London - Football hooliganism and racism are largely caused by English people with a distorted view of their own nationality, the British Home Secretary, Mr Jack Straw, said yesterday.
He called for an effort to rid England of "the baggage of empire" and redefine what it means to be English, in an attempt to address the hostility towards foreigners which seemed not to be shared by the Scots, Welsh or Irish.
Speaking on GMTV's Sunday Programme, Mr Straw said that almost every public institution was infected by the "institutional racism" detected in the Metropolitan Police by the Macpherson Report on the death of Stephen Lawrence.