Ansar Ahmed Ullah, who is involved with the International Forum for Secular Bangladesh, has charted these alternating sinusoidal waves in racial identity and religious politics in an article on the short history of activism among Bengalis in the East End of London “from the localised welfare politics to the dangerous shores of Islamism”. I hope the young people from Tower Hamlets who now see themselves as “Muslim activists” would read this to see how the real battles against racism in East London and beyond were fought, not so long ago, by men and women with secular politics first and foremost.

The history of the Bengali community and political activism in London’s East End can be seen as passing through different phases. It started with localised welfare politics. Then it was characterized by Bangladesh’s national independence movement. This was followed by the political mobilisation of the second generation of Bengali community activists in anti-racist politics. But significant involvement in mainstream politics led eventually to the fringes of the global politics of Islamism.

The earliest Bengali political activism in London’s East End can be traced to the first Bengali settlers, the seafarers. The Bengali presence in the UK goes back long before the Indian subcontinent gained its independence from the British in 1947, however it was early in the 20th century that the first large group of South Asian – including Bengali – seamen, known as “lascars”, were recruited in British India to work for the East India Company, and came to the UK.

Some of these seamen had begun to settle in London’s East End from the 1850s onwards. Evidence of the early settlement of Bengali seafarers in London can be seen in the formation of organisations such as the Society for the Protection of Asian Sailors in 1857.

Read it in full.

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The BNP likes to present itself as a party that tells the truth, unlike mainstream political parties that rely on lies, misrepresentation and spin, but have yet again demonstrated that this is far from the case.

Former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, recently wrote an article for the Times on immigration and the rise of the BNP. Carey was immediately denounced by the BNP Legal Director as an ‘idiot’ working for ‘Zionists’, but the BNP’s official statement on the article has wisely avoided following Barnes’s line (as it usually does). The BNP website’s take on Carey’s article (‘Lord Carey predicts BNP victory in Dagenham’) puts a typically dishonest spin on what he actually said. From the BNP’s commentary, you’d think Carey was on the verge of joining the party and it appears that he has endorsed them.

BNP website:

Writing in The Times this morning Lord Carey warns:

“The fact is that a rise in the UK population by ten million in two decades will put our nation’s resources under considerable strain, stretching almost to breaking point the enormous reserves of tolerance and generosity of the British people. Failure to take that action could be seriously damaging to the future harmony of our society.”

He also acknowledges that the million people who voted for the British National Party at the European Elections had genuine concerns about both overpopulation and the ability of this nation to integrate new communities whose values are sometimes very different, even antithetical, to our own.

What Carey said:

The fact is that a rise in the UK population by ten million in two decades will put our nation’s resources under considerable strain, stretching almost to breaking point the enormous reserves of tolerance and generosity of the British people.

The declaration by no means spells out a halt to immigration. In fact we welcome the contribution of both economic migrants and asylum seekers to our lively cosmopolitan culture. But we urge a return to the levels of the early 1990s, about 40,000, compared with 163,000 in 2008. Failure to take that action could be seriously damaging to the future harmony of our society.

Last year nearly a million votes were cast for the British National Party. We cannot ignore the fact that such far-right groups exploit genuine concerns about both overpopulation and the ability of this nation to integrate new communities whose values are sometimes very different, even antithetical, to our own.

BNP website:

He then went even further, and predicted that the British National Party could win the parliamentary seat of Dagenham at the General Election.

He told the readers of Britain’s premier newspaper:

“In Dagenham, where I was brought up, the white working-class electorate, alienated by far-reaching social change and largely ignored by the mainstream parties, could vote for a BNP Member of Parliament.”

He said that people were supporting the BNP because it was the only political party echoing the sense of unfairness that many people felt about immigrants, economic migrants and bogus asylum seekers coming to Britain and availing themselves of our social services and our jobs.

What Carey said:

In Dagenham, where I was brought up, there is a very real danger that a white working-class electorate, alienated by far-reaching social change and largely ignored by the mainstream parties, could vote for a BNP Member of Parliament. This would be a tragedy in our long history of parliamentary democracy. Yet we play into the hands of the far Right if we do not seriously address the concerns that have led to some otherwise decent people supporting modern-day fascism.

For some reason, the BNP’s statement fails to offer a link to Carey’s article. I wonder why that is?

Lest there be any doubt about Carey’s view of the BNP, here’s what he told the News of the World in October 2009:

To hear the phrase “Christian Britain” coming from the mouth of Nick Griffin made me shudder. It was the most chilling moment of Question Time, perhaps better described as the Nick Griffin Show.

