A very convenient truth indeed, actually

It’s an old trick. What better way to rule inadmissible any potential accusation of bias regarding a controversial thesis on race or immigration than by assigning a non-WASP face to the messenger role? Whether it’s Baroness Sayeeda Warsi ‘legitimising’ BNP opinion for the Tories, or the BNP themselves reeling out what must surely be the most brazenly boneheaded man in the world to trumpet their legendary concern for the Jewish community, the belief that the co-option of an ‘ethnic’ voice gives a speech or pamphlet writer carte blanche is one of the more unpleasant and patronising assumptions generally held by those engaged in public discourse.

It would be a shame to lump Rageh Omaar in with these unfortunate characters but sod it, he’s never going to read this, and the sad fact is that his current series, ‘Immigration – the inconvenient truth’, deserves nothing less. If Richard Littlejohn or Jon Gaunt travelled around the country finding a handful of idiotic/paranoid/racist/bored white people willing to spout half baked theories about racial shifts in British culture on ITV it would be instantly and rightly dismissed as just another serving of their puerile partiality. That this programme is the product of respectable Channel 4 and presented by a nice British-Somali young man is presumably supposed to lend an air of sophisticated concern to whole thing, as well as a reassurance that there couldn’t possibly be anything untoward in its conclusions. What it actually amounts to is Omaar abusing his heritage by allowing it to be used as a pseudo-a priori defence against legitimate criticism. He’s helped in this by a godawful ‘specially commissioned You Gov poll’ and an actor reading out Enoch Powell speeches.


Rageh was in my hometown of Leicester this week. Leicester is famously set to become the first UK city with a majority non-white population, and Omaar spent time visiting what he described as the Somali St Matthews estate, the Hindu area around Belgrave Gate, the Muslim dominated Highfields and the ‘white enclave’ of Braunstone. His argument was that while Leicester remains free of the racially/culturally motivated conflict seen in London and some northern towns, the city instead plays out Powell’s predictions of disconnected communities living geographically proximate yet utterly separate lives. Supporting evidence came from a Muslim talking about ‘our services, our libraries and Islamic schools’ in the Highfields and a man from Braunstone who attempted with scant success to muster some enthusiasm for what Leicester used to be, before there was ‘a black face on every corner’.

To argue that there is never any racial/cultural tension or suspicion in Leicester would be foolish, as would to insist that the city inhabits some kind of utopian rainbow nation parallel universe. But Omaar’s portrayal of what I still consider to be my home did not ring true; it felt like he had chosen his argument before filming, and was intent on moulding everything he saw or heard into that shape, whether it would fit or not.

The Highfields, for example, is a largely Muslim area, yes. But there is still a huge Afro-Caribbean community living there, there are still white working class families. There are a number of mosques, where children can learn the Qur’an after school, but there is also Leicester’s largest synagogue. The services referred to are not ‘Muslim’, but are for, and used by, all residents. In other words, Highfields is not some Islamic ghetto, retracting into itself and abandoning all relations with its surrounds, just as Belgrave, its northerly neighbour (and you’d be hard pressed to know where one area began and the other ended), is not the Hindu equivalent. To pretend otherwise is disingenuous, and lazy.

As for the concerns of the soon-to-be white minority, well, you will always find someone who is willing to articulate a ‘fear’, or a sense of being the last stand, the ‘Alamo’, as the aforementioned Braunstone resident put it. But again, the concept of Braunstone, and the white working class Omaar allows the area to represent, existing as an island, with residents rarely daring to venture from their secluded sanctuary, is simply not accurate. If Rageh had walked through the city centre on a Saturday afternoon, he would have seen the very definition of multi-cultural consummation; people from all areas of the city, including poor old Braunstone, united in their love of identikit high street shopping.

If he had carried on walking, turning the corner from the clock tower, he would have seen an even clearer example of the integration his programme chose to ignore. Leicester market, ‘Europe’s largest undercover market’ as the council is ever trumpeting, is a true historic bulwark of the city’s white working class. Yes, Gary Lineker’s family still have a stall there. It could not fit in more with what Gordon Brown is desperate to define as ‘British’, not that he or any of his government would ever deign to shop there. But what is instantly noticeable is that while the stall holders are still drawn from the same white working class stock as in previous generations, their clientele are now overwhelmingly Asian, and often first generation immigrants. While the white population has all but abandoned the market in favour of the huge superstores and shopping complexes on the edge of town, the Somali, Hindu and Muslim communities have not. In effect, therefore, the heart of the city centre’s white tradition is being upheld by the very immigrants accused of refusing to engage with it. If that isn’t integration in its truest sense, I don’t know what is.

But Rageh Omaar chose not to look at the market, or the pubs, like the one around the corner from my Dad’s house, which are often far more genuinely mixed than anything I’ve seen in London. Leicester is not perfect – the ridiculously white crowds at the Walkers Stadium attest to that – but it deserves more than Omaar was willing to give it last night. Rather than attempt to pull out every negative it could find, regardless of its relative weight, or make vaguely threatening predictions about future coherence, I can’t help wishing that the programme had taken the opportunity to celebrate Leicester for what it is: city-shaped proof that, if supported, multiculturalism can and does work. But perhaps that was an ‘inconvenient truth’ too far.