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Whitey Blighty
Writer: Satinder Chohan
'Whitey Blighty' attempts to envisage Britain without immigrant influence by asking the rather intriguing question: 'What would Britain be like if immigration had never happened?' The straight answer: It's almost unimaginable to think of a Britain without immigrants.
Britain is perceived by many as a nation of racially pure white Anglo-Saxons. However it is a nation that has been built by foreign hands: the Celts, Picts, Saxons, Angles, Normans, Jews, Huguenots, Poles, Irish, Indians, Pakistanis, African-Caribbeans, Bengalis, Chinese, Ugandans and Somalis among others.
The mass immigration in the 1950s from the Caribbean and South Asia gave pallid Britain an ethnic makeover, techni-colouring its verdant landscape and leading a former Empire into the global age. Thousands of immigrants providing cheap labour, worked to reconstruct Britain ravaged by war after 1945. They not only played a pivotal part in rebuilding the economy and regenerating public services but also spiced up British food, fashion, music, the arts and urban living with their vibrant additions. Without immigration of people of colour Britain would be as dull as the grey weather that hangs perpetually over its isles. There would be Last Night of the Proms and Morris dancing but no Notting Hill Carnival; pop idols but no R 'n' B or garage MCs; Yorkshire pudding but no chicken tikka masala. Class but no 'street'. Immigration loosened the racial strait-jacket of what it means to be British :being British no longer means that you have to be white.
I am a British-born child of immigrants who arrived in Britain during the 1960s. As a 2nd generation British Asian, I feel utterly blessed to be living between cultures. Naturally, there are conflicts and contradictions. But the benefits of British Asian cultural fusion easily override these, giving openness, flexibility and empathy with others through constant shifts between two vastly different worlds.
Immigration loosened the racial strait-jacket of what it means to be British
As a proud Punjabi Sikh, I feel that my Sikh values which include gender/caste/religious equality, justice, humility and respect to others, importance of family and community, shape my personal view of the world. As a British citizen, I have been educated, live and work in a British society whose laws and customs I respect. However I would not be happy making jingoistic pledges to the land of my birth. Especially since modern Britain still refuses to relinquish notions of nationhood that easily lapse into an Empire mentality and mythic white Anglo-Saxon exclusivity.
I would still fail Tebbit's cricket test. I don't support England at either cricket or football and prefer to see the Germans giving England a football thrashing. Yet it makes me happy to see 3rd generation Asian kids supporting England at football. But for me, the rousing terrace renditions of 'Rule Britannia' still make this child of Indian immigrants feel very uncomfortable indeed. For most of my life, I have lived in a Britain that has reluctantly adjusted to the black and Asian influences. Britain is doing well to celebrate its multi-ethnic make-up but it has been an arduous journey for non-white Britons and there is still some way to go.
For all the Bend It Like Beckhams, Gareth Gates' collaborations with the Kumars or summer love affairs with Bollywood, we still suffer racist attacks. We still endure institutional racism and discrimination in education, the workplace, politics and the law. With the war on terrorism, there is increased Islamophobia. There is still high unemployment, underachievement, poverty and disaffection in ethnic communities from Bradford to Tower Hamlets. Under David Blunkett's new naturalisation laws, there will be citizenship and English tests that are patronizingly targeted at non-white immigrants. These tests could also be of benefit to (white) English-born citizens who might do well to take English lessons and classes on English history and democracy. As British Asians, Blunkett feels he can tell us with whom we can and cannot arrange our marriages and tells us that we should speak English in our homes. Would he equally demand the same of Italian and French families living in Britain? How many British people living in Spain make any attempt to learn fluent Spanish while living in their English-speaking ghettos?
The government should lead by example. It should spend less time trying to coerce Blacks and Asians into conforming to muddled notions of Britishness and expend more effort celebrating the positive aspects of racial difference and cultural diversity in this country. Immigrants like my parents inadvertently triggered the process of releasing Britain from its imperialist past, towards one better spent revelling in the multicultural riches of the present.
In addition to imagining a Britain without immigration, perhaps we also need to start visualising Britain as a genuinely pluralistic, multicultural society. One where immigrants are valued for the contributions they have made and continue to make, rather than being undermined for the out-dated notions of Britain that they are rightfully taking away.