• Kick It Out founder feels sacking will not be barrier in future
• Ince lost his job because of poor results not colour, says PFA

The founder of football's equality and inclusion campaign Kick It Out, Lord Herman Ouseley, today said that Paul Ince's dismissal from Blackburn should not be an obstacle to another black British manager being employed in the Premier League.

"It shouldn't spell another lengthy period where we see no British black managers at the top level," said Ouseley, the first black head of the Commission for Racial Equality. "Football management is a volatile environment, nowhere more so than the Premier League. Paul Ince himself is capable of plying his trade there or else he wouldn't have been given the job in the first place."

The Guyana-born peer, who founded Kick It Out in 1997, believes Ince, hardened by the experiences of his playing days, is strong enough to survive this setback: "You need thick skin and a bit of luck to succeed. Paul is very thick-skinned because he's encountered discrimination in his playing career, but luck wasn't on his side during his time at Blackburn."

Ince was the first black British manager in the Premier League and the first black manager of any nationality hired by a team in the top flight. Jean Tigana, the only previous black manager, was hired by Fulham when they were still in the then Football League first division, from where the Frenchman won promotion to the Premier League — and the first division title — in his first season and consolidated the club's top-flight status before being fired in 2003.

Bobby Barnes of the Professional Footballers' Association, who works closely with Kick It Out, said Ince was fired because of Blackburn's poor results and nothing else: "Paul Ince hasn't been dismissed because of his colour, because he knows more than anyone that the football world is a results business. Sadly, the modern game doesn't allow a great deal of time for Premier League managers anymore."

Barnes, an assistant chief executive of the PFA, hopes that Ince will not have to wait as long as John Barnes for another management opportunity. Barnes lost his job as head coach at Celtic in February 2000 and did not take another managerial position until September of this year, when he was appointed manager of the Jamaican national team.

"It was encouraging that he [Ince] was given the chance in the first place. What mustn't happen now is a John Barnes- style scenario, where, as a black manager, he couldn't get back into the game after a high-profile sacking at Celtic."

Bobby Barnes, offering the former Manchester United, Liverpool and Internazionale midfielder the backing of the PFA, predicted Ince would make a return to the game: "I know Paul and he's a resilient character. He needs to pick himself up, dust himself down. We'll ensure we do what we can to help him quickly get back. This decision doesn't mean he's become a bad manager overnight.

"To be fair to Paul, on-field factors went against him. He lost his two best players [Brad Friedel and David Bentley] and his best striker, Roque Santa Cruz, has been on the sidelines."

I offer my unequivocal support of the analyses of Doreen Lawrence, Herman Ouseley and Ali Dizaei (Comment, 24 February). Institutional racism is alive and thriving, not only in the police service but throughout civil society. Like Hugh Muir, I also believe there have been some small victories, but it is clear we have squandered the opportunity that the Macpherson report and the subsequent Race Relations Amendment Act offered to address this issue properly.

Many members of black and Asian diaspora communities and professional organisations, like ours, view with growing alarm and disappointment the assertions by Trevor Phillips, chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, that institutional racism is an outmoded phrase, no longer relevant in the current climate. We believe he has rushed to judgment in this assertion. The police service is by no means an isolated example of underrepresentation - look at education, the civil service, local government, the political parties. The difference is that these areas of civil society are not under the same levels of scrutiny.

Both the Business in the Community report Race to the Top and the imminent Runnymede Trust report Stephen Lawrence 10 Years On support our own evidence, and overwhelming anecdotal verification, that the employment position of black and minority-ethnic Britons in the workforce is as bad as ever, and in some cases getting worse. Under Phillips, the Commission on Racial Equality increasingly became a paper tiger, with the exception of some empty threats, making no attempt to use the weight of the law to improve either race relations or the position of black Britons. We see no reason why the EHRC will behave differently.

We believe that Mr Phillips's assertions are wrong and precipitate in their timing, and believe that his public positions on race relations in Britain are so out of step with the day-to-day experiences of our community members as to place his credibility at risk. It is becoming difficult to regard him as having the authority, irrespective of his job title, to adjudicate on these matters or to represent the black British experience. If the CRE and now EHRC were doing its job, and making the tough but necessary decisions, we might now be further advanced down the road to a more equitable society.
Robin Landman
Chief executive, Network for Black Professionals

Your otherwise excellent coverage of continuing racism 10 years after the murder of Steven Lawrence overlooked rural racism. The minority population is growing faster than the UK population as a whole. However, because of their geographical isolation, the policy indifference of government, police, local and health authorities, and lack of political voice, minorities in rural areas are subject to higher levels of racism than their counterparts in urban areas.
Professor Gary Craig
University of Hull

• Veteran campaigner says there is no will for reform
• Mixed-race candidate was not shortlisted for top job

Herman Ouseley has threatened to quit the Football Association council over what he termed the "institutional exclusion" of black and minority-ethnic figures from the game's decision-making bodies.

Lord Ouseley, former chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, was appalled at the failure of a nominations committee of senior FA figures to consider Heather Rabbatts as a serious candidate for the chief executive's position filled last week. The Jamaica-born Rabbatts, who is of mixed race, was on a list of 12 applicants but was not accorded even a preliminary interview after failing to make the cut from 12 to six.

"They're white and male at the top of the pyramid but there are lots of people from all backgrounds playing football," Ouseley said at a function launching the Football Foundation's diversity strategy this week. "It's about how we get through the mechanism and having enough people rise up through the institutions. I nearly resigned from the council last week. In terms of where we make the shift and get senior management and board to recognise it, we're talking about institutional exclusion. If they don't break the mould nothing will change."

Ouseley had to be talked out of resigning from the Race Equality Advisory Group, an FA sub-committee, by his fellow members, who have elected him to the FA council. The group was set up in the wake of the Burns report, a review of the FA that noted the long-overdue requirement for the contribution of black and minority-ethnic communities to the game to be ­recognised. Several other structural reforms recommended by Terry Burns, which led to the appointment of David Triesman as the FA's first independent chairman, have since been abandoned.

"The decisions at the top level are taken by those who are powerful so there is no will for reform," said Ouseley. "I think there are big vested interests who'd resist change on the FA board. For them it is about maintaining the status quo."

Ouseley is understood to have made plain his frustrations to Lord Triesman but is by no means an isolated voice in expressing his frustrations about opportunities missed, of which Rabbatts, who declined to comment, appears to have become the latest victim. The broadcaster Garth Crooks and the former Chelsea and Celtic player Paul Elliott, who are special advisers on sports issues to the Commission for Equality and Human Rights, are said by close associates also to have been dismayed at the development.

The executive deputy chairman of Millwall, Rabbatts had impressed headhunters with a CV that includes a non-executive directorship of the Bank of England and having been a governor of the BBC. Her broadcast experience – something previously considered crucial at Soho Square with the appointment as chief executive of the former BBC and ITV head of sport, Brian Barwick, in 2004 – extended to her having been a senior Channel 4 executive.

Of the five-man nominations committee – Phil Gartside and Sir Dave Richards from the professional game, Barry Bright and Roger Burden from the amateur game, as well as Triesman – Richards was her strongest advocate. But she could not muster sufficient support from the ­others on the committee, none of whom was available for comment last night after they attended a board meeting at Soho Square except for Burden, who refused to do so.

