On 4 October 1936 the Jewish community of east London came together with community organisations, trade unionists, communists and socialists – including many members of the ILP – to stop Oswald Moseley’s British Union of Fascists from marching through the east end. The fascists were sent packing and Cable Street forever became associated with a victory for Britain’s anti-fascist forces.

Nick Lowles of Hope not Hate, one of the supporting organisations, said: “While our methods might have evolved since then, the dedication and commitment to opposing fascism and hatred remain the same, and it is vital we celebrate our own history.”

Assemble: 11.30am at Aldgate East (Junction of Braham Street and Leman Street)

Rally: 1pm at St George in the East Gardens, Canon Street, off Cable Street (http://g.co/maps/mnppe)

The march and rally is just one of several events taking place on 2 October. Others include:

• Protest and Survive – a photography and poster exhibition
• Grand Union Orchestra of East London (www.grandunionyouth.org.uk)
• Book launch – five new publications about the Battle of Cable Street
• ‘They Shall Not Pass’ – an evening of celebration and entertainment at Wilton’s Music Hall, including Billy Bragg, Michael Rosen, Shappi Khorsandi and The Men They Couldn’t Hang (www.battleofcablestreet.org.uk)

Hope not Hate have also produced a special Cable Street pamphlet, sponsored by Unison, to mark the 75th anniversary. The 28-page full-colour magazine includes maps, rare photos and stories from the day.
£4 (including p&p) from www.hopenothate.org.uk/shop/cablest or by sending cheque or postal order for £4 to:
Searchlight Educational Trust
PO Box 67502
London NW3 9RE.

Full details of all events can be found at: www.hopenothate.org.uk or cablestreet75.org.uk

Their recent Fear and HOPE report highlighted that economic insecurity was a key driver in support for right wing parties. As a response the HOPE not hate campaign is organising a day of action on Saturday 19 March to target those most susceptible to fear and hate. The intention is to produce 250,000 leaflets and target the 62 wards most vulnerable wards, including the 12 where BNP councillors are up for re-election.

To achieve this they need to raise £5,000 by the end of the week. That works out at £80 for each ward, £20 for each polling district of 1,000 homes or just £5 for each delivery round of 250 homes.

Fortunately the Fear and HOPE survey tells them who they need to target with these leaflets and what they need to say. With help they can get the correct message into the right hands and so ensure they prevent the BNP from winning council seats in May.

More than 70 people have already donated £1,700 between them.

You can make your donation here:

https://donate.hopenothate.org.uk/page/contribute/sponsor-a-ward

On Thursday afternoon (22 October) Hope not Hate are going to the BBC to deliver the Question Time presenter, David Dimbleby, thousands of messages of hope from supporters. “Your stories, your experiences and your belief in an open and tolerant society will send the strongest possible rejection of the BNP’s message of hate.”

http://action.hopenothate.org.uk/questiontime

More than 60 people filled the Working Class Movement Library in Salford on 30^th May to see former POUM militia man Roma Marquez Santo unveil a plaque to the ILP’s Spanish Civil War volunteers.

In a moving speech Roma declared it an honour for people, like himself, who fought fascism in the 1930s to be remembered by today’s generation. Many in the audience felt that the privilege was the other way round.

The plaque is the first ever public commemoration of the ILPers who fought in Spain, and its unveiling was marked by the launch of Chris Hall’s new book Not Just Orwell.

While disagreements about the civil war – particularly over divisions on the Republican side – will no doubt rumble on, Chris stressed that this occasion was not about rehashing old debates but commemorating and remembering individuals who stood up against fascism. Keen to redress what he called the “forgotten story” of the British left’s involvement, he recounted the contribution and sacrifices made by the ILP contingent and their comrades in POUM.

For the ILP, Barry Winter welcomed the book and plaque, which recognise the ILP’s role: “It is time to acknowledge the role played by those who, like Orwell, went to Spain to fight under the ILP banner, to stand alongside their comrades in the POUM. They are part of the story of the civil war and rightly deserve recognition.”

Remembering past anti-fascist struggles is particularly important today when the political influence of the far right is once again increasing across Europe.

The event ended with a performance of Spanish revolutionary songs by the Manchester group, the Maddonas.

You can read more about Chris Hall’s book and order a new edition of the ILP’s pamphlet Land and Freedom.

Christopher Hall explains what drove him to discover the untold stories of ILP volunteers who fought in the Spanish Civil War

In 2006 many new books were published and many events held to commemorate the 70^th anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.

As an historian and researcher on the Spanish Civil War for over 20 years, I was eager to be involved and so I helped to stage a concert in Manchester headlined by Billy Bragg on behalf of the International Brigade Memorial Trust. Yet as 2006 came to an end it dawned on me that in Britain all the events and most of the articles had focused on the International Brigades. Those anti-fascist volunteers who had served in the ILP contingent alongside George Orwell and the POUM (an anti-Stalinist Communist Party militia) had been seemed to have been ignored.

Many books have been written about the Spanish revolution and the way it was crushed by the Spanish republican government and its Stalinist allies. Probably the most famous is Burnett Bolloten’s monumental work. However, very few books mention the role of the ILP contingent in any depth. The most famous and, in some opinions, the most controversial account is George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, which tells about his time fighting with the POUM. Using this, and my earlier interview with ILP volunteer Stafford Cottman as a starting point, I began my research.

My aim was not to write about the Spanish (social) revolution or to explore the political intrigues of the time but to discover who the members of the ILP contingent were, why they went to Spain, what happened to them in Spain, and what became of them on their return home.

I discovered about 40 names but the available details of their lives differed greatly. For example, Bob Edwards – the leader of the ILP contingent – has a whole archive in Manchester, whereas there is only the odd line or picture of some volunteers. For background I found it was necessary to include a brief history of the POUM and the ILP, and cover in more detail the role of the two parties in the Spanish Civil War.

ILP support

The role of the ILP in the Spanish Civil War has been criticised by many academics and by the majority of the Labour movement at the time. In fact for a small political party, the ILP was hugely involved in the Spanish Civil War and continued to support the Spanish republican government even after POUM was suppressed.

The ILP continually raised money for POUM and the Spanish people. It paid for a fully equipped ambulance to go to Spain (named after the POUM leader, Maurin, who was presumed dead). One of the ambulance drivers with experience from World War I stayed in Spain to help train and command an artillery unit. When the Basque country was being overrun by the fascists, the ILP looked after and fed some refugee children from anarchist families at a house in Street near Bristol. Over 100 ILP members served in the republican forces in military and non-military units, with many serving in the International Brigades too.

Leading ILP figures visited Spain three times to try and free POUM prisoners with varying degrees of success. The most infamous case relating to the ILP was the death of their leading young activist and leader of the ILP ‘Guild of Youth’, Bob Smillie. He died in prison after being arrested on the border because he did not have the proper discharge papers. In prison he died from a combination of neglect and appendicitis. To their credit the ILP made no attempt to make political capital out of this and continued to support the Spanish republic till the end of the Civil War.

