'Rivers of Blood' ( a reflection on 'passive' racism)

Over the past five years I have spent considerable time among the ‘aged’ community in the outer suburbs of London. It is an area that has only recently experienced large-scale changes in its ethnic make up. At the school I went to (oh my god - thirty five years ago - ) there were no coloured people. Now when I pass by at least 50% of pupils in that embarrassing uniform (that looks like a bad design for deck chair cloth) are clearly of non-European origin. Equally, in the same period, having a Chinese takeaway or an Italian Pizzeria in your neighbourhood was a sign of exoticism. These days one is hard pressed to find a traditional fish and chip within a mile of your home. Times have changed (as ‘His Bobness’ said) but the elderly are very ill-equipped to deal with these changes.

Almost inevitably when talking to elderly people in this part of the world, a forbidden subject comes up. It begins with the line ‘I’m not racist but..’ and before they’ve finished saying this I know what their next line is going to be: ‘Enoch Powell was right, you know’. I do wish that they remembered a more important and inspiring speech from the same era.

Sometimes I want to challenge these views, but too often I am pre-occupied with thinking about the tasks that need to be done that day. There’s a sense that these people know that their views are out of place in today’s world - I don’t think that they are inherently or ideologically racist, and they have no reason to feel economically threatened (most of them are past working age and probably rely on immigrants to be their cleaners / health care providers), - but equally they have a sense of grievance about a world that has changed out all recognition since they grew up. They may not have grown up in the ‘Days of Empire’ but that epoch left a long shadow over the attitudes of the generation(s) that followed. And this not just about skin colour or ‘monkey chants’ on Russian football terraces. It’s about cultural dislocation – without ever leaving home. It’s about people on the bus (this generation relies on buses) speaking different languages and wearing different costumes: about the local shops, takeaways and restaurants being run by Poles, Pakistanis and (in the case of New Malden) Koreans, selling products that they don’t know anything about and are too old to want to experiment with.

The empire (English, French or whatever) does bite back. And we’ve never really thought through the consequences of that. I did a draft of this blog about a year ago – but shelved it - because it seemed too controversial and I hadn’t found a way to express the discontent of this older generation without sounding either too accepting or dismissive of it. For an unknown reason it resurfaced again this week. I wrote a paper copy (as I always do) then it came up with a discussion with a Indian friend a couple of nights ago – and she said the same thing that I had been thinking – ‘these people will not be here much longer’. Let’s hope the coming generations will be more tolerant and flexible.