"There was a robust recruitment and selection process for the new chief executive and the best candidate got the job," said an FA statement. "The FA is committed to achieving national standards of equality and Lord Ouseley remains a ­massive influence as chairman of the FA Race Equality Advisory Group."

Had she reached the last six in the process, Rabbatts would have been the only individual apart from the former Arsenal chief executive, Keith Edelman, with football experience. The position was ultimately filled by the 50-year-old former civil servant Ian Watmore, whose appointment has been criticised given his links to Triesman, with whom he worked as permanent secretary to the department for innovation, universities and skills.

Slater on the outside

Barbara Slater's influence as the BBC's first female head of sport might not be as strong as expected after it emerged she had no input in the recent revamp of its late-night news-and-features show, Inside Sport. Although Amanda Farnsworth, a close associate of Slater's predecessor, Roger Mosey, left the show to be replaced as editor by Alastair McIntyre, it is said that the incoming head of sport was not asked for her opinion on those moves despite it being her department's flagship sports-news programme. Farnsworth will be unlamented when the new series begins in April but McIntyre has only a single shot at it. He will be replaced by Jo McCusker for its following series but Slater had no say in that decision either.

Blow for Blatter plan

Fifa's increasingly ludicrous attempts to campaign for the introduction of a 6+5 rule, dictating that clubs' starting line-ups must include six locally qualified players, went a step further yesterday with the release of an academic report it had paid for. It took less than two hours for a European Commission spokesman to dismiss the plan as "direct discrimination". The report had even outlined a loophole for players to get round the rules: "The 6+5 rule merely considers the entitlement to play for the national team concerned." That means the likes of Mikel Arteta and Manuel Almunia, pictured, Spain-born players who have never represented their country, would be counted among the six and not the five. This dissuades such players to accept international caps from their native countries because they would become disqualified from representing their adopted nation. Sepp Blatter has yet to explain how that will improve international football.

Duo dominate agent fees

Rotherham United and Luton Town accounted for more than half of their entire division's payments to agents in the six months from July to December last year. The two clubs became debt-free companies after emerging from administration last year and their combined £79,500 payments to agents compared with a £158,500 total for League Two. They were by far the most generous, completing only 60 deals between them of 530 in total. On average, agents earned £168 per transaction from other League Two clubs - but at these two that rose to £1,325. They might both be under new management but could the profligacy of the past, which led to both suffering large points deductions, be repeated?
matt.scott@guardian.co.uk

• Herman Ouseley and Garth Crooks attack bid's lack of diversity
• 'England 2018 has to be careful it doesn't alienate people'

England 2018 will today attend a crisis meeting with the game's leading black and minority-ethnic figures after the World Cup bid came under attack last night for a lack of awareness on ­diversity issues.

The accidental invitation of a British National Party councillor to the launch of the World Cup bid campaign on ­Monday has proved hugely damaging to ­internal relations in the game. Andy Anson, the bid's chief executive, will be warned three days into the formal 2018 campaign that some feel strongly enough to destabilise it with direct action towards the Fifa executive committee members who will award the right to host the tournament.

"England 2018 has to be careful it doesn't alienate people because if ­individuals feel offended by its associations with undesirables they could make life difficult for the bid by making their views known to important people whose ­decision it will be. I know people who are up for that," said Herman Ouseley, the peer who is chairman of football's anti-racist movement, Kick It Out. "But ­people really do want the bid to succeed on the right basis. We want to see how it will be more ­inclusive, how there will be more BME [black and minority ethnic] representation, more women and a broader base contributing to the bid."

Valerie Amos, who is also a black peer, serves on the bid board, with John Barnes and Hope Powell, the England women's team coach, acting as vice-presidents. But Lord Ouseley warned that the bid campaign is in danger of "gross complacency" if it believes that, in appointing them, its responsibilities to BME communities have been fulfilled. He said: "Therein lies the problem. You then feel you don't have to go further and the reality is it's tokenism."

Although England 2018 did send an invitation to Ouseley for the launch event Piara Powar, his chief executive at Kick It Out, was not invited. The internationally connected Kick It Out would be a hugely valuable asset for the bid.

There is also dismay that, although ­Baroness Amos attended Monday's launch, Barnes and Powell were otherwise engaged and everyone who addressed the audience was white and male. According to Garth Crooks, the BBC broadcaster and former footballer who acts as an adviser to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, this compounded the mistake over the BNP councillor's invitation.

"What I find so desperately sad is that whatever your view about the BNP being there, there is a bigger view. If it had been a really diverse event, if there had been a selection of BME groups there, we could have got over this," said Crooks, noting that the Professional Footballers' ­Association chairman, Chris Powell, and deputy chief executive, Bobby Barnes, are black. "We've spent 20 years trying to drive the BNP out of football and here they are getting an invitation to the launch of our World Cup bid. I see progress in the modern game but the FA doesn't seem to have caught up with modern thinking and what people in the game and society expect. They can talk about diversity but where is it?"

There will be an emphasis today that London's successful bid to host the 2012 Olympics stressed its multicultural qualities and that it is an important message to convey when campaigning to a governing body as diverse as Fifa. England 2018 did have 350 schoolchildren from Brent, the local authority around the national stadium at Wembley, who came from a variety of backgrounds, but much work clearly needs to be done.

It is understood that England 2018 has been planning further events around the country, at which several black footballers will be involved. It is on these initiatives that Ouseley, Crooks and their colleagues will seek clarification today.

Black and minority ethnicities cannot break through 'white executive' network to get top jobs, says Lord Ouseley
• Datablog: get the data behind this story

Research has revealed that the top tier of local government in Britain is overwhelmingly white – and that black and minority ethnic people have missed out on top jobs in the 400 town halls across the UK.

Staff in the highest paid council posts are mostly white men. Only a handful of black and minority ethnic (BME) people feature in key positions, even in local authorities covering areas with a large BME population.

Figures released to The-Latest.com, a citizen journalism news website, using freedom of information requests, show that many authorities employ predominately white staff as top decision makers, the posts that usually have the biggest salaries.

Of London's 33 local authorities, including the City and the Greater London Authority, only Lambeth has an African-Caribbean or Asian chief executive. Yet the capital has a population that is 31% BME. The chief executives of Newham and Brent are both white. An Asian woman is the sole BME representative on Brent's nine-strong corporate management team. The populations of the two London boroughs are mostly BME.

The survey reveals that some councils come close to reflecting their ethnic minority population in their workforce. But the authorities fare far worse when forced to reveal the number in top jobs.

As part of a three-month investigation, town halls in Manchester, Birmingham, Bradford, Leeds, Nottingham, Leicester, Liverpool and Bristol were studied, none of which had a BME chief executive, as well as councils in London with a large BME population, including Boris Johnson's City Hall.

Britain's former race equality boss, Lord Ouseley, said he deplored the dire lack of black or minority ethnic bosses in town halls. Ouseley made history as Britain's first black chief executive of a big unitary authority when he took control of staff at the Inner London Education Authority in the late 1980s. He left his job as boss of Lambeth council to become chair of the Commission for Racial Equality in 1993.

Ouseley said: "One can look back to 20 years ago and say that there were black council leaders and local government executives, whereas today there are very few. In some town halls it's an all-white structure at the top." He added:

"It's inexplicable why talented black and minority ethnic people are no longer in key decision-making positions."

In 2001 Greg Dyke, then director-general of the BBC, described it as being "hideously white" because 98% of its management was white.