A mass of biographies and autobiographies of British and Irish volunteers in the International Brigades have been published, and many hundreds of books have been written about the International Brigades and the British involvement in them. Some of the ILP volunteers, including Bob Edwards, Stafford Cottman, Frank Frankford and Urias Jones, have been interviewed for the Imperial War Museum and South Wales Miners Library. Before my work, however, the only written account of the ILP contingent in Spain was a 1987 article by Peter Thwaites in the Imperial War Museum Review. No easily accessible book on the ILP contingent has existed until now.

One of the main criticisms of the ILP contingent has been that it served for only six months on a quiet front in Spain, achieved little and then went home. Looking at the involvement of the International Brigades in every major battle of the Civil War, and their huge losses, this criticism at first seems justified. But as my research progressed, and more information about individual members of the ILP contingent came to light, this view of the ILP volunteers proved to be much less than the whole picture.

Fifteen members of the ILP contingent were involved in a small action at a place called Ermita Salas and several volunteers were wounded. ILP members did indeed serve on a quiet front and became embroiled in a ‘civil war within a civil war’ while on leave in Barcelona. Many of the volunteers did return home after just over six months but since POUM had been declared illegal they risked imprisonment if they remained in Spain.

Several ILP volunteers served in other republican units, even in some cases in the International Brigades. Around a third of ILP volunteers were wounded or hospitalised and two died – a statistic that shows the ILP volunteers’ commitment to the anti-fascist cause in Spain. And several ILP volunteers served for long periods – Reg Hiddlestone from January 1937 to January 1939 (much longer than most International Brigade volunteers); and Robert Williams, who joined up alongside Orwell in December 1936 and served with republican forces until November 1938. He was wounded three times.

John Donovan served in the International Brigade alongside Winston Churchill’s nephew, Esmond Romilly, before deserting to join the ILP contingent. In the attack on Ermita Salas he was cited for bravery by his commanding officer. He later left the ILP contingent to serve in an Anarchist unit before returning to Britain. Arthur Chambers, a First World War veteran, was an NCO in the ILP contingent. In May 1937 he also left the ILP contingent to join an Anarchist unit, and was killed on the Aragon front in August 1937.

Overshadowed

Until now the role of the ILP contingent in the Spanish Civil War has been overshadowed by the fame of George Orwell, and any examination of the ILP volunteers has centred on him. This book includes a brief biography of Orwell as his book Homage to Catalonia is still a major source for any discussion of the ILP contingent. Orwell’s account also provides invaluable descriptions of the way the Spanish militias were organised, trained and armed. As its title clearly states, this book is not solely about Orwell but about the volunteers who served with him.

The book provides the first full account of the ILP contingent’s role in Spain, alongside a list of those men who served in the contingent and their experiences. Stafford Cottman became a friend and advisor to the film director Ken Loach when he was making his 1995 film ‘Land and Freedom’, which was loosely based on Cottman’s experiences.

According to his wife, Stella, Cottman attended a film premiere in Bath for ‘Land and Freedom’, and afterwards said: “George Orwell always said, ‘The truth about what happened to the republican cause in Spain will never be told.’ But now it has been.”

I hope in some small way this book has a similar impact and changes people’s perception of the role of the ILP in the Spanish Civil War.

–

‘Not just Orwell’: The Independent Labour Party Volunteers and the Spanish Civil War by Christopher Hall, is published by Warren and Pell, May 2009.

The book is available for £14.99 plus £2.50 postage and packing from Warren and Pell
http://www.warrenandpellpublishing.co.uk

The book launch took place on May 30^th at Salford Working Class Movement Library near Manchester, where a plaque honouring the ILP volunteers was unveiled by 1930s ILP activist, Sidney Robinson, and former POUM militia man, Roma Marquez Santos, who spent ten years in a Franco jail.

Further details of the event: www.independentlabour.org.uk/main/?p=359

Seventy years after the end of the Spanish Civil War the first ever memorial plaque commemorating the anti-fascist British and Irish volunteers who fought alongside George Orwell in the ILP Contingent is to be dedicated.

Two political veterans will do the honours: Sidney Robinson, an Independent Labour Party activist in the 1930s who chaired the Newport Spanish Aid Committee, and Roma Marquez Santos, who served in the POUM on the Aragon front with the ILP volunteers. Roma was to spend 10 years in one of Franco’s jails.

At the same time there will be a book launch for ‘Not just Orwell’: The Independent Labour Party Volunteers and the Spanish Civil War by Christopher Hall. For the first time we have a publication that examines the experiences of the ILP combatants and the role played by the ILP. This acknowledges the tragic political conflicts between POUM and the anarchists on one hand and the Communist Party.

The twin events will be held at the Working Class Movement Library in Salford beginning at 2.00 pm, Saturday, 30^th May.

 –

To be sure of a place, or for a copy of the book, please contact:

Chris Hall christoff_hall@yahoo.com

Barry Winter b.winter@leedsmet.ac.uk

ILP (Independent Labour Publications) info@independentlabour.org.uk

When, on 5 October 2006 in the Lancashire Times, Jack Straw started a debate about the wearing of the veil by Muslim women, he did so with characteristic modesty and equivocation. While Straw said that that the wearing of the veil makes ‘better, positive relations between … communities more difficult’, he acknowledged that the Muslim woman he first asked to remove her veil was otherwise well-integrated. In fact she had chosen to wear the veil out of personal religious conviction and her desire to escape the male gaze.

Straw admitted at the end of the article that his concerns could be misplaced. But‚ he added, ‘I think there is an issue here’. How right he was!

Immediately following his comments, there was a media feeding frenzy. Politicians, including the prime minister and Straw himself, firmed up the questions‚ raised in Straw’s initial article into full-blown criticism of the veil. The PM called the wearing of the veil ‘a mark of separation’ which raised a more general question: ‘how we make sure the Muslim community integrates’.

Naturally, these words did not help to dampen down the situation and two months after Straw’s original article the regional press is still carrying stories of acts of discrimination against veil-wearing women, ranging from assault to refusal of service. One cannot help suspect that the issue has been whipped up by the media in a way that has been damaging to the public interest. Instead of the debate which Straw had invited, opinion has been polarised in a particularly unhelpful way.

However, the press alone are not to blame. Tony Blair’s words were not well-chosen. In an article in the Sunday Times on 22 October, Trevor Philips, chair of the Commission for Racial Equality and chair designate of the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights, noted that positions on the veil were already becoming entrenched and feared a deterioration in race relations as a result.

He defended Straw, however, saying ‘it was entirely reasonable for him to express his discomfort’, and noted that ‘barriers to honesty and understanding are a disaster for race relations‘. Philips went on to say that ‘the real crisis is our failure to adjust to change … and our failure to find a civilised way of talking about our diversity’. In his view, Straw‘s comment was as much ‘about him and his generation as it was about the niqab’.

