Hate Mail, Smashed Windows and Insults : Asian-Born Lord Mayor Breaks Barrier, Learns the ‘Extent of Racism’ in Britain

Mohammed Ajeeb is the first Asian-born lord mayor of a British city, and as the end of his term nears, he says he has learned a lot about the “extent of racism in this country.”

But he said he has stuck it out and is living testimony that minorities can succeed.

“My postbag of hate mail has been enormous, the windows of my house have been smashed and my official car has been spat upon while I was riding in it,” he said.

Ajeeb, 48, was chosen lord mayor by the Labor Party-controlled City Council last May to serve a 12-month term. The mayoralty is a post that rotates annually in Bradford, a woolen-manufacturing center in West Yorkshire.

Largest Asian Minority

The city has Britain’s largest Asian minority, 12% of the 450,000 populace, and notices on the Victorian City Hall are written in English, Punjabi and Urdu.

Of Britain’s 56 million people, about 5% are nonwhite.

Ajeeb said that hate letters began to arrive as soon as he became mayor.

“I read every letter and I often felt upset, but I never asked advice from anyone about what to do,” he said in an interview.

“I carried out all my duties and ignored the insults. So did my wife, a very brave lady.”

Stonemason’s Son

Ajeeb is a village stonemason’s son from Chatro on the Pakistan-Kashmir border. He was supervisor of Bradford’s mosques, as well as an elected councilman, when he was chosen mayor.

At a war veterans’ reception a man refused to shake hands with him. When Ajeeb asked him why, the man replied, “I’m not forced to.”

“I responded in typical English fashion,” Ajeeb related. “I told him I couldn’t bloody care less.”

When Ajeeb’s windows were broken, reporters asked if he would move his Pakistan-born wife and four Bradford-born children from the city center to a Pakistani-majority district.

Refused to Leave

“I said I wouldn’t because my house was my home,” he said. “It made me all the more determined to fight against racism.”

He has been to nearly 1,200 official functions as mayor and believes that he had done something for all communities.

“It won’t be felt immediately but I hope that after a few years, people will come to realize that I’ve done good for the city. Whatever I did was in the best interests of Bradford and Britain,” Ajeeb said.

“When I’m in the car with the flag flying, that helps the minorities to feel proud, and the whites can see that I’m the living testimony of a success story in a positive way.

‘Myths Shattered’

“Myths have been shattered, like the unfounded belief that Asians and blacks are unable to perform some tasks in a modern society. Some jobs here were reserved exclusively for whites.

“Our city is one of the most peaceful, beautiful and pleasant in Britain and I am proud to be lord mayor of it.”

He came to England in November, 1957, when he was 19, shivering in a thin suit.

He said he was fired from his first job in a Nottingham soap factory for refusing to do as he was told by a foreman who called to him, “Come here, blackie.”

Did Community Work

Ajeeb was a railroad worker and bus driver before going into community work on behalf of his fellow immigrants living with overcrowded conditions and discrimination. He said an English clergyman suggested in 1971 that he settle in Bradford.

Bradford was once the wool-manufacturing capital of the world. But it fell on hard times in the 1970s when automation swept away thousands of jobs in the mills that had attracted immigrants in the 1950s and 1960s. Bradford now has a 14% unemployment rate, and 50,000 people are on welfare.

“We’ve had difficulties with lost work in the mills, but we are pulling up: the woolen industry is reviving, and we even have tourists coming,” Ajeeb said, sitting in City Hall and wearing his gold chain of office over a business suit.

He said his term in office has been “hectic, rather abnormal, and 12 months of it will be enough. But it’s been the most interesting year of my life.”

Traumatic Time

It has been a traumatic time for Bradford.

On May 11, 1985, 10 days before he took office, 56 people were killed in a Bradford soccer stadium fire. Ajeeb visited the survivors and the families of the dead and led fund-raising efforts to build a new stadium.

Just before Christmas, he saw the end of a school dispute that had rocked race relations nationally for almost two years.

At Ajeeb’s urging, the City Council agreed to spend 70,900 pounds (then $101,000) to retire Gordon Honeyford, principal of a mostly Asian middle school. Honeyford had sparked controversy by saying that white pupils were disadvantaged when a majority of pupils were from ethnic minorities.