Race equality campaigners blame what they claim are institutionally racist local authority processes – such as selection procedures – that have worked against well-qualified BME candidates applying for top jobs at town halls.

Ouseley said: "The system benefits white executives who are very good at using networking processes that get their faces seen by the right people with the power to recruit them to plum jobs in local government." A new equality law, created by Labour, came into force this month., which many hoped would improve things at town halls. But Ouseley, who fought to make it tougher, said it was toothless and "not worth the paper it is written on".

London's only black chief executive is Derrick Anderson who, according to the GMB union, earns £250,000 a year running Lambeth council. He said: "I have a beef where there is a local authority whose staff does not reflect its diverse community and therefore cannot deliver a credible and relevant service."

Anderson said that, after almost 30 years in local government, "where you have black leadership, then getting the authority to reflect its racial diversity is much easier."

Lambeth, whose BME population is 38%, has a staff that is majority African-Caribbean and Asian. But the political leader and his deputy are white.

Anderson explained why there was a paucity of black chief executives: "Wherever there are talented black executives in local authorities they tend to get headhunted by the civil service and industry. Joe Montgomery [director general of regions and communities] is an example of that."

Ealing's Asian chief executive Darra Singh left the job he held for four years to become the boss of Jobcentre Plus in August last year, a post that put him on the same grade as a civil service permanent secretary and in charge of 74,000 staff. Before working at Ealing, he was chief executive of Luton borough council.

Transport for London's former director of equalities says he applied for six or seven chief executive posts with unitary authorities, including some in London, without success. Sushel Ohri, criticised the racially biased way "the headhunters do their job".

Groundbreaking CEOs

Errol Ray Milton Keynes council 1970s

Herman Ouseley Inner London Education Authority late-80s, Lambeth council 1989

Imtiaz Farookhi Leicester district councils, 1991-96

Gurbux Singh Haringey council for 11 years from 1989, then chairman of Commission for Racial Equality

Heather Rabbatts Merton council early 90s, Lambeth 1995

Manny Lewis Watford council

Owen Williams Calderdale council

Dorian Leatham Hillingdon until 2006. Now executive director of regeneration at Lambeth

What's it like being a black footballer in Britain today? As former England captain John Terry is cleared of racially abusing a fellow professional, we ask the players who know

It is 30 years since Paul Canoville became the first black footballer to play for Chelsea. When the team-sheet was announced, with his name as substitute, the National Front held a meeting in a local pub to discuss the outrage. As Canoville warmed up, Chelsea supporters screamed, "Sit down, you black cunt", "You fucking wog''. Then they started to chant: "We don't want the nigger, we don't want the nigger, la la la la."

The abuse continued unabated for the next two years. That was when Herman Ouseley, then running the Ethnic Minorities Unit at the Greater London Council, decided something had to be done. In 1984, Ouseley, now Lord Ouseley, went to see Chelsea chairman Ken Bates, who couldn't see there was an issue. "I said, 'We need to look at what we can do to tackle this problem properly,'" Ouseley says. "He said they didn't have a problem, and that the security people will see me off the site. And some big goons in their anoraks saw me off the premises."

Most clubs turned a blind eye to racism back then. It was easier to pretend it wasn't happening. Match Of The Day didn't highlight it and players didn't discuss it, let alone complain. This was the era of Love Thy Neighbour and Alf Garnett, when racist characters were the heroes of sitcoms. Football merely reflected common values.

How times have changed. Six of Chelsea's starting 11 who won the European Champions League in May were black. Ouseley's pressure group, Kick It Out, has been hugely effective, and Bates has gone on to become a vocal campaigner against racism. Now, football clubs have a zero-tolerance policy on racism, and 25% of premiership players are black or from ethnic minorities.

Yet last season, barely a week went by without a controversy. Luis Suarez abused Patrice Evra on the pitch. Two people were convicted after racist tweets. Micah Richards closed down his Twitter account after being abused. And, this week, Chelsea and England's John Terry was in court charged with a racially aggravated public order offence.

I meet Ouseley in the House of Lords. He has done more than anybody in this country to fight football racism. Ouseley, who moved to London from Guyana at the age of 11, is a glass-half-full man. It was during another intimidating occasion at Chelsea that he became convinced football fans would overcome their prejudice. The team was playing Ron Atkinson's West Bromwich Albion, the first British side to field three black regulars. "From the moment West Brom stepped on to the pitch, they got the bananas and the treatment, because it was the team of Cyrille Regis, Laurie Cunningham, Brendon Batson," Ouseley says. "The booing was incessant, because the three black players were touching the ball a lot. Boo. Ball. Boo. Ball. Boo. Twenty minutes into the game, Laurie Cunningham got the ball, skated through the Chelsea defence, banged it in the back of the net and they got even worse." Ouseley had gone to the game to watch the black trio, nicknamed the Three Degrees, after the soul group. "Twenty minutes later, Laurie Cunningham picked the ball up, zoomed through their defence and banged it in the net again. I'm in with the Chelsea fans and everybody's booing, and one of the big guys in front of me turns to the other and says, 'Mind you, the nigger is fucking good, isn't he?' That gave me a lift, because what it said to me was that these guys hated black people and wanted to destroy them, but at least the skill of a black player had risen above that. From that moment I felt a bit more comfortable."

Occasionally, English football is given a jolting reminder that it hasn't made quite as much progress as it likes to think. Never more so than in 2004, when Ron Atkinson, working as a commentator but not realising his microphone was on, said of Chelsea defender Marcel Desailly, "He's what is known in some schools as a fucking lazy thick nigger." If that was what Atkinson, the first great champion of black English players, really thought, what hope was there for football? Eight years on, I ask Atkinson if he will be interviewed for this feature on racism in football. "No, I think it's all a load of crap," he says. "What I want to know is why journalists never ask me about the trophies I won."

Sol Campbell orders a coffee at his local Italian in west London. We meet a few weeks after he has announced his retirement, and he admits his new life is taking some adjusting to. Campbell, one of four black men to captain England, is a complex character. He was one of the greatest defenders of his era, and one of the most taunted.

Campbell says his problems at Tottenham began early and went way beyond the fans. A serious and disciplined young man, he signed youth forms at 15, in 1989, and made his debut three years later. He was still only 18, but he believes he should have been selected earlier. "I could have started playing professional at 16, 17 quite easily. For my position, I was far better than a lot of people around me. All the people in front of me had was experience but, talent-wise, I easily could get in."

Does he think his colour held him back? "I don't know." His pitch rises. "I dunno. I was banging my head against the wall. Maybe they weren't ready for someone to come on the scene and turn football on its head in a proper way."

What does he mean? "Maybe they were just used to white faces doing certain things and black faces doing another thing in football. They weren't ready for a black guy doing it ultra proper, and standing up for himself, and saying, 'This is me and I'm coming through.'"

What did the club expect black players to be like? "Just having a laugh, skillful, drinking, not great attitude. Not just at Spurs, at other clubs, too, that's what they expected." And he was the opposite? "Yes, attitude-wise."

Campbell says black players were treated differently on all levels. "A white guy who's not as good would have been getting paid more. I was getting frustrated at 17/18, and I wanted to leave. My friends around me were getting a decent break, but I wasn't."

