Summer in the city
As I relax in the relative cool of my inner-city council flat the temperature outside is reaching 30° Celcius.
I'm lucky enough to live on a post-war estate with tower blocks interspersed with lawns and mature trees and surrounded by lower-level homes with private rear gardens (good socialist mid-century urban planning). At this time of year it is something of a green oasis but, with the windows open to encourage a cooling through-draft (something else socialist architects understood and which speculative builders have now abandoned for profit), I'm aware of the sounds of my neighbours enjoying a rare sunny Bank Holiday weekend alfresco. As I type I can hear Bob Marley from one garden and Bangla from a parked car, which has set me thinking about our supposed multi-cultural community, and multi-culturalism in the wider national context.
As far as the former is concerned, the prevailing atmosphere could optimistically be described as 'live and let live' but I fear it is perhaps rather more a case of grudging tolerance, verging on weary resignation, than of any real empathy or mutual comprehension. While there is, thankfully, little overt antagonism, there is no meaningful integration either. The different ethnic and religious groups seem to live parallel lives, rubbing along with neighbours on a daily basis but never mixing socially. With the majority of Bangladeshi Muslim residents having Sylheti heritage, with the distinct linguistic and conservative traditions that implies, it is unsurprising that a cultural gulf exists between them and their Eastender, British and European fellow-residents.
And then there's the perennially thorny issue of class. The remaining elderly Eastenders (Cockneys in the old parlance) are white working-class while their more socially mobile and skilled children have often moved out to Essex to 'better themselves'. While I enjoy cordial relations with my immediate neighbours, exchanging Christmas and birthday cards with the Eastenders and Eid cards with the Muslims, my life experience is very different to both groups. I think it is safe to say I would find more in common with educated middle-class Bangladeshis than with white working class Eastenders, but they too have joined the exodus to Essex so I have little opportunity to find out.
My assessment of the demographics of my borough - a phenomenon by no means unique to East London but very marked here, with Bangladeshi Muslims making up 35% of the population - is of two distinct and separate cultural groups which, though not openly clashing, are fairly incompatible. The difference of religion, language, customs, dress and food throw up barriers to integration and there is little, if any, social mixing as a consequence. In more culturally diverse boroughs, by contrast, I get the impression that there is greater community interaction. At the national level, it is a conundrum that areas of the UK most exercised by immigration are those least impacted by it. Those of us living in very mixed areas mostly do our best to get along.
In the absence of mutual understanding, though, perhaps indifference is the best we can hope for.