When the Iron Lady Ruled Britain

by Robert Chesshyre

  The violence and the police indifference, he said, were breeding a tough generation. ‘Asians are no longer prepared to accept the stereo-type of passive victims. They are fighting back.’ Ninety-six per cent of blacks under eighteen had been born in Britain. ‘They are much more militant. They have nowhere else they can call home, but they are still referred to as “immigrants”. They are going to respond increasingly violently.’ He cited the well-publicized cases of the ‘Newham 7’ and ‘Newham 8’, in which young Asians were charged with offences involved in fighting back. The police, he said, were now trying to ‘criminalize’ Asians as they had done West Indians, accusing them of involvement in gang warfare. In 1986 a Scotland Yard report was ‘leaked’ to crime correspondents, which alleged the ‘rapid rise of violent, military-style Asian gangs in organized crime in Britain.’ Such leaks are taken at face value by papers like the Daily Mail, which reported beneath the headline ‘NEW GANG MENACE AS ASIAN “ARMIES” MOVE IN. The gangs are suspected of involvement in drug trafficking; armed robbery; prostitution; protection rackets; and ritual rape. One police raid recently uncovered an arsenal of weapons, including guns, sledgehammers, machetes, swords, an axe and daggers.’ That puts racial harassment in its place.

  Courts, however, will accept that defensive violence makes for bona fide mitigation. The Newham defendants were acquitted of the more serious charges brought against them; Mr Bhondi from Easington found a sympathetic judge; and others have not been jailed as they might have expected had they not been seeking to defend or avenge themselves. Some Asians who have attacked the wrong targets, as one group did who jumped out of a car and beat up two passing whites, have been leniently treated. One of that group told the court: ‘When we go anywhere, there’s always racialist abuse, racist remarks about us. It’s about time the Asians started doing something. When I got beaten up, nobody helped: people just walked by ignoring it. If you go to the police, they just write it down and do nothing. It’s something that doesn’t just happen to you one day; it’s every day of your life.’

  Few mainstream newspapers cover the harassment of Asians in depth or with much enthusiasm. Research is mainly carried out by monitoring and academic groups, and detailed reports appear in ethnic minority papers like New Life. C.B. Patel, New Life’s founder, emigrated from India to the former British colony of Tanganyika as a young man, moving to Britain to study law when his job was Africanized. He sold insurance to support himself, and rapidly built a small empire of shops. With capital behind him, he fulfilled an ambition he had cherished since his African days to establish an English-language paper for Asians. He first bought an ailing Gujerati paper in London, Gujerat Samachar (‘Gujerat News’), and ten years ago started New Life, which now sells 25,000 copies.

  The paper concentrates on Asian affairs, but also covers other ethnic communities. After an over-lavish launch, Mr Patel ran the paper on a shoestring, printing it from his basement and doing much of the distribution himself. The paper is now published near Hoxton Market in east London, and Mr Patel is still a hands-on ‘editor-in-chief’ and proprietor. When I went to see him, I was told he was out: in fact he was asleep, having been up all night ensuring that the paper was distributed despite the heavy snow. He meticulously cleared his desk of the disorganized clutter of journalism, swiftly changing from editor to proprietor. He was in his late forties, with thinning hair, an open-necked shirt, and checked jacket and trousers that didn’t match. He half-smoked gold-banded cigarettes.

  Some Asians accuse New Life of concentrating too much on negative aspects of immigrant life, a criticism anticipated by Mr Patel before I could raise it. The paper’s most notable feature is a weekly ‘Score of Shame’, a report of racialist attacks throughout Britain. A typical week included: arson in Wakefield; a restaurant smashed up in Bolton; a shop window destroyed in Windsor; an old woman terrorized by a gang in her Bradford home; taxi drivers in the same town subjected to a series of assaults. ‘We would like,’ said Mr Patel, ‘to bring out more positive aspects of life, but the reality of the attacks is hard to avoid: we learn of eighty to eighty-five a week.’ I thought I’d misheard him. ‘No,’ he repeated, ‘that’s right – four thousand plus attacks a year that we get to know about.’