Discrimination

At the same time, it was unfortunate (for everyone except journalists and lawyers) that a Muslim bilingual classroom support worker from Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, Aishah Azmi, was suspended for wearing a veil in class. Her case was taken under new legislation to prevent religious discrimination and, although she succeeded with her claim of victimisation (thereby winning a whopping injury to feelings award of £1,100), she failed to establish that her suspension constituted either direct or indirect discrimination.

This may seem strange to an outsider to discrimination law, but in fact it was quite predictable. The employment tribunal accepted that the correct comparator in a claim for direct discrimination of this kind was with a non-Muslim woman who covered her face. Otherwise, any attempt by employers to control religious dress would be doomed, because once direct discrimination has been established there is no defence an employer can use. Her claim of direct discrimination duly failed.

Subsequently, it was successfully argued that the requirement not to wear a niqab was a ‘provision, criteria or practice’, so Azmi could claim she had suffered indirect discrimination. However, under the law, this form of discrimination is justified if the employer can show that the ‘provision, criteria or practice’ is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate end. In this case, of course, it was.

Although taken under discrimination law and not the Human Rights Act, the case recalls that of the Muslim schoolgirl and Denbigh High School. Eventually, the House of Lords found that the school, which had consulted widely with the local Muslim community and Islamic authorities, was within its rights to exclude the girl for refusing to comply with school uniform by covering herself from head to toe.

However, in its progress to the House of Lords, the case ‘uncovered’ some interesting faultlines in the UK constitution. The Court of Appeal, for instance, noted that the issue would never have arisen in Turkey, which has a secular constitution and bans the wearing of headscarves for religious purposes in all state educational institutions. The position in England is unclear. It is because our head of state, the Queen, is also the head of the Church that the issue of religious freedom was engaged in the first place. After all, religious organisations control many schools and it is government policy to encourage this.

On the other hand, events in France suggest that a secular constitution is not a simple answer to this particular problem. In fact, the riots there last year gave credence to Christian voices who argue that Muslims will only be successfully engaged by other people of faith. Unfortunately, the Pope’s attempt to say this led to uproar when, for reasons known only to himself, he prefaced his remarks by quoting a Byzantine emperor’s less-than flattering assessment of Islam.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, however, has proved to be less gaffe-prone. In 2005, in a prayer meeting in Lyons, he called for a secular state in the UK which acknowledged the role of religion in civic and personal life as a way of addressing the UK’s multi-faith (and no faith) society.

Suspicion

The idea of a no-faith society brings us to another issue. Generally, people in Britain are suspicious of those with overt religious faith, particularly when that faith seems to encourage support for theocracy. This suspicion may be rooted in England’s protestantism, which still has some cultural influence despite the waning spiritual authority of Christian teachings. After all, our whole modern history (in constitutional terms at least) is arguably shaped by anti-Catholicism.

This is not to say that there is no rational basis to criticise the wearing of veils. In the schoolgirl case mentioned above, the Court of Appeal noted, without questioning, hearsay evidence from the school that it had been approached by Muslim parents and children who were concerned about the political views of the Begum family who wanted to establish Ms Begum’s right to wear the veil despite school uniform policy. It was alleged that there was a feeling they wanted to divide the community into good Muslims and bad Muslims, and show that good Muslims were the most politicised and fundamentalist.

Furthermore, Salman Rushdie may be right, the veil may ‘suck’, largely because of the way it separates women from the civic sphere with the excuse that it protects them from intrusive male attention. What about men doing something about their behaviour?

Whatever the merits of wearing veils, the question is not simply about ‘them’ fitting in with ‘our ways’ (whatever ‘our ways’ might be). It is surely about a dialogue concerning the relationship between faith and the state, faith and politics, and faith in society, as well as, crucially, women and religion. In fact, it is not common for Muslim women to wear veils, and to turn it into a symbol of Islam has only played into the hands of people who want to define Islam as a theocratic religion that seeks political and cultural hegemony.

Straw was right to ask the question about veils, the problem has been our response.

“Halifax is a wonderful place and its people are not racist,” Alice Mahon MP said the day after the British National Party’s Adrian Marsden won a council seat in Mixenden Ward in January by 28 votes. In fact, making negative comments about “pakis” has the same conversational status in Halifax as complaining about the weather, although there are considerable pockets of resistance to that way of thinking, as the by-election result itself showed.

The culture of the town is insular – you are a foreigner if you come from another part of England let alone anywhere else. A former councillor of Irish heritage once said that very few people actually feel like they belong in Halifax, totally, and most people experience some degree of exclusion. Snobbery is as rife as racism, and some of the casual comments about people from Mixenden estate itself exhibit a prejudice as deep as that expressed about Asians. If David Blunkett wants more proof of “coiled anger” in the collective English psyche, then a trip to Halifax would be in order.

However, Halifax is also a place of strong contrasts – most of its council wards are mixtures of urban and rural, rich and poor. Reading the national press, you would think Mixenden was simply a big concrete estate. It isn’t. Follow the valley down from Halifax town centre, through the idylls of Wheatley, and you come to the estate. Turn up the hill and you come out in Pellon, with rows of modest but largely well-maintained terraces and some beautiful older stone cottages. Then there is the ‘middle-class’ area, Mount Tabor.

Politically, Mixenden is not a Labour stronghold in the same way as, say, an inner city ward in Newcastle or Newham. Since the creation of Calderdale in 1974 – an unpopular invention which has remained so – Mixenden has not always returned Labour councillors. In 2000, a Tory called Lorraine Stott won, when a deselected Labour councillor, Red Mellett, stood as an independent.

Calderdale council remains unloved partly because it is barely viable. It is the smallest council in West Yorkshire with a very low number of council tax payers and an aging population. Because of its demographic diversity, it is the only authority along the Pennine corridor not to qualify for neighbourhood renewal money. The ability to make political choices is, therefore, somewhat hampered by a complete lack of resources in comparison to more favoured areas like Leeds, Bradford or Manchester. More often than not, the council is hung.

Despite this, Halifax Labour Party should be in a very healthy state indeed, with one of the country’s most outspoken, though unassuming left-wing MPs representing it – at least, it should if you think along the lines of the Campaign Group. In fact, it is in a state of near-collapse, particularly in the North Halifax “Labour heartland” wards of Ovenden, Mixenden and Illingworth. Both DLP and CLP struggle to have quorums and there are possibly only four, perhaps occasionally five, branches in the constituency that meet, only one of which, Ovenden, is in the shaky Labour heartland.

Clinging to class

In Mixenden, all the active members are old and many are in declining health. The party still clings to concepts of class which define its constituency ever more narrowly, and it has been unable to work out alternative ways of involving the socially excluded and the socially aspirational home-owning classes in any meaningful political projects. However, it still knows firmly what it is against: war and Tony Blair.

