The 1965 British Race Relations Act was a whimper of a law that arrived with a bang. By contemporary standards it was a narrow and weakly enforced attempt to ban racism. Passage of this act, however, was neither a banal event nor a foregone conclusion. Regulating behavior based on personal preferences or aversions was long and strongly opposed by many of the political elite. Britain's first Race Relations Act was therefore a significant philosophical departure from reigning British public policy. Moreover, action perceived to favor minorities – who at the time were caught in a maelstrom of anti-immigrant electoral sentiment – was not politically popular. Establishing antiracist provisions was thus a risky step for a Labour government with a thin two-seat majority.

The 1965 act had long-term implications for the future of British race institutions, laying the foundations for many present-day British race policies. As the following chapters suggest, the decision taken in 1965 to establish an administrative model (backed by the civil law) to punish access racism was critical to British institutional development and marked a significant departure from the criminal law model later selected in France. Britain's administrative and civil law approach has resulted in significantly higher numbers of complaints, settlements, and verdicts in cases of discrimination than France's criminal law structures. Yet, the content of British institutions was by no means predetermined.