Class, Ethnicity and Religion in the Bengali East End: A Political History by Sarah Glynn

Author:Sarah Glynn [Glynn, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ethnic Studies, Social Science, Minority Studies, General
ISBN: 9781847799586
Google: QWa5DwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 22812746
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 2014-12-10T00:00:00+00:00

7 Bengalis in the council chamber

The community-based activism of the late 1970s led to a pragmatic move into mainstream Labour politics.1 For many activists this was the logical next step, despite the fact that party politics had been only peripheral to the struggles described in the previous chapter, and that in some of the housing battles Tower Hamlets Labour Council had been on the opposing side. These activists generally continued to see themselves as representatives of the Bengali community, but argued that they would achieve more through conventional channels. The overriding reason given by my interviewees for joining the Labour Party was to continue campaigning for better and fairer treatment for Bengalis. There were, of course, also those who thought more could be done outside organised politics, but self-organisation along ‘ethnic’ lines had mobilised a new generation, and now they wanted access to the mechanisms of power. As Helal Abbas (who had since become council leader) put it, ‘you can only change so much from outside’.2

The association of ethnic minorities with the Labour Party was once a truth universally acknowledged – and repeatedly reinforced by the overt racism of the Conservatives. Immigrants were disproportionately in Labour-dominated urban centres and in working-class occupations, but support for Labour was exceptionally strong and extended across class boundaries.3 In Tower Hamlets, this affiliation was also the best way to achieve real power within the political establishment, as – apart from a two-term Liberal hiatus – the party has dominated local politics since the 1920s. The Labour Party was the natural recipient of most Bengali votes and the natural forum for most mainstream Bengali political activity. As Manir Uddin Ahmed put it, ‘everybody’ was ‘automatically’ Labour.4 Sundor Miah, who came to England in 1967 as a teenager, told me in 2000:

since I came in this country, I have been taught by my father that we are supposed to vote Labour, and we’re still in Labour … I came in this country when the prime minister was Wilson … He always … think of immigrant people.5

The 1971 Independence struggle gave the Bengalis’ long and increasingly intimate relationship with the Labour Party an especially firm foundation. This rested both on the active involvement of Labour MPs in support of the Bengali cause6 and on the party’s perceived ideological link with the Awami League. As Peter Shore, former MP for Stepney, observed, ‘There was a feeling of some considerable overlap of values and outlook between the Awami League and the Labour Party’.7 Recollections of the period all acknowledge the part played by a number of Labour MPs in keeping up pressure on the Conservative government to support Bangladesh, and Shore’s own contribution was acknowledged officially in Bangladesh by the new government, and in London by ‘an ongoing and very close relationship with the community, and indeed with their leaders’.8 At the Awami League’s commemorative meeting, held in Toynbee Hall shortly after his death, Shore was described as a de facto member of the Awami League and de jure member of Bangladesh.

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