  Having lived in both India and Africa, Mr Patel is not blind to racial, religious, and caste hatreds to be found elsewhere in far more widespread and virulent form than in Britain. ‘This country is as civilized as any in the world. I have tremendous respect for the tolerance of the British. I do not say that most police are racist. The British bobby is a good institution. But there are black sheep, and there is a lack of resolution in stamping intimidation out. The law is made an ass, and law and order not meaningfully established.’ He added: ‘In Britain the colour of skin is a uniform. Unlike previous immigrants, we won’t be able to discard that uniform.’ The intimidation stunts the natural dispersal of successful immigrants into the wider society. ‘It creates a siege mentality; coloured immigrants will stick together in ghettos,’ said Mr Patel.

  I told him how President Reagan – whose record on racial issues is patchy – had gone to a black family’s suburban home at which the Ku Klux Klan had ignited a burning cross on the front lawn. It was an immediate, emotional and effective gesture of society’s atonement. The Reagans drank coffee with the family and embraced them on the spot where the cross had burned. Asians I met frequently complained of the lack of equivalent, visible leadership in Britain. Mr Patel asked: ‘When was the last time that Mrs Thatcher went on national media, and gave a bold, brave stand, accepting full-heartedly that Britain is now a multi-cultural society and denouncing the attacks?’ It was, of course, a rhetorical question. He contrasted Mrs Thatcher’s low profile on the issue with the Queen’s clear commitment to a multi-racial Commonwealth. Pandering to racism would, he said, create ‘a Frankenstein, a monster.’ He added: ‘The government can stop racial harassment any time they want. It requires leadership. They have the resources if the leadership is there. Asians are a docile community, who want to get on and establish financial security. They will not seek confrontation or fight their white neighbours.’

  He said that certain east end pubs are known hotbeds of racism, yet the police do nothing about them. ‘You can bet they would soon smash a kebab house run by Indians from where racial attacks were being launched. The British are not racist. They do not open their papers and say “I am glad to see Patel’s shop was burned down.” People think I am a “wet” when I talk like this, but things could be very different if the prime minister gave a lead. Increased racism will create a lot of pain, and everyone – not just immigrants – will suffer.’ Mr Patel took me to the stairs as I left. ‘Had I seen the graffiti on the building?’ he asked. They had trouble, he said. People kicked and rattled on the door. They were close to a National Front office. Outside on the white walls I read the tediously familiar ‘NF’, ‘Blacks out’ and ‘Pakis go home’.

  The Asians who suffer most from deprivation and harassment are Bengalis in London’s east end, most of whom came from the Sylhet province of Bangladesh. In January 1987 a House of Commons subcommittee reported that it was an ‘educational and social disaster’ that 74 per cent of Bangladeshis in their last year at school cannot speak English fluently. On top of appalling overcrowding – three families sometimes in a two-bedroomed flat, parents and small children sharing beds, older children on sofas; in private accommodation perhaps seven families cooking on one stove – this poor English, said the committee, restricts Bangladeshis’ access ‘to health and social services, and they appear to be disproportionately affected by racial violence’. The Bangladeshis have lower average earnings than any other ethnic group, have exceptionally high unemployment, and their children do badly at school. In one school in Tower Hamlets, 84 per cent of the pupils are Bengali. A community leader said: ‘They are so very, very poor in Bangladesh that here they are in heaven. But that does not justify putting them in ghettos.’ It was a view with which the Commons sub-c
ommittee agreed.

  Brick Lane, with its sari shops, leather clothing manufacturers and Indian restaurants, is the heart of the community. Through upper windows, partially covered with newspapers and ragged curtains, a passer-by can glimpse the sweatshops. ‘Shirts, blouses, dresses, trousers’, read the signs. Jewish names are still painted above some shops now owned by Bengalis. The men wear thin, flapping trousers, and the women in winter look pinched and cold. The people peering from the balconies of the council estates behind Brick Lane and the children on the playgrounds are all brown. It was here in July 1987 that Prince Charles paid a visit, expressing dismay that the Bengalis were living in conditions that matched those of the Indian sub-continent.

