The presence and settlement of the Somali community in significant numbers in the UK dates back to the 19th century when Somalis arrived to work as seamen for the British merchant navy.
The seamen settled in most port cities like Cardiff, Liverpool and east London docks, were they joined the National Union of Seamen. In east London the Somali seamen settled around Cable Street. This is where they established their own boarding houses prior to the first world war. In 1936 the British Union of Fascists, under Sir Oswald Mosley marched down to Cable Street. A mixed of locals, Somali seamen and dock workers took to the streets in opposition to the BUF in what later come to be known as the battle for Cable Street.
Early Somali seamen formed part of the socialist working class movement of the time. Poor living and working conditions were common to the lives of the early seamen and the Labour party became the natural home for them. At a time when the Labour party was seen as the party for the working class these seamen, like so many poor workers, voted Labour.
Yet it was not just their working-class link to the Labour party that made the early Somali settlers in Britain vote Labour. It was the values of the Labour party like equality and policies like the welfare state that were similar to the beliefs and culture of the Somali people.
Somali tribal clan culture at its core is based on a socialist system, working something like a welfare state: the weak are protected by the tribe, through the offering of work, money or shelter. The tribe works on a community level; in times of need it is the tribe that one turns to for assistance and it forms a net to protect the weak.
Labour had many who fought for the early British Somali community, like James Callaghan in 1956. The MP for Cardiff South-east challenged the then Tory minister Iain Macleod in the House over the increase in unemployment of Somali seamen in Cardiff.
By the 1970s and 1980s many in the party were taking up the fight for the Somali community. It was commonplace for me to walk into my parents’ living room to find the late Peter Shore MP sitting on the sofa sipping sweet Arabic tea, while 10 Somali women bombarded him with a list of problems they wanted him solve. Or in the to bump into Ken Livingstone tucking into Somali food at a local Somali event, after giving a heartfelt speech on how the GLC was going to improve the housing problem faced by many Somali families in London.
Fast forward to the 1990s and we saw an influx of Somali refugees from their war-torn native Somalia. This new group of Somalis face some challenging issues like poor and overcrowded housing, the lowest levels of employment of all immigrants in the UK, low levels of educational attainment across the board, and inequality in healthcare and elderly care.
This community is one of the hardest hit by the coalition government’s cuts and reforms to welfare, further pushing the community into increased levels of deprivation and poverty resulting in isolating the community even further.
This is why today more than ever the Somali community needs the Labour party to fight for it against this rightwing government. We have set up Somali Friends of Labour so that this normally invisible community can be heard and seen. It will be a platform for the Somali community and the Labour party to come together and work on addressing some of the key issues affecting this community in Britain today. After all, the British Somali community still feel that Labour is their tribe.
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Amina Ali is a first-generation British Somali born in the UK. Her father was a Somali seaman from 1949 to 1983. She is chair of Somali Friends of Labour and a Labour party activist who stood for local council elections in 2006.