Image above from Wikimedia Commons
By Amir Darwish,
‘Go home,’ a man shouted at me from across the street in Middlesbrough in 2004, just a year or so after my arrival in the UK as an asylum seeker. ‘I am,’ I replied, ‘my home is in Fleetham Street,’ I continued. A few people around the street laughed when I said that. I did not know why they laughed, nor did I understand why the man told me that. I was too naïve then to grasp racism. Several years later, I grasped it and knew what he meant. Then, I went through the education system to discover that man’s beliefs are part of what historians call the national character of the country, or what political scientists call the political identity.
Britain’s shameful past
Through the journey of education, I discovered that slavery was advocated, protected, encouraged, and a source of significant income for Britain. Did slavery end when the government announced its abolition in 1807? Not really. In India, by 1815, for example, the army contained 140,000 Indian soldiers and 30,000 British ones. Some of these soldiers were simultaneously the fruits of the empire and its creators and defenders. Other British colonies were treated as laboratories of the empire, and experiments took place to taste theories and functions of society on the colonised populations, treating them as lab rats. Fast forward to the 20th century, we think gone the days of slavery, discrimination, and racism. Not surprisingly, a few historians almost had a heart attack when they observed the similarities between interwar anti-semitism and current anti-Muslimism. Jews became the ‘other’ in interwar British society. Not that they were not the ‘other’ before; for instance, Jews were forbidden from owning properties in England until 1723.,
In the 1930s, The Imperial Fascist League, which was a fascist movement in Britain, adopted a clear anti-Semitic policy that was reflected in its racial dogma at the time. Similarly, the British Union of Fascists, with their leader Oswald Mosley, turned to anti-Semitism in 1934 after failing to persuade the public of a crisis in the British government. Anti-semitic rhetoric was then viewed by Mosley as a winning token to power, just like the anti-immigration narrative is nowadays. This, in turn, made the British Union of Fascists exhibit cultural anti-Semitism, where they often used publications to express the sentiment. As the 1930s progressed, notions of Jews as “morally deprived” reached a peak when Jewish immigrants’ refugees arrived. Jewish Refugees and those who helped them became primary targets for fascists. The influx of Jewish refugees saw the British Union of Fascists coining the term ‘Refujews’ to indicate that all refugees were Jews who brought their bad culture with them.
Is there a way forward?
It is more possible to enforce change when it is done from a young age. Many people say I did not know about Britain’s past with slavery until I got to university. It is about education and syllabus and teaching things in the right way—about bringing history naked and examining it closely. The idea of ‘not bombarding the curriculum with difficult history’ is rubbish. One of the main pillars of studying history is to learn from past mistakes to serve humanity better in the present and the future. To decolonise the curriculum, there needs to be proper history told with facts about the empire and what it did not only within this island but outside it as well in all the colonies. There were boys and girls who were black and sold in the streets of Liverpool, Glasgow, and London. Slavery was at the heart of the Industrial Revolution. These facts need to be said and said out loud. Bizarrely, Britain seems to be the only country in Europe that does not have a history of being ashamed of.
Until we face that difficult history of Britain, we will not see change. Until we say genuinely that the country’s national character has racism as part of it, as history shows, we will not move forward. Until we start the change by institutions, including the police, educational establishments, and governmental apparatuses, we will not see racist stereotypes disappear. When all that is done, then we can think about how societal thinking will change. This will take time, yes, of course, but Britain has a robust anti-far right and anti-fascism tradition. Change is possible, but when it comes to society, unfortunately, it is a gradual and lengthy process. But that can be faster if the change is bottom-up rather than top-down. Look at how racist riots in the summer of 2024 receded when anti-fascist protests started. Look at how racists refrained from attacking mosques when Muslim communities decided to gather and protect their holy places.
Lastly, refugees, who are the primary target of these racist riots, need to have a voice in the British media. They are part of society and a thriving community that can offer so much to this country. Even now, after 20 years of being here, if that same man told me to go home. I would still give him the same answer, but this time, I am fully aware that he was racist, and I am ridiculing racism with such an answer. In fact, I will answer him with this poem:
If you are British I am British too
If you are British I am British too
I sleep every night just like you do
I find myself in situations I never knew
I sniff the same air as you
I travel by plane, train and car
Where the language is concerned I also don’t have a clue
I eat fish and chips too
I go to the shop to buy bread and milk to see my hunger through
If you are British I am British too
I eat with my mouth
And go to the loo
I bleed the same colour as you
I get sick just like you
I drink coffee and tea and I take milk too
If you are British I am British too
I walk the dog when he wants me to
I see the birds fly in the same sky as you.
If you took time to walk in my shoe
You will see that if I am British you are British too
I am American, Syrian, Bangladeshi, Colombian, Indian,
Pakistani, South African, Polish, Brazilian, Korean, Chinese,
I am white, black and pink
But above all I am human like you
If you are British I am British too.
