Stop 7: Banglatown
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This is the BanglaCity Supermarket. Nearly 70% of the population of the Spitalfields & Banglatown ward of Tower Hamlets today are of Asian origin, their families originally coming from the coastal region of Sylhet in Bangladesh.
Some Bangladeshi migrants have been in Britain since the late seventeenth century as lascars (sailors) who were recruited by the notorious East India Company's merchant ships. A more significant number did not arrive until the second half of the twentieth century after the partition of the Indian sub-continent in 1947 and in the 1960s and 1970s following a protracted civil war with current day Pakistan which led to Bangladesh gaining independence in 1971. Against this backdrop some Bengali men came to Britain to find work and stability, with their families following later.
Like many post-war immigrants, on arrival, they faced many obstacles from overcrowded accommodation to long working hours in low-paid jobs. Many Bengalis coming here initially found employment in the rag trade (textiles) but as the rag trade declined in the 1960s, some opened the cafes and curry houses that thrive and provide fabulous cuisine here today. From small beginnings in the post-war period, a network of Bangladeshi restaurants, shops and banks became established in Brick Lane and the surrounding area.
The Bangladeshi migration to Britain from the 50s onwards formed part of 'New Commonwealth' emigration, from the Caribbean and the Indian sub-continent. This followed the British Nationality Act of 1948, which gave Commonwealth citizens the right of entry into Britain. The journey of the steamship the Empire Windrush from Kingston, Jamaica, to Tilbury in Essex in June 1948 is often referred to as a symbol of the start of this period of migration. On board, nearly 500 West Indians journeyed to Britain to start new lives. Between 1951 and 1964 on average 16,000 migrants came to Britain each year.
After the Second World War and during the post war boom, Britain experienced an acute labour shortage. Young able-bodied men were needed in all sorts of jobs ranging from work in the northern mills, to London's docks. Politicians actively encouraged people to come, but in public their attitude was more ambivalent, portraying their policy as a 'necessary evil'. It is in this period that racism became a social force permeating all sections of British society and a defining and disastrous feature of a popular mindset. When Britain's boom years of the 1960s turned to bust, unemployment rose to 1.5 million. The government response was once again to blame the immigrant population and within only two decades of the 1948 Nationality Act, Britain introduced the most draconian immigration laws the UK had ever seen.
The 1962 and 1968 Commonwealth Immigrants Acts made it law that only holders of work permits or people with parents or grandparents born in the UK could now gain entry – British Commonwealth passports were no longer a sufficient qualification for entry. The 1971 Immigration Act introduced the terms 'patrial' and 'non-patrial'. Patrials were defined as people who were born in the UK, or had a parent or grandparent born or naturalised in the UK, were Commonwealth citizens who had lived in the UK for 5 years and had applied to be a British citizen, or were married to a patrial man. Only patrials had the right to live and work in the UK. These Acts made critical the idea of descent by blood and brought direct migration to an end.
From the Aliens Act of 1905 to the draconian immigration controls introduced during the 70s recession, the tendency to view society through the prism of 'race' or 'culture' has always been accompanied by claims that immigrants in Britain are to blame for society's ills particularly for lack of jobs, low wages and shortages of resources. Sadly with looming recession the government is again today pointing the finger at immigrants and its new points system is closing the door even further to more of our peers and friends, preventing them from coming here.
