more riots like the ones that we have seen in Birmingham.

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