Is immigration an issue in Ealing Southall?

I saw the first UKIP campaigners out yesterday. They had one of those lorries with a huge poster on the side saying, "Stop uncontrolled and unrestricted immigration - Vote K T Rajan." At first sight, it seemed rather odd to see a poster attacking immigration, then asking us to vote for the Asian man in the picture. A few people have suggested that campaigning on immigration might not play well in a multi-cultural area but I'm not so sure.

Ealing has had a large Polish community since the Second World War and it has been reinforced by the latest wave of migrants. There is very little animosity towards them, perhaps because many people here grew up with Polish people. In any case, the more affluent eastern third of the constituency welcomes the cheaper rates for tradesman and domestic labour.

In Southall, though, the situation is more complex. This is the part of the constituency with the most social housing and consequently the largest concentration of Somali migrants. No-one seems sure how many Somalis there are in Southall but most agree that the 2001 census figures, giving a total black population of around 9,000, are well wide of the mark. A recent housing report for Ealing council estimated that Somalis are probably between 3% and 10% of the total population of the borough. This would give a figure between 9000 and 30,000, mostly concentrated in Southall. (See page 31 0f this report)

There has been some tension between Asian and Somali youths in Southall. The late Piara Khabra was criticised for blaming the rise in street crime on Somalis and warning that Asians might start taking the law into their own hands if nothing was done.

This Punjabi message board describes one such incident:

I know a major part of Sikhi is all about human unity and realising the human race as one race alone and that we should live side by side with our neighbours and all the rest of it but im begining to think that these somalians are taking advantage of it.

I have heard of many cases of somalians hassleing Sikhs for no reason, just looking to pick fights. Infact this has happened to afew people i know personally. Let me tell you about this one incident inparticular.

2 of my mates, lets just call them amz and jaz had just been to the Gurdwara and bought afew Punjabi albums and were about to go to uni from southall via southall station. Jaz is an amritdhari Sikh with distinctive Sikh features. Amz is your everyday "mona Singh". it was about 2ock pm, they just missed a train and the station was virtually empty (well the platform was anyways). Out of nowhere about 5 lanky skinny somalies (dressed like the tramps they are) made inapropiate comments about indians in southall, such as;

"this is our manner now, might have been yours in the 70's but this is our mannor now". They also suggested that the "indian writing" of Southall should be replaced to somali writing. Amz and Jas decided not to respond as there was 5 of the somalians and only 2 of them. Aslo, it is common knowledge that these lanky twats carry knives.

The Somalis were right in one sense. Parts of Southall are now their manor. A couple of Sikhs I spoke to recently said that the ethnic tension has not gone away and that many Asians are moving to neighbouring suburbs like Heston to get away from the Somalis. (And before you ask, no, I didn't start the conversation on this subject, they did.) In Southall's covered market, once the best place in London for Indian silks and spices, Somalis now make up the majority of the stall holders. Even the newspapers have dubbed it "Little Mogadishu". There are unsubstantiated rumours of Asian stallholders being forced to give up their pitches after threats of violence from Somalis. Whether or not this is true, Southall feels less Indian than it did ten years ago. It may simply be because many Asians have sold up and moved out. A sort of "Sikh flight" mirroring the white flight from Southall in the 1970s.

So in this constituency, Asians are at least as concerned about immigration as whites are. Perhaps more so. But this frustration is unlikely to be expressed at the ballot box. All the mainstream candidates have avoided discussing the issue, at least in the literature I have seen, and I can't see large numbers of Sikhs voting for UKIP or the English Democrats, even if their candidates are Asian. Immigration is seen as an issue here but, just like everywhere else, the politicians don't want to talk about it.

 

Comments

[DP111]

Muslims are a problem but Somalis are the worst. Somalis are regarded as the dregs even in East Africa. Why on earth we got them here, and for what purpose, heaven only knows.

The present drift towards a situation - Muslims becoming ever more numerous, and demanding more as a consequence, will eventually lead to a civil war, with countless dead and untold suffering. Humanity and compassion require that separation from Islam/Muslims be undertaken as a matter of urgency, or else we are looking to the demise of the West, or a civil war that makes Bosnia look like a garden party.