Southall gripped the nation’s attention
in 1979. Immigrants, mainly from the Indian subcontinent, huddled together to repel anti-immigration political party, National Front.
It was one of the frequent
race-riots of that era. Blue plaques with names of Gurdip Singh Chaggar and Blair Peach hang on the Town Hall’s brick wall to remind you. And footage of the street
altercations, with the police either dispersing protestors or aiding the
far-right group, depending on who you ask, survives on YouTube.
But to assume that story a leitmotif for the area is to misunderstand what’s beginning to happen in this west London borough. Pakoras and jalebi still constantly sizzle in hot oil behind kiosks of street food vendors. And rows of shops displaying groceries, sarees, and more Asian wedding accessories under frontal awnings have grown longer in all directions. With HSBC bank, Poundland and Gregg’s appearing like aberrations here. Yet, change has occurred.
Testament to that is, despite the anti-immigration stance of both Leave campaigns during 2016 EU referendum, manifest in that ‘Breaking Point’ poster, this desi-community significantly voted ‘Leave’. Defying Europhile leadership of Ealing-Southall Constituency Labour Party – a branch of the one UK political party that ever thinks itself attuned to feelings of minority communities UK-wide.
That John Tyndall’s National Front once came to town doesn’t activate limbic systems of those who live here now. Many who lived through that fright 40 years ago have upped sticks and moved to Ickenham and other nearby affluent neighbourhoods.
The Indian Workers’ Association (IWA) has also fallen silent. What’s left of that organisation is its banner on a shop building on The Green. Passersby may stare at it like an unlabelled portrait in an art gallery, sensing it’s important enough to be exhibited, but unsure why. How, for example, the organisation acting as ‘social workers’ alongside sympathisers in the Labour Party assisted those first and second waves of male migration from Jullundur and elsewhere to settle here in the fifties and sixties. The men had a new life of form-filling to face in Britain and had no ability to speak English. They had to gain a foothold in employment before later sending for their wives. Later on, protection from exploitation was important too, and 1965 Courtauld’s Red Scar Mill strike is an example of how IWA stood by them.
That, they say, is history
Southall is today a collage of first-generation British-Asians, a growing Somali population and newly-arrived South Asians; all feeling more at home in ‘Little Punjab’ than the past generations ever did.
It’s grown into a cluster of family-run small businesses: pharmacies, general practices, restaurant chains, tailoring services and a massive TRS warehouse that distributes Asian spices throughout Britain. Imposing desi-architecture now sits on the landscape in the form of Hindu Mandirs, Sikh Gurduwaras and Muslim Masjids piously overlooking trading activities on King Street and The Broadway.
As a community of enterprise, naturally, Southall residents would love to keep more of their money to spend on their priorities like private education for their children. Labour Party’s instinct of collecting more in income tax and business rate to fund social services may now, understandably, seem an attack on those aspirations.
Splice into that Labour’s Brighton conference motion acknowledging Kashmir’s right of self-determination – a move that’s unified Pakistan and India in displeasure – from a party that they frankly no longer need as a scaffolding to navigate British life, and you can begin to foresee breakdown in the party’s relationship with British-Asians.
Simply put, it could, in the nearest future, snowball into what we see today with the British Jewry, a demographic that as mentioned in the 1996 Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR) survey, had begun diverging from Labour Party in huge number from at least 1995 on socioeconomic policies and “perceived left-wing bias against Israel”. And that was at the height of Blair’s ‘New Labour’.
Labour’s BAME voters
Labour Party was created in 1900 to improve conditions of white-British working-class. And over time, it intuitively forged an alliance with immigrants who moved into those working-class communities. First, with Jewish refugees who came from Eastern Europe and next, the post-war immigrants from the Caribbean Islands, South Asia and other parts of the Commonwealth.
And now that a tribe of British-born and foreign-born ethnic minorities who are economically confident has swollen into a sizeable voting bloc. And they see no difference between themselves and their white-British middle-class colleagues and spouses (except for the odd gaffe), Labour Party could see its BAME votes potentially decrease going into the future.
For what it’s worth, I have anecdotal evidence of immigrant Nigerian and Ghanaian friends, in London, Milton Keynes and Bristol, who have switched to voting Conservative. They were attracted by Cameron’s ‘Broken Britain’ theme at the 2010 General Election backed by reheated ‘One-Nation Conservatism’ rhetoric.
Indeed, after the keelhauling at hands of British voters from Scotland to northern England towns, Wales and Northern Ireland at the 2015 polls, many commentators wondered if insolvency proceedings should begin for the Labour Party as they no longer had a purpose in twenty-first century Britain. After all, none other than Labour Deputy Prime Minister, Prescott, had eight years earlier infamously proclaimed: “We are all middle-class now!”
Corbyn has understood the existential need to cultivate a new voting tribe. And not only has he grown Labour party’s membership to be largest in western Europe, but also, in 2017, recorded the party’s highest overall vote share (40%) in a General Election since 2001. This to the amazement of commentators who saw no hope for the party.
Conservative’s ‘One-Nation’ rebranding has at the same time atrophied from habit of ‘small government’ (austerity) and ‘hostile environment’. Both policies have caused a massive spike in child poverty in Britain, and a unique state-bullying of black-Britons termed ‘Windrush Scandal’.
