Daily Mail
THIRTY years ago when I first arrived in this country from India, had I been asked if Britain was institutionally racist, as the report on the horrific Stephen Lawrence murder suggests, then my answer would have been yes.
I was 20 and had left behind my parents in Bombay to study for a degree here. But, if my early experiences of this country had continued to be unbearably ugly, I would never have changed my plans and stayed here after graduating.
Although laws making racial discrimination illegal were then coming into force, it was difficult to believe people in this country wanted me here. Landladies, even in the capital, would openly tell me that they could not give me a room because of my colour.
Looking back, I can laugh about it. Then, it was painful to arrange to see a place only to find, when the landlady opened the door and saw my suntan, that the room had suddenly gone.
True, I was never stopped by the police in the way that some young blacks have been but I can remember encountering a kind of casual hatred that was very unnerving.
I had arrived soon after Enoch Powell’s `Rivers of Blood’ speech and saw the unsettling pictures of dockers marching in his support. So perhaps it was not surprising to find a news vendor, from whom I was trying to buy a paper, lecturing me on courtesy.
Pretending not to have heard me say please, he barked out: ‘In this country we say please when we ask for something, but then you wouldn’t know that would you, sunshine?’
Or the taxi driver, who ignored my outstretched hand for a while, saying: `You ought to get a lighter shade if you want to be noticed.’
Through much of my education here, the most persistent question I was asked was when I would return home and how my education in this country would benefit my people.
The first winter I was here the nation’s favourite comedy show was one where Spike Milligan played an Indian who only had to say `goodness gracious me’ to have the whole audience in fits of laughter. I remember watching it in a hotel and being approached by a guest who said: `Spike Milligan plays an Indian better than the real Indians, don’t you think?’
It’s a measure of how far this country has come that now not only has Indian food become the staple diet of this country but the best comedy show on the TV is Goodness Gracious Me, performed by Indians born in this country who have the confidence to laugh at themselves and the native British.
I had vivid illustration of the confidence of some of the ethnic community recently when an Asian company which runs a growing television station in this country held a glittering launch of its new television channel.
The event at the Cafe Royal — at which a businessman talked of how London was seen as the launch-pad for a worldwide Asian television network — indicated the ease with which many ethnic businessmen feel about living and making money here.
True, the Afro-Caribbean community has less of an economic stake but, in the sporting field, the contrast with 20 years ago is again most striking. Then almost no football manager would think of fielding blacks and some openly talked about how they could never stand up to a hard British winter.
It is difficult to see anybody making such a claim today if they’ve ever watched Sol Campbell play. Even the success of the Spice Girls shows how comfortably black and white can mix.
But how different Britain is from America. A couple of years ago Rupert Murdoch told his daughter Elisabeth, then married to a man of African extraction, that as a mixed couple they would socially be much better off in London rather than America where such mixed couples are rare.
Although in America, many blacks have made tremendous progress — Clinton’s secretary is black, his best friend Vernon Jordan is black, and he turns for spiritual solace to the Rev Jesse Jackson — blacks and whites there rarely mix on a personal level, let alone cross the bedroom threshold.
It’s also interesting to note that in America there was much comment about the racial dimension to the Louise Woodward case — the father of Matthew Eappen is a Syrian Christian from India, but this received virtually no attention in this country.
More than 30 years ago it certainly would have.
In those days the Conservative MP Gerald Nabarro could ask in all seriousness: `Would you like your blue-eyed English rose to marry a big buck nigger and produce six coffee-coloured grandchildren?’
He did not need to seek an answer and it’s a measure of how much this country has changed that if anybody were to ask such a question, only Lenny Henry could get away with it — and the answer would probably be a delighted yes.
What this means is that socially Britain has more relaxed race relations, having opened the bedroom door and the kitchen door to ethnic communities, while keeping them out of real political power.
Much of the angst and the belief in institutional racism in this country (a belief I frankly do not share) comes from the lack of political power that the blacks and the Asians feel. In the media, too, blacks and Asians are strikingly noticeable by their absence and strongly feel that their voices and feelings are not heard.
Yes, there is an immense problem between some young unemployed blacks and the police but there is an immense problem between many other unemployed young people and authority in this country. The difference is that relations between blacks and the police are of a particularly violent and nasty variety.
But to build from that the picture of a wholly and irredeemably racist society would be quite wrong. It would miss out the fact that in many areas of life there is a great deal of positive mixing, particularly noticeable among the young. To someone of my generation, it is both striking and remarkable.
What this country needs to do is find ways to open the door to political power for blacks and Asians and we need to find ways whereby the voices of these communities can be better heard in the media.
The Macpherson report makes dismal reading yet I remain convinced that this country can find an answer to the sense of despair and alienation that blacks and Asians feel.
I’m confident of that because I can recall how dismal it looked back in 1981 when Brixton was on fire. It seemed parts of London were about to become the sort of no-go areas common in America.
However that did not happen; society changed for the better and this country’s historic capacity to adapt and accommodate new ideas will see it through to a society where different cultures and colours can truly live in harmony.
© Mihir Bose
