Time for city statue to the fallen from BAME communities

THIS is an open letter that I have sent to Bradford Council.

Growing up in Bradford, you would never know, as a black person, that your ancestors fought in the Great War or the Second World War.

Why? Because there is no visible statue to tell you that. We have the statue of the fallen soldier that stands impressively between the Alhambra Theatre and the National Science and Media Museum, but where is the statue to the many BAME men and women who fought for Britain?

Bradford likes to pride itself on its diverse credentials, yet it fails to acknowledge the fact that the ancestors of its many communities fought and died alongside their white counterparts to save the world from tyranny. When will Bradford acknowledge this and erect a statue to honour our fallen? Never, I would imagine.

I grew up in Bradford in the 50s, the child of an Irish mother and a Nigerian father, and I can tell you the racism I experienced was intense and relentless.

Every time I left my home, I expected and received verbal and often physical abuse. However, over time, the abuse lessened, and it lessened because my parents worked side by side in the mills with people from all over the Commonwealth. Slowly, over time, working class people began to break down the barriers and they began to accept and then embrace other cultures.

White working-class people have not been the real barrier to integration for a long time, it has been the organisations and institutions that run the country and control civil life that have remained the problem.

I worked within the criminal justice system as a probation officer for several years and saw institutional racism play out starkly in the sentencing system.

I would appeal to institutions such as Bradford Council to play their part in addressing racism and addressing the true inequalities within society, the mood of the young and the disillusioned weary elders are sick of waiting.

Bradford could play its part by starting with a statue to our fallen, and then it should move on to address the racial and cultural divisions in the city that it continues to ignore.

Bradford’s local authority has a history of failing to understand its own inherent racism and this has led to Bradford becoming a divided city where some of the young people, whose families were once marginalised and the victims of racism, are now becoming the racists of today and tomorrow.