Deeply Conflicted

Towards the end of May, I received a call from a very well spoken African woman who said she was from the honours and appointment secretariat from the Cabinet Office.  She told me that an urgent email was sent to me and I needed to look at it immediately and call her back. I happened to be on a train and on my way to a jazz event at Birmingham City University.  I opened the email and looked at the attached letter and saw I was nominated for an MBE.  I called the lady back and she said they had struggled with my email address and that she needed a decision immediately. I replied “I’m struggling with the word ‘Empire’” and I can’t simply make a decision’, she said, “I am happy to give you 24 hours to come back to me”.

The word ‘Empire’ to me, has a legacy of bloodshed and has enslaved and killed millions and caused countless famines, even within our lifetime the Bengal famine happened as a direct result of Winston Churchill’s actions when he diverted grains for the British Tommy’s who were fighting in World War 2.  This resulted in the starvation and death of 3 million Bengalis.

I came to the UK in 1976 when I was aged six with 5 other siblings and eventually settled in Lozells.  We were like many other migrant families during that period, doing our best to get by.  The Bangladeshi settlement into this country was different from other South Asians as we joined our fathers much later on.  It was during that period of industrial decline with established manufacturers closing resulting in many of our fathers losing their jobs.  They pinned their hopes on their sons and sent them to work in restaurants, some as young as 12 years of age.  They would work in the kitchen and in some instances struggled to get to the bottom of the sink and were aided by an empty upturned  plastic milk crate.

My employment in a restaurant started at the age of 15 (1985). I worked in my uncle’s restaurant and was paid £16.00 for a Friday and Saturday night.  School wasn’t much of a priority and wasn’t really encouraged by most Bangladeshi parents as there was a job in the restaurant waiting for you. Your career path was set based on whether you had good linguistic skills.  If you spoke ‘English’ you would work as a barman and if you didn’t you would be a kitchen porter. You would slowly work yourself up to be a Head Waiter if you worked front of house or Chef if you worked in the kitchen and then the aspiration was to own your own restaurant. 

I took a slightly different route as I went to college for a year to be a mechanic and within that period I realised it wasn’t for me.  At aged 17, I started to work full time in restaurants and did so until I was 19.  I had a bad experience with a restaurant owner and vowed I would never work full time in a restaurant again.  I managed to get a job at Currys Electrical store selling fridges.  My cousin said he was undertaking a part time course in a college and asked if I wanted to come along? Which I did, we studied a BTec National Business & Finance course.

I also started to volunteer at the Lozells Recreation Centre, the local youth centre. I also started to manage the local football team ‘Lozells Strikers’.  That’s when I found my calling in life.  It was to become a youth worker. I set my life goal and it was simply ‘to help’ and I reflected on this during the pandemic and I added ‘to help and serve’.  There were many Bangladeshi young people who needed support to make sense of the world around them.  It was a difficult period as our parents’ reference point of being young, was the Bangladeshi village and our reality was an urban jungle often in a hostile environment where we faced racism and prejudice.

I continued as a sessional youth worker and worked in restaurants on a part time basis to make ends meet. At the age of 23 I went to University to study Youth and Community Work.  I qualified at 26 years of age and gained my first full time job working for Worcester City Council.  At the age of 24 I set up the Bangladeshi Youth Forum (BYF) and became the Chairman.  This was a campaigning and youth delivery organisation.  By 1997 we rented the basement of Lozells Methodist Church and delivered a variety of youth activities.  I managed to get funding from regeneration bodies and trusts and created various jobs and I applied to be the Development Manager.  Which I got and over the next four years, I developed the organisation to become one of the leading youth organisations in the city. We had up to 300 young people attending our services on a weekly basis supported by 12 members of staff.  At the age of 31, It was time for me to move on. 

I got a job with the Government Office for the West Midlands as their Community Cohesion Co-ordinator for the region.  I spent nine years in that role and was seconded to a housing pathfinder for a period of time. In 2010 I was made redundant and leading up to it, I established Legacy WM (LWM)as a charity with a Board of Trustees.  The initial aim of Legacy WM was to focus on heritage.  The first project was ‘Bangla Food Journeys’ and the second project was a walking heritage trail for Lozells and East Handsworth.   For the first five years it worked alone with the support of volunteers, friends and family.  We then broadened our aims to include well-being,  arts and community cohesion. This led to employment of staff to lead projects.  LWM has now become a leading organisation in the region and is credited for shaping the heritage sector and making it more relevant for the global community.

Being deeply conflicted about the offer of the MBE, I had to make some calls to my close friends and wife.  I spoke to my wife and she said, ‘we are British now and of course you should take it’.  All of my friends that I spoke to said that I should take it as I have worked long and hard in the community and I clearly deserve it.  When I came home that evening to my wife and daughters, our eldest sat me down and said ‘what would your father want?’.  As it happens, the messages of congratulations from friends have been ‘your parents would be really proud’, that is bitter-sweet, given that I lost my mum less than two months ago.   I would be the first in a generation to get an MBE and it would be a great sense of pride for people in my community as there are only three others in the Bangladeshi community in Birmingham who have an MBE to my knowledge.  

I had a sleepless night and, in the morning, I read the nomination letter.  I was being nominated for my work on heritage and services to the community.  I have dedicated 30 + years in the community and have done this with integrity, honesty and love.  And I am humbled by the role that I have played in improving the lives of local people and the heritage projects that I have enabled to happen.  Success isn’t simply about your achievements, it’s your starting point and the distance that you have travelled.  Being a Bangla boy from Lozells, who was pretty much written off after leaving school with no qualifications, I have come a long way.

The question is, why should I feel guilty about being recognised for my work?  If the word ‘Empire’ was replaced by ‘excellence ‘ then there would be no feeling of guilt.  The following day I called the very well spoken lady and told her that I will reluctantly accept the award but that I have issues with the word ‘Empire’, she asked me to put that in writing so they have a record of my feelings.  I have publicly said that I would never accept an ‘honour ‘ and yet here I am.  You can call me a hypocrite if you want and I am guilty of that.

If I get the chance to meet the King, I will ask him to change the word ‘Empire’ to ‘Excellence’ to usher in a new era.  In the meantime, below is a link to the campaign should you wish to sign it.

www.excellencenotempire.co.uk