The ludicrous campaign for Banglatown
This is a guest article by Zeenat
A campaign of lobbying supported by London labour councillor Abdal Ullah has begun, in a bid to rename Shoreditch High Street over-ground station to Banglatown.
The aim of this absurd renaming is to supposedly help celebrate the cultural diversity and rich history of immigration, particularly from Bangladesh, in the Brick Lane area.
When I first heard about this ridiculous campaign, my first question was – what exactly is it that Cllr Ullah wanted us to celebrate?
After all, was he not the very same man whom, two years ago, led an almost embarrassing and (thankfully) unsuccessful bid to rename Aldgate East Underground station in nearby Whitechapel High Street to Brick Lane?
Back then, he refused, much to the dismay of local restaurateurs, to add the tag name Banglatown, saying it would be “disrespectful and divisive to the area’s previous Jewish, Huguenot and Irish settlers”. So why the sudden change of heart?
Brick Lane, like many other areas around England (Southall, Sparkhill, Wilmslow Road, Alum Rock for example) comprise of a significant ethnic minority make up where the local people have set up successful and highly commendable businesses – something that I feel should be celebrated.
For this very reason, I agree that the Bengali community are very rightly, as Cllr Ullah described, “the custodians of the Brick Lane community”. Yet, on the flip side, does this not highlight the fact that rather than integrating with the rest of society, Asian communities in Britain choose to habit one particular part of the city, and make this their own. Should we really be celebrating the failure and outright reluctance for these communities to be part of wider society?
The campaign is likely and very much hoped to be rejected by Transport for London because of a number of problematic issues. The figure for the costs involved in changing maps, transport literature and the like is estimated at £2 million.
Furthermore, Transport for London have already issued a statement saying “it is necessary for station names to reflect the streets they are on or the area they are in”. Surely, it is nothing short of common sense that the station should remain ‘Shoreditch High Street’ as it will be in Shoreditch High Street, in the borough of Hackney and not pay homage to London’s curry capital, which is almost half a mile away and not even in the same borough?
Cllr Ullah should concentrate his efforts of what actually matters in the area such as crime, employment and education rather than supporting nonsensical campaigns that fall flat on their face and embarrass him even further.
There is a very large and vibrant Bangladeshi community in Tower Hamlets – if anything the uproar surrounding Monica Ali’s book, Brick Lane, did the area stupendous publicity than any Asian sounding station name would.
Anyone who visits the area is immediately aware of the Bengali cuisine, the Bengali signs and the Bengali that is taught in local schools. We do not need our intelligence insulted by having to rename train stations. Is this campaign was (for some bizarre reason) successful, what is to stop a future campaign to rename Brick Lane, Sylhet Lane or to change Tower Hamlets to Mini Bangladesh?
The thriving Balti Triangle and Chinese Quarter in Birmingham are popular with locals and tourists. Yet I have reason to believe, this is due to an excellent and effective advertising campaign not because the councillors chose to rename New Street Station, Balti Station….Take note Cllr Ullah!
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Filed in: British Identity, Culture
This is all about the up-coming general election and who can out brown the other
it would be so funny if they managed to do it… Banglatown… LOL
Here’s an idea – why don’t people who live in London try to become part of the wider London community instead of trying to take over one specific part of London and claim it as their own? I only listen to people who consider themselves part of the wider community, not inward-looking immigrants.
http://lettersfromatory.wordpress.com
well written zeenat. what a silly thing to suggest, and i am glad you highlighted the cost of such self-absorbed nomenclature, £2 million..isn’t to be scoffed at. And anyway its silly, there are plenty of people who will inhabit the area in future, why get so narcissistic about living there now? there are ways to celebrate one’s mark on an area without needing statues, renaming of places and all that kind of nonsense. Such a focus on material ownership..
Letters from a Tory: you can make a place “your own” without a) making that exclusive i.e. in a literal way, i.e. making a place “home” is figurative, and b) you can do that without needing some “thing” changed! home is home, its where the heart is, it can’t be changed by a plaque in your honour, or all the other stuff. What that stuff is Ego, pure and simple. It’s really no different to the kind of mindset that goes to the Moon and puts an American flag. (which is highly pathetic) or going “overseas” and claiming it as your territory and sticking a Statue of yourself and all that imperialist malarkey.
Great artcle Zeenat!
Cllr Ulla, why tackle deep-rooted problems in your area such as the soaring crime rate, the youth unemployment, the heroin and crack houses that are sprouting up like mushrooms and the worst performing schools in the London region, amongst other forms of social blight, when you can change the name of the tube station. Good thinking! You really have your priorities right, don’t you. We Bangladeshis are so proud of you!
Here is a picture of the flatulent numpty himself:
http://www.abdalullah.co.uk/
He promises to bring you “youth with experience, passion with pragmatism and new ideas with influence”!
By the way, what is mr Keith Vaz’s obsession with ethnic balancing?
He has now called for more english ministers to balance the ’scottish mafia’.
good points Sid. he might be asking for the £2 million to do something else with!
plus he’d better decide which local area he actually wants to work in
Yet, on the flip side, does this not highlight the fact that rather than integrating with the rest of society, Asian communities in Britain choose to habit one particular part of the city, and make this their own. Should we really be celebrating the failure and outright reluctance for these communities to be part of wider society?
