Any sort of discrimination is unacceptable, and I'm sorry to hear that you have
suffered from that recently in Oxford Raj. Where discrimination does occur, I
would support anyone pursuing this through whatever channel (mediation, legal,
probably not vigilante though) that they see fit.
It's also certainly true that nationality is one area in which discrimination
can occur, and it is as unacceptable as any other.
However, the event BP describes, although upsetting for them, does not appear
to fit into the category of discrimination. Although BP has interpreted the
event as being link to "not being British", it actually appears to have
occurred due to BP not having a form of ID that was acceptable to the Co-op
employees at the time. This is unfortunate, and you have my sympathy, but I
think you should see it as related to rules and regulations, rather than
anything to do with discrimination. Unless you carry one of the core forms of
age-proving ID accepted in the UK, there is a risk this incident will be
repeated in the future.
When one moves countries, there are always new things to get used to. ID cards
are much more rarely used here in the UK, so many people are not familiar with
them. If you presented me with one from any country in the EU, I wouldn't be
able to tell you if it was authentic or not.
I see nothing in the link from Raj that refutes this. If you think of a British
person walking into the shop with an ID card from somewhere else in the EU that
wasn't recognised by staff, they would not be served either. So although Raj
feels "almost certain" that you have been a victim of discrimination, based on
the facts presented, I'll say I'm almost certain that you haven't been.
If people feel strongly about people being able to use EU ID cards to prove
their age, the options would be to lobby individual shops/chains to broaden
their policies, or to get a change in the current regulations to make certain
forms of ID acceptable in law so that firms are required to train their staff
or maintain a file about these acceptable forms of ID. I'm sure big firms could
absorb the cost easily enough, but that might ad significant burdens to small
businesses.
If people want to send the Co-op a message that they wont shop there because of
this sort of thing, that's fine. Perhaps they would provide extra training to
staff to extend their breadth of knowledge about alternative IDs. But lets not
be too quick to term it something like racial discrimination if it isn't.