Crowds of people bustle through Harrow High Street, which is lined with South-Asian markets and stores. The sound of faint background chatter drifts across the street to an open field. Here, groups of families huddle around park benches as they unpack loaded picnic baskets in the sun and distribute samosas and pakoras.
London is home to a large Indian community, including in Harrow, where Gujaratis are the most prominent South-Asian group.
In the recent local elections that took place on 5 May, the Conservative Party assumed control over Harrow for the first time in 16 years. Harrow’s British Indian community have displayed a pattern of voting Labour over time, their vote was therefore crucial to the direction of the local elections.
The drift away from Labour is partly down to local factors. The Labour party in Harrow has been accused by its residents of implementing high council tax and costly schemes to reduce local traffic. For Harrow’s Indian population, these factors could have contributed to a shift in voting behaviour.
But there is more. Across the park sits Meyer, a local Harrow resident. She says: “I migrated here from Mumbai, India and have always been interested in politics. We saw Boris Johnson fly to India soon before the election took place. He was in Gujrat and they showed him visiting a Hindu Temple. I think these events affected the view that a lot of Indians may have had about him before it was time to vote. Especially for those already unhappy with the Labour party.”
Johnson was the first British Prime Minister to visit Gujarat and the trip was documented across the news only three weeks before local council elections took place
More recently, months the Prime Minister and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi declared that the UK has made more bilateral agreements with India.
Johnson signalled that he was eager to increase accessibility for Indian nationals to enter the UK, telling ITV that “the UK has a massive shortage in certain sectors like IT… we have controlled migration which will let us bring in talented people who can help the economy”.
Dr Ekaterina Kolpinskaya, Lecturer in British Politics at the University of Exeter and expert in the political participation of minority groups in Britain, says that voter turnout in the South Asian community is not linked to individual political representation:
“There is no reason to believe that greater representation of South Asian communities necessarily leads to their increased turnout in elections”
“Representation matters for political participation far less than individual predictors of voting, for example, interest in politics, citizenship status and structural barriers to registration to voting,” says Kolpinskaya.
Over the last 20 years, there have been shifts in British ethnic minority groups’ voting behaviour. Within South-Asian groups alone there is varied support for the Conservatives from British Indians, Sikh and Hindu voters, compared to British Bangladeshi and Muslim groups.
Given the diversity that exists within these groups, Dr Kolpinskaya notes it is important “to be cautious in assigning too much influence to representation and gestures to improve visibility of British ethnic minorities”.
Changes to the UK’s immigration policy, on the other hand, may have an impact. Tulsi, a recent graduate from The University of Westminster who moved to London in 2019 from India, says: “The UK is changing its relationship with India in ways that actually increase opportunities for Indian migrants and their prospects in the UK.”
Before 2020, British Indians were the highest migrant group in the UK to volunteer to return to India, totalling almost 6,000 cases of reverse migration in 2016.
Covid-19 resulted in heavy damage to various sectors in the UK. The combination of Brexit and the pandemic-created pressure on the labour market has led to a shortage of workers. Over the past year, changes have been made to migrant laws and policies designed to tackle this issue. They have led to the UK welcoming migrants to enter and work in the UK from India. An agreement made with India during this time aimed to reduce the number of Indian nationals settling in England without the legal right to stay in the country.
The pact allows young professional British and Indian nationals to work and live in both countries. More recent statistics show that nearly 100,000 young people from India have migrated to the UK in the past year. Interestingly, there appears to have been a massive decrease in cases of reverse migration among Indian migrants in the UK, dropping to 1,084 reported cases in 2021.
“I can see why groups of people who migrated to London from India may feel inclined to change their votes if government policies continue to shift in this direction,” says Tulsi.
(Feature Photo: Farihah Chowdhury)