Are you sure the blame for the ghettoisation of these communities should fall mainly on the shoulders of Asians: that it has nothing to do with the refusal of the aboriginal/indigenous/white British to live in areas that have high concentrations of their brown skinned brothers and sisters?
BTW I love the new click to edit function, Sunny.
You’re really out of the Benglai area by the time you get to Shoreditch High Street anyway. Ironically there might have been a case for calling the old Shoreditch station Brick Lane given its location. I’ve lived in Bethnal Green for a few years now and have genuinely never heard the term Banglatown used outside council propaganda and guide books. Yes the Bengali community is large and contributes a lot, but other people live, and have lived here, and that should be recognised. This is just pointlessly divisive.
What a crazy idea…no wonder the BNP keeps getting stronger in East London. Presumably now we will have calls for Southall Station to be renamed Chandigarh.
The proposal for Banglatown is a lot older than the campaign Abdal Ullah is launching.
Much of it is driven by the same groups that would promote economic regeneration schemes using the cultural uniqueness of a neighbourhood to ’sell’ place. This has happened with Chinatown examples all over the world – and people don’t seem to be having the same violent reactions there. I don’t particularly find places with names with connections from former corners of the empire odd – it is after all, acknowledging that British cities have been influenced by its empire. Nothing radical about that, and nothing radical about the hundreds of streets in Singapore and India named after their imperial legacies – sure you don’t want to call a country by its former imperial name but there’s no attempt to wide out total episodes of British imperial influences.
I have some sympathy for Bangladeshis that fought the National Front in the 1980s in Brick Lane in bare-fisted knuckle grid locks every Sunday to reclaim this space and that they would want to observe the symbolic importance of that struggle by naming the area Banglatown. It is a product of its time. Equally I have sympathy with the idea that Spitalfields and Brick Lane are both multi-cultural space, and their public identity should be hetereogeneous. Still to give credence to the idea of Banglatown is also to recognise this particular groups’ struggle and its anti-racist legacy – which is why the left in Spitalfields has sometimes supported it.
I disagree with Banglatown on different reasons – and that is to do with the reactionary and conservative identities of ethnically constructed places. Banglatown is not a friendly place for local Bangladeshi women and for me, any economic regeneration scheme has got to be inclusive , and Banglatown isn’t. But this is a very different argument from the ones people on this blog are using to resist Banglatown.
As to why people come to settle in one area as opposed to another is to do with push and pull factors, most of it economic and preference not to be the only gay in the village.
Chandigarh has a really nice ring to it. I don’t understand why people think using influences from South Africa or Africa or where-ever is a bad thing – the streets in Spitalfields are all a homage the French Hugenouts from the 17th century – another feature of the area’s long standing cultural influences.
naming a neighbourhood is different to asking a Tube Stop to be renamed though surely – they are entirely different. as far as i can see, the “banglatown” campaign has succeeded – people refer to the brick lane “area” with that name and that is the success. its how “chinatowns” were successful – you get out at leicester square tube, not “chinatown” tube, the fact that you get out at leicester square tube isn’t detracting from the fact that people understand “chinatown” and the area its referring to, for example.
and if its about naming an area “officially” then that is always different to having an “unofficial” name which sticks, and if it resonates with people, they will call that area by that name. So its practice that is significant, in stamping a “mark” on a place.
sure tube stations are different. but Shoredtich Shoreditch station is on Brick Lane and deserves to be re-branded. Aldgate East was always a compromise for an area that was essentially Whitechapel, for example think of Jack the Ripper, it’s all about Whitechapel but the heritage tours starts at Aldgate even though Aldgate has no relevance for most locals or Londers. So really Banglatown isn’t a bad option for the tube either. Shoredtich by definition is much closer to Hoxton, Pitfield Street, etc. I am getting a little bit into local geography here but the naming of the tube is s pretty local, too. Abdal Ullah might have a point.
Shoreditch High Street over-ground station?
Is there an over-land station that I hadn’t heard of?
And isn’t Shoredtich High Street near the Town Hall in Shoredtich itself – which is no where near the tube station that is called Shoredtich (on the yellow east London line) and is just off Brick Lane by the Bagel shop – hence the reason why some would argue changing the name.
Where are you going? ‘Banglatown’… Where?
It will confuse the lot of us!
if you put it like that, yes….
Brick Lane would be a better name. I used to use this station for going to school and am very fond of it – brings back loads of memories.
Whether a transport name is or isn’t valid isn’t just a question up to the area’s residents though – that is the wider point i think. There is the utilitarian function which i think is relevant to transport interchanges – which is separate to the relevance of a name for the people in an area. they are separate issues, as far as i can see, sure people can make it into the same issue by wanting the way they refer to their area to become the name for the transport interchange. And yes of course it is a valid point that a name needs to be rethought because of the utility function – absolutely – and that should be considered with the function of the transport interchange in mind. The point is the residents of that area Are not the only stakeholders, so if we have to agree a new name then it is a wider matter. Because that affects anyone who is going to ever use that station..and is a “collective” knowledge matter then. Complicated, and obviously has to be weighed up certainly with cost in mind, it is nomenclature at the end of the day. Perhaps if it is a big deal to people, they can fund it out of some organisation, public transport needs all the funds it can get without fussing too much about name changes i reckon, but then that is my priority.