When Campbell did eventually leave Spurs for rivals Arsenal, nine years later, he was labelled a "Judas". From then on, Spurs fans abused him mercilessly. Football's great taboo is still homosexuality – the only player who ever came out, Justin Fashanu, killed himself. Chants about Campbell united racism and homophobia in a bitter cocktail (despite the fact that he had a number of high-profile girlfriends at the time and is now married). I tell him of a particularly vile one, with references to hanging, lunacy and HIV. "Sick," he says. Was he aware of it at the time? "No. I don't want to be aware of it," he says tersely.

Campbell says it was tough for him, but worse for others. "You have family and friends. I was strong, but when it starts hurting your family, and when they started getting involved, I said, right, that's enough."

In 2005, Campbell's brother John was jailed for a year after brutally assaulting a fellow student who had suggested Sol was gay. Did Campbell ever consider quitting football? "Yes, or moving and playing somewhere else – Spain or Italy." The irony is that both Spain and Italy now have considerably worse problems with racism than Britain does. This year, Campbell suggested black Britons should not travel to Poland and the Ukraine for the European championships after racist incidents were shown on Panorama.

Has the abuse left a mark? "It's made me sad." Silence. "Empty. I had to go down this road by myself. No authorities wanted to take notice. I had to go up and above the FA, go to the police, and say, 'This has happened to me, I need help.' This is football. It's not war."

Goalkeeper Arthur Wharton became the world's first professional black footballer when he signed for Rotherham in 1889. He played a paltry six games for seven clubs over 16 years. Over the following 70 years, only a handful of black players succeeded in English football.

When I started watching, in the early 1970s, Clyde Best was the only black footballer playing regularly in the first division. He is now a social worker in Bermuda, where he grew up, and looks back on his time at West Ham with love. "It was like being in a big family – we all got on. I bleed claret and blue today."

Everybody adored you, I say. "Well, not quite everybody," he says. "Away from home, I took terrible abuse. At least the players today have four or five guys to huddle up with. I was by myself. But you can't just think of yourself, you've got to think of the players coming after you, so you've got to carry yourself in a certain manner." He considered himself an ambassador, he says. "You knew you had a job to do. You were playing for people of colour, not just in England, but all over the world."

Seventy-five years after Arthur Wharton retired, the second black goalkeeper played in the English football league. Alex Williams made his debut for Manchester City in 1980, and says he was lucky, because City already had a couple of local black lads in the side. Why were black goalkeepers such a rarity? Simple, he says – stereotypes. "Black players had always been associated with being fast and athletic: strikers."

As a goalkeeper, he was more exposed than any of the outfield players. "In those days, there were a lot of racial tensions, and it wasn't as if I could run around the field and get away from taunts." In 1979, Williams played in the FA Youth Cup final against Millwall, a team notorious for its far-right fans. "We played the second leg away at the Old Den, and it was horrendous. It was just black this, N word, throwing bananas and coins."

Williams, who has worked for Manchester City's community programme for the past 23 years, divides the abuse into two types. "At places like Leeds and Millwall, it was the real, deep race-hate kind of stick you got. Then you used to get the humorous kind of stick when you played Liverpool or Everton."

I ask for an example of humorous racism. "I remember playing Everton, and I ran out to the Everton end and a lad climbed on top of the barrier with a programme, and he folded it up into a cross and he lit it, à la Ku Klux Klan." That sounds terrifying, not funny, I say. "Well, yes, it was, but what made it more humorous was that I turned round expecting my fellow players to be running up behind me, cajoling me, telling me to get on with things – but they were all laughing, finding it quite funny." He pauses. "It wasn't funny at the time."

When footballer-turned-commentator Stan Collymore was growing up, he didn't think of himself as black or mixed race. His white English mother and black Barbadian father split up early on, and he was brought up in an all-white area by his mother, alongside three older white half-sisters from her previous marriage. "I had no idea of black heritage, because there was no one there to give it me until I was 20-plus and living in London." He signed for Crystal Palace and discovered a squad divided into racially-defined cliques. "Ian Wright, John Salako, Mark Bright, Andy Gray and Eric Young were in the black clique. It was the first time in my life I'd been around guys talking in slang and patois – stuff that had been passed down – and I was fascinated. On the other side there were players like Alan Pardew, Gareth Southgate, Nigel Martyn and Andy Thorne. I wouldn't say the cliques were purposely on racial grounds, but there were different interests. The black guys were into R&B and hip hop, and their cultural identity was Afro-Caribbean. Your Southgates and Pardews were into cricket and golf. It wasn't so much tension as highly-strung banter."

Collymore was once asked, if there was a black and a white room, which one he would belong to. "I was like, well, they'd have to find me another room. I got the piss taken from all sides. I'd be listening to bands like Prefab Sprout and Scritti Politti and talking with this thick Black Country accent. All the blacks thought I was a white brummie, and the whites thought I was a black brummie."

He is one of very few players to have reported a fellow player to the FA for alleged racism. He was playing for Aston Villa against his former club Liverpool and claimed that Liverpool defender Steve Harkness abused him. "If I'd been called a nigger or a coon once, I wouldn't have done anything, because I'm of the notion that, OK, it's wrong, but we can all do silly things in the heat of the moment. But this was over 10-15 minutes – 'You coon', 'Your mother slept with a coon' – and I just wanted to rip his fucking head off, to be honest."

Harkness has always vehemently denied the allegation, and the FA ruled that it could not act because it was one player's word against the other.

What was it like the next time they played each other? "I was wound up like a top, it's fair to say. I tried to take on-pitch retribution. Not in words." Harkness was carried off injured after a dangerous tackle by Collymore. "It was in the combat of a football match, and it was left at that."

Collymore stresses that on-pitch racism was a rarity, and that in many ways football led the way for the rest of society. The stereotyping of black boys – rubbish at academic work, great at sport – had led to a disproportionate number of black footballers in the English game, but those players had changed attitudes for the better – it was always going to be difficult to sustain prejudices when your sporting heroes were black.

Earlier this year, Collymore was involved in another high-profile race row. In January, Joshua Cryer, a law student at Newcastle university and the captain of the department's football team, sent Collymore offensive tweets, including: "@StanCollymore has anyone ever referred to you as semi pro as in a semi pro coon #neitherwhitenorblack." Collymore reported Cryer to the police and, in March, he was sentenced to 200 hours of community service. In the same month, 21-year-old student Liam Stacey was jailed for tweeting racist comments about Fabrice Muamba after the footballer had a cardiac arrest on the pitch.

Collymore believes this form of abuse is now more prevalent than anything experienced on the pitch or in the stands. Perhaps, he says, we became complacent about racism – been there, challenged it, beaten it. "We thought it was the Nick Griffins, the shaven-headed guy with a swastika who listened to Skrewdriver, who said stuff like this, but it's not. They're from every age and every background, and a lot think the eastern Europeans have come over and nicked their jobs, just like dad said the blacks and Asians did years ago. And in a recession, we know rightwing ideas and principles tend to come to the fore."

It's so much easier for people to hurl abuse, he says, when they think they can hide behind a cloak of anonymity. But Twitter "trolls" are discovering that they are more answerable than they imagined. Does he think jail is the right solution for offenders? "You know what I'd like to see more of? Community orders. I had a letter from Joshua Cryer a few days ago. Very apologetic. He said, 'I realise how stupid it was and the pain it caused to you and your family.' It could just be that, as part of his 200 hours, he's been asked to send a remorseful letter, but it seemed very genuine. I may well contact him."