  The Federation of Bangladeshi Youth Organizations (FBYO) had a room in a former school that is now a community resource centre. Abdus Shukur, an FBYO volunteer, had overcome the disadvantages on which the Commons sub-committee reported. He arrived in 1968 at the age of twelve, had been ignored by his teachers because of his bad English, and had dropped out of school. Failure had been a shock, because in Bangladesh he had been one of the brightest in his school. Here he was considered a ‘dimbo’. He said: ‘The teachers’ attitude was “don’t worry about him; he can’t do anything.” I just wanted to get out, without O levels or anything, because the school system held no charms for me. When I did get out, I found that, as a black person, I couldn’t move, only do manual jobs.’ When I met him, he was reading for a degree in order to become a teacher. ‘The thing is that I am a survivor, but very few can come through because the odds stacked against them are so high,’ he said.

  Most Bangladeshis work, he said, for fellow Bangladeshis because to get other employment ‘you have to be twice as highly qualified as a white contemporary. You have to be damn good. As a white, you’re OK if you’re mediocre.’ He estimated that one or two members of every Bangladeshi family in Tower Hamlets were subjected to either racial abuse or suffered prejudice in the course of each year. It might be overt on the street, or covert in the DHSS office. His father, a businessman, returned to Bangladesh on retirement. ‘He asked: “Why should I have to put up with this on a daily basis?” But my generation is trapped. We have been to school here, have our friends here, we cannot “go back”. I have three kids, all born here. They know nothing different apart from a four-week holiday to Bangladesh. My four-year-old came back from school, and asked “What’s a Paki?” Try explaining the connotations of that word to a four-year-old.’

  Brown and black Britons desperately need an identity rooted in their parents’ culture to serve as an anchor in a turbulent world, according to Mr Shukur. White immigrants can shed their antecedents and, within a generation, be assimilated, but ‘the one thing we can never give up’ – and he touched the back of his brown hand – ‘is the colour of our skin. This is the one thing that still divides. Children are at a crisis; they have nothing to cling on to. They are looking for an identity that parents have too often stripped from them.’ The English have remained monocultural, he said, very self-centred and arrogant. ‘The “Great” in Great Britain is no longer accurate. Some people still fantasize on how it used to be and blame their altered condition on blacks. We’re not the people to blame because we’re at the bottom of the shitpile anyway. Most of us dream of returning “home”. But where is home? We came in search of prosperity and a better education. As time went on, that dream was shattered. It’s very difficult to make it here. Right at the bottom it’s very difficult to scrape a living.’

  Mr Shukur handed me a copy of Jubo Barta, the ‘National Journal of Bengali Youth’, which led its front page with a bitter attack on the popular press coverage of race. The reporting complained of was specifically about the 1986 imposition of visas for visitors from the Indian sub-continent and two West African countries, but immigrant groups are consistently unhappy with Fleet Street. On this occasion, there appeared to be a direct link between inflammatory press coverage and intimidation on the ground. Headlines from one paper were daubed on an Asian-owned Tower Hamlets newsagent’s shop.

  The story was the flavour of the week in mid-October 1986. The headlines cited by Jubo Barta included: ‘THEY’RE STILL FLOODING IN’ – London Standard; ‘3,000 ASIANS FLOOD BRITAIN’ – the Sun; ‘IMMIGRANTS PARALYSE HEATHROW’ – Daily Mail; ‘ASIANS START HOUSING CRISIS’ – Daily Mail. The Star commented: ‘Britain finally began to drop the portcullis and raise the drawbridge against the alien hordes.’ The Sun, under the banner headline ‘THE LIARS’, reported ‘the 1,001 lies used by immigrants to cheat their way into Britain’. One pop paper wrote: ‘Remember too that every male immigrant to this country represents either an addition to the dole queues, or a job lost to a native Briton, or both. We can afford neither … Some of their customs – child brides, arranged marriages, marriage to first cousins – are repugnant to Western minds. Many of them refuse to conform to our way of life, our laws and our customs … Nothing the Tories have belatedly done will solve any of these problems, but at least they will not be aggravated by more brown tidal waves.’ Letters to the Director of Public Prosecutions, pointing out that this article seemed a prima facie case of incitement to racial hatred, and therefore an offence, went unanswered.