There are only two reasons for renaming places. One, that the name of the place is now an offensive word, or two, that the person that the place is named after is now considered a terrible person (e.g. the residents of Adolf Hitler Lane required a change). That place names should represent the majority of the population is idiotic at best, dangerous at worst. How many Puritan regicides live in Cromwell Road? What happens to the non-Bangladeshi residents of Banglatown?
I’m not an advocate of changing the name to Banglatown but can see why some might think it’s a good idea. I’m also one for local activism – the locals can fight it out – and I guess they did agree a happy the compromise over the Spitalfields constituency to Spitalfields-Banglatown.
The point about Banglatown isn’t to represent the Bangladeshi people – it’s to represent their struggle and fight with the National Front in the 1980s so by extension it becomes an anti-racist legacy and symbol. Something like the re-appropriation of place. Like the Cable Street Riots came to name Cable Street in Shadwell and is symbolic for anti-faschism. This is one of the reasons why the white left in Spitalfields has supported it. But others such as Spitalfields Historic Trust or other heritage based groups resisted it on grounds that the neighbourhood is the story of London’s migration – like Ellis island and we might want to preserve this legacy. For me the Banglatown legacy and the anti-racism legacy are the same story. But perhaps people don’t read too much into the politics of place – and simply think the argument is just about which group happens to dominate the area and now wants to claim its identity onto it.
It’s not a big deal to anyone but those that live there – trouble is that the area is always in the lime-light for so many reasons that things never just stay parochial. And we like to comment and look into the East End a lot.
I think Banglatown is a really cool name for a station. Why go to the expense of changing the name on maps etc etc. why not have a nice happy sign over the sign for Shoreditch station saying “Banglatown”? Unofficial ethnic names for places are good slang.
You know Bethnal Green is named after the great soul and R&B singer Rev. Al Green and his wife Beth, don’t you: Beth and Al Green.
Always thought Bethnal Green had soul …
…if you didn’t you wouldn’t be in here…
sadly, I can’t check video links on my feudal connection… will take yr word for it…
They’ve got a better chance in context of Crossrail, I’d give up on Shoreditch High Street and put efforts into that – Cllr Ullah is really making a mess of things!
p.s. yes, the idea of Banglatown has been around since the late 1970s/early 1980s it was advanced by Spitalfields Housing Association.
I have lived in various Chinatowns, and no one seems to have a problem with it– now. But in the past, they were looked down upon. Currently, they are seen as kitsch places for peeps of non-Chinese descent to lap up good food, tapioca drinks (my favorite), etc.
I’d have no problem with a Banglatown– I am sure you’d find the best egg tarkari there.
Oh, and Bengali mithai. YUM!
Rumbold:
“There are only two reasons for renaming places. One, that the name of the place is now an offensive word, or two, that the person that the place is named after is now considered a terrible person (e.g. the residents of Adolf Hitler Lane required a change). That place names should represent the majority of the population is idiotic at best, dangerous at worst.”
You better go take this fight up with the Chinatowns of the world– and I am sure that the Milanese right-wingers will greet you with open arms!(For those who don’t know, Northern Leaguers in Milan have been waging a campaign against “Chinatown”).
According to your logic, then CALCUTTA (name coined by the British), which got changed to Kolkatta, is now wrong. I agree that the renaming name game CAN be pretty dumb (and politicized, as witnessed by renaming Bombay into Mumbai at the behest of Marathi “sons of the soil”), but I see no reason to your definition or criteria of how a place should be named.
A lot of names around the world now are in fact the product (transmutations) of what people–not ‘official’ folks– were calling it before.
You people are off track again – why can we not have accurate discussions? naming a transport interchange is different to naming a place, in the first instance.
both of course hark back to what is possibly the sensitivity around this topic: WHO has the authority to change any name, and who are the stakeholders, where is the resistance going to come from, how are you going to deal with resistance etc. who is going to pay for it.
and in the case of e.g. Bombay/Mumbai, what is interesting was the business of enforcement. If an area has recently changed its name, then can you force people to call it one thing or not. This of course..goes back to having official names and unofficial names. So of course Identity politics is clearly a key part. And again, if a name is so important to local residents to have it changed, perhaps they can fund it out of some collection, I really can’t see why people think there is so much money floating around any whim has to be “satisfied” from the “top”. We live in a co-operative society..
“You people are off track again – why can we not have accurate discussions?”
Ouch.
Sorry, Soniaji.
Sonya
You are right – the campaign shouldn’t be about Banglatown, but about a sensible transport connection – and Brick Lane is on the map and is also where the station physically located – not in Shoreditch. Perhaps it was a silly name in the first place – nowhere near Shoreditch or Shoreditch High Street.
