Читать книгу No Win Race. A Story of Belonging, Britishness and Sport онлайн

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Manor Park was bleak. People were nice. But Manor Park seemed to lack ambition. Most of the older kids I knew would leave school at 16, find work, get married and, if they had airs about them, move 20 minutes up the road to Ilford. Nothing wrong with that, but it didn’t feel as if much existed beyond Newham’s borders.

Manor Park suffered from the usual inner-city problems: kids carrying knives, frequent robberies, high unemployment, little or no green space, little for kids to do. But racism had been among the borough’s biggest problems. Felt it. Nothing direct. Heard the rumours. Saw the looks. Sensed the tension.

The National Front (NF), a violent, extremist, far-right movement, used to distribute racist leaflets outside my primary school (Avenue) and my two older sisters’ secondary school (Little Ilford). I had heard rumours about black families, not far from where I lived, who had petrol poured through their letterboxes and had their houses set alight. I overheard the story of some white youths who had dressed in Ku Klux Klan outfits and set alight either a four-foot cross or a black kid. Didn’t know which. The term ‘P*ki bashing’, which would involve skinheads beating up Asian people, had been a part of the daily vocabulary in primary school. Indian and Bengali kids were frequently beaten up by white youths on their way home from Little Ilford, our local secondary school. At my school, some white kids just wouldn’t befriend you. I could take the constant questioning, about the colour of my skin (‘were you burnt?’), about my heritage (‘where are you really from?’), about my name. But some kids would just flat out refuse to play with me (‘you must stick to your own’).