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Immigration and asylum - new material (10)

01 July 2011

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Brides and Prejudice, Humas Quareshi. The Guardian 13.5.11. The UK’s Conservative education minister, Michael Gove, has argued that schools need to “celebrate the distinguished role of these islands in the history of the world” and portray Britain as “a beacon of liberty for others to emulate.” Presumably, this chauvinistic approach would omit the horrors of British history, one small example of which is the topic of this article – the largely forgotten 1970s policy of “virginity testing” Indian and Pakistani women arriving in the UK at Heathrow airport. This policy was not defeated through the rewriting of history, but by black communities coming out on the streets, picketing the airports and defying the authorities stereotyping of south Asian women as “submissive, meek and tradition bound.” The historical lessons of black communities’ fight against institutionalised state racism in the UK is as relevant today as it was in the 1970s.

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