But the wider debate is really interesting for a nerdy geographer like myself…building on the Milan example, in Vancouver there was considerable resistance to the in-coming Hong Kong communities – and there the resistance was played out differently. The predominant Anglo-Saxon population wasn’t terribly excited at the influx of Hong Kong dollars and real estate development which was all being brought up by the Hong Kong folks and remittance being channelled back into greater China – so they organised a campaign to preserve the heritage of the neighbourhood based on landscape, nature and open green space. In short, it was a way of keeping new HK money and HK folks out but decorated as a campaign to keep heritage of the area.
There’s been some interesting work done by Kay Anderson on Vancouver and other Chinatowns in the world. She’s quite cool on what’s driving the Chinatown models in different parts of the world (mixture of exotika and economics and sometimes community recognition) but its mostly about economic regeneration.
Ooops ’sonia’…..
Halima, there is an area in Chicago where I used to live called North Halsted or “Northalsted”. It is also the city’s gay district and is lcoally, popularly and unoffically known as Boystown and also Wrigleyville (because of the local baseball stadium).
As you know, queer folk have also been through years of civil rights struggles as well as hard fought conflicts and homophobic attacks. They also have gay religious and political figures from there who have the good sense not to campaign for North Halsted’s local el-station (their version of the tube) called Montrose to be named Boystown. This is because they want to integrate into the wider community rather than carve out mono-cultural enclaves that will only alienate the people of Chicago.
There’s a lesson there for Cllr Ulla and his stupid hollow gesture politics.
The parallel with the gay movement is interesting and different – proclaiming a neighbourhood with a gay identity is also dangerous and can potentially invite violence.
Gay communities choose when to activate carnivalesque spaces for ‘displaying’ their identity politics – and when not to. By carnivaleque I mean when they ‘play’ out their identities, when spectacle becomes political and public. They might choose to go to new Orleons during Mardi Gras and celebrate in the most public of ways – but then choose other spaces/time to be more hetereogenous.
Desi:
Unofficial names are fine. People can it any place what they like. The difficulty comes in changing the name of a place officially.
If people in India felt particularly offended living in imperial-named Calcutta, or Bombay, or Madras, or Delhi, then obviously they were willing to spend all that money renaming the places (apart from Delhi strangly enough). But for us in this country it would just be a waste of money.
Sonia:
But surely the principle is the same. If people want to call where they live something different, fair enough, but I don;t see why names should be changed just because some people want it so. What about the others? As long as taxpayers have to pay for it, I am not too bothered, but they will end up having to.
I resent the Anglosaxonisation, the Romanisation, the Normanisation, of our land. I demand that we either revert to the Celtic use of “Tamesa” for Thames or something pre-Celtic. Our land isn’t ours anymore! Damn Farangis!
good one.
39 rumbold good points summing up at the end.
if people are bothered about transport interchange names well they need to think outside their little box, sorry but there it is, why such a fuss about a train station, which is hardly a personal thing. If you asked anyone in a local area, im sure they’d have a different name preferred for their local tube. But again, this isn’t about the feel-good factor, its about TRANSPORT. Getting from A to B.
Halima—
This story was picked up from the East London Advertiser’s website here in April
http://tinyurl.com/4thkjb
and here more recently:
http://tinyurl.com/3lswuz
Let’s be clear. Until two years ago, there used to be an East London Line stop called Shoreditch. It had an entrance on to Brick Lane. That closed in 2006 as part of the major extension of the East London Line. A new station is being built which will open in 2010. Its only entrance will be on Shoreditch High Street, more than half a mile away from Brick Lane and outside the ward boundary of Spitalfields and Banglatown. In fact, it will be in Hackney, not Tower Hamlets, the authority Councillor Abdal Ullah is trying to represent.
Anyone familiar with the area knows full well that Shoreditch High Street does not resemble “Banglatown”: it is not a Bangladeshi area; it has a character all of its own.
Cllr Ullah is trying to be the big man of the area, currying favour with the influential and wealthy Bangladeshi restaurateurs. They’d love a station called Banglatown for obvious reasons.
But let ourselves be generous and give the councillor the benefit of the doubt and just put his silly suggestion down to a lack of rigour, that he failed to realise the station was actually moving. It would be like renaming Leicester Square Chinatown.
Incidentally, Tower hamlets council has just assigned £1m of planning gain money to create a “Banglatown heritage trail”, so maybe this will appease Cllr Ullah and his fellow “custodians”.
Sonia; the model of common sense once again.
Dan
I don’t read the East London Advertiser much. But your explanation would explain the proposal for a new station on Shoreditch High Street – not be confused with the current Shoredtich tube which is on Brick Lane .
The point i am making, though isn’t to support Banglatown or political personalities in favour of proclaiming the area. It is rather to say there is a strong constituency for ‘Banglatown’ and these are not just the British Bangladeshi ones but regeneration interest groups at GLA and the London Develompment Agency and powerful economic alliances between public and private partnerships. It is simply convenient that Cllr Ullah is flying the flag – but it definately ain’t the Bangladeshi one.
