Back in 2000 when cool Britannia ruled and Tony Blair’s honeymoon with the electorate hadn’t yet ended, the Runnymede Trust’s Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain reached its conclusions. Vice-chair Lady Gavron declared: “It would have been great if Prince Charles had been told to marry someone black. Imagine what message that would have sent out”. Five years later, Charles got hitched to Camilla Parker-Bowles, thus declining the challenge. Now it’s Prince William’s turn up the aisle. While the House of Windsor’s ethnic deficit is still unaddressed, Kate Middleton may be closer to Britain’s ethnic communities than first meets the eye. Her mother grew up in Southall, one of Britain’s longest established areas of South Asian settlement.
This incongruity has not gone unnoticed. Among the internet frenzy surrounding the impending nuptials, speculation has mounted on one forum. “Will Kate Middleton’s relatives from Southall be invited?” Quaker Oats and Woolf’s rubber factory help to define Southall as more of an ageing industrial suburb than a stereotypically leafy 1930s one. Also present on many past and present residents’ CVs as an employer is Heathrow Airport. In Gautam Malkani’s electrifying novel Londonstani, narrator Jas describes the lives of his peers “workin’ in Heathrow fuckin’ airport helping goras catch planes to places so they could turn their own skin brown”. Kate Middleton’s parents may be goras (whites), but they first met while working in the aviation industry. It’s a family background typical of the west London Asian experience.
Given the number of royal marriages that did not have a fairy tale ending, much good will has been invested in this union. The actual wedding will last only a day, so if the marriage is to revive the monarchy’s long-term fortunes, the happy couple need to demonstrate that they are in touch with modern Britain – unlike the clueless David Cameron, with his repetitive denunciations of multiculturalism. Prince William may not have chosen an ethnic minority bride, but by reaching out to communities such as Southall, he could send a powerful message to the racist right.
We are used to seeing photos of royals on walkabouts in exotic places, garlanded with flowers in the subcontinent and elsewhere. They don’t need to go so far for the experience. Southall railway station’s sign helpfully announces the destination in Punjabi as well as English. Restaurants and jewellers far outweigh pubs, but the surviving watering hole, The Glassy Junction, has become something of a tourist attraction, with its clocks displaying both Punjab time and Southall time. It also accepts rupees. Among the surrounding rows of Edwardian and Victorian villas are six Sikh gurdwaras, as well as a couple of Hindu temples and three mosques with one patronised mostly by Somalis. Southall’s transformation from a rural outpost of London to the scene of 1979 riots sparked by National Front agitation continues. Today it is far from the dullsville we associate with suburbia. Its ethnic fluidity makes it a compelling case study of 21stcentury Britain that Wills and Kate need to see for themselves, particularly given its new royal significance.
Royal visits should also be arranged to Brixton, Manchester’s Rusholme and Birmingham’s Soho Road. In all these places, ethnic commerce has thrived, going against the recessionary grain of boarded-up Britain. Such an itinerary would be in tune with the still-relevant Runnymede remit “to analyse the current state of multi-ethnic Britain and to propose ways of countering racial discrimination and disadvantage and making Britain a confident and vibrant multicultural society at ease with its rich diversity”. It would also be easier on the carbon footprint than foreign climes, given climate change awareness. And Will and Kate could even be pop in some relatives in order to revisit some roots.
