Clifford Hill discusses growing ethnic segregation in Britain.
A report published this month highlights the alarming trend of racial segregation in many towns and cities in Britain.1 The overall decline in the white population of Britain is accelerating with vast changes that have taken place in a single generation.
By contrast, this month we have also been celebrating black culture, with the BBC broadcasting an excellent series called Black and British: A Forgotten History, as part of their Black and British season this November.2 In this article we review some of the changes that have taken place since the middle of the last century.
Initial Arrivals
Before World War II the UK population was virtually 100% white. The number of non-white people was statistically too small to show in any survey. For most people in Britain their first encounter with non-white people was when members of the Commonwealth came to help defend the Motherland from threatened Nazi invasion, and when American forces with many black soldiers arrived in preparation for the 1944 invasion of Europe.
HMT Empire Windrush.After the war the first non-white migrants (mostly ex-servicemen who had served with the British forces) came to Britain from Jamaica aboard the Empire Windrush in 1948. Their numbers increased steadily during the 1950s. It was not until the early 1960s that significant numbers of Asians began arriving, settling mainly in the Southall area of West London.3
Ten years later I was living in East Ham, in 1972, when the first Asians arrived in Newham as refugees from Uganda, expelled by Idi Amin. The area where they settled was mostly white with a modest number of Caribbeans. Today it has only 4% white people living there. Many of the white people in Newham are now from Poland, Lithuania or other parts of East Europe, and there are only a handful left of local EastEnders who were born and raised in the area.
I was living in East Ham in 1972, when the first Asians arrived in Newham as refugees from Uganda.
Total Transformation
There are other areas of Britain that have seen a similar change-over in a single generation. The report, by professors Ted Cantle and Eric Kaufmann of Birkbeck, University of London, shows how in some areas the white British population has halved in the past 20 years.
Blackburn in Lancashire has areas where there are virtually no white people. The Whalley Range area of Manchester is where migrants from India and Pakistan came in the 1960s to work in the cotton mills. Today, the report says, 95% of the local population is Asian and there are schools where there are no white children. Integration has simply not taken place.
The process of neighbourhood change is very similar to what I have seen happening in Chicago and Detroit in the USA where 'redlining' has taken place. When the first black people moved into an area the real estate agents would 'redline' it and inform the white occupants that property values were dropping and if they wanted to maintain their stake in the housing market they should sell quickly and move out of the area. Within two or three years the population can change drastically. Something similar has happened in many towns and cities in Britain.
A Racial Issue?
Church and mosque side by side, Birchfield. See Photo Credits.
Last year my wife and I visited a church in Leicester where they were baptising 15 former Muslim migrants. They were the only church left in the area. We took with us a friend from Oxford who had a sore throat. He went into the local corner shop to get some cough sweets but was unable to make himself understood because neither the shopkeeper nor anyone in the crowded shop spoke English!
According to the report, white people are moving out of 'Asian areas' in droves and this situation is repeated in many other places such as Slough where the white British population dropped in 10 years from 53% in 2001 to 34% in 2011.
This lack of integration will cause serious social problems if it is not tackled very soon. Segregation breeds prejudice and dysfunctional societies. It reinforces racial stereotypes and creates fear and suspicion; this is what is happening in areas where large-scale Asian settlement has taken place. But this needs to be seen in its true perspective – not as a racial issue but a cultural issue! It is very important to recognise this.
Segregation breeds prejudice and reinforces racial stereotypes, creating fear and suspicion.
Segregation is About Religious Culture
There are many inner-city areas where Africans and African-Caribbean migrants have settled and integrated with the local white population. In the 2011 riots that began in Tottenham, north London, and spread to other areas of London and other cities, it was very clear that these were not race riots – black and white participated equally in protests against inequality and injustice. I described this from my personal experience of living in Tottenham in FREE AT LAST: The Tottenham Riots and The Legacy of Slavery.4
Following some difficult times in the early years, the Africans and Caribbeans have now integrated well into local white communities because they share a common Christian culture - in contrast to the Indians and Pakistanis whose backgrounds are mostly Muslim, Hindu or Sikh. These cultural differences have been exacerbated by the failure of our politicians to understand the social and cultural issues involved.