The Labour group itself is actually the smallest group on the council. It had 11 seats before 23 January and has no policies, no strategy and no interest in politics. In May 2002, it did quite well and won two seats. Then it promptly entered the council cabinet with the Liberal Democrats and the Tories, against the advice of the regional director of the Labour Party in Yorkshire and Humberside, Nan Sloane. He bowed, eventually, to “local” knowledge and the NEC permitted it. A surprising number of people in Halifax believe Labour is still in control of the council, including some of the members of the group.

This year quite a number of (mainly Tory) councillors have quit for one reason or another and soon after the Mixenden by-election was announced, another seat became vacant in Rastrick. The BNP put forward candidates for both seats, but eventually withdrew from Rastrick. Apparently, this is a common tactic because it splits the forces of the opposition.

Labour’s campaign in Mixenden was run by regional officials and telephone canvassing was done from the national HQ in London, although some also took place from the Labour Rooms in Halifax. The usual “Get out the vote” materials were used, based on the marked register of those who had actually voted in general and district elections since 1997. The obvious weakness of this technique is that it does not reach those who don’t usually bother to vote.

Given that this was a mid-term council by-election caused because the sitting Labour councillor was disqualified for non-attendance, the existing Labour vote held up quite well. Encouragingly, most existing Labour voters, at least the ones I talked to, said their second choice would be Liberal Democrat, except for one or two who said Tory specifically because they felt that they would vote for anyone who stood a good chance of beating the BNP. One voter, a pensioner, said that she appreciated the extra money Labour had given her but was disappointed with Tony Blair “because he’s right up that George Bush’s arse”.

During the campaign, Mixenden ward was flooded by BNP activists who moved around in large groups, delivering newspapers and leaflets. There was even a campaign video, which is still available on the BNP website. As you will have no doubt read, the BNP activists – whose accents ranged from Scottish, through Geordie to estuary English – were dressed smartly, usually in black. Their behaviour in public was subdued, but that did not lessen their menace as they swilled round corners and swamped whole streets.

Apparently, they now model their campaign techniques on the Liberal Democrats, having downloaded the Lib Dem’s handbook on how to campaign in local elections from the internet. On the whole, their leaflets said nothing about local issues, concentrating on asylum seekers and calling for an end to racist violence (by which they meant attacks on whites by Asians). They did, of course, capitalise on the 43 per cent per cent pay rise councillors had recently awarded themselves (despite opposition from the Labour group).

Asylum seekers

One leaflet, though, is worth mentioning in particular. It was printed on yellow paper and bore the Liberal Democrat symbol. On closer inspection, the Liberal bird in full flight was made out of condoms and syringes. The first page was a parody of Liberal Democrat PC-ness, entitled “Liberal Democrats – caring for ethnic minorities”. The second page provided a list of quotes from leading Liberal Democrats about asylum seekers and gay rights. Only at the end, after another list of allegations about Liberal Democrat members being charged with child abuse, did the leaflet call for support for the BNP. The Liberal Democrats used the same parodic technique against Labour in London in the 1990s.

Targetting Liberal Democrat voters was an interesting tactic, but not unexpected as the BNP specifically look out for Labour seats which may be about to fall to the Lib Dems. Once the habit of voting Labour has been broken, it is possible to attract floating voters.

In contrast, the Labour Party leaflets avoided the issue of asylum seekers, which was something of an irony because the candidate works for the civil service deciding whether asylum seekers should be sent home or not. He is keenly aware of the abuses which take place and the desperate need of many to find refuge here. Throughout the campaign, however, the national party gagged him. Even on election night itself, he was told not to talk to the press, even though he is a former leader of the council whose trademark is loyalty to the party and self-discipline. His leaflet – “Vote Mike Higgins – the no nonsense candidate” – mentioned a number of bread and butter issues, like renewing former council housing stock, and claimed a vote for the BNP would increase racial violence and lower house prices. The whole thing was written by regional office.

By contrast, again, the Liberal Democrat leaflet openly dealt with racism and supported the rights of asylum seekers. Their candidate, Stephen Pearson, is openly radical. In 1997, when he was the Liberal Democrat candidate for the Calder Valley parliamentary seat, he called for the UK to become a republic. “He may be a shit,” a leading Calderdale Liberal Democrat said during the campaign. “But he’s our shit.”

At one point on election night, an organiser from Labour’s regional office looked up and said: “There’s a 39 per cent turnout. That could be bad for us.” When I pointed out, perhaps naively, that a high turnout ought to be good for Labour he boasted about the time he had orchestrated a successful defence of a Doncaster seat against a strong Liberal Democrat challenge. He had realised Labour would win, he said, when only 11 per cent of the voters turned out.

He went back to his lists and coloured bits of paper. And the rest is history.

Some points are worth noting, however: Mixenden estate voted solidly for Labour, while the BNP vote came mainly from the Mount Tabor and Rye Lane boxes, the areas of “nice” housing. The Tory vote collapsed and the Liberal Democrats only failed to beat the BNP by 28 votes with Labour third, 10 votes behind the Liberals.

Since then, Combat 18 has published photographs of Anti Nazi League activists on their website, asking for details of their names and addresses.

It could be any day in modern London. A tube pulls into King’s Cross underground station. The doors slide open and a young woman wearing a headscarfe, long skirt and woollen shawl struggles on board with a baby-shaped bundle strapped to her back in a cloth sling. A small boy sporting a tightly-plaited pig tail stumbles after her, followed by a young man with dark hair and olive coloured skin who drags a large plastic launderette bag on to the train, heaving it through the legs of London’s commuters.

Feet shuffle and newspapers rustle as the young family search desperately to catch someone’s eye. “Please, please!” whispers the woman to a middle aged man seated opposite her. But his eyes are suddenly fixed on the adverts above her head. Others gaze at the floor, or stare intently at their own reflections in the dark windows behind her.

Then the little boy hops up, plants himself in front of a beige suited woman. “Please,” he says, pointing to the tube map above his head. “Wittorie? Wittoria?” “Oh, Victoria!” she exclaims, flushed but relieved that she’s not being asked to delve deep for some spare change. “It’s three stops,” she says, holding up her fingers, pointing to a name on the blue line. The boy sits down and a shy smile creeps across his young mother’s round face. “Thank you,” her eyes say.

Just another tricky episode for one of the UK’s newest families, feeling their way through the sea of suspicion…

Marcel Malik arrived in England from the Czech Republic in October 1997. Like the family on the tube he is a Gypsy – or Roma as they are more correctly known. He fled from eastern Europe to escape regular beatings from skinheads and the police, but so far England hasn’t exactly been the haven from persecution he had hoped for.