Bethnal Ganj
I can do the editing for free
Halima – do you realise that the Shroeditch station on Brick Lane has been shut down permanently, and the Shoreditch High Street one is under construction rather than ‘proposed’?
Interesting, a lot of discussion of a name of a place where clearly some people think is one place and others think is in another! perhaps part of the problem with turning practical getting from a to b into an identity issue. Perhaps the focus can be shifted to discussing names of neighbourhoods over train stations.
I guess only in Britain do ppl get fussy about what their local “leaves on the track” spot is called!
and who is actually going to use the station? are residents going to be driving? It is hardly as if when one alights at Aldgate East tube it is full of bengalis. nope, so many of the local bengali businessmen all use th eir cars.
Brick Lane is, though, on the tourist trail, so it might make sense to highlight the best station if you’re visiting Banglatown. North Greenwich is marked on maps as ‘North Greenwich for the O2′ and Cutty Sark is marked as ‘Cutty Sark for Maritime Greenwich’. Shoreditch could be changed to ‘Shoreditch for Brick Lane’ or ‘Shoreditch for Banglatown’. There are plenty of announcements on the Tube for areas of interest as well – a train arriving at Green Park has a message telling you to alight here for Buckingham Palace while Custom House says its the place to alight for ExCeL.
If history is anything to judge by, Banglatown won’t be an appropriate name for ever, otherwise it would be Huguenot-Irish-Jewish-Banglatown.
There are, though, locations that double as major attractions that don’t have their own tube station, Trafalgar Square being the obvious one.
xD.
Yes.. realised the tube was shut – but hadn’t realised the location for the new one was elsewhere..
Seperating transport from place…..
Banglatown isn’t my campaign! Just trying to point out alternative views.
I have in fact criticised the concept in my own research as far back as 2000 on grounds that such ideas don’t lend themselves easily to all sections of the Bangladeshi population . i.e. women, but benefit the consumption and taste of a visitor economy – mainly non-Bangladeshi. Indeed, they tend to package ‘culture’ as things that can be eaten most of the time – to be consumed and for want of a better word – ‘exoticised’. Culture being reduced to steel bands and samosas. In fact – there are many Bangladeshi residents that opposed the transformation of Spitalfields into Banglatown. They saw it as the market encroaching in their local space – the same motives as the folks opposing the redevelopment of Spitalfields market which resisted the movement of capital and commerce from the Square Mile spilling over into the old Spitalfields Market – some of you will have heard of the 15 yr long Save Spitalfields Market campaign. Banglatown is mostly about economics and gentrification – and less about carving out symbolic stakes for minority communities.
Being locally grounded is no bad thing.
Is the author Zeenat a Dhakaiya (Non-Sylheti) Bengali by any chance?
How many respondents to this article have actually resided in the Banglatown area? I would be interested in how local residents take to renaming the station rather than some of the brown sahibs of Pickled Politics. Maybe there is support and maybe there isn’t.
There are a plethora of differing identities vying for expression around Banglatown amongst the local Bengalis, as explained by Halima. Though not an exhaustive list these are the British, Bengali, Sylheti and Islamic identities. We live in Britain and therefore this identity predominates and impacts on how we express the rest. Most Bengalis exhibit an amalgam of the above identities.
There is no point in pandering to our elders nostalgic remembrances (this Councillor is undoubtably crusty, old and can barely speak English) of the country they left in the 60’s and 70’s. There is little point in changing the stations name to Banglatown as most of the local ethnic Bengalis in the area (and 90% of Brit Bengalis) are ethnic Sylheti Bengalis like me. There is no commercial gain for our restaurant industry as the area is already well known as Banglatown.
The article above is wrong to suggest the local Bengalis maintain their Bangladeshi ties through ‘Bangladeshi cuisine’ and are ‘taught Bengali’ at local schools. It uses the wrong terminology. The cuisine is specifically Sylheti eg. Hatkora Curry & Hutki/Hidol dishes. And the children are taught Sylheti (not Bengali) by Sylheti speaking, mostly female hijabi, teachers. Typically youngsters don’t care much for ‘back home’ and certainly not the dirty and stagnant feudal personality politics usually associated with Bengali culture.
There isn’t much ‘Bengali’ about Banglatown.
this Councillor is undoubtably crusty, old and can barely speak English
Wrong as usual. Here is a picture of Cllr Allah himself:
http://www.abdalullah.co.uk/
Fair enuff,
But you know the type I’m on about. Councillors who are male, old, mentality still back in BD who think local council politics is like the feudal personality politics of the AL/BNP from ‘back home’ where they grew up. They were usually voted in becoz Councillors don’t get paid, except expenses. Historically such positions were not held to be particularly prestigious.
The new generation of Brit Born and more modern outlooking types have changed that. I don’t support RESPECT but kudos goes to them injecting a whole new generation of Sylheti Bengalis into elected local positions. Hopefully these ppl will drift to the mainstream parties. Some already have.
Stop harping on about AL/BNP for fucks sake. The real problem for Sylhety youth is the victim mentality and being tightly bound to that claustrophobic village mentality and those regressive gender roles. Look at Ullah – a young Labour councillor who can’t look beyond the Sylhety cultural bubble. Integrate not assimilate.
