Stop 13: The East London Mosque
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Opened in 1985, the East London Mosque has become one of East London's most notable cultural landmarks with its golden fiberglass dome. The new mosque replaced its more humble origins in Commercial Road where since 1940 it had consisted of three conjoined houses. Despite the opening of the Brick Lane mosque in 1972, the growth in the local Bengali population to over 10,000 by the beginning of the 1980s meant that a bigger prayer space was required. But it's the largely forgotten political context that spurred the mosque's construction that is particularly interesting.
The years leading up to the 1980s were low points for post-war 'race relations'. Successive governments let immigrants take the blame for unemployment and shortages and promoted the view that immigrants were no longer welcome or needed and did not belong here. In April 1981 The Metropolitan Police introduced 'Operation Swamp' in black and allegedly crime-ridden areas. The police under the 'Sus' laws could stop and search anyone based solely on a 'sus'picion there may be a crime being committed. Brixton was one of these designated areas and in six days almost 1,000 people, mostly young black men had been stopped and searched under the 'Sus' laws. This led to riots between police and Brixton residents. By July riots had broken out around London and in twelve cities across the UK, most notably in Toxteth and Moss Side in Liverpool where 200 youths attacked the police.
The riots sent shock waves through the Establishment. Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Government realised it had a big problem on its hands. The 1981 British Nationality Act made matters worse, separating people into two classes of nationality; British Citizens who held nationality 'by descent' and those who held nationality 'other than by descent' – the latter being worthless, allowing no right of abode and forbidding citizenship from being passed down from parents to children. Black and Asian communities felt under siege.
The Government's response was the Scarman Report published in November 1981 and its recommendations were hastily adopted by the authorities (including the Labour-led Greater London Council). The report made multiculturalism official policy, the idea being to calm things down by officially recognising and endorsing cultural differences and different cultural groups within society. It sought to provide ethnic community groups with grant aid for community projects, bolstering the more moderate forces within them and bringing them into the mainstream.
In East London one of the early beneficiaries of multicultural policy was this mosque. Construction began only a year after the Brixton riots in 1982, helped along by a £2 million government grant. Since its opening the mosque has continued to receive funding to support community programmes. In 2004, at a cost £10 million – £2.4 million provided by public grants and charities – it was expanded to include the Prince Charles-endorsed London Muslim Centre, notable for its ornate traditional frontage to the building.
Unlike the Jamme Masjid, which has not had the public funding and sees itself as a place for prayer and teaching, the East London Mosque forms a centre for more than just religious activity. The London Muslim Centre has added a gym, a library, an Islamic restaurant, a crèche and classrooms as well as a primary school. It runs many public-sponsored community cohesion projects, drugs awareness programmes, and the Mayor's Way To Work scheme. Through government support it has become an important cultural, educational, community hub for the local Bengali population. Most significantly it has become the conduit through which local government attempts to communicate with the local Muslim population, not as part of a wider British society, but as a distinct and 'different' sub-group.
At establishment level even though ideas of racial difference after world war 2 were clearly in disgrace, sadly what replaced them were ideas of ethnic and cultural difference, which today we know as multiculturalism. This is not just a term which harmlessly describes the existence of exciting and diverse cultural traditions, tastes and preferences which we can enjoy throughout London. It is a policy which culturally defines and fixes people according to their ethnic origins. Sadly it is what many see as anti-racism today, yet it is now proving no less divisive than older ideas of nationalism and racial inferiority. Designated as different, ethnic groups now compete for resources wearing 'their' culture as a badge of vulnerability to prove themselves more deserving than the next group. At the same time children in UK schools are taught to respect 'difference' to learn 'tolerance' and polite behaviour, whereas in truth culturally identified communities live ever more segregated lives as the East London Mosque exemplifies.
30 years ago, the Asian Youth Movement and anti-racists fought for Bengalis in East London to be treated equally with whites, as had Rocker and Jewish radicals 100 years ago. The fight for equality rested on an understanding that we are all the same and should be treated as such. Sadly today's multiculturalism tells us we are all different and in doing so often sets us apart.
The appeals for respect and tolerance of cultural difference has little impact when fears of too many immigrants, shrinking resources and a strain on public services means keeping the 'culturally different who were born somewhere else' out, be they Polish workers or asylum seekers. The fight for equality has sadly been undermined but is not beyond repair. It is possible to put the idea of one human race back on the map, to critique fears of too many people and too little to go round. It is possible to argue for the right to migrate, to live, work and be treated equally wherever we choose and this is the message of our Brick Lane Tour.