Establishment Ignorant
British immigration laws were formed in the 1960s, based upon outdated concepts of the old British Empire. All citizens of the Empire were regarded as 'British' which gave them the right to settle in Britain. This has allowed large numbers of Asian migrants the freedom to develop a form of voluntary racial apartheid in Britain. They have been allowed to settle in an area of their choice and given no official help with cultural integration, language instruction (although local voluntary groups have helped) or education in British history, law or customs. There has been no expectation that they would integrate into British society. They have been free to come to Britain and establish culturally isolated expatriate communities.
To reinforce their cultural isolation, they have also been permitted to bring their relatives to Britain including sending their children back to India or Pakistan to find a marriage partner and bring them back to Britain, thus doubling the size of the childbearing migrant population every generation and maintaining a much higher birth-rate than the white population. Of course, some Asians integrated very well into British culture as can be seen in the election of the London Mayor, but this has not happened with the majority of migrants.
By contrast, most African and Caribbean migrants have been keen to integrate into British society. African-Caribbeans have English as their first language; their education is British-based, and the vast majority are Christians having attended churches of similar denomination to those in Britain. The largest churches in Britain are African, and the Redeemed Christian Church of God holds an all-night prayer meeting twice a year where 50,000 (mainly migrants from Nigeria) meet at the ExCeL Centre in London to pray for the re-evangelisation of Britain.
Segregation is a cultural issue, not a racial issue - it varies greatly depending on the religious culture of migrant populations.
The differences between the Africans and the Asians have not been recognised by our politicians. Politicians of all parties in Britain have recklessly ignored our centuries of Christian heritage in Britain and encouraged the settlement of those who have no interest in becoming 'British'. Many Asian migrants want to retain their own culture and for some of them their desire is to change the culture of Britain. This is particularly true of some Muslims; whose stated aim is to make Britain a Muslim country. British immigration law actually facilitates this. Unless the law is changed Britain could have a Muslim majority by the middle of this century.
Of course, it could be argued that the migrants are only following the British example. The British formed expatriate communities in India and made no attempt to integrate, and to a small extent we are doing it today in Cyprus, but that doesn't make it right.
Wisdom and Love, Not Xenophobia
I have spent the whole of my working life living and working among migrants and campaigning for the rights of ethnic minorities. My first book was called Black and White in Harmony,5 and I have constantly advocated the rich benefits of cultural diversity - so I can hardly be charged with xenophobia in calling for a change in our immigration policy.
It is surely time for Christians in Britain to sound the alarm and call upon our politicians to review ALL the laws regarding immigration as part of the Brexit negotiations. Surely it would be much better to be giving refuge to Christians fleeing their desperate plight in war-torn Syria than to go on allowing thousands of migrants to come in from Pakistan who have no love for Britain and who may represent a very real threat to the future of this nation.
White Britain has gone forever and I personally have no regret - I love living in a multi-racial community with its rich diversity. But I am greatly concerned that our precious freedoms for which we fought two world wars will be lost if Islam becomes the dominant religion in Britain. We need to wake up to the fact that our present immigration laws are directly handing Britain over to Islam.
For all who believe that Britain still has a role in the modern world – it is time to sound the alarm! If we are to maintain our freedom to preach the Gospel of Jesus and to preserve our Judaeo-Christian heritage, our immigration laws must be changed!
References
1 Reported in The Guardian. Asthana, A and Parveen, N. Call for action to tackle growing ethnic segregation across UK, 1 November 2016.
2 Watch online here. See all the programmes associated with the BBC's Black and British season here.
3 ONS net immigration statistics quoted from Hill, C, 1970. Immigration and Integration. Pergamon Press Ltd, Oxford, p27.
