We now have the most racially diverse cabinet in history. Three of the most powerful politicians in Britain have skin as brown as mine: Chancellor Rishi Sunak, Home Secretary Priti Patel and Health Secretary Sajid Javid.
But what does it really mean for British race relations if these same Asian politicians enact policies that make life actively harder for people of colour? When Patel decries footballers taking the knee as mere “gesture politics”? Or, when the government claims the UK is not institutionally racist how does, say, Javid square that with the disproportionate effect of Covid-19 on the community he comes from?
There is a longer story here, and one that has received insufficient public attention. The potential for someone with the name Rishi Sunak to become the second most powerful man in British politics is due in part to an older, forgotten generation of activists.
Ansar Ullah led various anti-racist groups in Luton and Tower Hamlets in his youth. Ullah tells me that Britain has come a long way since the 1970s and 80s. “Things were chucked at me, I got chased, I got called names,” he says. “If you were Asian—you were a target.” He recalls having to avoid match days in Luton. “We had to do what we could to defend ourselves.”
In the late 1980s, Ullah became the first head of the Federation of Bangladeshi Youth Organisations. Around that time, the group made a concerted effort to take part in mainstream politics. “We’d protested for five years… nothing was changing,” he says. “We believed that to change the system we had to be a part of it.” Ullah says they encouraged more Bengalis to run for the council, noting that Tower Hamlets now has one of the most diverse local councils in the country.
Their aim was both to make it easier for Bengalis to better integrate into British society as well as to combat racism. The group helped new immigrants fill out government forms, and assisted residents to make complaints to their housing officers.
The Tower Hamlets of today is 55 per cent non-white and, in some ways, it is Britain at its multicultural best. There is certainly considerably less overt racism than in the 1970s. But the stark inequalities present in the east London borough point to the complexities of structural racism—in which policies, past and present, continue to make life unfairer for certain groups of people. Ullah says: “We are still one of the most deprived boroughs in the country. We still have a very high rate of unemployment and still have under-achievement in terms of education and the community is still suffering with health issues.”
Having a few, prominent British Asian politicians does not automatically solve these issues.
Amrit Wilson, author of Finding a Voice: Asian Women in Britain, has been on the frontlines in the fight against state-sanctioned racism since the late-1960s. “Asians are not a monolith,” Wilson says. “Well-educated Indians in London have a different experience of racism than say Muslims [Indian or otherwise] from outside London who can’t find jobs.”
While some may point to the success of high-profile Asians such as actor Dev Patel and newscaster Krishnan Guru-Murthy as proof that Britain is no longer racist, they shouldn't ignore other factors such as class, gender and religion. The Home Office reported that half the religious hate crimes in Britain in the year to March 2020 were targeted towards Muslims.
Nevertheless, seeing brown people in power will undeniably normalise British Asians for some. There is value in images, as the Conservative Party seem to know better than anyone. Unlike the Tories, Labour has just one ethnic minority in their four top shadow cabinet positions—Lisa Nandy. “The Tories have focused on getting A-list talent for the last ten years—and they’ve been fortunate to have found Asian politicians who fit that bill,” says Luke Raikes of the Fabian Society. Yet at the lower levels the Tory Party is still not very diverse at all, Taylor says.
“These people and their achievement represent some form of recognition that is undeniable,” says Anamik Saha of Goldsmiths University who studies British Asian representation. Saha points to work by Jodi Melamed, a professor in English and Africana studies, which argues that sometimes diversity can just be a smokescreen for a racist establishment. “In a capitalist state like the UK—in order to remain in power and remain legitimate the dominant culture needs to concede some things,” he says. “It has to appear liberal and tolerant in a way that preserves its privilege.”
Sophia Siddiqui, a researcher at the Institute of Race Relations, says that if a politician is implementing policies which harm minorities then “the colour of a politician’s skin is irrelevant.” She says: “The limits of representation politics have been laid bare by South Asian politicians now in senior positions of government who uphold the status quo, further nativist policies and discriminatory outcomes and reinforce the government line that there is no such thing as institutional racism.”
Rina, who helps run the Instagram account @dearasianyouthlondon, says her Indian parents don’t like it when she criticises Asian politicians. The Instagram account she helps to run shares stories and comics about overlooked British Asian histories and highlights the racism that some still face today. “My parents tell me we’ve come so far and I shouldn’t be so harsh on them [Asian politicians]. I understand where they’re coming from… but just because we are in this place now—don't look back to the past and compare it to that,” she says. “I personally believe that you should compare it to the future. You can always improve, and everything can always get better.”
Having British Asians at the highest levels of power suggests Britain is moving forward in some respects. “Symbolism is so important, even if it’s not a perfect symbol,” Ullah tells me. “Symbols encourage people—especially young people—to ask for more… to expect more.” Yet while the likes of Ullah and Wilson have undeniably made life easier for Asians in Britain, the same is harder to say for Sunak, Patel and Javid. In the final section of Finding a Voice, Wilson reflects on the position of Asians in British society. Over 40 years later the last line of her book still rings true: “These are the early, early days of a conscious struggle.”