It’s interesting to see how Bengalis on this thread have reacted to this issue:
Sid/Sonia (both ethnic Dhakaiya immigrant Bengalis) oppose the change due to their ‘fear’ of the area being ghettoised.
They wouldn’t oppose it if their group of Bengalis was dominant in the UK.
Halima and myself (ethnic Sylheti Bengalis) oppose the change but are more aware and sympathetic to the history and composition of the local Bengalis in and around Banglatown.
Getting off the thread but…
Statements that begin with ‘the real problem with white youth or black youth or Sylheti youth’…are problematic – can you talk about Sylheti youth anymore than white youths?
I am still young I think … and am Sylheti and also grew up on Brick Lane so your comments would mean I have a victim mentality – and I don’t , I love myself too much…
Abdal to be fair , contested a seat in Wimbledon at the last election where there are few Sylhetis.
The problem with Dhakaiyas is that they fail to appreciate that the Brit Bangladeshi community is 90% Sylheti. An ethnic group which faces societal discrimination and marginalisation in Bangladesh. Hence certain immigrant Dhakaiyas have imperialistic notions of what it means to be Bengali. They like to portray the Sylheti community as being ghettoised because they are not a part of it. This mentality actually damages Dhakaiyas since you need us more than we need you due to our numbers.
It is better to oppose this renaming scheme on practical grounds eg. recognise the fact that those who support this scheme mainly do so for economic reasons which will not be realised, rather than dislike for the culture/identity of another peoples.
Ashik, I don’t accept that you can group your regressive, insular, view of things in the same category as halima’s more nuanced analysis. She’s far more worldly than your narrow self. You’re always the first to complain about “feudal personality politics of the AL/BNP from ‘back home’” but your posts are replete in the Dhaka/Sylhety divisions that is now as predictable as a pattern in any Sylheti discourse – it’s that victimhood thing again.
It’s a self-perpetuating cycle you’eve damned yourself to. You say “The new generation of Brit Born and more modern outlooking types have changed that.” – has it? You show nothing of that yourself. Too bad.
well I prefer to probably cast the difference in other ways – I grew up with strong working class roots and find myself at odds with more middle class perspectives. Blog perspectives are often fairly suburban and middle class views to me – and miss the detail of inner city yuts and dynamism that comes from being young, black and broke – well you see what I mean.
Some of these blog perspectives are fairly suburban and middle class views to me – and miss the detail of inner city yuts and dynamism that comes from being young, black and broke – well you see what I mean.
I’ve been all three. I’m also an immigrant and I’m aspirational like all immigrants. That and being Bangladeshi binds me to the Brick Lane community. I feel the Sylheti and other Bangladeshi divide and find it perplexing. I want to have nothing to do with reinforcing these abstract divisions.
However, if I sound like Morgoth, I apologise.
Sid
We all miss details but nice to check ourselves against that – makes for more interesting encounters and conversations!
And I might sound like I have two great big chips on each shoulders and despite being comfy with my identity i fear it might occassionally creep up on me – so hope I wasn’t too offensive either.
The point about this part of London is that it has always been a transient hub for immigrant communities. The Jews, Huguenots etc, and now the Bangladeshis, Africans etc.
So if there was no need to re-name this part of London ‘Huguenot Town’, or ‘Jewish Town’ when the earlier communities came in and lived there, isn’t the naming of this area actually a betrayal of the very character of the area, which is an open gateway to Britain, and an enforcing of a single identity on an area that is rich in history and culture and character precisely because it is not owned by anyone? Isn’t it a betrayal of all that to formally name it ‘Banglatown’? And doesn’t it suggest that Bangladeshis won’t move on, move out, just as earlier communities did, and in the future other groups will also come in and make it their home?
In short, this is a really bad idea, and a betrayal of all that this part of London is.
Having said that, localities with certain ethnic characteristics are a reality and provided they are permeable, there are a lot of good things about them. Minority groups will always gravitate, for example, to places where the shops that sell their food, music, and culture are, where their places of worship are. This is what makes London great. Whether it’s Golders Green, China Town, Carribean Brixton or Brick Lane, let’s not get into a moral panic about this.
Sid,
For an individual who portrays himself as a wordly middleclass denizen of suburbia you have a strange habit of participating in controversial feudal expat Bangladeshi party politics through your membership of groups like Drishtipat. I would expect such ‘political activism’ from newly arrived inner-city working class Bengalis uneducated in the Western style politics of policy and action rather than personality and 1970’s style stagnant Bengali identity politics.
As for ‘reinforcing abstract divisions’, you do just that by participating in a group which represents a minority of a minority in the UK. Drishtipat should not expect to celebrate a politicised and artificial Bengali culture and language in it’s works when it is a well known fact that the vast majority of the target group speak a different (if related) language and have their own culture.
It’s very easy to portray oneself as an enlightened and liberal person over the net. However, actions speak more than words
Sunny, could you please confirm the ethnic background of the author of this article. It ought to mean what it says. Use of terminology to describe certain groups ought to be precise.
