“When I moved to Southall in 1968, most of the people here were either Indian or Pakistani because Southall was well known across South Asia for being a welcoming home. Later, this attracted more ethnicities to move to Southall as they felt they would be comfortable living in a community with other South Asian migrants, including Afghans, Somalis, Bangladeshis, and Nepalese. It wasn’t all welcoming arms though, and as Indians became a larger ethnic minority in Southall, many struggled to find employment, regularise their immigration status and with housing issues. They needed support of some kind.
This led to the founding of the IWA (Indian Workers Association), and I am proud to have worked closely with the IWA throughout their journey and to this day. This organisation massively helped migrants to stand on two feet and to live independently. The IWA had its obvious advantages, it created a large community in Southall, brought people together in times of struggle, made them more confident and supported them in their new area of residency. More recently I’ve seen new organisations run by young people doing the same work the IWA did before. Now there are more religious buildings being built, a positive thing as people had another part of their identity back in their motherland now in Southall. While having more religious buildings is a good thing, it fragmented the community, where once there was only one option, now there are many pathways often divided into different faiths. The options are wider, and the support is greater, but it is concerning how separated people can now be.
Southall has also changed economically quite a lot; Southall’s percentage of people claiming unemployment benefits has decreased by a considerable amount since I’ve been elected, however, due to Covid this number skyrocketed to a peak of 11.5% in 2021. Since then, I have been working with businesses and local government to reduce this number and get us back on the right path, and as of the end of 2022, it is 6.2%. Southall and Ealing’s economy has also changed as places like the airport and local industry have provided high-quality, well-paying jobs.
But as online shopping has thrived and high streets have suffered, I know Southall needs help to keep shopping alive. Now people are travelling all the way into central London to buy clothes; this is partly because of changes in taste and fashion, and the lack of big-name brands in Southall. Southall is a community, it should be a place where residents are able to do the things they want to live their lives. Good jobs locally should mean popular and successful local businesses that attract shoppers, money being made and spent in Southall grows the economy. People too often travel out of Ealing Southall to buy the things they need when we already have some amazing local businesses. To counter this, I have been giving awards to local businesses and shops to share these success stories, and hopefully encourage more people to shop locally. By shopping locally, we can all reduce our use of fossil fuels and our CO2 emissions, because #smallbizbigimpact.
I know people locally want better policing; we need more beat officers to minimise dangers. Just last week I challenged the Metropolitan Police Commissioner on the topics of responsiveness to crime, antisocial behaviour, and domestic burglaries. Only a few days ago, I was talking to a newly married couple who had just bought a house, sadly their house was broken into, the couple reported the crime as they are supposed to do, the police said that they would come to investigate, yet they never did. By ignoring these deeply personal crimes the Police create a separation between themselves and the public, eroding trust and leaving people unwilling to call the police, as they think it is pointless. As an MP I don’t want that, I want trust in our public sector and public services.
13 years of Tory Government has eroded trust in services, been an assault on the strength of our communities and stretched our health services. We need a Labour victory for Ealing Southall and for communities just like it across the country.”