“Marcel was sent to Rochester prison for 45 days after he arrived and has been refused asylum three times,” explained his girlfriend Suzana Gyurkovics, a 17 year-old Slovakian Gypsy who came to England to escape hostility herself nearly four years ago with her mother and two sisters. “At school in Slovakia teachers wouldn’t speak to us because we were Roma,” she says. “My mother was harassed when she was pregnant and Roma women were beaten up. It’s better here but it’s still hard.”

Marcel was attacked in a restaurant once; both of them have been threatened in the street and forced to leave shops and clubs in Folkestone, the small seaside town where they have tried to remake their lives. According to the papers Marcel and Suzana are part of the “invasion” of illegal refugees arriving at Britain’s ports over the last few years “looking for a hand out”. Those who rode the wave that brought Marcel to Dover two and a half years ago were dubbed “giro Czechs” by the papers. But the “flood” turned out to be merely 600 people, half of whom left immediately.

Those who stayed were greeted with National Front marches and media scare stories, hostilities which intensified greatly in the following months as asylum seekers from Kosovo and Albania added to Britain’s so-called ‘immigration crisis’. On the south coast, when a few lucky families found places to live, signs went up in their new neighbours’ windows saying, “No asylum seekers welcome here”. One woman even put barbed wire around her garden fence when Gypsies moved in next door.

“Some of the things people came out with was incredible,” said Charles Bourne of Kent Refugee Link, an organisation which helps immigrants with their asylum appeals and welfare advice. “Even the kids were calling them perverted, dirty thieves, scroungers, baby snatchers – all the worst prejudices about Gypsies.”

Meanwhile, in London and other cities, east European Gypsies have become the new scroungers, labelled so by press and politicians – they exploit their children for begging, we’re told, they are fraudsters, aggressive, a menace on the streets. For the family on the tube it all seems a sorry tale, a tale of our times. But for them and their Roma ancestors it’s only the latest chapter in a long, long story of persecution and discrimination.

Origins

It started over one thousand years ago on the Indian subcontinent, where the origins of all Roma people are said to lie. No-one knows quite why they began to travel, but US Romany scholar Ian Hancock suggests they came from non-Aryan tribes who were recruited as troops by Hindus to repel the threat of Muslim invasion – partly because their lives were regarded as less valuable than those of India’s Aryan rulers.

Through their military endeavours they gradually travelled through Persia and the rest of what is now the middle east, into Turkey and beyond. This is known as the first great Romany migration. The second saw them spread into Europe, which they reached in the 14th century; and in the third, after Roma slavery had been abolished in the middle of the 19th century, Roma crossed the Atlantic to the Americas. Some say the exodus of Roma people from eastern Europe since the fall of the iron curtain constitutes a fourth great migration.

Through these endless wanderings, today’s estimated 12 million Roma are dispersed throughout most countries in Asia, the middle east, Europe, and north and south America. No-one knows for sure quite how many there are because Roma are often excluded from census records and many choose to hide their background for fear of discrimination.

It’s a well-founded fear. For, despite their 600-year presence in Europe, Roma remain the least integrated and most persecuted of peoples, having suffered centuries of slavery and state-sponsored pogroms. In the 15th and 16th centuries, for example, Roma were kept as slaves in the Balkans and Spain; in the 17th and 18th centuries they were shipped by Portuguese, Spanish and English merchants to become slaves in colonies in the Caribbean, Africa, north and south America, and even India; they were made slaves of the Russian Crown under Catherine the Great in the 18th century; and were later employed “in a state of slavery” in the coal mines of Scotland. In the 20th century, 1.5 million died at the hands of the Nazis – one of the least remembered aspects of the holocaust, or Porrajmos, as it is known in Romanes, the Roma language.

Anti-Gypsy hostility in the UK is nothing new either. Roma first arrived in Britain in 1500, travelling as tradesmen, craftsmen or entertainers. In 1530 Henry VIII made it a capital offence just to be an ‘Egyptian’, as they were known (see box below), in an Act that remained on the statute book for over 300 years. More than 100 were condemned to death in York in 1596, and 13 were hanged in Bury St Edmonds in 1650. Edward VI passed a law stating that Gypsies be “branded with a V on their breast, and then enslaved for two years”. Anyone who escaped was to be branded with an S and made a slave for life.

Marginalised

Now there are more than 100,000 Gypsies in the UK, about half of whom still live a nomadic lifestyle. And although the slavery and death sentences have gone, ‘No Travellers’ signs in pubs and shops are still seen; opposition to caravan sites from local residents, press and politicians is common; and daily harassment and intimidation continue to make Romanies one of the most vulnerable and marginalised ethnic minority groups in the country.

Rachel Morris of the Traveller Law Research Unit at Cardiff University claims that Gypsies have the highest infant mortality rates of any ethnic group, the lowest life expectancy, the most appalling accommodation provision, the highest illiteracy rates, and the most racist press coverage. “Romany culture appears to be so different from the rest of society,” she says. “We live in such a controlled society, and people see Travellers as outside the norm – they find it scary.”

In fact, Romany culture is extremely diverse. Although there are attributes common to all Roma, such as loyalty to extended family and the ‘clan’; belief in God (or Del), the Devil (or Beng) and predestiny; and attachment to a code of rules on cleanliness and purity (called Marim), the standards and norms vary enormously as different tribes have adapted to changing conditions and integrated to a greater or lesser degree with different gajikane (non-Roma) societies. Some Roma are still nomadic, but not all; some speak Romanes, but not all; and some Roma groups are illiterate, but not all.

Nevertheless, like other ethnic groups, Roma have suffered from ingrained stereotypes that have been built up over centuries. “Either they are seen as a wandering, mysterious and carefree people with pretty, painted wagons,” says Morris. “Or they’re dirty, noisy thieves and baby stealers with an alien language and customs, who never do an honest day’s work.” This “good gypsy – bad gypsy” syndrome derives from a dangerous mix of fear and fascination – fear of the outsider and fascination with the romantic notion of ‘taking to the road’.

This attitude was revealed last year by the Home Secretary, Jack Straw, on a local radio station. “There are few real Romany Gypsies left who seem to mind their own business and don’t cause trouble,” said the government minister responsible for good race relations. “Then there are a lot more people who masquerade as Travellers or Gypsies … these so-called Travellers seem to think that it’s perfectly okay to cause mayhem in an area, to go burgling, thieving, breaking into vehicles, defecating in doorways, and so on”.

Romantic vision

Mary Lee was born on a Traveller site more than 60 years ago and now manages a local authority site near Widnes. “I wish Jack Straw would just come and meet some of us,” she says. “Everyone thinks the true Romany is someone who lives in a fancy horse drawn wagon. But the Gypsy that goes to work in a factory or to school, they don’t want to know about them. The romantic vision is fine but not the reality.”

When she was young, Mary used to travel extensively with her family, going from farm to farm in the Cotswolds and around Gloucestershire. “There was never the hatred against us that there is now,” she says. “They see we have cars and caravans and they think we’ve all got money. Or they think we’re all on social security and living a free life.” Mary’s father never claimed benefits, she says, and her mother didn’t take any family allowances, although she had five children.

