Watched a show on tv called Heaven & Earth.It's part of the BBC's requirement to produce Religious Broadcasting. They have a segment where a 'celebrity' goes through the week's newspapers and comments. This week was a girl I barely recognised. She was in the first series of Big Brother. She showed a newspaper headline and picture from the desecraion of the North London synagogue, saying how disgusting it was.
She then talked about the reported average age of the congregants being 68. She said, "If you think about it, that means most of them were Holocaust survivors..."
Yes some of them might have been but the majority of London Jewry were refugees from far older persecutions. Once again, Jews wre made synonymous with the Holocaust.
We did exist here before that. Just as black people have been part of British history long before Windrush.
It is misleading and ultimately very problematic to date Britain or London's multi-culturalism, multi-faith and multi-ethnic reality to the latter half of the 20th century. That frames it as a 'modern problem' when in fact immigration and trade from across the globe have long roots into history - centuries long - with moments of intolerance and sectarianism.
It's interesting how the telling of history, a nation's collective remembering, changes over time: what's left out, what's emphasised...