Segregated Britain. Farhaan Wali
describe the first communities that formed in the East End were largely modelled on traditional Bangladeshi homesteads. The early community was strongly influenced by kinship ties, which played a crucial role in organising social life in the enclave. In the early period, most Bangladeshi households actively maintained regular contact with kinship and non-kinship households. In essence, the clustering of households developed a Bangladeshi village spirit, in which households joined ←49 | 50→together for mutual support and protection. It also allowed the households to maintain their ethno-religious identity at the social level.
Initially, caste did not play a functional role, but as the Bangladeshi population rapidly grew, in relatively concentrated areas, there was evidence of inter-communal conflict based on status. The vast majority of immigrants from Bangladesh were of similar social status, namely peasant labourers. However, when some middle-class families migrated to the UK, they expected higher status privileges, as they had received in Bangladesh. However, despite aspects of the social structure being imported from rural Bangladesh, little special recognition was given to higher status families. In the East End, social status was determined by economic mobility; rather than lineage. If a family became wealthy, then they were considered ‘noya Chowdhury’ (Aminur). As a result, the Bangladeshi caste system became mostly redundant in the UK context, especially in the East End were several peasant families gained mobility upward. Eventually, those families that were noya Chowdhury became economically high status; however, these families were despised by the high class as they had elevated their status through wealth and not lineage.
The social practice of Samaj was established in the East End. It was considered an essential communal practice, as it encouraged family-based social cooperation and interaction. Samaj is somewhat tricky to describe as it has different variations of understanding in Bangladeshi villages. However, most would agree that it is often viewed as a moral duty to interact and engage with the social network, usually through religious and cultural events. In Bangladesh, this practice at the village level relates to caste interactions; however, in the East End, it became a way to facilitate social and community cohesion and belonging. When the wives of immigrants began to join their husbands, some women engaged in Samaj in order to interact with other newly arrived women, building a friendship network that bypassed the practice of purdah [seclusion].
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Reinforcing the Enclave: Racism and Discrimination
When the early Muslim migrants arrived in the heart of the East End of London, some of them encountered considerable challenges. As they encountered the white English people, they quickly become conscious that the host society did not want them. This overtly hostile reaction left many immigrants socially displaced. As Minhajul noted, ‘we live away from Gora [white people] because they hate us … they attack us [immigrants]’. During the late 1970s, the streets of London erupted with violence, as many South Asians were attacked and some killed. Altab Ali, a 25-year-old Bangladeshi migrant, was brutally beaten to death by a group of white youths in 1978. White gangs prowled the back streets of the East End, seeking out Asians. Some of the most extreme forms of violence saw a spate of arson attacks on migrants living in the Tower Hamlets area, as these attacks intensified the local council installed ‘anti-arson letterboxes’ to protect immigrants (Sampson, 1992). The racial violence flaring up on the streets of London facilitated widespread social polarisation as ethnic groups sought protection in separate enclaves. Early immigrants chose to live apart from the white population, because as Minhajul explained: ‘we didn’t feel safe living with white people’.
At one level, enclaves can be considered a geographical reality. Urban enclaves, for instance, grew out of the desire to elevate social status. During the colonial era, white Europeans carved out separate communal spaces that were geographically and culturally distinct from the non-white English population. As Nightingale (2012, p. 3) asserts, ‘the idea of separating a “black town” from a “white town” dates back to 1700’. The British adopted racial segregation across the empire in order to maintain a power imbalance between indigenous and colonialist. The construction of ‘hill stations’, in which Europeans built separate residential colonies in the highlands of India, symbolised deliberate racial and cultural enclaves. The white colonialists manufactured racial boundaries and chose to reside apart from the non-white native. So, if this was the attitude of the British colonialist in India, then when mass immigration took place, how did the white UK population react?
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On the night of 25 January 1982, a gang of forty attacked the home of the Saddique family in the East End of London. They threw stones, smashing the shop window and narrowly missing the family crouched inside in darkness. They daubed swastikas, gave Nazi salutes and chanted, ‘F**king Pakis out!’ They did this for six straight hours without intervention from the police. (Teare 1988, p. xi)
Some of the earliest encounters with the white English population narrated by early immigrants often involved racism and violence. Taijul, after just four weeks in the East End of London, was chased and viciously assaulted by a gang of white youths. As he describes, ‘I walk home … I hear shouting I see five or six white English people running to me. So, I ran. They catch me and they say “no pakis here”. Then they start punching and kicking … next thing I wake up in the hospital’. He suffered two broken ribs and several head injuries. He spent over two weeks in the hospital recovering from his injuries. Eight months after this incident, several white youths tried to assault him again, but he managed to escape. According to Taijul, it was common to encounter verbal and physical racial abuse; it was a natural fabric of early immigrant life in London. However, this was not contained to disgruntled white youths, hanging out on street corners. Instead, racial abuse was encountered across society.
Aftab, who immigrated to London in 1974 from Pakistan, worked in a textile factory in the East End. He describes, ‘it was hell! Working with white people … they call us Pakis every day and they give us the worst jobs’ (translated). Racial abuse proved to be a standard part of the London workplace. The tension between the white and non-white labour force had been escalating for several years in the factory where Aftab first worked, as the white English viewed the immigrant as a threat. They felt newly arriving cheaper foreign labour would result in their termination and thus loss of livelihood. This perhaps inspired the treatment received by immigrants. As Aftab explained, racial abuse was not restricted to the labour force. He asserted the management echoed similar racial abuse. The supervisor separated non-white workers and actively limited upward mobility. Aftab claimed, Asian workers were ridiculed and degraded both privately and publically, which gave the white labour force full licence to insult non-white workers racially. Most of the immigrant workforce emerged from different religious and ethnic backgrounds, but the collective racial discrimination ←52 | 53→they experienced gave them a sense of communal togetherness. This initially dissolved the deep-rooted religious differentiations that existed amongst most of the immigrants while in the Indian Sub-continent. However, this sense of communal solidarity slowly declined as the immigrants settled and began establishing distinct identity markers.
Racial violence and abuse became a standard part of social life in London. The height of which was a spate of racially motivated murders of young Bangladeshi men in Tower Hamlets during the late 1970s (Teare 1988, p. 3). Racial violence towards immigrants became a widespread epidemic on the streets of London, triggering the immigrant desire to live apart from the white majority. Early immigrant communities in London were inspired by communal refuge. When early immigrants entered the social space, beyond the sanctuary of the home, they would instantly encounter the physical and verbal violence of the white majority.
While on the bus, for instance, immigrants recounted stories of being spat upon, verbally insulted and physically attacked. Nayeem, who arrived in the East End of London in 1971, described an incident that took place on a bus. Nayeem was heading home on the local bus after a long day’s work; a group of white youths sitting at the back of the bus began to yell out racially abusive taunts. As they stood up to leave the bus, they hurled a wave of verbal abuse at Nayeem. Then, in a despicable act of racism, one of the youths poured milk onto Nayeem and shouted: ‘once a coon always a coon’. For Nayeem, this incident underscored the overwhelming hostility white people felt towards immigrants. As he described, ‘abuse from English people was normal, they [white English] are racist