Graeme Archer's Diary: The Integral Calculus

I’m sat on Bethnal Green tube platform, waiting for the eastbound train to take me to Snaresbrook, ready for my last day of jury duty. We’re going to start with the judge’s summing up at about 10, and then deliberate, and then deliver our verdict. On Mr M. Mr M who doesn’t speak a word of English, washes dishes in a curry-house, and has been accused of threatening to kill two family members with a kitchen knife.

The seriousness of what we’re about to do this morning has been growing on me all night. York Hall pool is next to Bethnal Green tube, so I’ve been swimming there this week with the early morning crowd, rather than closer to home in the Lido, and it’s a very grumpy pool compared to the Lido, and this morning I was quite disgruntled anyway (thinking about Mr M), so I’ve come down here to wait for the tube in quite a bad mood. Harrumph.

And then. One of those London moments. A Hainault-via-Newbury-Park train pulls in, no use to me, harrumph, again, and a young black woman gets off, and our eyes meet. I don’t know why, but we smile at one another. And then our smiles grow larger and we’re grinning. Mouths open, grinning. Shared happiness. Shared something. Then she’s gone.

*
I remember the first afternoon I was by myself in London. Not quite twenty years old and down on the sleeper train for a milk-round job interview. I ate a sandwich in St Martins-in-the-Fields and was served by a man whose demeanour denied any previous experience in which I could embed him. Of course, I know now, he was homeless, one of the homeless people who are helped find their feet at St Martins. I’d never seen a homeless man before so I couldn’t identify his nervous agitation, his almost palpable desire for me to like him, or at least not to dislike him on sight. Perhaps if you’re homeless for a while you become invisible. I walked through St James’ Park and along Petty France and jumped when I saw the sign saying “Home Office”. It’s all here, I thought, it’s all here, I’m here too, look at all these people, look at these millions and millions of people, none of whom know who I am. I took a tube to Hammersmith, it was a hot summer’s evening, and the District line filled up with people of a middle-class prosperity that was just as alien to me as had been the homeless man working in St Martins. A man with a huge jaw (to my Scottish eyes) winked at me, as a woman in a too-heavy overcoat cracked open a can of wine (it was the 1980s and this was a shocking sight). My anonymity among these masses gave me a heady sense of liberation.

Time Passes, though, and eventually we all put down some roots – don’t we? Now what I crave from London, and increasingly find, are the small acts of recognition – the shopkeeper who remembers me, the barman who knows what wine I want, the swimmers in the pool who say “hi” – all those small acts add up – they integrate – to be, I think, almost a definition of community integration. I know I am integrated, not through any theoretical categorization of myself (“I am middle-class”, “I live in Hackney”) but through my experience of interpersonal interactions (“I smile at strangers on the tube and they smile back”, “I am known by the man who serves me in my shop”, and most fundamentally of all, of course, “I love and am loved”). If no-one in London ever acknowledges your existence it’s the loneliest place on the planet.

*
Which takes me back to Mr M. Prior to this last fortnight I have been guilty of casual indifference to the Bangladeshi community in east London, despite living cheek-by-jowl with them. They were “them”, and not “us”. I have made comments like “why don’t immigrants learn English?”. On the first day of evidence I was tutting away to myself about the fact that all the witnesses required translators. I was a walking, breathing Daily Mail editorial.

But as the evidence in the trial was produced, something very good and quite separate to the charge emerged. We learned something about what it is to live like Mr M. We met an amazingly community-spirited young man from Bethnal Green who combines full time study with helping his fellow Bengali speakers carry out those tasks the rest of us take for granted, from communicating with British Telecom to giving an interview to the police. Another prejudice of mine was knocked for six when a very distinguished Bangladeshi man, who had tried to help Mr M’s family, came to give evidence and told us sincerely that any form of affirmation would serve for him: he didn’t require the Koran. Reading this back, these seem like quite small matters: all I can say is that I wasn’t unique in finding the experience quite profoundly transformative.

But nothing moved so much as to listen to the details of Mr M’s life. “Why don’t immigrants learn English?” – hmmm. Quite how a man who works 50 hours a week in a Bengali-speaking kitchen, for less than the minimum wage, is going to find the time or the money for language lessons, was not a matter I had previously considered. But I will now. What happens when things go wrong for someone like Mr M? They end up spending the night on a bus stop in Whitechapel, because they can’t explain to the police what’s happened to them. They are prey to baseless accusations from evil people who’ve learned how to manipulate the police system to their own spiteful advantage. Mr M was lucky – he had made just one or two connections into London life, with those witnesses we heard from, who were eventually able to help him. But he was very nearly lost, and came close to complete dis-integration.

