Flickr/FarzanaL. Some rights reserved.
Following and prior to the recent 12 June Tower Hamlets mayoral election results, it seems some on the liberal and white left are asserting that racism and Islamophobia were at play. But such well-wishers are in fact colluding, appeasing, empowering and encouraging the most right wing, reactionary and corrupt fundamentalist elements of the Bengali/Muslim community in Tower Hamlets. It seems that there is a group of white leftists, trade unionists & Christian faith leaders who would prefer to keep the Bengali community insular, ghettoized and away from the mainstream. They ignore the history of the Bengalis who came to Tower Hamlets as economic migrants during 1950s and 1960s to better their lives and those of their children, and overlook the history of that community's stand against ghettoization by the GLC in the 1970s.
These self-appointed saviours talk as though the Bengali community is unable to resist racism. They forget how, following Bengali factory worker Altab Ali's murder in 1978, it was the Bengali community that fought the racists off the streets of the East End physically almost on a daily basis, dealt with the unannounced arrivals of the National Front and Combat 18, and later the BNP - without the protection of 3,000 police.