Mary now has two children and a grandchild of her own, but she and her husband stopped travelling about 15 years ago to take on a warden’s job. “My husband used to paint barns and I would do a bit of selling door to door,” she says. “But it was hard with two kids. The way of life has completely changed now for our younger people, but then we have always changed to survive.”

They have had to. In the 20th century, as modern industrialisation grew and the need for itinerant labour decreased, many of the traditional Gypsy occupations disappeared, and land shortages reduced the number of available stopping places for caravans. The 1968 Caravan Sites Act, which made local authorities responsible for providing sites, was repealed as part of Michael Howard’s notorious 1994 Criminal Justice and Pubic Order Act, which also gave police and local authorities extra powers to remove Travellers from highways and land. Recent changes to planning laws mean that 90 per cent of planning applications made by Gypsies fail, while public money given to local authorities for house building is not available for providing Gypsy sites, forcing many young families to live in “settled” accommodation rather than caravans.

Rachel Morris estimates that councils now spend about £10 million a year evicting Travellers, and she echoes many Gypsy organisations in believing that these changes have ‘criminalised’ the Romany lifestyle. A recent report by Save the Children found that 92 per cent of Traveller families in Scotland had been forcibly moved by police and landowners, revealing a “disturbing level of institutionalised racism”. Some Gypsy groups have even taken cases to the European Court of Human Rights claiming their rights to family life and a home have been violated.

Education

Prejudice and discrimination have severely restricted Gypsies’ access to education too. According to Mary many Romany adults never went to school. “I went for six weeks but my father wouldn’t let me stay because I was called names,” she says. “My son went until he was 14, then the site we were on was closed and we had to move. My daughter left when they called her a ‘dirty Gypsy’.”

A 1996 report from OFSTED found that around 10,000 of the estimated 50,000 secondary age Gypsy children were not on school rolls, and of those that were, only one in five reached key stage three and one in 20 key stage four before dropping out. Hester Hedges is one Traveller who has bucked the trend. Now 20, she is part way through a law degree at De Montford University in Leicester, one of very few Gypsies who have ever passed A levels, never mind gone on to higher education.

“I was a lucky in a way because my parents stopped travelling when I was five so local people got used to me,” she says. “And my Mum can’t read so she was really keen on us going to school.”

Hester, who grew up in a caravan on a site near Cambridge with her parents, a brother and a sister, received help from the local Traveller education team, one of about 70 such units around the country who encourage Gypsy children to go to school, reassure their parents that education won’t dilute their own culture, and try to get schools to educate other children about Gypsy life.

“Lots of Traveller children don’t get over the initial barriers at school, which is not surprising,” says Hester. “My sister used to come back home with her lip swollen and black eyes. For some Traveller children the education was secondary – just getting there and back without being beaten up was the main thing. When you get abused as a Gypsy it carries a whole lot of meanings, it’s more than just an insult.

“I used to think I’d rather be someone else,” she adds. “It’s painful having to go through life feeling different. There are still some people who I would never tell I was from a Traveller family – you never know what their reaction might be. Even those people at school who knew would be like, ‘No, not a proper one’, or ‘But you’re not like them’.”

Certainly there are no dangly gold earings or flowery skirts on Hester, and her accent is no more mysterious than Radio 4 English. Yet, she’s acutely aware of her heritage, and is already wondering how she can use her law degree to help other Travellers. In many ways she represents the future, the hope that education can both preserve a culture and destroy a prejudice.

As Mary Lee says: “I believe in education. I want our children to be health workers, liaison officers, teachers, because I want them to be able to speak up for Romany people. But the educating has got to be done on both sides.”

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What’s in a name?

The name Romany is derived from Sanskrit for ‘the people’, whereas the term Gypsy comes from the mistaken 16th century notion that these “dark travellers” came from Egypt. Some people prefer the terms Rom and Roma, or Rrom and Rroma.

The Council of Europe has approved the term ‘Rroma (Gypsies)’ for use in its documents.

Romanies call non-Gypsy people ‘gorjer’, ‘gorgio’, or ‘gajikane’.

Language

There is a common Romany language (Romanes), with roots in ancient Punjabi or Hindi, although there are now some 100 dialects and three distinct language groups: Domari, spoken in the middle east and eastern Europe (the Dom); Lomarven, spoken in central Europe (the Lom); and Romani, in western Europe (the Rom).

Culture

Although there are still some common elements to Romany culture, it is complex. The Roma population has always been a composite of different ethnic groups brought together during the initial migration from India and fragmented by later migrations into Europe and elsewhere. Romany groups have grown differently in different places, sometimes assimilating other populations, sometimes being absorbed by them. Tribes around the world have different beliefs and tenets, but no group can claim to be the “one true” Roma.

In Britain “Romany Gypsies” were identified as an ethnic group, as defined by the Race Relations Act, in 1989.

Thomas Acton, then a student, established the first Gypsy Council caravan school in 1967 on an airfield in east London. Now Britain’s first professor of Romany Studies at Greenwich University, he has identified four groups of Gypsies in the UK: Romanichals (English Gypsies), Kale (Welsh), Nachins (Scottish) and Minceir (Irish).

Well known modern entertainers with Romany ancestry include Yul Brynner, Charlie Chaplin, Rita Hayworth, Michael Caine, Bob Hoskins and David Essex. Romany music has influenced artists such as Liszt, Bizet, Brahms, Verdi and Rachmaninov.

A spoked wheel (or chakra) was adopted as the symbol of the international Romany movement in 1971. It bears a striking resemblance to the 24-spoked Ashok Chakra found in the centre of the national flag of India.

The Romany flag is green and blue with a red chakra in the centre.

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Juneha Chowdhury is nearing the end of her first year as a newly qualified teacher. It hasn’t been easy but, at 27, she’s finally beginning to fulfill the promise she first made to herself as a school girl more than 10 years ago. “I remember realising quite early that I could help my friends learn,” she says. “I suppose I had a natural talent to teach.”

But Juneha’s path from school girl to school teacher has been far from smooth. She went to Mulberry girls’ school, in the east London borough of Tower Hamlets, the once struggling education authority that has recently received swathes of praise and press coverage for its vastly improved exam results and fast improving schools. She left with nine GCSEs and three A levels, but family disapproval prevented her taking up an offer from the London School of Economics to study law, which she’d applied for in secret.

Instead, aged 18, she went to Bangladesh to get married. Four years later, after struggling with the authorities to bring her husband to the UK, and with a seven month old son to look after, she eventually enrolled at East London University to study English. Despite living in a hostel, and for a time officially regarded as a homeless family, Juneha got her degree.

After that, the decision to train as a teacher was easy – made easier, indeed, thanks to Tower Hamlets council. As a resident and ex-pupil in the borough, Juneha was eligible for one of the authority’s many innovative initiatives to encourage local people to work in local schools. She received a £3000 bursary when she took her first teaching job in a Tower Hamlets school, and she’ll get a further £2000 if she stays in the borough for at least two years. It certainly helped to make up her mind.

