Sheep magazine Archive 2: issues 10-17

for Bengalis,’ he says. Brick Lane and Cannon Street Road were ‘the sole
places where Bengalis felt relatively comfortable’.
Julie Begum conjures up the fear. ‘You went to school, you went home, you
didn’t hang around. You did your shopping, and you hoped that you were
not going to be attacked on your way there or back.’
Britain’s first Bengali MP, Rushanara Ali, settled in the East End with her
parents in the early 1980s. As a child, she recalls, ‘we weren’t allowed
to go out and play unsupervised, even right outside, because there was
a lot of racism.’ In the evening she stood at the window with her mother
watching for her father to get home safely from work.
On 4 May 1978, Altab Ali, a 25 year old Bengali machinist, was walking
home from work when he was attacked and stabbed to death by a racist
gang near Whitechapel Road. There were local elections that day. The NF
were contesting 41 seats in Tower Hamlets.
9
In 1982, the incomplete mural was daubed with six-foot high racist
slogans. Binnington was devastated and abandoned the project. Two
other artists, Des Rochfort and Ray Walker, helped Butler reimagine
and complete the mural. It may look like one dynamic, convulsive, and
coherent image, but it was created in sections by three individuals, each
with their unique style.
Ten years after the unveiling, as Butler was restoring the weatherbeaten
mural, the fascists returned: the British National Party had won a local
council seat. Its emboldened supporters paint-bombed the mural and
October 2016