The fact that London has been targeted is no accident. The aim of this bomb, and those of the previous two weekends, was evident–to mount a challenge to the increasing confidence and integration of London’s minority communities. The city’s very openness provides the opportunity. Secret documents revealed last week showed that at least one far-right group advocated violence against minorities in the hope of provoking a violent race war in England. Yet the resort to bombs is a clear sign of the far right’s desperation. Two decades ago, during the rundown of London’s manufacturing industries, and in the midst of economic depression, the ultranationalist parties appeared to have some prospect of gaining the same sort of political support garnered by their French and Italian equivalents. But paradoxically, under the 18-year reign of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, the Conservative ascendancy left the far right bickering among itself, virtually collapsing in a series of vicious internal splits.
In recent months, a shadowy far-right group that claimed responsibility for the devices, the White Wolves, has led the right’s re-emergence in a new guise. The police have already made arrests, but this does not mean that the outrages will end. Indeed, other London communities, particularly the city’s Jews, are bracing themselves for further attacks. But Londoners are not being bystanders in someone else’s tragedy. The bombers have badly misjudged the city, for two reasons. The first is demographic. Among London’s 7 million-or-so population, between a quarter and a third belong to visible ethnic minorities. Indeed, a majority of Londoners can now claim recent ancestry from outside the United Kingdom.
Second, there is virtually no segregation in London. There is no London borough where there are more minorities than whites; in no borough does a single minority occupy more than a quarter of the households. It is almost impossible to strike at a black or Asian person without hitting their neighbors or workmates–or perhaps their in-laws. Nearly half of young black men are married to a white person, as are a fifth of Asians. Nobody knows the size of London’s gay community, but here, too, British attitudes have changed. Tony Blair’s Culture secretary, Chris Smith, found that his vote in an inner-London constituency actually went up after he came out.
The fact is that the fascists know they are losing the latest round in this war for the soul of a great city. They hope that a policy of terror may create a reaction that will swing the pendulum back in the direction of their paranoia. But as I drove home the day after the Soho bomb, I watched two teenagers, one black, one white, swinging down the pavement in the sunshine, laughing at some remark the girl had made. I don’t know if they were romantically entangled or not; but here, it would be easy to suppose that they are. In today’s London, such a relationship is as unremarkable as a man in a pinstripe suit. This is the bright future for the world’s cities–mixed, creative, unworried by the historic baggage of race, uninterested in the dark myths of past ethnic and nationalist purity. The far right hates that future. They will be defeated because in London, that bright future is already here.
