Stoking the fires of racism

Since mid-April, towns and cities in the north-from Bradford to Oldham to Leeds and Burnley- and now Accrington, have seen ugly clashes between whites, instigated by white supremacist groups such as the British National Party and the National Front, and Asians in the northern Lancashire area. 

Admittedly institutional racism (particularly in the police force where blacks and Asians are often stopped for questioning and searches and complaints by these ethnic minorities often go uninvestigated or are only cursorily examined), is contributing to the violence that has swept the north.

Naturally the authorities- from Home Secretary David Blunkett to police officials in the affected areas- would like to blame the regular outbreaks of racial clashes to "criminal elements".

So Blunkett is now talking about using water cannon, tear gas and other instruments of crowd control as a means of preventing the spread of riots. This is a rather simplistic solution to a problem which the "New Labour" government, having failed to deal with it in its first term, is now trying to solve by applying a poultice to a gangrenous wound-a much more polite simile than the colourful Sinhala one about athisaraya and the amude. Firstly, the use of water cannon and tear gas have not made the confrontations in Europe between anti-capitalists and police, shorter and sharper. Rather the European protests show they have become more prolonged because the demonstrators have struck back by improving their strategies. Secondly, this spate of violence has occurred mainly in the inner cities and districts in northern England where economic problems and problems of integration have been festering.

Basically the confrontations have been between white and Asian youth, largely Pakistanis, whose parents came to England to work in the textile industry in the northern Lancashire region.

Most textile manufacturing and other industries in and around there have closed down and many of the workers are out of jobs. The whites blame the Asians-and refugees in general - for using up taxpayers money. 

Even if this is not entirely true, this kind of perception has, over the years, built a wall of resistance and anger at the presence of what they see as "foreigners" taking up space.The Asian youth, living in difficult conditions-cramped and dilapidated housing and attending schools that offer little hope of advancement- are angry and not willing to listen to their elders in local councils and race relations boards, who prefer a peaceful approach. In the perception of the Asian youth the local police are racist and are more likely to take the side of the whites in any dispute and harass them because of their ethnicity.

More and more, the whites and Asians tend to live in separate parts of the inner cities and rarely venture out into the other's 'territory'. 

In the context of the United Kingdom, it is akin to Northern Ireland where Catholics and Protestants generally live in their own areas of Ulster in fear of the other.

Earlier this month, Prime Minister Tony Blair ordered the biggest-ever inquiry into discrimination against Britain's ethnic minorities in health, education and the workplace. The order came after research showed that the wealth gap between blacks, Asians and whites was widening.

But it is not just the widening wealth gap that is causing the growing racial tension and the now frequent clashes. The fact is that "institutional" racism exists in most spheres of Britain's public services. 

It was the Macpherson Report on the inquiry into the death of a black youth named Stephen Lawrence that first made public the existence of institutional racism in the police.

Recently a King's Fund sponsored study exposed the harassment of black and Asian doctors in the National Health Services and the discrimination they faced in promotions. While all this has contributed to a sense of alienation and pent up anger in the ethnic minorities, it has not led to violence. Often it has led to black and Asian professionals challenging the results of police investigations or the treatment accorded them at hospitals.

In some cases doctors or other professionals have left in disgust, accusing their seniors or administration authorities of racial discrimination. Recently a senior Asian woman lawyer working for the Law Society won her case against the Society for racial discrimination and harassment.

While the government is now trying desperately to cover up its own inadequacies and role in not dealing with the problem of growing racism, 11 watchdog bodies led by Liberty, a civil rights group, have accused British politicians and the media of stoking the fires of racial hatred by their inflammatory comments on asylum seekers and refugees. In a report to the UN Human Rights Committee, the 11 organisations say that "politicians and media alike have been encouraging racist hostility in their public attitudes towards asylum seekers".

