|
|
 |
| Immigration History |
| |
London is a city that has been and continues to be built on immigration; its long history gives it a unique cultural background and rich ethnic diversity. London's East End, and Tower Hamlets in particular, have for a long time been the first port of call for refugees and migrants arriving in Britain.
The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw the arrival and settlement of large numbers of Irish, Chinese and Jewish people. In the twentieth century some of the earliest settlements of African, Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi people were also located in the East London, near the Irish and Jewish communities who had famously settled in the area previously.
|
| |
Image: Multicultural celebrations in Tower Hamlets (courtesy of East End Life)
|
| |
The Somali community is one of the oldest black African communities in East London. The first settlers were part of the Merchant Navy and landed on British shores after the First World War. The majority settled in Tower Hamlets, but there are also old-established Somali communities in other port towns such as Cardiff and Liverpool. The years following the Second World War, and the disintergration of the British Empire in the fifties and sixties, saw a dramatic increase in immigration from commonwealth countries, in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. |
| |
Image: Stepney Institute 1963 (Courtesy of Local Hsitory Library & Archives)
|
| |
Postcolonial London became an important centre of cross-cultural fertilisation; for example, the interaction between Africans and West Indians, who shared ethnic and political heritage as former colonial subjects, now members of the new British Commonwealth. Many twentieth century immigrants to Britain were invited with the promise of jobs upon arrival, usually the most dirty, strenuous and poorly paid.
In present day London, 1 in 4 of the population is a member of an ethnic minority. Following patterns of conflict, large numbers of Somalis, alongside Zairians and Kurds, are among recent groups of refugees to arrive in the UK, but there is a strong historical continuity with the early seafaring settlers. Somali seamen have provided vital links for chain migration. There are an estimated 70 000 Somalis living in London, with the largest group of some 10 000 people in Tower Hamlets, and more recent arrivals settling in Southall.
Newcomers to Britain from other cultures have often experienced racism, discrimination and hostility in some shape or form. In the early years of this century, riots directed against ethnic groups occurred in 1915 against Germans, in 1919 against blacks.
Newly arrived migrants tend to get shunted to the bottom of access and entitlement facilities and to experience discriminatory and exploitative practices, through a combination of language difficulties, social dislocation and tension between more settled communities. In earlier times, Irish immigrants and Eastern European Jews were greeted with widespread animosity and violence followed by people from the West Indies, India and Pakistan replacing them as the main victims of hostility.
Current well-established East End populations, such as the Bengali community, previously suffered racial violence, harassment and discrimination at the hands of the native white population (and unfortunately still do in many cases), although the source of conflict has shifted somewhat in late twentieth century London from simple white-on-black racism to tensions between, and within, various ethnic groups.
However, the media frenzy in newspapers such as the Sun, Daily Express and especially the Daily Mail about Asylum seekers, and the protests that have been staged along coastal towns such as Eastbourne, Saltdean and Dover, bring to mind the inflammatory rhetoric that plays on people's xenophobia and prejudices used by Oswald Mosley or the BNP.
20thC: British Brothers League, opposing the settlement of Russian/Polish Jews in London.
WWI: British Empire Union, opposing Germans in Britain.
1948: Mosley's Union Movement, opposing Blacks and Jews.
1960: National Front (NF).
1967: British Nationalist Party (BNP).
During the last 25 years in the UK we have seen a consistent and severe enforcement of immigration controls irrespective of the prevailing economic conditions or of the party in power.
The impact of mass migration is huge for both the host society and the migrants, and both groups benefit on the whole from interacting with each other. The host society benefits from a cheap ready supply of labour power; there are now many vital institutions, trades and services, such as the NHS, that heavily rely on immigration from developing countries.
Link to:
Asylum Seekers & the Media
Media and Misinformation
Tower Hamlets History
|
Top
|
|
