Inside the idiot box

This is of course not to say that racism has disappeared from the sceptred isle. In fact British racism has displayed an ability to change with the times. Long after the man who famously predicted 8216;rivers of blood8217; would run if Asians were allowed into Britain has been safely buried in his grave, racism in the UK is far from being so interred. Today it is immigration that has top billing. Immigration remains a potent electoral issue, not just for the British National Party but for both the Labour Party and the Conservatives, as the rhetoric during the last general election underlined. Subsequent developments like the London blasts of July 2005, the demonisation of Islam, and the expansion of the European Union have only deepened its electoral allure.

We must, at the same time, also recognise that three decades of anti-racist activism have helped make Britain one of the more racially sensitive societies in the West today. There have been three distinct phases in this confrontation between the Middle Englander and the Immigrant. First, was the period of early settlement in post-World War II Britain. The fifties and sixties saw the arrival of cheap labour from the former colonies. Settling down was not easy from all accounts. The first race riots to rock the country occurred in Nottingham in 1958. Landladies began to put up notices outside their property that read: 8216;No coloureds please8217;. In 1959 a delegation of 20 Southall residents pleaded with the local authority to stop coloured people from buying property in the areas since they constituted a health hazard.

The late Vishnu Sharma, who for many years was general secretary of the Indian Workers Association, once told me that even if the Asian and Jamaican settlers had wished to live in a more congenial way, they had no choice. People packed themselves into the few houses available, often sleeping in shifts and pissing in the garden. People worked 14-hour days at extremely low wages. Employers would openly boast that one Indian would be able to do the work of 10 Italians, and he would do it in sulphurous fumes and on slippery floors.

The early skirmishes for survival and basic facilities gave way to the militant battles for equal rights of the seventies and eighties as the government started tightening entry regulations. Sharma recalled being approached by the husband of a Delhi schoolteacher who had been subjected to a virginity test at Heathrow in 1979. When the news made it to The Guardian the next day, it caused an international uproar 8212; something possibly like the Shilpa Shetty episode evoked, but on an issue that was far more serious.

This phase of militancy was decisive. As anti-racist theorist A. Sivanandan put it, 8220;Black became a political colour.8221; Anti-racist organisations like the Monitoring Group played their part 8212; through street protests and court battles. An instance of the latter was the Stephen Lawrence case of April 1993. Lawrence, a black teenager, was stabbed to death in a completely unprovoked attack. When the police failed to bring successful charges against the five white kids believed to have committed the crime, it led to some degree of introspection within Britain. The Macpherson Report on the Stephen Lawrence case graphically highlighted the institutionalised racism inherent in British society and suggested 70 key reforms, starting with the police. It remains an outstanding instance of a society8217;s serious attempt at self-correction and needs to be emulated in countries everywhere, including ours.

Today, in what can be termed the third phase of British integration, immigrant communities have found their niche in mainstream society. Sivanandan described the Asian community as a 8220;community in itself and for itself 8212; with its own class structure, which had fulfilled Roy Jenkins8217;s dream of integration8221;. But did this mean that it no longer faced racism? Celebrated novelist of Indian origin, Hari Kunzru, argued in a Tehelka essay that this is not the case. His generation, he believes, has become 8220;a kind of goodnight story, told to newer immigrants to persuade them that if they follow the rules they will be rewarded, and to nervous Middle Englanders to persuade them that things aren8217;t as bad as the news pages of their morning papers may claim8221;. But, he goes on to add, 8220;racism is alive and well in today8217;s Britain8221; and there are the 2001 riots in Britain8217;s industrial towns as a reminder of this. Germaine Greer seems to agree with Kunzru, going by her quick response to the Shilpa Shetty controversy in The Guardian: 8220;This is a racist country. There is almost no interpenetration of English and Indian cultures in Britain.8221; But is this lack of 8220;inter-penetration8221; a good thing or bad? Or, to put it another way, is the more intrusive integration of France free of racist overtones?

Difficult to say, Big Sister Greer, although I still wouldn8217;t take Big Brother too seriously.