Jim Rose Lecture 2008

No. 353 MARCH Bulletin 2008 RUNNYMede’s QUARTERLY Jim Rose Lecture 2008 Rageh Omaar on Identity and Homecoming In the year that commemorates its 40th anniversary, Runnymede has celebrated the contribution of its founder, Jim Rose, in a lecture by Rageh Omaar, who took as his subject the theme of ‘Identity and Homecoming’. Staged in late January at the and multicultural society. Royal Society of Arts, the Multiculturalism, and many of evening began with an address my friends and colleagues, have by Matthew Taylor, Chief had a very torrid time over Executive of the RSA, who the last few years, especially expressed his pleasure in since 7 July 2005. And it’s been collaborating with Runnymede quite an awkward situation for in this event devoted to the me because I’m very used to work and memory of Jim Rose. reporting events like July 7 and Dr Samir Shah, Runnymede’s their repercussions and trying Chair of Trustees, presided to analyse them. I want to use over the lecture and the this talk to try and unpick some subsequent Q&A session, and of that and tell the story of introduced the speaker, Rageh multiple identities and the sense Omaar, a writer of Somali of home in Britain that straddles origin who is now a well-known colour, race and much else the issue of multiculturalism. Rageh Omaar, presenter of television news besides. Somalis are black, they’re speaking at the Jim Rose Lecture and documentaries on BBC It’s also the story, I think, Muslim, a huge number of 2008 television and other stations. of hundreds of thousands of them are asylum-seekers or An edited version of his people like myself who can be have relatives who are asylum- presentation follows.1 British, can be Muslim, can be seekers. The overwhelming black and find no contradiction majority of the community is Identity and in that. The reason why I impoverished and in the last 1 The full lecture Homecoming wanted to make it so personal three years the British Somali can be listened I wanted to call this talk ‘Identity and talk about my own community has been associated, to by visiting the and Homecoming’ for very community, the British Somali some would say, with some Royal Society of personal reasons and talk about community, is that I think for all of the more high profile and Arts website at my own experience, and the the wrong reasons we British horrific acts of violence from http://www.rsa.org. experiences of my relatives, in Somalis have been at the centre the failed suicide bomb attacks uk/events/detail. becoming part of this diverse of the argument swirling about of July 21 to the shooting of PC asp?EventID=2450 ISSN: 1476-363X RUNNymede’S QUARTERLY BULLETIN MARCH 2008 1 Sharon Beshenivsky and much that he took else. me – I was less So I want to explore what than 5 years many young Somalis of my old at the time generation and also of the – with him and next generation, feel are the my mother, to JIM ROSE failures and challenges facing us perform the LECTURE and often I think these failures ‘Hajj’ to Mecca. and challenges aren’t aired and I talked to him 2008 they’re often not understood. many years When I arrive at Heathrow, afterwards, Samir Shah introduced returning from assignments, asking him Rageh Omaar it always feels very much as why that was and chaired the Question & though I am coming home. But the last thing Answer session it was a very different story for he did before my father when he made the he started a decision to emigrate to Britain new life in back in 1972/3. I’m from a Britain. He said that although he and elder brothers. And of very privileged background, my wanted very much to be British, course it’s economics that’s father was an economist. It was he felt he had another part of driving this, it isn’t just an really an optimistic time, when his identity that he wanted to inability to cope with a Western there was a huge sense of pan- maintain and performing the society. They’re absentees Africanism on the continent but Hajj was his way of making that because many of them joined also a sense in which societies link. the huge globalized flow to which had only recently thrown I think what it also indicated seek work, often in the Gulf, off the shackles of colonial rule for my parent’s generation was joining many other Somalis and were really going to take off, that they never really mentally Sudanese who went there to and my father wanted to be ‘unpacked’, they were coming find the money to meet financial part of that. He’d been part of here temporarily. But it was needs at home. The burden of the independence movement very different in the 1980s as family life has inevitably fallen from British colonialism in the more and more Somalis began on the Somali women, who, north of Somalia, a movement to emigrate for very different being part of this conservative, that took many into politics reasons – the civil war saw tens patriarchal, Muslim society, subsequently. My father made of thousands of Somalis seek didn’t have the education or a very conscious decision that and gain asylum in the UK. The exposure outside of the home economic development was exact figures are hard to come to give them the language skills really going to be the key by, but it is thought that about to deal with the inescapable but generator that would change 130,000 to 150,000 Somalis crucial bureaucracy of the health everything – the politics, the formed communities in virtually and education systems. social outlook, the sense of all of the UK’s main towns The language barrier was freedoms – and would define and cities. And this flow hasn’t and still is a huge obstacle to the new political systems that stopped – each year there are many young children who’ve would follow independence. around 3000–5000 Somalis just arrived, often having Somalia was a very small seeking asylum. experienced truly horrific country, a sort of backwater in For many years, I think it’s scenes, and joined the British the horn of Africa. A chance fair to say, the Somalis formed education system not being conversation with a British one of the least visible and at able to cope. They seemed in colleague of his convinced my the same time one of the most my day to fall between a lot father to come to Britain. He deprived minority communities of different identity ‘stools’. did think, interestingly, about in the UK, at least until those They were black but they going to the Middle East, with horrific events of July 2005. And weren’t West Indian so they which he felt a greater cultural in almost every area – housing, weren’t part of the Windrush affinity and Lebanon was the literacy and especially health experience, they were Muslim ideal that he had, just over one and educational needs – the but they weren’t Asian, and and a half years before the civil Somalis were amazingly ill- there was, and there still is, war began. But he came to equipped, culturally, to meet the a huge level of conflict and Britain. This was a man making challenges violence that affects young a very conscious choice – to It was, and still is, a Somali boys and leads to a huge say I’m moving, I’m not fleeing patriarchal society with a huge level of educational failure. This anywhere. But before he did level of absentee men – fathers has largely resulted from feeling 2 RUNNymede’S QUARTERLY BULLETIN MARCH 2008 that they were part of lots of pretty much the same could has become focused around different identities but didn’t be said about multiculturalism the problems and challenges of truly belong to any of them. in Britain. It has taken a huge the British Muslim community It also opens up the whole number of blows within recent in the wake not only of the generation gap between young years but I think it works. I think 9/11 events but also of July 7. Somalis, for whom this is home, the proof is in front of us. I’ve Trying to react to the question and the generation of other chronicled accounts of children of whether multiculturalism JIM ROSE Somali men who came here in who arrived 15-odd years ago, has failed on the basis of the LECTURE the 1940s and 1950s who are 5-, 6-, 7-year-olds who walked problems faced by British 2008 struggling to put bread on the across the Ogoden desert and Muslims would be a great pity, table, and are having to resort spent months in refugee camps, and I think that Britain would be to long periods of absenteeism having seen relatives killed in a much lesser place for it. to make that work. front of them. They are now at I think that a lot of the university and many of them are Somali experience boils down working and feeling a part of to a lack of resources and the fabric of this country. money, and one of the key Britain is also a less racist aspects is this idea that, for country than it was 40 years a lot of Somali families, they ago. The model of racism as have relatives still in Somalia I understood it growing up – who are hugely dependent on based on the duality of black remittances.

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