Protecting the Bengalis
Tony Judge
Most of the hostility to the Greater London Council's proposal to rehouse, as one community, some of the Bengali families in Spitalfields, came from expected quarters. The mob of white youths who went on the rampage in Brick Lane last Sunday did so at the end of a week of intense local and national argument. They gave proof, were any needed, of the dangers faced by Bengalis in the area.
Other criticism comes from more surprising sources. The allegation that the GLC plans to create a ghetto comes oddly from people who have seemed to tolerate the existence of such a ghetto in Pelham Buildings for so long. The alleged urge of these Bengalis to assimilate with their white neighbours belies all the evidence of their Years in the district. Some Asian spokesmen say the answer to persecution is to provide greater police protection, knowing that even Asian families established on council estates are daily at risk. The vociferous protests from these quarters is in odd contrast to their almost total silence on the plight of the Bengali squatters over a long period. Just one body, the Bengali Action Group (BAG), has been pressing the GLC for Years to take action, insisting from the start that any mass rehousing must take place in Spnalfields because they feel relatively safe there, and many depend on the small workrooms servicing the rag trade.
The Bengalis who would be affected by the scheme are not the self-sufficient and relatively prosperous immigrants who, apart from occasional harassment, have Managed to fend for themselves in Tower Hamlets. Those concerned are mainly long established, having come here just after the War, or to join relatives, but they speak little English, are poor, and often illiterate in their own tongue. For years they have had to endure bad housing, getting no help from the local borough council or the GLC.
The squatting in Pelham Buildings began When, some years back, the GLC began clearing them of tenants to proceed, at some unspecified date, with a modernisation scheme. The early squatters were virtually ignored by GLC officials, more concerned with getting rid of squatters in buildings Which were in the immediate rehabilitation Programme. Now the need to modernise Pelham Buildings, and the constant pressure of BAG, has produced the plan and the controversy. Not for the first time the GLC has been found wanting in community consultation and public relations. When rehousing white families from redevelopment areas, the problems are tewer. In general 'licensed' squatters, those who squat with GLC permission, are
offered regular tenancies in low-grade flatted estates, not dissimilar from the blocks which the GLC proposes to set aside for the Bengalis. Tenants who start off their tenancies in this way stand a reasonable chance of transfer to better homes later on. The Bengalis in this case are different. They have no wish to find themselves marooned on estates which are mainly white, or white and West Indian. There is strong resistance among East London council tenants to the allocation of flats on their estates to Bengalis. On more than one occasion, tenants have physically prevented the letting of a flat to a Bengali family, notwithstanding the efforts of the housing officers and the police. The National Front has been very active on the older estates and tenants fear that the first Bengali arrivals will be the forerunners of many more. A few of the squatters in Pelham Buildings were once GLC or borough council tenants who left their homes because of harassment from white and West Indian youths. They preferred dreadful living conditions to living constantly in fear.
The GLC is on its own in this matter. Tower Hamlets council accepts no responsibility for Bengali squatters in GLC prop erty. The council has long resented GLC policies which tend to make the borough a dumping ground for families with problems.
As coloured families and homeless families are brought in from other boroughs, the pressure from existing white tenants to move out builds up and the resulting vacancies are filled by still more families of the 'problem' category.
If the word ghetto must be used to describe the plan for Bengalis, it is worth mentioning that existing housing policies are rapidly leading to other ghettoes.
This week's events seem to indicate that the GLC will abandon the scheme in defer
ence to the protests. Opposition has come from both parties at County Hall. But what are the alternatives? The Bengalis can be left to rot in their present appalling conditions, or they could be evicted and attempts made to disperse them in Tower Hamlets and the rest of East and South London. Without the protection afforded them by their numbers and the BAG, the chances of violence are multiplied. There is little or no prospect of the police being able to protect isolated Asian families. The GLC solution is pragmatic and far from ideal, but the alternatives are either unworkable or irresponsible, likely to create more tension than exists already.
The GLC should have little patience with the spate of utterly uninformed comments of which some of the calls made to local radio stations are typical. These suggest that the Bengalis have been singled out for special treatment not available to whites. One look at the estates earmarked for the scheme would dispel that myth. Even Jean Tatham, the leader of the Housing Management Committee, has said she would consider similar applications from white or West Indian groups. When, after realising the implications, she stressed she had only said 'consider', not 'agree to', she revealed how swiftly councillors are forced on the defensive when the issue is race and housing.
There are one or two estates in London where the population is.as completely col oured as makes no difference. For years it has been argued that it is wrong to create all black or all white estates by intention, or by the failures of allocation policy. It is not objectionable, on the other hand, to have estates with predominantly coloured popu lations if this conforms to the wishes of the tenants. The GLC survey Race and Council Housing indicated that tenant choice played little part in the creation of mainly black estates. With the scheme for the Bengalis, the GLC was led all along to believe that this was what they wanted, and is now accused of paying too much attention to the views of BAG. But the other groups, to the best of my knowledge, have shown little interest in the problem of Pelham Buildings in the past.
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