Criticisms of asylum seekers as "bogus" economic adventurers and the scum of the earth, by rightist politicians in both the Tory and the Labour parties have led to the extension of public resentment towards ethnic minorities in general. It has also led to the strengthening of the power base of white supremacist groups such as the National Front and the British National Party which gained 15 % of the vote in a northern constituency at the June elections-the highest ever by a racist party. There is a strong lesson to be learnt by Sri Lankan politicians and the media from what is happening here. Don't stoke racial fires if you can't put them out.

The beginning of the 'censere' 

The term 'census' is derived from the Latin word 'censere'- to assess. It is associated with the distribution of the Roman 'assisui' (freeholders) into tribes, classes, and centuries which the Roman king Servius Tullius is believed to have effected. 

According to the constitution which bears his name; every fifth year, the population of Rome was to be enumerated together with the property owned by each family. The officers in charge of the classification were called 'censors' and were expected to perform the 'lustrum' or purificatory sacrifice, on behalf of the people, which followed each census. 

Making this observation in his exhaustive report of the 'Census of Ceylon 1946', the Superintendent of Census, A. G. Ranasinha (later Sir Arthur), traces the history of holding censuses. "Censuses, differing in character, appear to have been taken for a variety of purposes in different countries since the rise of ordered governments in the world. 

"In the third millennium before Christ, in ancient Babylon, the kings of the second dynasty of Ur recorded on tablets (some of which are preserved in the British Museum) particulars relating to temple property, agriculture, stock-raising, and so on, with the object, presumably, of assessing the wealth of their domains for purposes of taxation. 

In the second millennium before Christ, Rameses II of Egypt divided the country into administrative districts and registered every head of a family and all members of his household for the purpose of carrying out public works as well as for taxation. Confucius, writing in the book 'Shu-King' or Book of Historical Documents, in the sixth century before Christ, purports to give statistics of the Chinese Empire from the time of Emperor Yu who lived about three thousand years before him. 

"Among the Hebrews, Moses directed the numbering of the children of Israel to levy a poll tax of half a shekel of silver per head, and King David carried out an enumeration 'of the valiant men who drew the sword', which, however, was not finished 'because there fell wrath for it against Israel.' Solon, in Greece, made his famous division of the population into classes after making an estimate of the 'worth of the goods of every private citizen'.

In the Bible there is mention of two censuses conducted by Cyrenius, Governor of Syria, right at the beginning of the Christian Era."

A. G. Ranasinha believes that in ancient Sri Lanka, there would have been enumerations undertaken from time to time although no authentic records have been traced. 

"The call-up for labour for the construction of irrigation works and religious edifices, or the muster of troops for the war could scarcely have been systematically conducted, unless records had been compiled to show at least the heads of families who held lands to which such services were attached. Nor would the king's revenues, derived mainly from cultivated holdings, have been permitted to suffer for a want of such records. Indeed, the known existence of 'lekam-miti' or palm leaf registers, in the declining days of the Sinhalese kingdom would justify the inference that, in the days of its greatest authority, detailed inventories of all that was needed to be considered for taxation or general administration would have been carefully taken and registered in appropriate records."

The earliest reference to a Census as is known today, can be traced back to 1666 when, with the encouragement of the great French financier, Colbert, the Minister of Louis XIV, the intendant of the Colony of New France in North America conducted a 'nominal' or name by name enumeration of the people, on a fixed date, showing age, sex, occupation and conjugal condition. 

In Sri Lanka, the first census to which modern techniques may be said to have been applied was that conducted under the superintendence of W. J. MacCarthy in 1871. 

It was the beginning of the decennial census which was held uninterrupted till 1931. Before that, in the British period, estimates of population had been made, from time, to time on the basis of returns made by headmen. 

The total population, according to the 1871 Census, was 2,405, 576. By the turn of the century, the number had increased to 3,565,954 (1901 Census) and just before we gained Independence the population was 6,693,945. In 75 years, the population had increased by 4,256,959 or by 177.3 per cent. The estimated population by mid-1999 was 19,043,000, according to the Central Bank.

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