In the East End there are two mosques which symbolise the Bangladeshi-Muslim community of Tower Hamlets. One is East London Mosque, a grand labyrinth embodying the growth of the community, clear, vast and encompassing. It’s widely recognised but there is another mosque, not too far away, that doesn’t just symbolise Brick Lane’s Bengali community, but Brick Lane’s history of migration itself. And that is the Brick Lane Mosque. Its building once belonged to French Christian refugees, and then Jewish refugees. Today it belongs to a community that for many decades was besieged by the white nationalist far-right, but now stands as a large, sprawling family that survived a racist onslaught.
For a while during the Seventies, it never seemed like this would be possible. Bengali migration to the East End, largely from Sylhet, had been in a steady stream for years. Following the 1971 Liberation War when the Bengali people were subject to a brutal genocide, the influx grew. But in the East End they confronted a different kind of enemy who also hated their culture, language and ways of life. The white far-right had long been a presence in the East End, previously terrorising the Jewish community. They focused on harassing the Bengali migrants, subjecting them to a torrential downpour of abuse and attacks. Bengali mothers dropping their children off at school would go home together in groups, to prevent attacks. Letterboxes were made fireproof to prevent arson attacks. But bricks and glass bottles were never far away, always weapons in the hands of the National Front, fascists who would never, who could never see a people their own country once colonised as their neighbours.
The Bengali community integrated and immersed themselves into the East End culture. They looked to the law for protection, but the law never protected them. The police were riddled with racism and Britain was far more hostile then. Everything changed on 4 May in 1978, when a young Bengali worker named Altab Ali was murdered by racists. The patience which previously restrained the Bengali community snapped, and anger torched Brick Lane. Their youth collectively self-organised and began to seek the National Front out, with support from others.
East End for much of the twentieth century was a warring space between migrant communities and the far-right. But today it is a settled home for the British Bengali community. Today, the far-right cannot mobilise in the East End without fearing for their own safety. Whether this is EDL or Britain First, they do not have the local support they previously did. A park between Aldgate and Whitechapel station is named after Altab Ali, and every year, 4 May is remembered for a young man whose life was lost to racism, but whose death ignited an entire community.
So why is this relevant? Because this we seem to be in what soon might be known as “milkshakegate”. Nigel Farage joined Tommy Robinson and other far-right individuals in getting milkshake hurled at him, prompting a divide in how to approach the far-right. There are those on the left who regard this as perfectly acceptable, in contrast to the more liberal voices who regard this as simply the ignition for further violence, for normalising the substitution of open dialogue and discourse with something more sinister. We live in dangerous times of extremism and polarisation, when society seems to be coming apart, frayed by Brexit.
To an extent, the liberals here are correct. Fists and smashing fascist teeth won’t achieve a conclusive victory against fascism and racism. Ideas are not permanent and indefinite, but fleeting and vulnerable to time, always threatened by new forces recycling old arguments to new generations that have forgotten that humanity has been here before with fascism. On this, they are correct. As old arguments resurface, so must the ideas around equality and freedom for all from discrimination and prejudice be kept alive.
But where they are wrong is to suggest that this will normalise violence or simply provoke the far-right into their own retaliations of throwing milkshakes. Frankly, if that’s all they do, it’s a welcome change to what they normally do. Throwing milkshakes at the far-right will not ignite political violence because it is already happening. Hate crime has been rising astronomically since Brexit. Muslims faced a 593% rise in hate crime in the first week after the Christchurch terror attack. Violence towards minorities is wired into the far-right, from EDL to Generation Identity. Whether the left behave peacefully or aggressively, the far-right only understand one language and that is the one that resorts to fists.
Lobbing milkshakes might inflame their anger but it might also make them think twice about organising on the streets. When the people of Brick Lane defeated the fascism of National Front, it wasn’t the law and the ballot box that did it but their own bravery to meet fascism and evil on the streets, knowing full well that these people were happy to murder them just as they murdered Altab Ali. This community’s existence in Tower Hamlets today serves as a reminder that fascism on the streets is ultimately defeated when the far-right fear you. Example? In Liverpool, the far-right Jamie Goddard fled when insulting a trade union protest, shocked by how the Liverpudlians were unprepared to give him a platform.
So yes, milkshakes are funny and probably also not very meaningful in the long-term. But the idea that the far-right do not deserve political violence because they may respond with their own overlooks how ethnic minorities previously battled fascism, and what they go through today even when the left does not engage in violence.