And what a pity that none of the other panelists challenged Griffin’s deceitful attempt to align his despicable policies with Christianity. This squalid racist must not be allowed to hijack one of the world’s great religions.

All of us who believe in tolerance and decency must stand shoulder-to-shoulder in rejection of Griffin’s notion that “Christianity” has any place in his bigotry. I tend to agree that the BBC was mistaken to give the BNP such prominence. To use Margaret Thatcher’s phrase, it was the “oxygen of publicity” that propelled the insignificant and undeserving party into the Big Time. The BBC’s Director General errs in arguing that in a democracy all views should be heard. The views of the BNP are not simply false, they are dangerous, indeed irredeemably evil.

Nevertheless, ‘Any Questions’ DID expose Nick Griffin’s views to public scrutiny. What we saw on our screens was a 21st Century pipsqueak heir to Hitler and Mosley. If the public believed beforehand that support for the BNP was a protest vote against remote or out of touch politicians, they were proved wrong. The BNP leader was unveiled as a sly, shifty figure who would hide unpalatable truths, and cynically spin regardless of the truth, for the sake of votes and funds.

Quite so.

I got a phone call the other day. Unknown number, at my workplace. I picked up the phone and a strange voice says to me, in Bengali:

- Hello bhaiya, how are you?

- I’m good thanks, who’s this?

- My name is Nazrul. You won’t know me, but my sister is a tenant in your family’s house in Dhaka.

- Oh I see. Are you calling from London?

- Yes, I just arrived here last week.

- Student visa?

- Yes.

- So how did you get my number?

- Your mother gave it to me before I left.

- Okay, no worries. You settling in okay?

- Well, I went to the college today and filled up my registration papers.

- Where’s the college?

- In Whitechapel?

- And where are you staying?

- Quite far, Green Street.

- Sharing?

- Yes, five other guys, they’re all students as well.

- How did you find them?

- Oh, the college sorted it out for us. They’re all new, like me. We’re all enrolled at the same place.

- Okay, that’s good. So how are you liking it here so far?

- Well, it’s only been a few days, I’m still trying to figure out how things work. But seems alright so far.

- Are you looking for work? It’s a bit rough out there.

- Yes, bhaiya, that’s the next step for me. I’m going to start looking soon.

- Yes, you should. The job market’s not good, hasn’t been good for a long time now. So the sooner you start looking the better.

- Yes, some of my roommates are saying the same thing. They aren’t having much luck.

- Hope you don’t mind my asking this. Have you brought enough with you to see you through?

- Well, I brought 400 pounds, bhaiya. It’s running out rather quick, I’m finding.

Silence at my end. I’m stunned by what this boy is telling me. After a few seconds, I regain my powers of speech.

- Well if I were you, Nazrul, I really would get out and start looking right away. Your money won’t last you more than a few weeks at best. You’ll find yourself in trouble once that happens.

- I know, bhaiya. Where should I look, would you say?

After giving him a few suggestions, I had to hang up and get back to work. But this phone conversation has stayed with me for the past fortnight. The more I ask around, the more I talk to friends and acquaintances in east London, the clearer it becomes that a frightening problem is taking shape under our very noses.

What has happened and why?

In the last two months, a near-complete breakdown in the visa system that allows foreign students into this country has resulted in the arrival of tens of thousands of “students” from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and various African countries. Many of these are “students” in name only, many have arrived with far less than the minimum amount needed to support themselves. In effect, they have come here as economic migrants, as menial workers, taking advantage of very lax visa conditions for students that did not exist up until recently.

So how did this latest fiasco come about? Two things have come together to cause it –
1) a spectacular piece of bungling by the Home Office
2) the amoral rapacity of the so-called “Visa Colleges” in London.

About the second cause, most people including the government are already aware of this. People have been writing about it for years now, and still nothing changes. The government sits on its hands, watches complacently as the basic standards of education and even domestic security are violated again and again. These colleges are nothing but a bunch of money-hungry sharks, with no regard at all for the welfare of the students they bring in. They are little more than legalized traffickers in people. But in spite of much talk the authorities have no intention of doing anything about it, primarily because of the very short-term thinking that each new student is bringing in 3,000-4,000 pounds cash into the UK economy.

Let’s explore the first cause a bit more. What has just happened here is plain irresponsibility. In the past, the embassies in each country were required to practice a lot of discretion in deciding who they would give visas to and who they would refuse. This simple system has now been thrown overboard. The Home Office has recently changed the rules such that anyone possessing:
i) an offer letter from a college and
ii) 1,000,000 Bangladeshi Taka (about £10,000) in the bank for a specified period of time becomes automatically eligible for a visa.

