Making black history

Helena Ismail is British, very nicely-spoken, clever, committed to her community, and able to take a measured view of life's many shambles - except, perhaps, local and national politics. Right now, for instance, she seems pretty close to flattening whomever next claims that David Cameron's Tories are reformed and almost human. 'They (the Tories at Hammersmith and Fulham Council) have cut our throats,' she says tightly. 'They are targeting us. I tell you this. Why are they doing that?'

Ismail has run the much-admired Shepherd's Bush Somali support group Horn of Africa for 20 years, where she and her team provide an annual average of 3000 to 4000 poor, usually desperate, people with the immigration, employment and schools advice that they needed to settle in the UK, and get jobs, etc. Horn of Africa also does a good second line in helping newcomers to the country fill in forms and to get their heads round obligations like council tax. Horn of Africa will also help if you need to know how to deal with the many zealous coppers who play a large part in your life if you're poor, young and black.

The party's more or less over, though. In April this year, Hammersmith and Fulham's ghastly Tory council took a decision to cut exactly one hundred percent of Horn of Africa's funding (some £55,000 a year), as part of a charming borough rape of black and ethnic minority voluntary groups (other Somali groups like the youth support Hope 4 All organisation also got nothing, while African and African-Caribbean support group Nubian Life got less than half the funding it received in 2006. You'll find the full funding report here pdf 404kb). The cuts took effect this month.

Ismail is still deciding which part of this experience has been the most insulting. She says that the council's surpreme dismissiveness ranks pretty high. 'I've been running this centre for 20 years in the borough, and dealing with the council, and they did not even tell me that they were thinking about taking all our funding. There was no time that they tried to talk to me while they must have been making that decision. They didn't speak to us.' Indeed, at a now-legendary April 2007 public meeting on the funding cuts, the council's cabinet ran out of the room when Ismail got up to ask council leader Stephen Greenhalgh why her organisation had been targeted.

The council's claims that it will continue to help vulnerable Somalis is also near the top of the list of insults. 'That is rubbish. It is very hard to duplicate what we're doing. There will be nobody to support them (newcomers from Somalia) in the north of the borough. There will be nobody here if we go.'

A group called Firsthand will get some money to run a community centre with sports and club activities on the White City Estate, and good luck to them, but they won't be doing the same thing as Horn of Africa (they have also been instructed to make sure 'income from their building is maximised' (you'll find this under the Firsthand heading in the downloadable report above).

There won't be too much in the way of employment, housing, education, and immigration advice in the area when Horn of Africa goes. There's the hugely-underresourced Shepherd's Bush Advice Centre, and the beleaguered Hammersmith and Fulham Community Law Centre. Both have resource problems of their own: the Shepherd's Bush Advice Centre has been threatened by cuts in the last few years, and the Tories just cut the Law Centre's annual grant by more than £100,000). That means there'll be another three to four thousand people a year wandering the streets of Shepherd's Bush, unable to support themselves, or to find anyone who can show them how to write a CV, or tell them who to approach for work, etc. This northern part of Hammersmith and Fulham is one of the poorest and most deprived parts of the borough, as well.

'The other thing is that it's not just Somali people that we help,' Ismail says. 'We get British people ringing us all the time. There are a lot of people who want advice about finding a job, or trying to sort out problems with their children at school. If there were enough public services to help people, they would not need to come to (voluntary) services [sic] like mine, but people don't know where else they can go.'

That seems a fair point: in its April 2007 voluntary sector funding report (downloadable on the link above), the council says there are 'generalist services' that will provide the services that Horn of Africa used to. Point is - where are these 'generalist services?' Who runs them? Where are they? Is there an address for them and a contact number that we can put on this site? What does 'generalist services' even mean?

Ismail says that she and a group of volunteers are trying to keep the centre open, but that she isn't too excited about their chances.

'We could not just let it go after 20 years. We didn't want to lose it. A lot of people we know are giving voluntary help to us. They (the council) terminated the lease on the building, but we went back to the property owner and they gave us some time to fundraise. But I don't have a job now, and I have to look for other work. When I get another job, I will probably have to work fulltime, so you have to be realistic about that.

'The fundraising is very hard as well. They [the Tories] cut our throats, really. Fundraising is even harder for us now, because people know that we lost funding from the local authority. It is very detrimental to be known as an organisation that the local authority [has decided not to support]. That's the reality, even if [the truth is that] it's not your fault, and that everybody [is being hit with cuts].

'No one cares about what happens to the people who come to our centre. They are very vulnerable. They don't have money, or resources. If you're not powerful, you are out. I feel very disappointed as a British person. We're trying to help the people that come to us to find jobs and make their contribution. Of course people want to work. I'm unemployed now, and I want to work. But these people need help with English, and CVs.'

Little wonder, Ismail says, that every loan shark and wide boy in Shepherd's Bush tries to prey on these vulnerable people. They're desperate for jobs, money and somewhere to live, and they'll listen to anybody who seems to be offering those things. But maybe that's the point. Desperate immigrants will do anything for money, and that includes working for subsistence wages on the black market. Suppose if you're a Tory, that makes it even easier to find yourself a cheap cleaner.