Don’t be scared of Drishtipat Ashik, they’re not your enemy. Sylheties who help to reinforce the same stereotypes of Sylheties such as Councillor Ullah are, however.
If we were anti-Sylhety and pro-BD government we wouldn’t have publicised the beating of Barrister Rizwan at the hands of military officials in Dhaka airport. Actually, it is you who is on record for voicing support to the military government right here on PP. And so is, I see, His Excellency Anwar Choudhury HC of Britain to Bangladesh. I notice he has done nothing to support Rizwan’s cause, stalwart of human rights and democracy that he is. [sound of suppressed laughter]
You’re also on record here on this list for using less than complimentary language of your own community (#51 and #53). So what does this mean? It’s OK for you to citicise Bangladeshi Sylheties for having regressive outlooks and values in the UK but if anyone else does, then it’s a case of culturtal superiority of the non-Sylheties over Sylheties. Come on mate, one rule for all please.
When young Bangladeshis like you from the Sylheti community enter the real world outside of your cultural ghettoes, you start getting beatings in arguments by people you have been taught to regard as anti-Sylhety and then all hell breaks loose and they are screaming “Bangladeshis are 99% sylheti!” in a vain attempt to protect your preposterously conflicted self-image.
i think the problem is contained within the presumptive mocking tone, assumed cleverness, the secularist imprint and the coconut attitude embedded all over 65. this is a ghetto of its own, whether or not its dwellers count beans and dance around different symbols.
Tis’ a pity that individuals such as Sid are so adamantly against multiculturalism even while benefitting from an atmosphere of multiculturalism in the UK in order to flog their own niche Dhakaiya Bengali culture and Bangla human rights politics while resident in the UK.
To clarify regarding Rizwan bhai’s experiences in the UK, I am on record as stating that the matter should be investigated and warning that the incident should not be used by the likes of Sid to scream for a return of the ‘democratic’ criminal oligarchy of either AL or BNP. It is well known that Sid’s group Drishtipat is a Pro-AL mouthpiece.
My criticism of Sylheti leaders at 51 and 53 for trying to Banglafy local politiocs in the UK illustrates that unlike you, I can criticise when things go wrong. Unlike you I have NO record of participation in exclusivist culturo-political groups with alligiences to ye olde social/political hierachies in desh. So much for integration, eh Sid!
I take a lack of aresponse to my request at 64. to mean that the auther Zeenat is a Dhakaiya Bengali.
While I oppose the renaming of the station I think this article contains some factual errors in not clarifying between Sylheti and (Dhakaiya) Bengali culture and language.
In addition, it shouldn’t have been spun to try and portray this as competing identities and ghettoisation. Halima has put forth some cogent arguments against the renaming and the real reasons behind the campaign ie. commercial motivation for local restauranters and businessmen.
A fuller discussion needs to take into account the history of the local Sylheti Bengali community and the struggle against racism and exclusion in years past. This is a serious matter, Altab ali park was named after a Sylheti murdered by caucasian racists. Presumably those who oppose the renaming of the station because they fear ‘ghettoisation’ also want to change the name of Altab Ali park and remove the Shohid Minar monument therin (commemorating the war dead from Bangladesh’s war of liberation from Pakistan)? These are quite sensitive issues.
I’m afraid there isn’t a shred of truth in what you’ve written. But then what can we expect from an shyster immigration lawyer.
You have the luxury of living in the UK along with all the special benefits multiculturalism has given you in a democratic social welfare state for generations whilst talking up a military dictatorship that is now in operation Bangladesh.
But I’m sure you won’t be turning down clients who are claiming political asylum from that regime, because you know you’ll be getting funds from Legal Aid. Immoral, shameless opportunism isn’t the word for it.
Ashik
Good you raise Altab Ali Park – a real anti-racist marker and should never be forgotten. It’s there in the hall of fame like Cable Street for East London.
Interestingly the Nelson Mandela plague on the south bank regularly gets trashed by racist graffiti… but never takes away from the power of what the symbol represents for Londoners
“have some sympathy for Bangladeshis that fought the National Front in the 1980s in Brick Lane in bare-fisted knuckle grid locks every Sunday to reclaim this space and that they would want to observe the symbolic importance of that struggle by naming the area Banglatown”
and now that it is clear that the english of this area have lost their home towns-even, it seems, down to the very name-I feel sympathy with the National Front. We have been colonised.
I think that, while the discussion here is interesting, we are getting of the plot a bit. A lot of the events mentioned are so long ago that many of those posting and reading here will have been to young to have been involved in.
I was on and helped to organise the first Bangladeshi march against racist attacks which took place on the 12th July 1976. Three thousand Bangladeshis and supporters marched around the edges of the community to demonstrate that they were prepared to defend themselves.
I was on the march when Altab Ali was murdered the following year and took part in most of the fighting at the top of Brick Lane every Sunday. I agree with the park being named after him but what the monument to the language martyrs is I don’t know.
What has not been mentioned here so far is the power struggle that is taking place within the group of Bangladeshi councillors from across all the parties. This is developing as I write and I will keep people briefed as it goes on.