But for the random chance of being on his jury, I would never have known of his existence. I said jury duty had been transformative, and – without wanting to labour a political point (the feelings of desired connectivity with my fellow Londoners explains to me why Toryism is more than just mellow libertarianism) – for me it has been. There must be something practical I can do to help with teaching English to new Londoners, for example. If we all managed to reach out, just a bit more, we’d help prevent more people falling through the interpersonal cracks.

*
Mr M was Not Guilty, by the way. Unanimous.

Comments

[Tony Makara]

There is absolutely no excuse for a person not learning a foreign language, particularly if they have the massive advantage of living in a country that uses that particular language. It need not be expensive either, self-tuition can cost as little as thirty pounds. Many people are put off learning languages because the grammar can sometimes be difficult, and in languages like German and Finnish that can be true, however learning a language to conversational level is not difficult. It just requires two little things called time and effort.

For an English speaking person to learn foreign language that uses roughly the same alphabet as ourselves it would require around 200 hours of study, doing that for an hour a day. That is 15/20 mins quick revision of the previous days learning and 40/45 minutes of new study. A language using a completely different alphabet would take 500 hours but the same rules apply. The golden rule of language study is that it must be done every day, and every day of the week. This is important in keeping up learning momentum, morale and helping the brain to assimilate the new language. The best method to use for self-tuition is a simple 20-25 chapter set of dialogues and CDs, stick to one chapter a week, then after 25 weeks have passed, go back and work though the entire book again. Work through the book fully a total of three times. That might seem monotonous but you will learn more by memorizing just the one book fully than moving straight on to another book, then a different book, then another and so on.

A vocabulary note book should be keep and every new word should be added as you encounter it. That way all your new words will be in one place rather than spread around the text book. This will give you fast, easy access to learning to remember the words. Put the words in groups of five, then try to learn them by rote. Everyone should be capable of learning at least 5 news words a day. Over a week that becomes 35 words, over a month that becomes 140 words, and so on. As you can see if this is done every day a person can quickly build up a store of words. The good news is that in every language there are about 350 words that are used most of the time, so if these 350 words are learnt a person will be well on their way to having a command of the language.

Unless you are studying at academic level, do not worry too much about grammar, it takes children learning a mother tongue seven years to master grammar, I well remember when my son was a little boy, I asked him to pick up some toys and he said "am are picking them up" of course I knew what he meant, he knew what he meant, and we communicated, although the grammar was completely wrong.

So there really is no excuse for an immigrant not learning English at basic conversational level, they may not be perfect but they will be able to understand and communicate. It just takes time and effort. Those immigrants who come here and don't want to make the effort to learn English should not be given jobs and would then have to go home. It is too their advantage to learn, being able to understand a simple message like "Be careful the floor is wet" could save them from serious injury.
Learning languages is not difficult, it is natural to the human brain, unlike other areas of study. There is only one barrier to language learning and it is called laziness.

[Annie]

I think this story is really about the sort of bargain we offer/demand from immigrants and the levels of immigration which are sustainable at any one time. I don't think the question is why someone straight from Bangladesh working on less than the minimum wage doesn't think to learn English (which could be done very cheaply as the comment above points out). I think the question is why do we enable immigration for people who are going to find themselves in a strange country without the educational or motivational tools to want to learn English and integrate. Which in turn is about why we are importing the kind of labour which will be prepared to work for less than the minimum wage - in other words in the illegal, black economy. This isn't a fair result for either side. The immigrant is exploited while the country ends up with cultural and economic consequences that are undesirable. The other problem this story underlines is that communities are made of people who feel they have something in common (even if only a shared ability to smile at the tediusness of an early morning tube ride). If you have too large an inflow of people who don't share that sense of belonging at any one time, everyone loses. The native Londoner (or whatever) loses the sense that there are people s/he can relate to and the immigrant feels alone and excluded (and may therefore huddle with other immigrants from the same culture creating ghettos.) Add in the fact that integrating people is also partly about having the financial and social resources to meet their policing, healthcare, social, housing and other needs, and you pretty much have the situation we are in today.