Back in the House of Lords, in between votes on the welfare reform bill, Herman Ouseley is totting up the various ways in which progress has been made. The very fact that the Suarez and Terry incidents caused such outrage is in itself a measure of this. "The Football Association did something they have never done before with the Suarez incident – investigate it with an amazing degree of thoroughness. If that's the benchmark, that's excellent."

But, Ouseley says, those people who suggest that the work of Kick It Out is complete, and that it's now time to focus primarily on homophobia and sexism, are seriously deluded. He mentions the Equality Standard, initially introduced for local government and now applied to English football clubs. "There are three levels: the preliminary level is where people can say, we've got an equal opportunities policy, we take action against racism, we have black players. So they can develop a basic level of commitment to tackling discrimination. The next level, you've got to do a lot more than tick the boxes. And then, to get to the advanced level, you've got to show a corporate understanding of what racism and exclusion is all about, and it has to be understood and carried through by the management team. There are only two clubs that have hit advanced level: Arsenal and Aston Villa."

Defender Clarke Carlisle, chairman of the Professional Footballers' Association and currently between clubs, is putting the finishing touches to a film he has made about racism in the English game. Yes, he says, compared with many other European countries, we come up smelling of roses, but there's still much to be done – especially at boardroom level. Carlisle, who left school with 10 GCSEs at grade A, was voted Britain's brainiest footballer in 2002. He says he has never experienced racism first-hand, which made it all the more shocking when he spoke to his contemporaries. To ask whether there is a problem with racism in football is too broad a question, he says. "If you are a black footballer, you stand as fair a chance of succeeding as a white player. If you are an Asian player, you don't. And when we're talking about coaching and managerial opportunities, and the structures of football, black and ethnic minorities still lag behind their white counterparts."

There's a simple reason we don't hear about the problems Asian footballers face, he says – there are hardly any. "We had stories of young men with obvious talent being passed over. One father was told by a scout that he was expressly told not to scout Asian players." Why? "Exactly. The stereotypical view is that Asian players a) don't make good footballers, b) aren't interested in football, and c) culturally don't fit with football."

One of the big problems is at the top of the game – in the boardroom and at the FA, he says. "It's only since Heather Rabbatts came on board that there has been an ethnic minority face in an influential, decision-making position at the FA." But the most measurable discrimination, he claims, is in coaching and management. In contrast to the 25% figure for black and ethnic minority players, only three managers are non-white (approximately 3%). In American football, the Rooney Rule was established in 2003, to ensure minority candidates were interviewed for coaching and management jobs, and Carlisle is in favour of introducing a similar rule in the UK. "It's not about appointing the individual," he says. "It's about the application process."

Does he think it will be introduced here? "It's unlikely, because there doesn't seem to be much backing from the clubs or the governing body. When we were at Downing Street recently, for the parliamentary summit on racism in football, it was intimated that the FA has been advised against instituting any Rooney Rule or suchlike on the proviso that we weren't ready for it."

What does "not ready" mean? "Exactly," Carlisle says. "I think we're ready for it. We have a qualified talent pool that's available for interview, especially for coaching roles. The only way I think it may fall down is on experience for managers, because we haven't had many black managers. It's a vicious circle – you can't get a job because you've got no experience, and you can't get experience because you cant get a job."

Although the media and fans are talking about racism in football, Carlisle says that players are not. Or at least not publicly. In a way, the subject is every bit as taboo as it was for the first generation of black players. As the leader of the players' union, he thought people would be queuing up to talk to him about their experience, but found the reality was very different.

"Nobody wants to stick their head above the parapet. One guy, an England international, said he thought it might hinder his chance of taking part in the Euros." Carlisle laughs, hollowly. "Nobody wants to be seen as militant or a trouble-maker when they've got a good career."

Lord Herman Ouseley calls on governing body to be resolute and 'deal with the racial element' of what Terry said

John Terry walked away with an acquittal from Westminster magistrates court on Friday, yet the Football Association could nevertheless charge Terry with a similar offence of racial abuse, for the exact same incident. The FA is to resume its investigation into Terry's use of the words "fucking black cunt" in relation to Anton Ferdinand, which was suspended after the police became involved and Terry was prosecuted.

This toxic affair is in danger of poisoning race relations in the Premier League following many years of anti-racism progress. Several black players, including Fitz Hall and Cameron Jerome, exasperatedly questioned the verdict and on Saturday Rio Ferdinand, Anton's brother, replied "classic" to a tweet describing Ashley Cole, who gave evidence supportive of Terry, as "a choc ice". Garth Crooks, the BBC TV presenter who played for Stoke City and Tottenham Hotspur through the hostile racism that enveloped football in the 1980s, called on the FA to charge Terry.

Lord Herman Ouseley, the veteran anti-racism campaigner, chair of football's Kick It Out organisation, urged the FA to be "resolute", ignore the criminal prosecution completely, and "deal with the racial element" of what Terry said. Otherwise, he warned, black players could lose faith in the football authorities' commitment to combating racism.

"I am worried that this is a defining moment for the FA, to show it is a governing body prepared to keep to a high standard on the racism issue," Ouseley told the Observer. "If this incident, and the racial element of it, is not seen to be dealt with properly, there is the potential for black players to lose confidence in the authorities and withdraw their support for anti-racism campaigns."

The likelihood of an FA charge for the racial element of what Terry said in his confrontation with Ferdinand rests on the distinction between the required degree of evidence to support a criminal conviction – proven beyond reasonable doubt – and an FA guilty decision, proven on the balance of probabilities.

The chief magistrate, Howard Riddle, ruled Terry not guilty of a racially aggravated public order criminal offence because it had not been proven beyond reasonable doubt that Terry said those words as an insult. Terry's case, from the day of Chelsea's match at Queens Park Rangers on 23 October, when his confrontation with Ferdinand took place, toThursday 12 July when his QC, George Carter-Stephenson, concluded his defence, was consistent. He claimed he believed Ferdinand had accused him on the pitch of using those words as an insult, and Terry maintained he was repeating them only to deny he had said them.

Of that defence, Riddle expressed scepticism in his 13-page written judgment: "Mr Terry's explanation is, certainly under the cold light of forensic examination, unlikely." About Terry's case that he repeated the words back to deny having said them, Riddle went on: "It is not the most obvious response. It is sandwiched between other undoubted insults."

Yet Riddle explained that the evidence left sufficient doubt; the film around what Terry said was obscured, the evidence of lip readers inconclusive and there were no independent witnesses who heard what Terry said.

In December, according to the FA's procedures, a three-man panel found Liverpool's Luis Suárez guilty of abusing Manchester United's Patrice Evra with a racial element, although there was no film or recording at all of the words spoken and no independent witnesses who heard them. The panel decided Evra had been consistent in maintaining that Suárez had referred to his colour in the two players' heated argument during the match at Anfield on 15 October and found Suárez's account "incredible". Suárez was banned for eight matches and fined £40,000.

Ouseley said he remained thoroughly impressed with the FA for its handling of that case, but warned that its credibility had become in danger of being undermined during its interrupted investigation into the Terry episode. The FA mounted its inquiry quickly after the QPR match and Terry was interviewed by the FA's head of off-field regulation, Jenni Kennedy, five days after the game. However, when the police became involved following a complaint made not by Anton Ferdinand but a member of the public (an off-duty police officer), the FA suspended its investigation.