All posting here will be aware of the importance of graam rajniti, village politics, and how some are more important than others. The reversal of the position on the namimg of the station is about a group of councillors involved with Islamic Forum Europe and operating out of the East London Mosque demonstrating their power, it’s a show of force and nothing else.
To allow it to go ahead would be to give in to a group of sectarian third rate communalist politicians and would denigrate the struggles of previous generations of immigrants. To the group behind this these struggles are of no importance, their knowledge of local history is vitually non existent and their world is Syhlet and East London.
What is needed is not just a monument to the majority community in Spitalfields at the moment but the others that preceded it and on whose struggles the Bangladeshis have built.
Cable Street was not just a Jewish struggle, they were assisted by the Irish dockers of Wapping whom they had raised money for and given food to during the dock strikes of the 1920s.
There is a need for a monument to all of those that struggled against prejudice and the violence that came with it when they first arrived. There is a line of continuity from one set of struggles to the next that rises and fall thoughout this part of east London from at least the formation of the first proto fascist organisation the British League of Brothers in 1909 to the present day.
All of this should be recorded and taught, especially to the younger generations. There should be a monument of some sort to all of those who have shaped the area and not just one group.
This is what a discussion on symbols should be about. What do people think?
na man. its just a voicing of brick lane businessmen’s idea, spun outside the region to invite scorn and brownsahibness.
billericaydicky, I don’t agree with all of the time but I agree with you 100% in 72. There’s no social awareness or a nod to the area’s political history in this proposal for renaming “BanglaTown”. Just the sound of ker-ching-ing cash registers, a bunch venal regressive businessmen and stupid village politics. Well observed.
billericaydicky
Interesting .. I like that you bring the focus back on 1976 and Altab Ali – it is not just that people on this thread were too young – it’s just that this site is probably not one with activists and activism in its blood – that would be Red Pepper type audiences. Few of us are activists, including me, though I am sure we would like to be more active. I still have a friend who goes by the name of Terry Fitz who was around then and is around now – and he’d agree with you on many of the points.
I was a wee kid in the lat 1970s but lived in Brick Lane and crossed the road to get to school with my Mum walking past the violent clashes you describe. My parents weren’t organising in this way but we were living with the violence you describe. I also thought it would be interesting to look at the politics of space in Spitalfields in later years – seeing as it’s a micro-cosm of so many other issues in London , as it was for Jack London and many other poverty chroniclers in the past.
I’d agree with most of your points – but would also point out that Muslim groups are those that most oppose Banglatown – the reason being they don’t like to put nationalist stamps on territories – it be-littles their sense of a global identity – be it Bangaldesh or Britain. It is Muslim and Bangladeshi women, in particualar, who voice their opposition to Banglatown.
Cable Street is anti-racist monument, but some would argue Brick Lane in the 1970s was also an anti-racist moment. To me it matters less that a place is used to represent one group or many – the point is that symbols like Nelson Mandela represent all oppression – not the oppression in SA alone. Sure – using Mandela in the same vein as Banglatown isn’t quite right .. but it illustrates the general point. Mandela is a symbol of anti-racism – not SA black movement alone.
Cable Street could’ve equally had a stronger Jewish identity – but to subsequent generations it would stand as anti-racism – not just a Jewish symbol – it’s identity would’ve surpassed the religious/ethnic/racial markers.
But that said when gentrification marches onwards and let’s face it , Spitalfields is ultra, mega trend and kitsch quarter of London – itself one of the more tourist heavy cities in the world – commerce also absorbs the politics and legacy of a neighbourhood/nation – and then it’s businessmen and councillors that allege to defend these values… It would be nice, though, to reclaim symbols for their original purposes – to serve and commomerrate past injustices and not let the market colonise its true value.
I still have a friend who goes by the name of Terry Fitz who was around then and is around now – and he’d agree with you on many of the points.
I wonder if the time is right for billericaydicky to come out from under the burkha now.
I tend to agree with Halima. One should consider the history and composition of the locality without forgetting that this is Britain. Therefore, the reasoning behind supporting or opposing the renaming are important because it gives a clue to where ppl are coming from.
We have to distance ourselves from the petty minded immigrant activist types living in their own nostalgia on this thread who are siding with BNP/NF types in their opposition.
This scheme is a harmless attempt by local restauranters to make some money. It is not a clash of civilisations or ideological. Only a handful of ppl, the ethnic opponents of the residents of Brick Lane, wish to portray it thus.
It is a shame PP went with the Non Sylheti author than someone local and from ourt community. Hence the inaccuracies in this article.
Ashik
Why don’t you write a piece on an aspect of East London, seeing that it is a locality that captures the national imagination? I think PP is to ‘open’ to alternative voices and makes for a richer blog all round.
I would add a smiley face but don’t know where to find the icon on my keyboard…
Sid #76
Hmmmm. (she says smiling….)
Excerpts from a song about the white working class male. An endangered species, even as I speak!
Good evening, I’m from Essex,in case you couldn’t tell,
my given name is Dicky, I come from Billaricay, and I’m doing very well.
How are things in Siramishi these days?
green, lush, and pretty .