Whatever their fortune in this approaching 2019 winter General Election, to remain an electoral force in looming Age of Self-Driving cars, Labour Party must double down on return to socialist’s principles along lines of the Nordic-Model that’ll continue making a difference in working-class life, especially ‘Green Industrial Revolution’ offer. It should also continue inspiring young Britons who are resigned to inhabit that ‘AI’ future and who now make up a majority of BAME voters.
But to assume that story a leitmotif for the area is to misunderstand what’s beginning to happen in this west London borough. Pakoras and jalebi still constantly sizzle in hot oil behind kiosks of street food vendors. And rows of shops displaying groceries, sarees, and more Asian wedding accessories under frontal awnings have grown longer in all directions. With HSBC bank, Poundland and Gregg’s appearing like aberrations here. Yet, change has occurred.
Testament to that is, despite the anti-immigration stance of both Leave campaigns during 2016 EU referendum, manifest in that ‘Breaking Point’ poster, this desi-community significantly voted ‘Leave’. Defying Europhile leadership of Ealing-Southall Constituency Labour Party – a branch of the one UK political party that ever thinks itself attuned to feelings of minority communities UK-wide.
That John Tyndall’s National Front once came to town doesn’t activate limbic systems of those who live here now. Many who lived through that fright 40 years ago have upped sticks and moved to Ickenham and other nearby affluent neighbourhoods.
The Indian Workers’ Association (IWA) has also fallen silent. What’s left of that organisation is its banner on a shop building on The Green. Passersby may stare at it like an unlabelled portrait in an art gallery, sensing it’s important enough to be exhibited, but unsure why. How, for example, the organisation acting as ‘social workers’ alongside sympathisers in the Labour Party assisted those first and second waves of male migration from Jullundur and elsewhere to settle here in the fifties and sixties. The men had a new life of form-filling to face in Britain and had no ability to speak English. They had to gain a foothold in employment before later sending for their wives. Later on, protection from exploitation was important too, and 1965 Courtauld’s Red Scar Mill strike is an example of how IWA stood by them.
That, they say, is history
Southall is today a collage of first-generation British-Asians, a growing Somali population and newly-arrived South Asians; all feeling more at home in ‘Little Punjab’ than the past generations ever did.
It’s grown into a cluster of family-run small businesses: pharmacies, general practices, restaurant chains, tailoring services and a massive TRS warehouse that distributes Asian spices throughout Britain. Imposing desi-architecture now sits on the landscape in the form of Hindu Mandirs, Sikh Gurduwaras and Muslim Masjids piously overlooking trading activities on King Street and The Broadway.
As a community of enterprise, naturally, Southall residents would love to keep more of their money to spend on their priorities like private education for their children. Labour Party’s instinct of collecting more in income tax and business rate to fund social services may now, understandably, seem an attack on those aspirations.
Splice into that Labour’s Brighton conference motion acknowledging Kashmir’s right of self-determination – a move that’s unified Pakistan and India in displeasure – from a party that they frankly no longer need as a scaffolding to navigate British life, and you can begin to foresee breakdown in the party’s relationship with British-Asians.
Simply put, it could, in the nearest future, snowball into what we see today with the British Jewry, a demographic that as mentioned in the 1996 Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR) survey, had begun diverging from Labour Party in huge number from at least 1995 on socioeconomic policies and “perceived left-wing bias against Israel”. And that was at the height of Blair’s ‘New Labour’.
Labour’s BAME voters
Labour Party was created in 1900 to improve conditions of white-British working-class. And over time, it intuitively forged an alliance with immigrants who moved into those working-class communities. First, with Jewish refugees who came from Eastern Europe and next, the post-war immigrants from the Caribbean Islands, South Asia and other parts of the Commonwealth.
And now that a tribe of British-born and foreign-born ethnic minorities who are economically confident has swollen into a sizeable voting bloc. And they see no difference between themselves and their white-British middle-class colleagues and spouses (except for the odd gaffe), Labour Party could see its BAME votes potentially decrease going into the future.
For what it’s worth, I have anecdotal evidence of immigrant Nigerian and Ghanaian friends, in London, Milton Keynes and Bristol, who have switched to voting Conservative. They were attracted by Cameron’s ‘Broken Britain’ theme at the 2010 General Election backed by reheated ‘One-Nation Conservatism’ rhetoric.
Indeed, after the keelhauling at hands of British voters from Scotland to northern England towns, Wales and Northern Ireland at the 2015 polls, many commentators wondered if insolvency proceedings should begin for the Labour Party as they no longer had a purpose in twenty-first century Britain. After all, none other than Labour Deputy Prime Minister, Prescott, had eight years earlier infamously proclaimed: “We are all middle-class now!”
Corbyn has understood the existential need to cultivate a new voting tribe. And not only has he grown Labour party’s membership to be largest in western Europe, but also, in 2017, recorded the party’s highest overall vote share (40%) in a General Election since 2001. This to the amazement of commentators who saw no hope for the party.
Conservative’s ‘One-Nation’ rebranding has at the same time atrophied from habit of ‘small government’ (austerity) and ‘hostile environment’. Both policies have caused a massive spike in child poverty in Britain, and a unique state-bullying of black-Britons termed ‘Windrush Scandal’.
Whatever their fortune in this approaching 2019 winter General Election, to remain an electoral force in looming Age of Self-Driving cars, Labour Party must double down on return to socialist’s principles along lines of the Nordic-Model that’ll continue making a difference in working-class life, especially ‘Green Industrial Revolution’ offer. It should also continue inspiring young Britons who are resigned to inhabit that ‘AI’ future and who now make up a majority of BAME voters.
Comments
Post a Comment