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RACE AND POLITICS OF COMPASSION -1996
BY: T.R.KOn Thursday the 17th of November a British Court sentenced 17 year old Nicky Hall to a nominal 11 months custodial sentence for being part of a racially motivated brutal attack on Mukhta Ahmed, a 19 year old Bengali student living in East London. As Nicky Hall had already served 6 months in detention awaiting trial, he walked free whilst 19 of his accomplices who participated in this grim act of violence remain untried and unconvicted.
The attack was not just another act of harassment - some 1200 such incidents were reported this year. The gang of white youths chased and set upon Mukhta and kicked his head "like a football", until his scalp was torn off his skull. Mukhta was lucky to survive. He was in a coma for two days and spent the next 6 months in hospital recovering from this savagery. He now has the look of someone who has been comprehensively aggravated with a flame-thrower. His face is the mask of a war-wounded soldier.
Mukhta has survived, but there are 37,000 Bengalis living in the Borough of Tower Hamlets encircled by the dark ring of racism. On the front line are the foot-soldiers of the white youth culture, nourished by the Council funded youth clubs, where the consensus of racism is reinforced. Late night discos are where, fuelled by alcohol and perhaps drugs, this roaming pack of thugs acquire the necessary courage for their irrational attacks on their Bengali neighbours.
Nursing the problems of this community in the constituency of Tower Hamlets is the Right Honourable Peter Shore, their M.P. for four decades. He is one of the two last surviving members of Harold Wilson's Labour Government Cabinet of 1964, after the euphoric election victory that year. The other is Tony Wedgewood Benn. Shore's libertarian benevolence and deep humanity has its roots in socialism's evangelists like George Lansbury and Harold Laski, who invested this political ideology with the essentials of pluralism, equality and compassion.
The Asian immigrant population is now nudging 2 million in a country with a total population of 53 million. The Asians, it is argued, do not assimilate into the host culture, almost as a deliberate cultural stand-off. Outwardly the host culture could be said to be non-interfering, accommodating and benevolent. This distant perception dissolves on a closer examination. Libertarian politicians of any political faith are generally anxious to appear impartial on all issues of race and non-christian cultures. The middle rank of the Tory Party that makes up the bulk of the front-line of Government ministers feign indifference to issues of race, whilst assiduously cultivating the tiny Asian business community who generally vote Tory. This exclusive community would like to think of themselves as a select pressure group but are of little help to the Asian working class inhabiting ghettoes in Tower Hamlets, Leicester, Bradford and Liverpool.
Although there are major differences between Asian minority groups like the Bengalis in the East End of London and the Punjabis and Pakistanis in Bradford, there are overwhelming similarities in their isolation, their ghetto culture and therefore the problems they come with to a member of Parliament ministering such constituencies.
I talked to Peter Shore in the august surroundings of the Houses of Parliament. The particular subject I had come to speak to Shore about was the problems of the Bengali community: encompassing immigration, housing, racial harassment, educational problems in the new context of Islamic revivalism, the fevered religiosity of its educationists, the activities of the various pressure groups including the Asian business community; problems of the youth gangs among the generation of Bengalis who were born in England; the larger subject of crime and violence from within, the treatment of an ageing population by its children. The general subject was however the dynamics of Asian politics in England.
I had written earlier to Peter Shore in general terms suggesting that I would like to be an observer, a wall flower at one of his "surgeries" where MPs meet their constituents on their home ground. At our meeting in the Houses of Parliament in a basement visitor's room, (where presumably Guy Fawkes was held, so I fantasised), Shore wondered if this would be practical as his fortnightly "surgeries", were conducted in small cramped offices and were exhaustingly long.
