“The coconuts swing in the grove of palms
The angels in white surrender their charms
Their breasts now hang down to Adam’s rib bone
Let she of eternal youth cast that first stone
Your daughters, O Persia, are ageing and mad
All for the sins of their profligate dad
Whose head from his shoulders should be torn apart
These are the words to win his black heart”
From Bachchoo’s Poetry Forum
I’ve returned to Bradford, this city in Yorkshire, after many years. It has tempted me into writing what I don’t think I have ever attempted before — a sort of travelogue. I have been a bit apprehensive about the form because Ibn Battuta, Marco Polo, D.H. Lawrence, V.S. Naipaul and yes, even Willy Dalrymple have all in their way done it so well.
I am sure none of these and a hundred others I have read would consent to their work being labelled “travelogue”. Their purposes have been more profound. They have written books or essays or pieces of discovery. I can pretend to no such profundity and won’t. I am in Bradford to research a possible TV project.
Bradford is a mill-and-mosque town, by which I mean that through the Sixties and Seventies of the last century it was settled in part by immigrants from Pakistani Mirpur, from East Pakistan which became Bangladesh and in smaller part by Sikhs and Hindus from Indian Punjab. They came to find employment in the Yorkshire textile mills. For the most part they worked the night shifts in the mills, shifts that the white working class had abandoned.
Britain at the time had no policy or plan for the integration of the immigrants it tempted to its shores. Its ex-colonies were the source of internationally mobile labour. These labourers from Mirpur, Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur and Sylhet adventured here to earn some money, save it and return to their native lands with the ambition to buy estates, build houses, live happily not-quite-ever-after and leave an inheritance to their children. That is the substance of many an immigrant dream and any survey of the towns and villages of Mirpur, of Indian Punjab or of Sylhet will testify to the dream coming true.
But for every lottery winner there has to be a multiplicity of losers or the world wouldn’t work. The dream of return turns in our era to the reality of an uneasy settlement. Uneasy because in the case of Britain and of other countries in Europe which imported labour, this influx of people of different races has become a political issue, labelled variously as the clash or integration of races, religions, cultures and allegiances.
You see? I can’t do a proper travelogue. I get distracted and veer into pseudo-politics! But let me have another go. I first encountered Bradford in the Seventies when I was in an agitational political outfit in London which had an association with a group of Asian and West Indian Bradfordians who called themselves “Bradford Black”. This group fought local battles around issues of housing, employment, the unfair treatment of Asians and blacks by the police and other issues that arose from an immigrant existence. These Asians and West Indians were for the large part people who had grown up in Bradford, the children of first generation immigrants. When they staged a demonstration or some form of public protest, we would come up by the coach-load from London to assist or to swell the numbers.
At the time there were some areas of the city, a few streets, which were distinctly “immigrant”. There were shops which sold Indian and West Indian groceries — rice, dal, curry powders, sweet potatoes, yams, dried fish and other stuff that the main supermarkets didn’t stock. Bradford was then a very “white” town.
Then came the Eighties and the government of Margaret Thatcher. Her economic policies allowed textiles from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and China amongst other places to compete with the textile trade of Britain and run it out of business. The mills of Yorkshire and Lancashire closed. Cities such as Bradford, Dewsbury and Oldham with large populations of immigrants lost their purpose.
The last political protest I attended at the time was occasioned by the jailing of several young men for their part in a riot. The riot started when a police car ran over the foot of a young man. The accident led to stone-throwing and abuse by gangs of Asian youth confronting the police who retaliated in force. Their retaliation led to a full blown riot, hundreds of arrests and the trial and conviction of a handful of Asian and black youth.
Now returning to the city, three decades later, I pass a demonstration of 10 or 15 young Asians on a vigil outside a McDonalds fast-food outlet. They are holding placards denouncing the US for funding and supplying arms to Israel. The trade in hamburgers of the Bradford branch of McDonalds has, I am told, suffered as a result of the vigil. I doubt if this fact will affect the policies of President Obama towards the Israelis or contribute in some small way to ending the slaughter in Gaza. But what do I know?
The demonstrators are all young Asians of Mirpuri descent. My host, Aki Nawaz, Asian musician, who grew up in Bradford tells me that the Sikhs and Hindus have by and large moved out of the city. Only the Mirpuri and Bangladeshi communities remain. We drive through the city which is situated on several hills. In the town centre, on every residential street and along the commercial roads I see men in salwar kameez, women in hijabs and no white people. The signs on the shops are delightful: Khana Peena, Pakeeza, Kashmiri Fashions, etc. The old stone churches are now mosques or “Islamic Centres”. Aki tells me there are no white people within a three mile radius of the town centre. If it weren’t for the architecture and strong Yorkshire accents of everyone I meet, we could be in Pakistan.