The effect of this has been unbelievable. A MASSIVE surge of Bangladeshi ‘students’ has come into London in the last few weeks. The lowest estimate I’ve heard is 25,000 new students, others put it as high as 50,000. It’s simply unprecedented. Some people with just a primary education back home are now twisting the rules, getting hold of fake certificates, in order to come to London. Since the collapse of the Gulf Arab labour market in the wake of the credit crunch, the UK has become their destination of choice. It is now easier and cheaper to enter the UK with a student visa than at any time in the past.

There are those who would actually like to study. Even these valid students are coming here after being fed reams of misinformation by the ‘agents’ of the visa colleges in the cities of South Asia. They are being told that they can find odd jobs in London right away and support themselves that way. So they come over with very little money, but once they are here the truth hits them square in the face. Nazrul above brought 400 pounds with him. I’ve heard worse news from friends. Boys (and they are the vast majority of them boys) coming here with 100 pounds or less in their pockets.

Hunger, homelessness and worse

Many have already run out of money. In recent days, we in the community in east London have heard of students sleeping in mosques, we’ve heard of students begging for money after Eid and jumma prayers from the people coming to pray. We’ve heard of Jobcentres being invaded by several hundred people every day (see the video) and we’ve heard of Jobcentre managers handing out money for food to particularly needy people simply out of the kindness of their hearts. These ‘students’ are not allowed to miss attendance, otherwise many of them would have already fled to the regions where they might have found some income source. But under the new rules, that would make them illegal right away.

The job prospects for these people are obviously very very bleak. This is the worst recession in the UK since the Great Depression, unemployment is almost 10% and still rising, at least until the middle of next year. More than half the Poles who came here have gone home. In this situation we have all these students coming in, with no money and few skills and a very weak grasp of English. They won’t even be able to find Christmas retail jobs at the moment.

We have the dreaded winter months coming up. What will happen to these kids then does not bear thinking about. If you are in the Whitechapel or Mile End area, I’d ask you to observe closely, they’re often hanging about major street corners, bus stations, loitering about with a dazed disoriented look about them. I saw a young man yesterday, hed had obviously slept rough overnight, wrapped in a woollen chador and wearing Bata sandals on his feet.

So that’s the sum of it. It’s bad out there, getting worse. The choices are basically continued suffering, students fleeing London and going illegal, a not unlikely rise in street crime, or going home (which I’m guessing most wouldn’t be able to afford either).

There is one other option – becoming part of the underground slave labour system. It is well known in the community that owners of Indian restaurants like cheap labour from back home, so that they can keep their costs down and their margins healthy. Indian and Chinese restaurateurs were complaining recently that that the Home Office had created a worker shortage by cancelling work visas for unskilled workers from back home. The government countered – ‘why don’t you hire some of the east Europeans who are here already?’ The restaurateurs said, oh but they don’t understand the culture of the kitchen, the language and the terminology of the kitchen.

What they wanted was essentially carte blanche, to keep bringing over their male relatives from the villages of Bangladesh and Pakistan. That avenue was stoppered. Instead the government has now opened up a new avenue – foreign students. Many of these students will end up in restaurants, where in exchange of room and board, they will be paid a pittance, far far less than the minimum wage. Numerous other Asian-owned businesses engage in this kind of exploitation – they hire needy students and pay them peanuts, safe in the knowledge that the students have nowhere else to go in a job market this vicious. We’ve heard of people working at the TV channels full-time for a monthly wage of 500 pounds. I doubt the restaurant owners will be that generous. Even worse exploitation is now on the cards.

This is not the first time the Home Office has implemented such stupid rule changes. A few years ago, thousands of South Asian doctors were encouraged to come to the UK. But then very suddenly, in 2005-2006, they changed the rules preventing non-EU doctors from getting permanent training posts. This was a very cruel disruption in these doctors’ career progression and many had to leave the UK to restart their careers, some going back home, some moving to Australia or the USA. In the meantime, there were news reports of a Sikh gurudwara in North London opening a food kitchen to feed out-of-work Indian doctors.

If you know people of influence, (politicians, councillors, policymakers, local MPs, charity organizations), if you have friends and contacts in the media, please get in touch with them. This situation needs to be addressed and demands urgent investigation. To those who are in a position to look into the matter more closely and take appropriate measures, you will be doing these poor folks a huge huge favour.

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A video report of this issue is coming soon. Stay tuned.