The course of events was then rocked by the court's acceptance in February of Terry's application to have the hearing delayed. His lawyers argued their ability to organise witnesses on Terry's behalf was seriously hampered by Chelsea's demanding season.

The delay meant Terry continued to captain Chelsea, ultimately to the FA Cup and Champions League triumphs, although he was suspended for the final in Munich. As his case was not to be resolved before the European Championship, the FA responded by telling the then England manager, Fabio Capello, that Terry could not remain as England's captain, which prompted Capello to resign. Terry was still allowed to represent the national team as a player, in Poland and Ukraine, then Capello's successor, Roy Hodgson, decided not to select Rio Ferdinand for the squad. Hodgson insisted that was for football reasons, not because of the lingering poison in the impending Terry trial, but Ferdinand's omission struck a discordant note in the FA's conduct of the affair.

The likeliest charge the FA will consider is a breach of its rule E3, which prohibits improper conduct including "indecent or insulting words or behaviour". A reference to a person's ethnic origin, colour or race is an aggravating factor. Given the nature of the confrontation and swearing, it is likely Anton Ferdinand could be charged, as well as Terry. The FA must consider, on the balance of probabilities, its view of how Terry said "fucking black cunt" in a Premier League football match, following a court's decision that it was not proven, beyond reasonable doubt, the words were said as an insult.

The FA has said it will "now seek to conclude its own inquiries". There is no sign yet of how long that will take.

• Organisation begins wide-ranging consultation with fans
• Comes day after England U21 players abused in Serbia

The biggest ever fans' survey on tackling racism and discrimination in football is to be launched on Wednesday.

Kick It Out, football's anti-discrimination organisation, is launching the consultation with supporters ahead of their annual "One Game, One Community" programme, which starts on Thursday.

The survey comes after a troubled year for English football, which saw Luis Suárez and John Terry both banned for racist abuse and a number of current and former players targeted by racists via social media, while on Tuesday night England Under-21s were racially and physically abused in Serbia.

Lord Herman Ouseley, chair of Kick It Out, said: "At a time when discrimination is high up the football agenda, it is easy for fans and players to forget the great strides made over the past 20 years in helping to eradicate it.

"But there is still a long way to go. We are launching this important dialogue with football fans to help set out how we move forward to achieve a zero tolerance approach to discrimination in all its forms, at all levels of the game.

"The One Game, One Community weeks of action provide a focal point for everyone connected to football, from supporters to players, to stand up against discrimination in all its forms."

Kick It Out hope the findings of the fan consultation will help form a blueprint for tackling discrimination over future seasons.

The survey will run all season and cover topics including how to improve reporting of abusive behaviour and enforcement in grounds, to combating abusive behaviour on social media.

Kick It Out will also speak to players to canvass their opinions.

Clarke Carlisle, the chairman of the Professional Footballers' Association, welcomed the move.

He said: "The responsible majority of fans in this country are on board with stamping out discrimination and want more to be done.

"They are a powerful voice in football and this survey gives them a chance to have their say. We want to make sure we tackle the tiny minority for whom the healthy rivalries and passion that make the game great tip over into unacceptable prejudice and hatred."

Campaigner Herman Ouseley says the Equality and Human Rights Commission has failed as an organisation, and if it ceased to exist, most would not notice its disappearance

Equalities campaigner blames absence of leadership and passion for 'disconnection' from people suffering discrimination

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has failed as an organisation and if it were to cease to exist, most of the people it was created to support would not notice its disappearance, the distinguished equalities campaigner Herman Ouseley has said.

Describing the failure of the body as a tragedy, Ouseley said the EHRC "had failed the most vulnerable communities in our society" since it was created in 2007. It had no relevance to the lives of victims of discrimination.

"The people who are most disadvantaged feel totally disconnected. They don't even know that the organisation exists, let alone believing they can turn to it and get the help that they need," he said.

Lord Ouseley said he would be very sad to see the body shut down, but added that he did not think its closure would be widely noticed.

"If you closed it down for a lot of people it won't mean anything to them because they'll still have what they consider to be the status quo – which is very little access to proper advice and support to represent them in the area of inequalities," he said.

Lord Ouseley, who was the chair and chief executive of the Commission for Racial Equality from 1993 to 2000, said he felt the previous system of separate bodies championing different equality agendas, which disappeared with the EHRC's creation, had been more successful at championing people's rights.

"It has lacked the leadership that has been necessary since its creation to take forward the equalities agenda. There was no passion and there still is no passion," he said.

"I cannot see that the EHRC can in any way reach out to local needs among the population – on race, gender, disability, homophobia, and religious and age discrimination to enable people who feel they are vulnerable, who are being discriminated against, to receive the help they need: help in the form of advice, guidance, representation. All those things which existed pre-EHRC times, which are now almost totally gone, and EHRC seems to have no relevance to their lives.

"It has achieved a disconnection from people who are really suffering in our society … right across the board; I don't think that those people would miss the EHRC if it's gone because they have not had a relationship that has been meaningful or purposeful with the EHRC," he said.

The culture minister Maria Miller, in a recent letter to the Guardian, said the EHRC "had struggled to deliver across its remit or inspire confidence". The body's noble aims had "become lost in the mire".

Lord Ouseley agreed with her assessment of the organisation's record to date, but cautioned against concluding that closure was the correct response.

"I think Maria Miller was right in saying that the EHRC had failed to discharge its proper remit since its existence but I don't think that was a justification for taking functions away and giving them to central government or abolishing them as they seem to want to do," he said.

"It is important that we have a body, the EHRC or a body like it. I wouldn't want to see us not having that body because the present arrangements are totally inadequate and not meeting the needs. I would like to see that body strengthened."

The EHRC has seen its annual budget cut from about £70m to an expected £26m, and Lord Ouseley said this would make it harder to offer the support it should be providing to victims of discrimination.

"I am very sceptical about where the EHRC is going largely because it has had its budget decimated. That's fundamental because it can't do what it should be doing," he said.

He was critical of the way the organisation was set up by the Labour government, which had managed to get race "off the agenda".

"It was almost set up to fail and that in itself was a tragedy because we've wasted the best part of seven years in not getting it right and there is a very big risk that we are still not going to be able to get it right in the foreseeable future," he said.

The consequences of having a poorly functioning equalities body were dire, he said. Individuals were uncertain about who they should turn to for support and employers were not being sufficiently monitored to ensure they were implementing equality legislation.

"Previously, people who run big organisations might have been concerned that the EHRC could come and knock on their door and question them about their failure to implement equality legislation. They've not felt that there is a new body that is likely to be knocking on their doors and asking them questions about their policies on equality. We do need to have that over-arching independent body that is … able to say we will take regulatory action, we will enforce the law against you where you are failing to conduct yourself in a lawful manner with regard to equalities."

He also expressed concern about representation from minority communities at senior levels of the organisation, responding to news that commissioners Simon Woolley and Lady Meral Hussein-Ece (respectively the only black and Muslim members of the board) were not invited to reapply for their jobs in a newly slimmed down body.

"I think it is a tragedy for the commission because these were two very good people," he said. "I am deeply concerned that the commission at a commissioner level should have representation from the minority communities."

He said people who believe they are victim of discrimination "haven't got a clue" where to turn. The weakness of the EHRC nationally was compounded by legal aid cuts which meant that organisations like Citizens Advice were less able to offer help on a local level, he said.

