Under Thatcher, Some South Asians in Britain Embraced Militancy

Associated Press Margaret Thatcher, former British prime minister, making a speech in India in 1981.

“One cold night a few months ago, a gang of white youths tore through a Bangladeshi neighborhood in the East End of London, screaming obscenities and bombarding the mean little houses with milk bottles,” William Borders wrote in The New York Times on July 9, 1979.

“The incident was just one more statistic in the catalog of repression that blacks in England say is often their lot, too, except it had a different ending: Ten minutes into the disorders, a dozen young Asian men suddenly roared out of a public housing project and began throwing bottles back at the attackers.”

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who died on Monday, took office as tense race relations in Britain threatened to boil over. An interview in which she said whites in Britain felt “swamped by immigrants,” combined with a bi-paritsan move to limit immigrants from former British Commonwealth countries in Asia and Africa incensed both groups, and sparked a new militancy among Asians in Britain, who aligned themselves closer to black immigrants.

“Within the non-white community here, the term ‘black’ used to refer only to people of African and West Indian descent,” Mr. Borders wrote. “But increasingly, militants of Asian descent are using it to describe themselves too.”

“Old-style Asians used to go along with the white British view, which differentiated between us and the people from Africa and the Caribbean,” one Sri Lankan immigrant to East London told Mr. Borders. “But we have come to realize that was really just a divide and conquer tactic. In their opinion, we are all blacks and so we must stand together for our rights.”

Read the full July 1979 article.