[Margaret on the Guillotine]

Thank you Tony for this intriguing induction into how to learn a foreign language, though I'm not sure if that was the point of Graeme Archer's post or not.

Even though you say it's easy, however, by your reckoning it is 500 hours at an hour a day - that is still a year and a half.

I doubt someone working ten hours a day in an exclusively Bengali-speaking environment, going home to Bengali-speakers, on less than the minimum wage has the time, the money, and most importantly the incentive, to stick at it for so long for no apparent reason - except on the fluke chance they wind up on a police charge like this.

[michael mcgough]

I note that the World Federalist Head of the Immigration Advisory Service ,former Tory MP Keith Best,rather than promoting the use of English in Bangladeshi restaurants (remember most customers speak English~)reckons we need to import more Bangla speakers to ease shortages in these curry houses because the English speaking E.Europeans can't speak Bangla.
My experience in a S.Woodford curry house last week leads me to believe the problem is one of pay and conditions ---4 staff and their friend asked me about jobs and employment opportunities outside the sector.Of course the near empty restaurant could be a reflection of the bust economy under Brown.

[Sally Roberts]

Graeme I do love Sunday mornings for your little vignettes of London Life interspersed with some political discourse and sometimes moments of sheer beauty! Thank you.
It is interesting the point you make about people acknowledging one another and how much we value it in our stressed London lives! I love it when a stranger smiles at me or even occasionally says hello! All too often though I think people are frightened of making contact lest "people will think I'm a nutter" or "that person might BE a nutter"! We all distrust one another so much and it is a sad and vicious circle!

[michael mcgough]

"All too often though I think people are frightened of making contact lest "people will think I'm a nutter" or "that"

They may have even worse thoughts than that.

[Tony Makara]

Margaret on the Guillotine, unfortunately it does take time to learn a language. Its a slow process and rather like a tap dripping into a bowl, it takes a long time but eventually the bowl will fill and even overflow. Those immigrants who want to work here must learn English. I find it curious that anyone should want to live in a country and not be interested in learning its language and customs. It seems to me that these immigrants are just not interested in our country at all, they just want to use us, come here, earn money, live in their own community and to hell with the rest of us. They have to realise that living in England means learning English. If that means taking the time to study our language they must find the time, there is no excuse for not trying to learn, they are just lazy.

[John Ionides]

Tony,

I have to disagree with you; I think that Graeme has an extrmely valid point - for people,especially in my experience older people, who work extremely hard it can be very difficult to find the necessary time and mental energy to learn a new language. This is especially true if you come from somewhere with few, or no, linguistic similarities to the UK and if those that share your life, both at work and at home, share your mother tongue.

I am going to make a guess here and reckon that you learned foreign languages when you were quite young and that you probably have something of an aptitude for them as well. Not everyone is so lucky.

[Ian Parker]

Tony, “They have to realise that living in England means learning English”. That’s exactly the point; living here in no ways stipulates that as a requirement.

Multiculturalism in this country means a conglomeration of competing and, often, mutually exclusive cultures with no common thread. As such, there is no motivation or desire for assimilation or integration. The result is what we see, ghettos and an increasingly hostile minority insisting that their particular cultural norms be assigned equivalence with those of the indigenous, long-established culture (even if they are incompatible). Of course, not all immigrants fit into that picture by any means. Sufficient do, however, to make modern Britain distinctly uncomfortable.

[Tony Makara]

John Ionides, I only learnt French in school but have gone on to learn other languages as an adult. When I lived in Denmark, in the days before free movement of labour, after a three month period I had to apply for a five year residency permit. To get this I had to apply through the department for aliens and to the police. I had to prove I could speak Danish and prove that I was attending language classes in my free time, was working full-time and paying tax, had no rent arrears, and that I had no criminal record in the UK. Fortunately I was able to prove all this and received a five year residency permit which also could count towards full citizenship if I wanted it to after the five year period had expired. Since those days Denmark has relaxed its strict requirements for residency and surprise, surprise they now have a problem with immigration and criminality that is clearly linked to that immigration. We in this country need to get back to a stricter set of rules for UK residency, and I think the rules that I had to pass in liberal Denmark all those years ago would be ideal. Living in the UK should be a privilege earnt rather than a right that is expected by immigrants.

[Yogi]

I would go further than Tony. It is not the question of learning the language alone. Of course it is not that easy but if tehre is a will there is a way.

