Yesterday at the Old Bailey, three young men, Sodrul Islam, Delwar Hussain and Mamoon Hussain, were convicted of the attempted murder of a thirty-one year old fourth man, John Payne. The attempted murder took place in April 2006 on the Clichy estate in Stepney in London’s Tower Hamlets.
The victim of the crime had been out drinking at a pub on the estate together with four friends, two young men and two young women. As the group of five friends made their way home at closing time on foot through the estate, they were subjected to taunts of being "white honkies” by a gang of Asian men who clearly regarded the estate as ‘their turf’ and the pedestrians as trespassers on it.
For telling the gang to leave them alone, one of the five pedestrians was struck on the head with an iron bar and knocked unconscious. The attempted murder took place when, to protect his unconscious friend from further blows, Mr Payne threw himself on top of his friend’s prostrate body.
According to a reported account of the incident by the victim’s stepfather:
“15 or 16 more guys [had by then] appeared with machetes, axes, knives and hammers. John was struck with a machette over the back of the head, slicing a large area of scalp to the bone. His skull was crushed with such force that pieces of bone were embedded in his brain.”
A truly appalling and tragic incident that shows just how bereft of social cohesion some parts of the country to be.
From the government’s rhetoric, however, one would have thought Tower Hamlets not to be one such place.
In 2004, Tower Hamlets was only one of two London borough councils that won “a top government award for its role in creating a stronger, safer and more inclusive community for everyone living and working in the borough…. Tower Hamlets [w]as judged showing strong leadership by tackling inequalities between different groups, overcoming the fragmentation of communities and encouraging positive relationships between people from a range of backgrounds.”
Could it be, perhaps, that inequality and economic deprivation are not the root causes of lack of social cohesion wherever it is absent?
Much was made of the racism of Stephen Lawrence’s killers. But no one ever suggested that what motivated them to kill their victim was their relative economic deprivation.
With seemingly far greater accuracy than the government and all its endless stream of specially commissioned reports on community cohesion, an Asian youth from Stepney seems to have put his finger on the root cause of much inter-ethnic strife in Britain today when he was quoted in a newspaper report in August 2006 about community cohesion and the lack of it in Tower Hamlets. He reportedly said:
“The whites and blacks [in Tower Hamlets] mix together more than the Asians do because the Asians are Muslims. That is what separates people now.”
In the same newspaper report, this diagnosis was well elaborated by the 26-year-old manager of a council-run youth club in Stepney with a 90% Asian membership. He was quoted as saying:
“People stick together with what they are comfortable and familiar with. Right now, people from different races don’t know each other and don’t trust each other.
"The Commission [on Integration and Cohesion, then just launched] is a total waste of time.
“The real way to solve this is through jobs. When people of different races work together they get on, there is better understanding.”
That analysis was borne out by a Stepney gang member who was reported to have said:
"There are black gangs, Asian gangs and white gangs and they don't mix. It isn't about racism, it is just about mixing with who you know and what you were born into."
The government should start reconsidering just what might truly be suppressing the employment rate among young British-born Muslims, especially those growing up in Tower Hamlets.
Arguably, more than any other factor, it is their having been crowded out of suitable entry-level jobs by better-educated and more highly motivated economic immigrants that is doing so.
We read today that, of the 2.1 million jobs created in Britain between 1997 and 2007, as many as over 80% could have gone to foreign-born immigrants to Britain.
One is entitled to wonder whether, had the government not relaxed immigration controls as it did on gaining office, Britain’s young Asian populace would not by now have become far more integrated than it has through having been able to participate more fully in the labour market than it has been.
Rather than applaud local governmental efforts to promote integration and harmonious race relations through dishing out annual awards of ‘beacon status’, and other such gimmicks, the government would do well to consider placing greater trust in the labour market to solve a problem that seemingly cannot be solved by top-down governmental initiative.
It was truly heart-breaking to read that, in the same year as that in which Tower Hamlets received its beacon status for efforts to promote community cohesion, a meeting there of a local area partnership between local residents, police, counsellors and other interested parties, registered ‘concerns regarding youth congregation and fear of crime’ on the very estate in which, eighteen months later, the attempted murder of John Payne took place.
Rather than self-deceptive awards for cosmetic local authority efforts, the government should begin to make it easier for the country’s indigenous populace to find jobs, rather than being left to fester at the margins in alienated gangs, as vacancies here are filled by depleting East European countries of their young human capital.