“I had offers from schools in Wanstead and Hackney,” she says. “But the bursary helped me make the decision. It’s a great incentive.”

Now teaching English at a local secondary school, Juneha is just one of the latest among a new generation of teachers and school support staff who have emerged from Tower Hamlets’s multi-ethnic and immigrant-rich communities to help transform the borough’s schools and the academic prospects of its children. As such, she’s a symbol of the changing face and fortunes of an area that, not long ago, was synonymous with the kind of racial tension, far right activism and educational underachievement that seems to characterise those northern towns where the BNP has made such headway recently.

A decade ago this area of the east end was a main BNP target. But now, while councils in towns such as Oldham, Burnley and Bradford have been criticised for policies that encourage “community apartheid” (see box) – leading to the disturbances of 2001 and, arguably, the recent BNP election successes – Tower Hamlets has won beacon status for “community cohesion”. It wasn’t always this way.

Stephen Lawrence

Nineteen-ninety-three is etched into the minds of anti-racist campaigners as the year when Stephen Lawrence was killed. But that year also saw a number of other vicious racist attacks, notably against Bangladeshi schoolboys around Bethnal Green and Mile End. For a while, the atmosphere was tense and, at times, scary. The BNP fought street battles with anti-fascist campaigners in Brick Lane, and the Anti-Nazi League organised large, noisy protests outside Bethnal Green’s York Hall, where the BNP held a rally.

Most frightening of all, the BNP won its only council seat for many years on the Isle of Dogs, benefiting from the white community’s hostility to the council’s housing policy, a hostility fuelled, in part, by the Liberal Democrats. At the time it seemed like the thin edge of a very sharp wedge. As it happened, Derek Beackon did not last long, partly because the massed ranks of the London-based anti-racist organisations concentrated their forces on the ward, and focused on exposing the BNP’s racist underbelly. Luckily, back then BNP members were still wearing lace-up boots, black bomber jackets and short hair cuts, crassly conforming to their folk devil image and falling neatly into line for a media-led moral panic.

Of course, no-one would seriously suggest there’s no longer any racism in Tower Hamlets – the numerous incidents of abuse and harassment against ethnic minorities, Muslims in particular, in the wake of September 11, are testament to its continued existence – but there has certainly been a change in what used to be called “community relations”. What’s more, that transformation has come, partly at least, thanks to a number council initiatives, the kind of policies that just might start to make a difference in Oldham, Blackburn, Burnley, Halifax, Bradford, Stoke, and the like.

None of these seem like radically new ideas – they include, for example, housing policies designed to break up ethnically homogenous estates and spread people from different communities around the borough. There’s also a rapid reaction unit which responds to aggravation between teenage gangs – a continuing problem in the Bangladeshi community – run by the youth service, not the police. And there’s a jobs programme which has helped 1500 residents get work locally, increasing the proportion of local people employed at Canary Wharf by 50 per cent.

But the biggest difference has been made in education. Back in the early 1990s, Tower Hamlets’ schools were notorious as educational graveyards. This was an area where newly trained teachers took their first jobs because there were masses available and the authority provided cheap housing as an incentive. All too often, they survived for two years, then left to further their careers in kinder pastures. When the council took control of education from the Inner London Education Authority in 1990, only eight per cent of pupils achieved the equivalent of five or more A* to C grades at GCSE, and a fifth of all pupils left school without any qualifications. By 1998 things had improved, but only slightly, and education almost passed into the hands of private management.

Most improved

Last year, however, 44 per cent of pupils got top GCSE grades, a huge nine per cent increase on 2001, compared to a one per cent rise nationally. It was the biggest improvement in England. Only four per cent of Tower Hamlets pupils left school without qualifications in 2002, and the number going on to higher education has increased by more than 200 per cent. These results were built on the success of Tower Hamlets’ primaries, whose SATS results rose more rapidly than in any other education authority between 1998 and 2001.

Of course, exam results are a crude and distorting measure of children’s education, at best, and of the standard of schools and teachers in particular (whatever the government thinks). But such improvements do indicate that something significant has changed, especially given that, socially and culturally, the area is still characterised by the kind of deep poverty and huge ethnic diversity that’s often regarded as a barrier to educational success.

Indeed, despite being squashed between the pin-striped wealth of the City and the shiny glass glamour of Canary Wharf, Tower Hamlets is still the most deprived borough in the country – 17 of its 19 wards are among the worst five per cent in England; more than 60 per cent of households have an annual income less than £9000; and 62 per cent of pupils are entitled to free school meals (compared to 18 per cent nationally).

It’s also famous for being the first area of settlement for generations of immigrants, going back centuries. It was French Huguenots, 50,000 of them fleeing persecution at the hands of Catholics, who started the famous textile trade around Spitalfields in the early 18th century. When they moved on the area was inhabited by Jewish refugees from central Europe. There were some 150,000 by the end of the 19th century. There were Chinese seamen, abandoned at the docks a couple of miles down the Thames; Indian lascars, pitched up by the shrinking Empire; and Caribbeans enticed by post-war promises of work and welfare.

In the last two or three decades the area has become home to a largely Sylheti community from Bangladesh. Brick Lane, now known as Bangla Town, is a tourist attraction because of its lines of curry houses, and Mosques have taken their place beside the churches and synagogues, sometimes in the same place.

The present Bangladeshi community now make up more than 33 per cent of the population, according to the latest Census. This is an ethnic group consistently labelled – alongside black Caribbeans and Pakistanis – as ‘educational underachievers’. More than half of Tower Hamlets’ pupils are Bangladeshis, while another 11 per cent come from black African and Caribbean backgrounds. A total of 90 different languages are spoken in the area, and 72 per cent of pupils speak English as an ‘additional language’, another long recognised barrier to educational success.

Yet, as the latest GCSE results suggest, such barriers are being broken here with increasing ease. Last year, almost half of all Bangladeshi pupils (48 per cent) got five or more A* to C grades at GCSE, a leap of seven per cent on 2001, and higher than the proportion of white pupils (32 per cent) or black Caribbeans (31 per cent). Back in 1991, only 14 per cent of Bangladeshi pupils made such grades.

Not everything is perfect – a third of the borough’s primaries are still considered below the national average, for example – but Tower Hamlets clearly has lessons to teach other authorities about educating poor and ethnically diverse children. There have been some simple initiatives to “desegregate” schools, such as encouraging pupils from different backgrounds to sit next to each other, for example. But the main change has been in the make-up of the workforce, brought about by the council’s commitment to giving people from local communities, especially parents, opportunities to work in schools.

