Cultural Conflict

It's important to remember that people from all over the world - not just Africa, Asia and the Caribbean - have been immigrants to Britain in the past 50 years. The last Census shows, for instance, that more than 175,000 people living in Britain were born in Australia, New Zealand or Canada; 74,000 in Poland, 78,000 in Cyprus, 91,000 in Italy, 143,000 in the USA, 215,000 in Germany, and nearly 600,000 in the Republic of Ireland. Some have come to Britain as political refugees; others for economic or career opportunities. Every immigrant community has its own story, its own ways of adapting to the stresses and challenges of life in a new country. There are sometimes cultural conflicts. Here are two examples.

In the early 1980s, a considerable controversy developed between the Italians in Bedford and the Town Council. According to the Council, the Italians were turning the graves of their relatives into 'gardens', which is against cemetery policy. The tradition of the Italians in Britain is to delimit the grave, perhaps with a little fence, and to 'grow' rather than 'place' flowers, in 1982 the Bedfordshire Times carried a front-page article with the title 'Relatives Fight to Honour Dead'... Many of the Italians in question were indeed prepared to 'fight' and go to prisonover the issue. (Terri Colpi, The Italian Factior)

The private Islamia School in London campaigned for 10 years to become the first state-aided Muslim school in Britain. In August 1993 the application was refused by the Government because there were 'too many surplus places' in schools nearby. Yet only two weeks earlier the Government had given state aid to another primary school in the area. The school's leading supporter, Yusuf Islam (formerly the singer Cat Stevens), described the decision as 'an outrage'. He pointed out that there were 4,100 state-aided Christian schools, 21 for Jews, but none for Britain's 1 million Muslims. In 1998 the Islamia School's application for state aid was accepted. (Based on reports in The Times Educational Supplement)