Rishi Sunak and his fondness for Margaret Thatcher

The wife of Rishi Sunak, who would like to succeed Boris Johnson, takes a selfie. A monument to Margaret Thatcher looms in the background. Not an event actually. But the London “Sunday Times” recently featured a photo of this event on its front page. Why? Because the Indian-born wife of the former British Chancellor of the Exchequer refers to a figure known as Thatcher, who was known for her restrictive attitude towards immigration from the former colonies. And Rishi Sunak is also working hard to reaffirm his tough stance on immigration policy.

Who would have thought that a man of Indian origin, albeit a multi-millionaire and educated at Oxford and Stanford Universities, had a real chance of becoming the next British Prime Minister? His rise, however, only reflects a social development of recent years. This includes the achievements of the second and third generation of immigrants from the subcontinent in particular, who in turn benefit from the iron work ethic of their parents and grandparents and are now building on it themselves. Britons from Asia not only introduced saris and samosas into everyday British life and are present on every corner as owners of small shops. An emerging and at times affluent middle class has also established itself.

A clever move

But above all the visible rise in politics makes it clear that the reports of poverty, violence and counter-violence among immigrants are now only part of the story. Sajid Javid was the first Briton of Asian descent to hold one of Britain’s top four offices. The son of a Pakistani family was born in Lancashire. Javid was Home Secretary in the Tory government and then Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Sadiq Khan, London’s Mayor, was born in the south of the city into a British-Pakistani working-class family. While practicing law, he began his political career with the Labor Party, which took him to the top of London City Government. Indian-born Priti Patel, Home Secretary in Boris Johnson’s cabinet, was also born in London. She owes the inspiration for her political career to Margaret Thatcher. Patel takes a hard line on immigration. Those who themselves have a migration background do not necessarily have to have an open-door policy.

The fact that the Tories are increasingly promoting candidates with a migration background has only a limited connection to quota thinking or positive discrimination. Rather, they take advantage of their often critical attitude towards immigration. They are attractive to the Tories both as ambassadors of diversity and as unsuspecting critics of migration.

When people talk about Asians in England, they usually mean the South Asians, the largest non-white minority in Great Britain. In the decades following World War II and the collapse of the Empire, immigration from the former colonies increased in number. Most immigrants came from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

race riots and scandals

However, there are big differences between the various Asian communities. This begins with religious affiliation and extends to the differences between the first and subsequent immigrant generations. Another group of immigrants arrived in the 1970s with the arrival of East African Indians who had been very successful in railroad construction, administration and other jobs in countries like Uganda and Kenya. Priti Patel and Rishi Sunak are descendants of such families.

The social advancement that is now emerging is all the more surprising given that stories of misery and negative headlines have dominated the image of immigrants from South Asia for decades. The problems haven’t gone away. They are everywhere, and many Britons also remember the serious racial unrest of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, as well as the fact that many of the IS recruits from the British Muslim community were, appropriately, of South Asian descent.

Also unforgettable are the scandalous events in the northern English town of Rotherham, where hundreds of children have been victims of sexual violence for years. The authorities knew this. However, since the perpetrators were of Pakistani origin, the police allegedly did not intervene for fear of accusations of racism.

Public institutions are still struggling to deal with racism. This includes a misunderstood sensitivity as in Rotherham or sometimes aggressive unfairness towards people who look strange. The tendency to make racist statements follows a cycle that depends on whether the socio-cultural and economic climate favors or suppresses it. Most recently, violent aggression against Asians rose again in the UK during the Covid 19 pandemic.

Film, television and literature have illustrated these problems in the past. Popular feature films such as “My Beautiful Launderette” (1985), “Bend It Like Beckham” (2002) and “Blinded by the Light” (2019) tell about it, as do a number of novels, from Hanif Kureishi’s “Buddha of Suburbia” (Eng. « Suburban Buddha, 1990) to Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (2003). In the meantime, series such as “This Is Going to Hurt” and “The Outlaws” (both 2022) also address the fate of young South Asian women who are driven to the point of exhaustion by their ambitious parents into prestige jobs and who, moreover, have to endure the strain of a life between two cultures .

In football in the 1970s, Asians weren’t even wanted as fans. Sports journalist Tusdiq Din reports on this in an article in The Times. Although he says that conditions have improved significantly today, they are still a long way from being what they could be. The fact that top South Asian footballers are rare occurrences in the English Premier League has only limited to do with prejudices, but above all with the ambitions of the parents.

Traditionally, ambitious South Asian parents prefer their children to pursue an educated profession such as a lawyer, doctor or engineer. If it’s a sport, then it should be the gentleman’s sport of cricket. However, prejudices are also noticeable there. This was illustrated last year by the bullying scandal surrounding Pakistan-born cricketer Azeem Rafiq, who was driven to the brink of suicide over racism at his Yorkshire club.

No legal vacuums

Britain has long had the reputation of having the most tolerant policy towards minorities in Europe. Nevertheless, the way immigrants were treated after 1945 was anything but consistent: they were needed as workers, but they were discriminated against as a threat to their own lives. The social ideal of multicultural coexistence began to assert itself in the 1960s. In practice, it showed itself in a tolerance that was expressed primarily by looking the other way.

The country long renounced the claim of cultural integration, which led to the formation of parallel societies in cities like Bradford. There, against the resistance of the Christian population, special Muslim regulations were enforced in schools, including the introduction of halal meat in the canteens.

In 1989 Salman Rushdie’s “Satanic Verses” was burned in Bradford. Six years later, entire neighborhoods were burning. But there was never a lasting ghettoization in England as in the Parisian banlieue, where the applicable laws can no longer be enforced.

After the race riots in Oldham and Bradford in northern England, after Islamist attacks by people born in the country with a migration background – mostly South Asian – the idea of ​​the rainbow society was considered a failure. Brexit cooled attitudes towards foreigners even further. Immigrants and newcomers felt it. Even if the multi-ethnic, -religious and -cultural everyday life together or side by side mostly works in everyday life and stories of a successful, often conservative South Asian middle class and upper middle class are piling up.

Among the startling twists and turns of this complex relationship is the adoration for Margaret Thatcher as staged by the Tory candidate and his wife: they love Thatcher; she didn’t love her.