"That's a sad indictment of our society in 2012 that you've got a situation where people, whether they're male or female, black or white, gay or straight, old or young are actually struggling to know who to turn to for advice. Many people are giving up and putting their heads down and despairing. We've lost a lot of good resources on the ground and we've lost the opportunity through an established, national, independent body to give guidance, direction and leadership on this to make people feel confident that they can challenge unfair treatment," he said.

Mark Hammond, the chief executive of the EHRC, said: "It is not fair to suggest that there has been no impact from our work. Our landmark legal victories have significantly increased protection for disabled people and their families."

He also pointed to work on protecting the victims of hate crime, work with care providers to safeguard elderly people's rights, and with police forces to reduce the disproportionate use of stop and search powers against thnic minorities.

• Lord Ouseley cites a failure of 'morality' and 'leadership'
• FA, Premier League, Chelsea and Liverpool in the firing line

The chairman of Kick It Out, Lord Herman Ouseley, has launched a damning attack on the Football Association, the Premier League, Chelsea and Liverpool for a failure of "morality" and "leadership" over their handling of the racist abuse incidents by John Terry and Luis Suárez.

Lord Ouseley, who has decided to stand down from the FA Council and his other FA positions, said Chelsea and Liverpool protected their players because of their value as "assets", even when they were alleged, then proven by independent FA commissions, to have racially abused opponents. He describes the last year, when football has been rocked by repeated incidents of racism, as "12 months wasted in hypocrisy" by the authorities.

"There is very little morality in football among the top clubs," Ouseley told the Guardian, reflecting on a difficult year that turned turbulent for Ouseley himself and Kick It Out when groups of players boycotted the campaign's T-shirts during its October weeks of action.

"Leadership is so important; you have to send a powerful message that racism is completely unacceptable," he said. "But there is a moral vacuum. The big clubs look after their players as assets. There was no bold attitude from them, to say that they would not put up with it."

Terry was found guilty in September of having racially abused Anton Ferdinand in Chelsea's match against Queens Park Rangers the previous October, by an FA commission which stated it did not believe Terry's defence and expressed "considerable doubts" over his team-mate Ashley Cole's evidence. Despite that, neither Chelsea, the FA nor the Premier League had made strong statements of disapproval, either of Terry's racist abuse itself or the players' discredited evidence.

"The condemnations have been mealy mouthed," Ouseley said. "The FA did a good job with how they handled the independent commissions themselves – they showed that firm action is now taken when racist abuse is reported to them.

"We want all players and fans to feel confident about reporting abuse. But the FA did not say anything about thelies and distortionswhich came out in John Terry's and Ashley Cole's evidence. Instead the players are protected. The Premier League could have set the tone; they and the FA do a good job in community work. But on this, I have not heard anything from the Premier League."

Ouseley was particularly aggrieved at the supportive statements made by Chelsea and Liverpool and their then managers, André Villas-Boas and Kenny Dalglish, when Terry and Suárez were accused of racist abuse. Dalglish gave Suárez unqualified support and famously backed the Liverpool players to wear T-shirts portraying Suárez as a victim of injustice even after the striker had been found guilty of racially abusing Manchester United's Patrice Evra and banned for eight matches.

The England manager, Roy Hodgson, praised Terry as a "warrior" and selected him for the European Championship, despite the criminal charge pending of a racially aggravated public order offence, of which Terry was acquitted. Hodgson did not select Rio Ferdinand, Anton's brother, on "footballing grounds", a decision Ouseley questioned and criticised for sending the wrong message on racism, particularly to black players.

By contrast, until the criminal trial, then the FA commission's hearing, Kick It Out took the position that it must say nothing publicly which could be taken as critical of Suárez or Terry and possibly prejudicial to a fair hearing.

"We were observing the process," Ouseley said, "but the managers were speaking out and sticking up for Luis Suárez and John Terry. The FA should have asserted themselves, said they would not put up with people disrespecting the process, but the FA were very slack and weak. The whole 12 months was wasted in hypocrisy.Even now the FA has not acknowledged the hurt and pain caused to Anton Ferdinand and his family after the length of time it took.

"When Rio Ferdinand was told he was not good enough, whereas John Terry went to the Euros, that hurt the black players the most. They could see nobody speaking up for them, and the establishment seemed to be looking after its favourites."

Ouseley said he had felt "very frustrated" when Kick It Out became the target of criticism, because many players who declined to wear the T-shirts did not explain publicly why not. Then, when Jason Roberts, the Reading striker who was a leading figure in the protests, did articulate that his grievances were with the football authorities, the Professional Footballers' Association and Kick It Out, Ouseley said he accepted it as a valid critique.

"Jason Roberts said we are not doing enough directly against racism and Kick It Out has become too broad an anti-discrimination campaign. I can accept that as a valid view and he put his case eloquently. If people feel we need more of a cutting edge, then we have to address that. But many players did not articulate why they were doing it and it seemed the organisation which for 19 years has been fighting racism became the one which took the criticism."

Ouseley said he is considering resigning from Kick It Out, when he can be confident the organisation is strong enough and has recovered from a traumatic year. He has already decided to stand down from the FA council and other FA posts. He said that although fighting discrimination in football remains important, it has distracted him from his work with more vulnerable groups, including unemployed people, when racism is again on the increase.

• 'He's a good man. He's done a lot of good work'
• Ouseley said there was a 'moral vacuum' at top of game

The sports minister Hugh Robertson said he was "very sad" about Lord Ouseley's decision to stand down from the Football Association Council and his other positions within the game's governing body.

Ouseley told the Guardian that the last 12 months had been "wasted in hypocrisy" by Liverpool, Chelsea and the FA and that there was a "moral vacuum" at the top of the game.

Robertson has repeatedly called for reform of the FA Council to make it more representative of the game as a whole and is believed to have become frustrated at the pace of change.

Ouseley said that he would consider his position as chairman of the anti-racism campaign group Kick It Out once it was in a position of strength. Negotiations are ongoing between the Premier League, FA and the Professional Footballers' Association over how to fund the organisation and its future remit.

Robertson said he was sad to learn that Ouseley had stepped down from his FA positions.

"I'm very sad about that, because he's a good man. He's done a lot of good work over many years. I know for some time he's been frustrated both about this and the idea there might be a breakaway movement," he told the Guardian. "He's a much respected figure and he'll be missed. He would never vote for me in a month of Sundays but he is a really good man."

Robertson, in Doha with Lord Coe to lobby for British business in the wake of the London Olympics, said he expected to discuss the issue of crowd behaviour with football authorities on his return.

"The issue of racism has been the dominant political issue over the autumn and now there seems to have been a spate of misbehaviour with crowds. If this continues over the busy Christmas period, we're bound to be having some conversations pretty soon," he said.

Robertson said that a suggestion from the PFA chief executive Gordon Taylor that nets be erected in sensitive areas around the goal and the corner flags was an "interesting contribution".

"I'd want to know from the police and authorities whether this is a series of one off incidents or whether there is a wider trend driving it. We have to look at a range of responses," said Robertson.

The sports minister said he was trying to take advantage of the golden glow of the London Games to increase opportunities for British businesses overseas.

