This summer so far British Bangladeshis have had to endure being insulted by British politicians; seeing race riots in the North similar to what the NF use to do along Brick lane and finally our ancestral home returning to the worst days under military regimes in Bangladesh during the 1970’s. The latter was of course a source of much embarrassment at school for me!

For some reason during the General Election 2024 a few national politicians like Jonathan Ashworth MP for Leicester South cited Bangladeshis asylum seekers as one of the worst abusers of the system when only the previous month the governments of the two countries entered into an agreement on how to send back failed Bangladeshi asylum seekers to Dhaka. His rant on BBC Newsnight against South Asian asylum seekers clearly contributed to him losing his parliamentary seat subsequently as he learns the hard way, you should not insult your voters. 

Soon after the GE of 2024 was concluded with a Labour landslide, trouble brewed after the tragic killing of three girls in their dancing class in Southport. The fatal stabbing of three young girls at a dance class in the seaside town of Southport, in the north of England, followed by the worst unrest the UK has seen in more than a decade. Immediately after the attack, social media posts falsely speculated that the suspect was an asylum seeker who arrived in the UK on a boat in 2023, with an incorrect name being widely circulated. There were also unfounded rumours that he was Muslim.

The day after the Southport riot, violent protests in London, Hartlepool and Manchester broke out, which police linked to Southport. More took place throughout the week – with many targeting mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers. Mercifully when the riots were meant to come to London, the Far Right lost their bottle! 

Through out this time, we had student protests building up in Bangladesh in particular in Dhaka over the quota system for civil service jobs for the descendants of Freedom Fighters from the 1971 war of liberation.  Which all lead to the toppling of the PM Sheikh Hasina Awami League government and an interim government in place with heavy military backing, which for me brought back memories of the military coups in Bangladesh throughout the 1970s and also the 1980s. 

So you can see how it feels very much back to the seventies for British Bangladeshis in the UK.