  A cartoon in the Daily Mail showed an immigrant arriving at Heathrow. He was depicted wearing a turban (the immigrants concerned were Bengalis, who do not wear turbans) and carrying a bedroll; the caricature was clearly designed to make absolutely sure that the dimmest reader realized this person was both alien and destitute. The cartoon was divided into four pictures. In the first the immigrant is saying: ‘Well, here I am arriving penniless at Heathrow.’ In the second: ‘Ooh look! £50 of taxpayers’ money to stay at a posh hotel for my first night.’ In the third: ‘So this wonderful reputation the British have got themselves throughout the world is true – they are …’ In the fourth: ‘stupid’. Almost nothing in that cartoon was factually accurate, and every pen stroke was suffused with malice. It is not surprising that people who read such cartoons daub racial insults on Asians’ homes, make jungle noises at black footballers, or that their children run into corner shops and shout ‘Paki bastard.’ The press is also guilty of omission. Mr Tufail-Ali showed me stories in ethnic minority papers, which had not been reported nationally, that – had they involved white people – would, without doubt, have made big news. Concern for ethnic minorities is known as ‘bleeding hearts’ journalism, and it is not popular in these swashbuckling days of young fogies, the new right, and newspaper editors of the Tebbit tendency. Laissez-faire race relations may have an intellectual appeal to those who espouse laissez-faire economics, but they can be, literally, deadly.

  The most poignant experience I heard of was that of Mr Tahir Khan-Lodhi, who arrived in Britain from Kenya in 1964 with twenty-five pounds in his pocket. Twenty-one years later he bought for £10,400 – from the Queen’s cousin, the Earl of Lichfield – the lordship of the manor of Bentley in Staffordshire. A banker with a house in Kent and a flat in the west end of London, he seemed to have fulfilled the immigrant dream. The title, of course, was mere flummery, but it had long and romantic historical associations. It was the daughter of a lord of the manor of Bentley who, in 1651, smuggled Charles II to safety after his concealment in the oak tree.

  When Mr Khan-Lodhi obtained the title, he said: ‘I read in the papers that it was for sale, and, as you are aware, there is much romance in owning a manorial lordship for sentimental reasons. For me it was just a beautiful dream. The title has been held for centuries by the same group, and it was a rare opportunity for me to enter that sort of landed family.’ A year later when I contacted him, he was bitter and disillusioned, comparing the resentment his success had stirred up in Britain with the encouragement he imagined he would have received in the United States. The British, he said, were both lazy and keen to run down other people’s triumphs. There was so much jealousy he was even considering re-emigrating.

  The edition of New Life published the week I went to see
C.B. Patel made sad reading. The front-page lead story began: ‘It’s only the third week of 1987, but it seems some things don’t change. Racism is alive and well.’ It told the story of the young man blinded in one eye by the gang of whites who had been tear-gassing a black party. Inside, an editorial commented on a report by British Euro-MPs that there is a racial attack in Britain every twenty-six minutes: ‘Our community now instinctively avoids dark or lonely places, or certain areas or certain housing estates … Police, apparently sympathetic, mysteriously seem to lack the power to stop the nightly attacks by known youths.’ The article ended: ‘It is also worth remembering that the vast majority of the white population are on our side too.’ The tragedy of the immigrant experience is that the positive dimension has been squandered. Where, I was asked by the successful and the abused Asian alike, is the will to make us welcome?

  ‌Chapter 12

  ‌Damn Yanks

  Shortly after my return from America I was invited for a drink to the home of a liberal acquaintance. He was a thoroughly decent man, impulsive in his gestures of kindness to others; I had never heard him speak ill of anyone. I started enthusing gently about life in the United States. Suddenly he rounded on me quite vehemently. ‘I have never been to America, and I never wish to. If someone gave me a free ticket tomorrow, I wouldn’t go.’ A few months later I wrote an article in the Observer about Americans living in Britain in which I commended Americans for their generosity, their achievement in creating a vibrant, exciting, harmonious nation out of so many disparate people, and praising them for their assistance during the war. I pointed out that the British are deeply influenced by American culture and style. I concluded: ‘This is not an occupied country. Without the Americans, it might have become one.’ That single sentence did it. People wrote to say they would never buy the Observer again. I was abused across the length and breadth of the country.