A loss of the leadership, but a win for the British Indians. Rishi Sunak’s participation in the leadership contest contributes to greater integration of British Indians into the society
I know that many readers will, like me, be regretting Rishi Sunak not securing the Conservative party leadership. Regretting it because he is like us a fellow British Indian. But we should not be regretting, we should not be lamenting.
The reason why? Because in fact Sunak having come this far in the competition is a triumphant example. A triumphant example of British Indians, and those of immigrant heritage in Britain generally. A triumphant example of those of us who have excelled in so many fields from business and finance to politics, science, and the arts, contributing to British society in multiple ways. A triumphant example, above all, of integration into the mainstream and being patriotic.
There have been unwelcome whispers against Sunak’s triumph, and those are the real reason for regret. Foolish whispers that Britain generally and the Conservative Party in particular are racist, and that’s why Sunak lost and Truss won … but these are easy, throwaway lines that must be resisted. They can resisted by an appeal to history.
One can see why even Sunak coming second is still a triumph if one reels back to those moments in the 1970s when so many of us, or our parents or grandparents, came to this country. Thousands, like myself came from East Africa and many more from the Indian sub-continent.
Nearly all of us in that category have prospered, thanks to the amazing welcome Britain gave us. That doesn’t mean it was easy. We all have had to work very hard indeed. While the welcome was generally warm, some of us suffered racism, but that was at the start of a massive sea-change in the nature of this country.
The actual details, technical and bureaucratic, political above all, of how that welcome happened need some examination. It’s a process that deeply involves the Conservative Party, of which I myself have been a member for over 40 years.
Despite, in polls at the time (1972), only 6% of the country supporting acceptance of the Ugandan Asians as refugees, Sir Edward Heath, then Conservative Prime Minister, lead the charge in making sure it happened. He did so against some resistance in his own party, notably that of the awful Enoch Powell at a Conservative Party conference at Blackpool in 1972.
Heath had previously sacked Powell from his Shadow Cabinet, dismissing him while the Conservatives were in opposition, because of that disgusting Rivers of Blood speech in Birmingham in 1968.
Four years later, with a Conservative government in power, Powell and his misguided followers were still a significant force at that conference in Blackpool. Luckily, wise Conservatives such as Home Secretary Robert Carr and leader of the young Conservatives David Hunt (the latter now one of my colleagues in the House of Lords) prevailed, following Heath’s lead in wanting to make Britain a fairer place for people of all colours and classes. They also wanted to honour responsibility to British passport holders abroad.
So let’s be clear. It is the historical effort of the Conservative Party that has made Asians, broadly considered, welcome in Britain. And other immigrants too. The process that Heath began was later picked up by other Tory Prime Ministers. By the periods of John Major and David Cameron, when I myself began to be involved more fully, the diversity of the Conservative Party was significantly strengthened.
With Boris Johnson’s outgoing Cabinet, probably the most diverse in British history, that diversity was assured. It was reinforced by a leadership contest that involved six people of colour, actually more than any other ethnic British category – not that any of them, not Nadhim Zahawi, Suella Braverman, Rishi Sunak, Kemi Badenoch, Sajid Javid or Rehman Chishti, would have first identified as anything other than British.
And you know what? This growth story of diversity in the Conservative Party that I have told above, a growth story like that of all us Asians who came to Britain so many years ago, is one that is still crescent. I have no doubt that our new Prime Minister, Liz Truss – someone whom I have worked with before in her role as Secretary of State for International Trade– will commit to a Cabinet of many hues, just like other Tory leaders before her.
(Lord Popat is a member of the House of Lords and the Prime Minister’s Trade Envoy to Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo)
