The Tower Hamlets Factor
September 2011 by Carlos Cortiglia.
Since 1997, the then Labour government opened the floodgates hoping that by doing so they would secure their power in many parts of London. Paradoxically, the master became servant when servants grew up in numbers and when the Labour Party expelled an Asian politician the said politician won the election in Tower Hamlets. Who calls the tune now? Does the Labour Party call the tune? I wonder if many Labour politicians were left scratching their heads and asking themselves ‘how could this happen?’
This can be seen not only in London, but also in other English cities (or should I say former English cities, taking on-board comments made by John Cleese?) With Demographic changes, there are political changes. This is to be expected. Look at the partition of Yugoslavia. What has been the argument about who owns Kosovo? This is bound to happen in Britain, especially because they have been building ghettos that usually have their own language, their own customs and their own values.
One day, we might find ourselves having to decide who own Birmingham, Leicester, Manchester, Liverpool and parts of London like Towers Hamlets and Barking and Dagenham or even London as a whole. Sometime ago we learnt that a delegation of the Church of England was told that certain areas of Birmingham were ‘off limits because they were Muslim areas’ and even Christian female Police officers went patrolling wearing headscarves ‘not to offend the local community’.
I have always believed that numbers matter and that when the time comes there could be a British Diaspora. Looking a birth rate numbers plus the numbers of those coming into the country, the writing is on the wall. Huge political changes are on the way. This is why it is so urgent to talk about British Identity. Somebody talked about the minimal incidence of Normans, Vikings, Romans and others in the genetic pool of Britain. He was talking about a few thousands new individuals. We are now talking about millions of individuals and this is the equivalent of many times the Normans, the Vikings, the Romans and others put together.
Nevertheless, when we look a numbers, genetics is not the main concern. The main concern is identity and political power. Faces will change but so will laws, customs and values. Our everyday lives have changed dramatically. The ‘London Experience’ of 1989 is radically different from the ‘London Experience’ of 2011.
