Memories of Victoria Park, 1978

40 years ago today.

I worked at Tower Hamlets Law Centre as a placement student and was on the legal aid tent for the whole day. I remember it as a wonderful day, great spirit, brilliant music, and when The Clash hit the stage unannounced I somewhat unprofessionally left the tent.

During the previous few years, the far right had been attacking British Asians and Afro-Caribbeans on the streets and in their homes. Part of my job as the placement was to document this violence. I’ve written about that experience elsewhere and I don’t particularly want to remind myself of it here. But as punk took off in London it embraced, and in turn was embraced by, all the cultures of multi-cultural seventies London. The Victoria Park event celebrated the ethnic, cultural and sexual diversity of the time and as such it was unique. Our ‘enemy’ was the nazis — the racist thugs who were making life intolerable for so many people at that time. That Victoria Park day was the Woodstock for my generation — less of the hedonism and more of the idealism. I loved that day.

Four days later, a young Bangladeshi textile worker was walking home and set upon in Whitechapel Park, stabbed in the neck and murdered. They have named the park after him and you can visit it. I do, whenever I can — Altab Ali Park.

So no, the Victoria Park event didn’t sweep away the nazis. But perhaps it was a moment when our multi-cultural vision inched slightly into the mainstream, and for that I’m proud to have been there.

But unfortunately we were looking the wrong way. We were focused on the white working class far-right thugs. The pain they inflicted was real and at times murderous, but relatively marginal in terms of numbers. We should really have been looking more towards the playing fields of Harrow and Eton and those who have inflicted far more distress and permanent damage on our fellow Britons through the hostile environment they created.

I’d put the policy makers, politicians and civil servants responsible for Brexit, Grenfell and the Windrush deportations right up there with those brutish young nazis in terms of inhumanity. But — and let’s be absolutely clear about this — just about every political party is guilty here. Any party which has at any time called for ‘immigration controls’ has helped whip up a culture of acceptance for this stuff. Things are ‘controlled’ if they are a bad thing.

Immigration is not a bad thing. It’s one thing that makes us richer, fuller, greater. As in ‘Great’ Britain.

I’m an immigrant, so I’m all for it.