Not The Anthony Browne Fan Club

Cllr Akehurst:

"I'm not sure we can expect a sensitive approach to policy questions regarding race and migration from Mr Browne, given the views he has expressed about these matters...Do Hackney's Tory Councillors, eight out of nine of whom are from minority faith and ethnic communities, know about the views of their London Mayor's Policy Director about the model of community harmony represented by our borough?"

Good question.

"The appointment of someone who has such a disparaging take on the benefits of immigration and multiculturalism to the position of Policy Director to the Mayor of a city that has benefited from and been characterised by mass immigration and multiculturalism is a very odd move and will add to the unease London's BME communities already feel about Boris."

Yes indeed. More here.

Comments

[James]

And the benefits of multiculturalism and mass immigration are what, exactly? Foreign restaurants?

How do the native white people from Hackney feel about becoming a minority group in the town they built? When were they consulted by the mainstream parties about the immigration policies that would result in this?

[Dave Hill]

Hello James: Define "native".

[Glyn]

Dear James,

"the town they built"

Much of London was built by non-English workers, and funded by colonial endeavours (not to mention slavery).

What does "native" mean in somewhere like Hackney? My grandfather was born in poverty in De Beauvoir Town in the 1880`s, the child of Scottish migrants. He moved to north Wales circa 1920, where my father and I were born. I now live in Hackney, in Lower Clapton, no more than a mile from my grandfather`s place of birth, and I have been here for 4 years. Does that make me more native than, say, someone of Jamaican heritage who`s family has lived in (and contributed to) Hackney life for 2 or 3 generations?