My point is, that if anyone wants to come to the UK on a work visa, that person must have a working knowledge of English. Unfortunately, the Curry House owners are at it again - that the Home Office needs to give more work permits to Bangladesh nationals because the curry houses are short of skilled chefs.

I am soryy, but most of the curry houses were opened and staffed by people from a single district in bangladesh - Sylhet, because they did not have any other skills and as a matter of facts, their culinary skills gave Indian food a rathre bad name.

Why shouldn't these restaurateurs start a training course open to all. No, they wont do it.
My view is that the whole thing is aimed at getting work visas for their relatives and for agents back in Dacca to make money.

[David Sergeant]

Graeme I am one of those people who look forward to your postings and on this, as on most other occasions, I am impressed with your compassion. However, it seems to me that Tony Makara has to be right. I am particularly impressed with the Danish rule that, to stay in Denmark, you had to speak Danish. It would not be fair to say that a similar rule would mean Mr M going home, it would rather mean the restaurant owner having to get his staff training organised or lose his expensively imported staff.

Also, can I suggest that the verdict may have been affected by plucked heartstrings?

[Mr Angry]

Graeme, there is a simple solution to the problem of immigrants too cash and time poor to learn English. It is one I have been advocating locally for a long time and I believe that it should become party policy. It is:

Currently local authorities spend a massive amount of money on translation services and on producing literature in many languages. If that money was instead spent on providing free ESOL courses after hours in our schools, and perhaps also before school starts, then that would create an opportunity for many currently excluded people to benefit.

To start with this would require additional government funding because you cannot just cut off all translation services at a stroke, there has to be a transition period. But since this government spends a fortune already on largely failing community cohesion initiatives I am convinced that a budgetary review of that spending area will produce the funds to make this idea a reality.

The other strand to this is of course to address the very real issue of lack of Englis speaking amongst females who are deliberately kept in language ignorance by their menfolk as a means of controlling them. This especially prevalent in people from South Asia, but it not limited to them. Again holding these courses in schools, and perhaps making some of them women only to accomodate religious sensibilities, will help here. The Women can meet their kids at school, pop them into the school after hours club, go for their English lesson and then take them home afterwards.

Ok there are still going to be some people who, for a variety of reasons, won't or can't learn English this way but it would be a massive improvement over the current situation and is a positive policy that encourages integration, community cohesion and will improve people's life chances.

I strongly believe that the Conservatives should be strongly advocating this policy and where we are able to in local government we should be instituting it now.

[sjm]

Graeme, when reading your thoughts about why Mr M didn't have the time to learn basic English, I empathised with you.

Then I recalled that my maternal great-grandmother came to this country to escape the Tsaris pogroms, speaking only Polish and Yiddish. She was a young widow with 5 children, and was probably illiterate, though intelligent. Through very hard work, she ended up with a proper home and a respected position as a midwife, and no, she never remarried. What she did have was the structured support of the Jewish community that enabled her and the children to start to integrate with the English way of life.

[Tony Makara]

Immigrants that want to work in Britain should be given for free a home-study course in English and after a given time they should be made to prove that they are in the process of learning the language. I know not everyone enjoys learning a foreign language but if a person wants to live in Britain they should be expected to learn. Even if they are not the quickest of learners they will still be learning nontheless, and eventually they will reach a basic level. Any such courses should avoid the grammar that puts most people off language learning and instead concentrate on conversational English. Expecting a person to learn our language is not unreasonable. There are old women who came across to the UK during the late 1960s and early 1970s and they still hardly speak any English. I think that is such a shame because they have missed out on so much that is going on in our country. The Asian community, like the Jewish community, as pointed out above, does tend look after its own, but ultimately that leads to people being ghettoized, precisely the sort of thing that David Cameron has been talking about recently. If people are expected to learn English and learning is made a fundamental requirement for residency then it benefits everyone in the long run. Its a pity the Danes had to drop their strict criteria for residency but they were forced to adopt more lax entry laws after pressure from the EU.

[anthony scholefield]

Presumably the employers who paid the wage below the minimum are being prosecuted-but I am not holding my breath.
Incidentally what was the delightful Bangladeshi's immigration status-was he one of those brought in under the scheme to fill 'skill shortages' in the restaurant industry or was he illegal as implied by the payment of below minimum wages.