Peter Shore set out to confirm that the problems brought to him from the Bengali community in his "parish" had "overwhelmingly to do with immigration" In the euphoria of the 1964 election victory for the Labour Party heralding
the heady sixties, it might have seemed that all artificial controls were intrinsically illiberal. But Peter Shore affirmed to me that if the Labour Party held this view, it was soon replaced by 1966 with the framework of immigration law, very much as we have it today. Work permits were the order of the day and then only for persons with qualifications indispensable to Britain. However, the rights of a person who had acquired British citizenship lawfully to marry in his country of origin and bring back spouse, children born abroad and elderly dependants remained enshrined in British law. Almost all of Bengali constituents who come to Shore are trapped by the fine interpretation of the law and its guidelines. Whilst it is easier for a male to marry abroad and bring his bride back to the UK, women who marry back in their country have invariably to prove that "the primary purpose of the marriage" was not for creating legal rights of entry and residence to a non-citizen. To try and prove the negative is quite "a task", especially as such marriages are pre-arranged with the couple never having met even once prior to marriage. Another requirement is evidence establishing "devotion" between the couple. All this would be hilarious if only the thrust of such questions was even half serious. A large number of such application for entry go to an adjudicator, and after the first refusal to a tribunal. If it is a dependent, the now fashionable DNA testing is de rigueur. When all else fails Shore as their MP is expected to perform miracles by writing to the Home Secretary who has the power to delay, review or override a Tribunal decision "exceptionally, outside the rule." Shore expresses the hope that whilst the laws of immigration would remain in place and be seen to be operating fairly, real compassion would be in "easing details of control."
Housing has remained the other insuperable problem because of the withdrawal of Government financial support to Local government. In Greater London government funded new housing has fallen from its peak of 1000 houses a year to a couple of dozen. Bengali housing needs typically tend to be large in keeping with large families. Unsurprisingly Tower Hamlets was the only Borough in London that registered a rise in population between the decennial census of 1981 and 1991. Local Government has virtually given up building new housing, says Shore. Against this background, the racist right wing British National Party (BNP) won seats by scape-goating the Bengali community, although the underlying resentment caused by Central Government indifference and housing shortage is very real.
A further paradox was the composition of the local Council which until the latest local government elections that routed them, was led by the Liberal Democrats. This was the Trojan horse which brought in racists on a crypto-Liberal Democrat ticket. Their brazen-faced strategy was to "endear themselves to the white majority in Tower Hamlets, against the Liberal Party ethos". This led to rows with the local and National Liberal Party. To vindicate the libertarian roots of the Liberal party, the councillors were expelled and the Liberal Party nationally expiated its sins of racism by setting up a committee of investigation chaired by an eminent Q.C. and Liberal Peer, Lord Lester. The new Council has no Tory presence; in fact the fascist BNP polled better. There are 8 Bengali councillors among the 42 Labour councillors and 7 Liberal Democrats in this dramatic re-arrangement.
Peter Shore may be a compassionate politician, who would undoubtedly place equality and human rights above party politics. But he is a pragmatist. He foresees an ongoing war of nerves between a minority of racists in Tower Hamlets and the Bengalis who he fears might be incited to take "revenge action" instead of using political militancy purely as a defensive posture.
When I visited Brick Lane, the colourful Asian artery in the middle of this square mile, smelling of patchouli and sweet spice during the day time, the mood of the Bengalis I met was sombre. There were whispered rumours about young Asian youth gangs that ruled the square mile at night. There were patrician businessmen who encouraged and managed them, I was told by Bengali waiters: they wanted to get out of this confrontational stranglehold and make good elsewhere in the middle class shires of tolerant England in which they believed.
I finally addressed the question of Islamic revivalism that demanded an Islamic educational framework for their children. "There is a danger" Shore admits "Even in Bangladesh there is an Islamic Party in power. But I am surprised how little pressure is put on me by fundamentalist elements. Obviously there is still a healthy secularism in the Bengali community. The Awami League is a secular party and they have considerable influence within the area."
Peter Shore remembered visiting Sylhet in Bangladesh, the one town which seems to have shipped all its citizens to England, and being recognized and greeted and spoken to like an old friend. It is an extraordinary phenomenon of the late 20th century, Shore muses: "The immigrant community that travels back to their country of origin almost annually and repatriates capital regularly. Thanks to air travel and modern telecommunications"
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