I love living in rural Wales. I am mesmerised by the early morning mist lifting from the valley. Even the pungent farming smells, which I once found rather offensive, are now sweet. And then there’s the tight-knit community that welcomed me into their fold.
So it’s bizarre to hear stories of division and exclusion from the other place I call home, London. It seems like the city has recently become much less friendly to outsiders, which concerns me deeply, not because I come from a migrant family, but because, not long ago, I was the foreigner in this Welsh land.
My neighbours are wary of London: they see it as a place of discontent. They’re not convinced when I tell them it’s a great place to live—that the museums, culture and international vibe can make you feel rich. However, on 13th September, when Tommy Robinson—whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon—held his “Unite the Kingdom” rally, I felt like my home city resembled the angry dystopia my neighbours imagine.
What if the Welsh had waved their flag at me, not in an ebullient, inclusive way, but with anger, to make me feel separate and other? I’m so thankful this hasn’t been my experience. Waving a flag can be joyful—but not if you’re using it to bash someone over the head.
The disquiet I felt about Yaxley-Lennon’s divisive rhetoric turned into horror when I found out that a member of my Indian family attended his rally. Without any sense of irony, they had chanted: “This country belongs to the Anglo-Saxons!” I felt a deep and impenetrable chasm emerge between us.
Since acknowledging this disturbing piece of information, I have been grappling with it; trying to make sense of something nonsensical.
My grandparents came to the UK in the 1960s. My family worked hard to make a living. My mother told me stories of how kind and welcoming the British were. She said they were “angels”. My grandmother, however, was spat on.
I grew up in the west London borough of Southall, which has a large Indian population. In 1979, the National Front came to the area to hold a meeting. They were met with huge protest by anti-fascist groups and the migrant community. One of the protesters was a 33-year-old special needs teacher from New Zealand called Blair Peach. He was killed when police charged at him and other protesters. A school in Southall was named after him. I was five at the time of the protests, but I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know his name; he is greatly respected by Indians and is part of the history of Southall. A white man who died protecting migrants.
A member of my family attending a rally led by the far right is an affront to that history. It lacks empathy towards immigrants, old and new.
But jumping on the right-wing bandwagon is not restricted to my own family. A recent news article in the Guardian stated that support for Reform is rising among Indians. And this is a party with an MP who recently said: “It drives me mad seeing adverts full of black and Asian people.”
So why would Indians find allies in Yaxley-Lennon and Reform? Indians are generally conservative, so there’s that. But I think there’s something more sinister going on. The racism that is spewed by Reform and Yaxley-Lennon is largely directed at Muslims. It’s one of the reasons they see London as a dystopian place, a fractured city with a Muslim mayor. Traditionally, Indians have not got on with Pakistani Muslims, in a conflict originating in the days of partition. Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister and Hindu nationalist, recently amended a law that enabled immigrants to become Indian citizens—to exclude many Muslims.
As uncomfortable as this may sound, some Indians feel a consensus with Yaxley-Lennon and his ilk based on this Islamophobia; they are united in their disdain for the same group of people. It’s a “my enemy’s enemy” logic. I find this ignoble and short-sighted. Support for the far right puts us all in danger. We are not protected because we are not Muslim. We are brown—that’s where it starts and ends. My grandmother was still spat on even though we’re a Christian family. We are visibly different, and no racist is going to ask us our life stories before they decide we’re the enemy. The only people we should be united with are those who don’t divide us: an attack on one is really an attack on us all.
This schism within my family has highlighted something alarming. There was once a time when I knew who the far right were. They were the National Front, the BNP and the English Defence League. But now, their noxious politics pervades throughout society and belongs to the people I call family.
