For two nights my social media timelines have been awash with posts about Defiance, Channel 4’s powerful documentary on British Asian resistance to racism shattering illusions of community docility.
As an Asian youth who lived through the struggles depicted the program really resonated with me. I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s in Ealing borough, which includes Punjabi area Southall, to Bengali parents. I also ended up as an MP. As a kid we were sent home early from primary school in Ealing Broadway as it was feared riots down the road in Southall circa 1979 would reach us next. My parents feared Enoch Powellite politics and Margareth Thatcher’s repatriation rhetoric. We ate curry at home and I got called “Paki” at school despite being Bangladeshi.
Last week I attended a screening of Defiance in a community centre in Southall. The discussants on the stage, who'd been in the film, decried how while black and brown politicians exist these days unlike 1979, they often do bidding of the establishment. I was there as an attendee, rather than as a dignitary, but I felt my ears burning. It got me thinking to what extent representational politics really have changed or evolved.
Two weeks ago a person who sent me 16 racist death threats in one day as part of a pattern was arrested and placed in custody. I had to sign a police statement after listening to the abusive voicemails sent to my published MP work phone number — the first two were enough for me.
They were sweary and angry, decrying my failure for not producing the guy a council house. Among the words he used was not the P-word that rang through my youthful ears, but he did call me a "f***ing Bengali". Is that progress or a result of Google and/or my notoriety?
The trenches and badges of anti-racist movements have been replaced by keyboard warriors
MPs of all hues have been on receiving end of abuse — this individual's outbursts were likely a result of 14 years of austerity, the disinhibiting effect of social media, plus added racism. As a woman you statistically get more aggro; I've also had hassle from anti-choicers being called babykiller for speaking up on abortion issues (I'm a mum too, we all inhabit complex Venn diagrams).
Since 1979 the term "Asian" has disaggregated following the Salman Rushdie affair and then the 2001 Bradford/ Burnley/Oldham riots being labelled as Muslim issues. Similarly as the sense of black political unity splintered and shattered, the "Asian vote" has split with Conservative mayoral campaigns trying to scare Hindus into voting Tory as Sadiq Khan will take your gold and the Gaza/Galloway effect in Muslim areas.
As an Asian youth who started off in the crowd at Rock Against Racism gigs and marching against the BNP in light of the murder of Stephen Lawrence, I’ve since gone legit as an MP. I feel the trenches and badges of anti-racist movements have been replaced by keyboard warriors and the actions of groups who target MPs’ homes and Just Stop Oil being rather crude (excuse the pun) in their stunts leaving everyone more fragmented than ever in our culture wars era. Defiance incidentally has hitherto been a bit joyless missing Misty in Roots’ reggae, the Ruts’ punk thrash and bhangra sounds of Alaap – all three were Seventies and Eighties Southall bands.
Today the third of the trilogy airs and I’ll be glued to the box again. It’s fairest to say continuity and change exists in an age of hyphenated identities where mixed race is tipped to be the majority in time. In short British Asians are here to stay as a settled population, no an longer immigrant population, and not all simply currying favour.
