Fig.6

Wave after wave of immigrants have flocked to Brick Lane, a traditionally deprived area of East London. This started with the Huguenots - French Protestants fleeing religious persecution - who arrived in Brick Lane in the 17^th century. Around the turn of the century they were replaced by an influx of Jews, again fleeing persecution in Russia and Eastern Europe and later from Germany under Hitler’s reign. But they prospered and moved out to other parts of London. In the 1920s the area began to see a new wave of immigrants, overwhelmingly Bengali seamen and their families. More came in the 1960s and 1970s as civil war and political violence damaged their homeland. By the 1970s, the area had been transformed and the rising tension between Bangladeshis and Whites often broke into violence. However, by early 90s Brick Lane became de rigeur among young professionals and city folk looking for a cheap London property and there was a rising concern over Brick Lane becoming "embourgeoised," like Battersea and Notting Hill around it. Meanwhile, Brick Lane has one of the most vibrant street markets in London, which attracts a large number of shoppers. In it a large number of children, both boys and girls of the immigrants work in the rag trade to help their families, many of them also study during the night. It also is an important tourist attraction for the various walking tours that operate in this area with their enormously popular "theme"s. (This area was home to Dracula author Bram Stroker, a large number of victims of Jack the Ripper, and a number of fictional cases of Sherlock Holmes in addition to its larger history of Huguenots and Jews)

Brick Lane is in the borough of Tower Hamlets, bounded by the Highway in the south, Bethnal Green Road in the north, Spitalfields Market in the west and by Burdett Road in the east (Fig.6). It is a mile to the east of this borough that Derek Beackon became the first successful local authority candidate from the right-wing British national party in a by-election in Millwall Ward on the Isle of Dogs in September 1993. This period was prophetic of the rising upsurge in popular protest in East End (Tower Hamlets and thew surrounding boroughs are traditionally referred as the East End of London), a mass mobilization of young people, drawn in main from second generation Bengali households, clashes between young people and the police and a savage 300% increase in racial attacks in the last few years.

Fig.7

As Michael Keith argues, to valorize the rights of the immigrant communities to represent themselves in the anti-racist movement is not an end in itself. It is a political action, a strategy but not a goal. Similarly, to assert the right of the Bengali community to defend themselves against racist attacks thus implying a territorial claim, and the political moment when the democratic act is legitimized by a vote underscores the very vocabulary of popular politics when such a strategy becomes mistaken for a goal in and of itself.