ABSTRACT
Although a good deal has by now been written about the language and putative language problems of Caribbean children in British schools, remarkably little research has actually been done to study the linguistic behaviour of Caribbeans in Britain. In part this reflects research priorities set by policy makers at national level; in part it reflects the relatively weak position of the minority communities themselves; and of course these two causes are interrelated. Ideally, research within minority communities should be conducted by members of those communities, with the same facilities, resources and skills at their disposal as other researchers have. In practice, this is unlikely to happen except on a small scale in the present political climate.