Sarah Gale is head of the authority’s equalities and parent partnership development unit. “We’d been encouraging parents to come and help in schools for years,” she says. “But although they’re often extremely skilled, many parents in Tower Hamlets don’t feel comfortable – because of language barriers, or low levels of literacy – so we looked at ways for them to be involved that are non-threatening and can build confidence.”

Under the council’s encouragement, some schools set up informal parents’ groups, or set aside areas where parents could meet without feeling under pressure to enter the classroom. More specifically, the council began to advertise ‘family learning courses’ at its parents’ advice centre in Mile End, so that parents who wanted to could train to become more involved in school life.

A way in

The ‘helping in schools’ programme has encouraged numerous parents to take up support staff positions as nursery nurses, classroom assistants and administrators. The council also runs access courses during work time on communication skills, GCSE maths and English, an Open University specialist teacher’s assistant certificate, and, from next year, an employment-based foundation degree for TAs. The idea is that these form steps towards becoming a teacher, for those who want to, thus increasing the authority’s stock of locally-raised, locally-trained staff.

“We realised if we were going to encourage local people to become classroom assistants and teachers, we needed to address people’s personal needs and professional abilities,” says Ms Gale, who reckons about 500 classroom assistants a year take council-funded courses. “Having children in school can act as a catalyst for parents to start learning themselves. But some parents found school an ambivalent experience, others may have had no formal education in this country, and have no knowledge of it. Our strategy allows them a way in.”

There’s also a series of financial incentives designed to entice graduate teachers like Juneha to stay local. Alongside the ‘golden hellos’ for NQTs, the unit also funds a graduate teacher programme, in which mature students do one year’s ‘on-the-job’ training in schools. Further bursaries are available to local residents for a full-time, three year undergraduate course on primary and early years teaching, based at the local professional development centre. Teaching assistants and nursery nurses can be seconded to the course on full salary.

“Our aim is to give more local people greater access to careers in schools,” says Ms Gale, who is at pains to point out that none of these initiatives are specifically aimed at particular ethnic groups, just local residents. Nevertheless, there’s little doubt they’ve already begun to change the ethnic make-up of Tower Hamlets staff rooms. Of the 57 NQTs who have taken advantage of the bursaries, for example, 61 per cent are from ethnic minorities, and 90 per cent of those are Bangladeshi. More than half the people who have taken the graduate teacher programme so far are Bangladeshi, and more than half the 47 people currently on the three year training course are from ethnic minorities.

Three years ago 14 per cent of all Tower Hamlets’ teachers were from ethnic minorities, but by spring this year that had risen to more than a fifth of teachers, (and nearly 40 per cent of support staff), compared to seven per cent of teachers nationally. Juneha, for one, has seen a major change. “When I was at school it was very rare to find Bangladeshi teachers, other than teaching Bengali,” she says. “Now, the girls I teach will see me, and realise they can do it too. For me it was a dream, like trying to reach the sky. They’ll see it can be reality.”

While she’s had to endure a degree of suspicion both from white parents and Bangladeshi girls, unused to seeing one of their own in such a position, Juneha has also seen attitudes to education changing within her community. “I do see girls in my own school still not getting the parental support they need,” she says. “But teachers like me can help them to see that being in a profession is respectable.

“Nine years ago there wasn’t a community of people going to university, so how could I possibly go? Now, my parents’ attitudes have changed. My dad was heartbroken to see the trouble I went through to bring up a child while going to university, and now my younger sister is at college studying law. The whole community is changing. I just broke the mould, and what makes me proud is that now I’m able to share it.”

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Community apartheid?

Following the ‘disturbances’ of 2001 in the cities of Oldham, Bradford and Burnley, considerable attention has been focused on the lack of contact and respect between people of different racial backgrounds in those towns. The situation in some places was described as a kind of ‘community apartheid’, and numerous reports were produced to try and uncover how such segregation had come about.

Lord Herman Ouseley, former chair of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), wrote of Bradford that: “Communities are fragmenting along racial, cultural and faith lines… Rather than seeing the emergence of a confident, multicultural district where people are respectful and have understanding and tolerance for difference, people’s attitudes appear to be hardening and intolerance towards differences is growing.”

In the UK, enforced segregation on racial grounds is unlawful under the Race Relations Act but there are all sorts of social, economic and political reasons why ‘self-segregation’, or ‘congregation’ occurs. A report into the disturbances by the CRE found that “more than half the Pakistani population [the predominant ethnic minority group] in each of the three towns was concentrated in three wards or fewer; in the case of Burnley, in just one.”

While this can partly be explained by the understandable desire of newcomers to live near people like themselves, says the report, “economic circumstances, discrimination in the housing field, ‘white flight’, and newcomers’ experiences and fears of racism, also play a significant role in polarising communities”.

In Bradford, for example, the report found that only two per cent of council housing had been allocated to Asian households. In Oldham, between 1984 and 1993, the council had been housing Asians on different estates from white people, and in lower value properties. Even after this practice was reviewed, Asian residents tended to apply for housing in areas where others from their communities lived, reinforcing congregation. Inevitably, some estates became almost entirely white, others Asian.

It wasn’t only the council, however. In 1990, three Oldham estate agents were found to have been advising white customers to buy houses in ‘white’ areas, and pointing Asians to areas with large Asian communities. In Bradford, estate agents would contact neighbours when an adjacent house was sold to an ethnic minority family, suggesting their property’s value may decline – leading to ‘white flight’ and further segregation.

Inevitably, such residential apartheid has ‘knock on’ effects on other aspects of life, notably education. In Bradford, for example, there are 14 primary schools (out of 101) where Asian pupils form between 90 and 99 per cent of the school roll, and 26 where they make up more than 70 per cent. In Oldham, Asian pupils make up 80 per cent  of the roll in 17 of its 100 primary schools, more than 95 per cent in 13 schools, and more than 99 per cent in seven. In five (of 15) secondary schools, less than five per cent are Asian, and they make up 98 per cent in one, and 77 per cent in another.

The CRE report comments that “there is considerable ethnic segregation in education in Bradford, Oldham and Burnley”. Primary schools, it says, reflect the residential segregation of their catchment areas, but secondary schools, which from their location might be expected to have diverse intakes, have “come to be seen by many people as either ‘white’ or ‘Asian’ schools”.

Since the 1996 Education Act, ‘parental choice’ takes precedence in law over the Race Relations Act, so if parents choose to send their children to schools with other children of their own ethnic origin, or avoid schools where most children are from a different ethnic background, they are entitled to do so. Then there are faith schools, of course, which are entitled to give priority to families of their faith. Four of Oldham’s 15 secondaries are church schools, three of which were reported to have “virtually excluded” children from Bangladeshi and Pakistani families.

The CRE report concluded that: “Among the underlying tensions revealed by our research into the disturbances in the North of England, the frequent lack of connectedness and mutual understanding between adjacent but different ethnic communities stands out as the greatest threat to a socially cohesive society.”

It is into this gap between communities, it seems, that the British National Party has been able to tread.

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