"We are trying to take what we got right and what we got wrong in hosting London 2012 out to as many markets hosting future events as possible," he said. "Not to try and tell them how to do it. But to put the things we learned and the things we got right and wrong at their disposal, and try and leverage opportunities for British business off the back of it."

He said that the successful Games had also helped rebrand Britain in the eyes of the world. "There are two reasons to come here. One is the direct business opportunities that come to British businesses in construction or event management. Perhaps not so much the security," he said.

"But there is no doubt there is big soft power element of London 2012 and people are looking at us in a different way. In a sense, the biggest legacy from this is our renewed national confidence in being able to do these things. People look at us in a different way to other European countries because we managed to pull this off."

Robertson said that Danny Boyle's opening ceremony had been a major factor in changing perceptions of Britain. "I didn't really realise the effect it had until I saw the international newspaper cuttings the next day. The number who picked on the stunt with the Queen as being indicative of a nation that could laugh at itself and was at ease with itself, and then played that into a country that feels rather different about itself as a result," he said.

"If you'd left me to design the opening ceremony then I'm not sure we'd have got the one we did. But it's a good thing you didn't. Danny Boyle did it brilliantly. That counter-intuitive, fresh take on the country is what has made much of this possible."

Robertson's tribute to Boyle's opening ceremony was in marked contrast to rumours before the Games that then culture secretary Jeremy Hunt had intervened to try to cut the segment that paid tribute to the National Health Service.

• 'Football should have produced these plans immediately'
• 'Are the people running leagues giving dynamic leadership?'

Lord Herman Ouseley, the chairman of Kick It Out, has criticised the Football Association and the Premier and Football Leagues for the time taken responding to the government's request for improved anti-racism policies. Detailed plans are at an advanced stage, including a commitment to recruit more black and ethnic-minority coaches and referees, but they will not be delivered to the government until February at the earliest.

That will amount to a full year since the FA and leagues met the prime minister, David Cameron, in Downing Street and promised to improve the game's stance on racism.

Lord Ouseley, who this week described the FA, Premier League, Chelsea and Liverpool as lacking in "moral leadership" in their handling of the racial abuse by Liverpool's Luis Suárez and Chelsea's John Terry, told the Guardian: "It comes down to leadership again. Football should have produced these plans immediately, not taken a year to get them to the government. Are the people running the leagues giving dynamic leadership and selling to the clubs what is expected of them, telling them where society is, and that they have to change?"

The FA chairman, David Bernstein, has told the government he considers anti-racism a priority both for the game's governing body and for him personally, before he steps down from his post in May. After the Suárez and Terry incidents, outbursts of racism by supporters and expression of dissatisfaction by many black players led by the Reading striker, Jason Roberts, there is unanimous agreement by the football authorities that concerted action must be taken.

However, agreeing the detail, by the Premier and Football Leagues, all their 92 clubs, the Professional Footballers' Association, League Managers Association and other bodies, has drawn the process out. The FA has indicated it would like to get agreed proposals to the government before the new year but the Premier League is not working to that timetable.

Instead the 20 Premier League clubs will be given an update about the proposals at their meeting on 18 December. The Premier League hopes that following more work, its clubs will be able finally to agree the action plan at their next meeting, in February.

Details of a draft plan, understood to have the leagues' broad agreement, published in the Daily Mail, include an immediate target that 10% of recruits to the FA's first-rung coaching courses will be from black and ethnic minorities, and 10% of referees by 2015-16. This, though, applies only to "entry-level" grass-roots football. The professional clubs and leagues are not agreeing to a precise target or to the so-called "Rooney rule" to encourage more black professional coaches.

The Rooney rule, which operates in US sport, requires a black candidate to be at least interviewed for every vacant coaching position, and is credited with advancing more black coaches. The PFA included the Rooney rule in its six-point plan issued in October, during the fierce protests against English football's attitudes to black players, led by Roberts.

Gordon Taylor, the PFA chief executive, said: "We have not given up on the Rooney rule being implemented and will look for other ways to make sure more black managers and coaches are recruited."

While resistant to a rule requiring them to interview or recruit black coaches, the Premier and Football Leagues are expected to agree that they must improve their recruitment procedures. The thrust of the proposals are likely to be encouraging more top black players to take coaching qualifications in the belief that opportunities will open up and for recruitment procedures by clubs to be clearly fair, transparent and based on merit.

The government is understood to feel that the football authorities' response could have been quicker but officials are said to be encouraged by the drafts of the proposals they have been shown.

A Department of Culture, Media and Sport spokesman, said: "We expect the football authorities to come forward with their finalised plan in the coming weeks to help tackle racism and discrimination in the game. While there has been good progress over the last 20 years in this country on the issue, recent events have shown the need for further, concerted action."

Leading ethnic minority rights campaigner Lord Herman Ouseley has said ignorance of multi-cultural diversity means "racist decisions are probably being made every day" in broadcasting.

"Decision makers and executives, commissioning editors and managers are not competent in multi-cultural knowledge and experiences," said Lord Ouseley, former chairman of the commission for racial equality.

The army tender and contractual process was not connected in any way with the CRE: it was handled by the central office of information on behalf of the MoD/British Army. Focus started working with the army on their ethnic minority recruitment campaign in 1997-98, years before either Herman Ouseley or Bob Purkiss had any association at all with my company. Neither has been or is currently employed by Focus, although both are associated because of the skills they possess. The former chairman of the CRE was first invited to become a director of Focus in 1989, before he took up the post of chief executive with Lambeth borough council, and again in 2000. The invitations were based on his knowledge of the field in which we specialise and on his commitment to racial justice and social equality. Bob Purkiss's association with Focus draws upon his extensive trade union background and skills in mediation and investigations, and has been to develop work in these areas.
Prof Chris Mullard
Focus Consultancy

Lord Ouseley accused Mr Phillips of grabbing headlines with controversial comments about race relations terminology, but failing to speak out about last week's riots in Birmingham.

His comments came as the CRE released details of a report claiming to show that members of ethnic minority communities feel more "British" than white people in the UK.

Someone has got to put their head above the parapet. You might get it chopped off, but its the only way youre going to get change. People have to feel threatened.

The Kick It Out chairman, Lord Ouseley, is talking about the handful of players from John Fashanu to Paul Elliott, from Kevin-Prince Boateng to Yaya Touré who have driven change over the two decades since he founded footballs equality body. But he could just as well be talking about himself.

Kick It Out, footballs leading anti-racism organisation, has told the Guardian it deserves better than to be turned into Rio Ferdinands punchbag after discovering he has attacked it as useless in his latest autobiography for allegedly not supporting his family enough during the race trial involving his younger brother, Anton, and John Terry.

Herman Ouseley, the chairman, decided to speak out after the serialisation of Ferdinands book, #2sides, stated that the former England internationals decision not to wear a Kick It Out T-shirt in defiance of Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United was taken out of principle because the group had refused to come to the courtroom with us, so I wasnt willing to go through the charade My parents probably wouldnt have spoken to me if I had.

Rio Ferdinand has responded to Kick It Outs criticism of him by describing footballs leading anti-racism organisation as pointless.

In an interview with the Guardian on Wednesday, Herman Ouseley, the chairman, defended the organisation after Ferdinand described them as useless in his book #2sides over its handling of the race trial involving his younger brother, Anton, and John Terry.

Ask me to wear a kick it out t-shirt but you won't wear one yourself to represent the organisation..... #InvisibleSupport pointless