Southall (London)
| Southall | |||
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| Coordinates | 51 ° 31 ′ N , 0 ° 23 ′ W | ||
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| Post town | SOUTHALL | ||
| ZIP code section | UB1, UB2 | ||
| prefix | 020 | ||
| Part of the country | England | ||
| region | London | ||
| London Borough | Ealing | ||
| British Parliament | Ealing Southall | ||
Southall is a district of the London Borough of Ealing in west London. The surrounding neighborhoods are Yeading , Hayes , Hanwell , Heston , Hounslow , Greenford and Northolt .
Southall sits on the Grand Union Canal , which for the first time connected London to the rest of the growing canal system. It was the last canal that was used significantly for the transport of merchandise until the 1950s. The Great Western Main Line and Heathrow Connect also run through Southall and connect the district with Paddington Station to the east and to the west with Reading , Oxford , Newbury and Heathrow Airport . Southall has only one central train station.
The city is one of the most densely populated places of Asian descent outside of the Indian subcontinent . This is why Southall Station is one of three stations in England that are bilingual in English and Punjabi .
Immigration to Southall began in the mid-1950s when Woolf's Rubber Company needed manpower for its automotive supply company. A member of the owner's family had commanded a unit with Sikhs from the Punjab during World War II and recruited guest workers from among his former soldiers. They informed their families and neighbors. By 1961, 2,400 people from the former colonies were registered in Southall, most of them working for the food industry in West London and Middlesex . Immigration increased sharply when, due to political discussions in 1965, it was feared that immigration from the colonies could become very difficult in the future. Above all, those who came as workers caught up with their relatives as much as possible. When the independent nations of East Africa expelled all Asians brought in by the colonial rulers as skilled craftsmen and administrators from 1967 onwards, many of them with roots in the Punjab moved to Southall. The guest workers became immigrants. Further immigrants to Southall came from the Caribbean, with these spreading over the whole of West London without local concentration.
Racist violence triggered the Southall Riots in 1976 . A neo-fascist youth gang killed a young Sikh on the doorstep of an immigrant initiative. Two marches formed and moved from different directions to the police station. The youth accused the police of failing to protect them adequately from racist violence and of using violence against the neighborhood's young residents from immigrant families. Sit-ins, demonstrations and arrests occurred in the days that followed. The English press reported on it under the topic of "race riots" between young Asians and the police.
In the late 1980s, several music and night clubs opened in Southall, specifically aimed at blacks of Caribbean origin. The quarter, which during the day only has a small part of the population of African descent, became a hotspot of Caribbean cultures for the whole of West London in the evening and at night. This coincided with the rediscovery of the Bhangra , a traditional folk dance from the Punjab, which began in the late 1970s and intensified in the 1980s with elements of international pop music, synthesizers, keyboards, electric guitars and, above all, sampling and scratching techniques has been modernized. This musical innovation took place in Southall and was first called The Southall Beat before Bhangra became the name of the game. Bhangra became the common music of all Asians from the Indian subcontinent in London and England and spread worldwide in the corresponding communities. Contemporary witnesses believed this invention played a key role in establishing a common identity for the descendants of all immigrants from the Indian subcontinent.
Today's residents of Southall are disadvantaged compared to other parishes and neighborhoods in West London due to poor public transport connections. Anyone who works as a commuter in central London has to travel several hours a day. This is why Southall's job market has little to do with the east, but is rather oriented towards Heathrow Airport in the south-west of Southall. In contrast, there are long-distance bus connections to all other places in England with a high proportion of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent. Family connections and the many Hindu temples and prayer houses in Southall attract members of this population to Southall regularly.
literature
- Gerd Baumann: Contesting Culture . Cambridge University Press 1996, ISBN 0-521-55554-X
