Segregated Britain. Farhaan Wali
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shocked, I didn’t understand what this meant. We [immigrants] were treated very badly [in the beginning]’. Most of the early immigrants arriving in the East End were very unaware that a negative white consensus existed concerning the new arrivals. They were subjected to constant racial harassment and attack, especially those who ventured into white dominated areas. As Mr Miah suggests, ‘they [white English] rejected us, they think we are here to take their jobs … so, we were not wanted’. The overt forms of racism encountered by early settlers forced them to seek refuge amongst the ‘familiar’.
On the surface, according to the narrative of early Bangladeshi immigrants, it seems during the phase of early settlement; living in physically separated communities in the East End became a necessity rather than a choice. These isolationist trends developed greater meaning when the receiving culture seemingly rejected the migrants during the early phases of the diaspora. This directly affected the way migrants interacted with the white English population, limiting their social contact with the ‘other’. What caused early Muslim settlers to seek out the ‘familiar’ and seemingly resist the integration of the host society?
To start with, the ethnic enclave that formed in the East End of London appeared to form somewhat organically, as immigrants arrived; they were drawn to the ‘familiar’. The community rapidly became an enclosed ethnic space. The confined geographic location meant that the large build-up of immigrants quickly started to alter the physical landscape of the East End. In this organic stage, the area attracted a high concentration of immigrants seeking out safety and security. Eventually, the immigrant community grew in strength and offered economic benefit to newly arriving immigrants. Some British academics, who studied immigrant experiences during the early 1960s and 1970s, predicted that newly arriving immigrants would adapt relatively easily to their new environment (Taylor 1962, Evens 1971, Anwar 1982). In reality, as Tsang and Inkpen (2005) noted, thirty years later, the closed inner dynamics of the immigrant community restricted ←42 | 43→the immigrant’s ability to access and integrate into the dominant culture. As Imrul explained, ‘I came to London to get a job, I had a room … I didn’t interact with English people’. The immigrant communities constructed in the heart of the East End were visible symbols of the immigrant desire to live geographically apart from the white population. However, the reality of living geographically apart inadvertently spawned cultural separation as well. The newly forming immigrant communities sought to retain connectivity with the land of origin. This meant moulding an immigrant identity in London that had close associative ties to the Indian sub-continent.
In my study of the East End, Bangladesh and Pakistan appeared the most frequent places of origin for all the participants I interviewed. I suppose this is to be expected, as 37 per cent of the population of Tower Hamlets is South Asian (Riaz, 2016). Early immigrants arriving in the East End of London found it daunting to engage the broader social environment, as they lacked proficiency in speaking the host language. Bodrul, for instance, arrived in the East End after Bangladeshi independence; he came from a small fishing village near Sylhet. He had no formal education and could not speak English. Limited proficiency in the English language adversely impacted newly arriving immigrants, as Bodrul explained, ‘I don’t speak English well in the start. So who [will] I talk too? Desi people [Asian]’. Those early immigrants that arrived in the East End, without a basic command of English, found it difficult to locate jobs and housing opportunities. Mohammad, for example, immigrated to the UK in 1967 and he described several problems he encountered:
I settled in Birmingham, near Small Heath, but I can’t find a stable job. I would get occasional work in a factory, but nothing long-term. I got rejected all the time for lots of work, the same excuse, ‘you can’t speak English’. So, I got frustrated and moved to London in 1968. I knew a few family friends, and they helped. I got a job working in a laundry shop in Bethnal Green, and then I worked as a factory hand and so on until I bought my own shop. (Translated from Bengali)
Employment involving interaction with white English people often required the ability to speak English. The inability to speak English pulled early immigrants to the perceived security of the enclave because knowledge of language did not hinder job prospects. When early immigrants ←43 | 44→arrived in the East End, they were extremely reluctant to remove themselves from the community, as the enclave provided them with a cultural stepping stone into the host country. The Pakistani and Bangladeshi immigrants who arrived in the East End with limited language skills had little difficulty in social interaction within the immigrant community. The lack of language meant immigrants were unwilling to venture beyond the boundaries of the enclave, as they did not understand the cultural norms of the majority culture.
Mohammad’s case illustrates the entrenched attitude that developed amongst some immigrants. For instance, he has been living in the UK for over fifty years, yet he has minimal knowledge of the English language. As he commented, ‘I don’t need English; I work and speak to Asian people. So, why learn their language’. As Urdu and Bengali are completely distant from English, learning English was a real challenge for some early immigrants, especially those who migrated from rural villages that had no schooling system. Early immigrants found it difficult to construct sentences, limiting communication with white English people. As Amin narrated, ‘we could not understand the accent’. Accents represent geographical belonging, but for those who did not have an English accent, it was seen as an obstacle. As Amin explained, ‘[During] British rule [in India] they speak Queen’s English [Received Pronunciation]. When I come here [England], they speak different [common English], so we can’t understand’. Under British rule in India, the English language had prestige, and Received Pronunciation was spoken by English officers making it the perceived accent of the British people. In reality, this misrepresented the extreme diversification of regional accents within the United Kingdom. Thus, when immigrants arrived in the UK, they struggled to understand regional variations in accent and language.
Added to this, early immigrants developed unique accents that further alienated them from white English people. Even though the East End housed multi-ethnic peoples, language strengthened the ties between the immigrants. The similarity between the dominant South Asian languages meant that immigrants from the Indian sub-continent could communicate with each other, creating a sense of immigrant belonging in the East End community. Mr Qureshi arrived in the East End in 1962 he was inspired ←44 | 45→to immigrate by his older cousin, who had made a move two years earlier. After spending several weeks in the East End, he noticed a significant cultural and physical divide between immigrant and native (white English). As he explained, ‘we feel comfortable with our people; I meet people from all over Pakistan. We eat, we live, we have good time … I enjoy this time. I don’t speak good English at the start, I need to speak, and I have only our people!’ The East End ethnic community proliferated because it offered newly arriving immigrants a socio-cultural environment that replicated aspects of the country of origin. In the East End, immigrants could speak and freely interact despite widespread ethno-religious differences. Language acted as an instrument that accommodated people from different backgrounds. Most of the immigrants struggled to integrate into wider British society because of language. Therefore, the ethnic enclave offered a safe social space in which immigrants could communicate with their neighbours and secure jobs.
The second main pull of the East End was ethno-cultural familiarity. Stack (1986) argues that ethnic identity is shaped by a sense of ‘people-hood’, assuming a natural aspect of immigrant identity. He contends that this group identity is passed down from each generation, connecting individual solidarity to a larger collective, which differentiates members of the group from non-members. The East End evolved in order to generate a new basis for the immigrant community identity. In other words, it involved the formation of a physical space that imported the ethnic and cultural markers of the land of origin. This sense of common origin and experience united the members of the community together. The East End rapidly developed distinct boundary lines related to ethnicity and culture. These ethno-cultural boundary markers reinforced membership – that is, those who can and cannot gain entry. Bodrul, for instance, referred to the East End as a separate and distinct place set apart from the rest of Britain, as he stated ‘their country, our home’. This would suggest the enclave did not simply provide immigrants with a space to pursue ethno-cultural practices; rather it represented an ethno-cultural separation. From the narratives collected, it would seem early immigrants