A century in Britain, and still rarely heard

Today BSPAC begins publishing.

We are an independent editorial platform covering UK public affairs from a British Somali perspective. We are not a representative body. We do not speak for every British Somali, and we would distrust anyone who claimed to. What we offer is simpler and, we hope, more useful: serious, sourced and calm analysis of the questions that shape our lives in Britain.

A long history, rarely told

Somalis are not newcomers to Britain. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 remade the shipping lanes through the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. By the end of the nineteenth century, Somali seamen were stoking the boilers of the steamships that carried Welsh coal around the world.

Sheffield City Council's own archive guide records that Somalis "have been settling in Britain for well over a century". They arrived first as seamen and traders in port cities such as London, Cardiff and Bristol. Community memory in Cardiff's Butetown dates the first settlement to 1894.

Later generations followed the work. After the Second World War, many Somali men moved to Sheffield's steelworks. The largest arrivals came in the 1990s, when families fled Somalia's civil war.

That history includes injustice as well as endurance. In 1952 Mahmood Mattan, a Somali seaman, was hanged in Cardiff for a murder he did not commit. The Court of Appeal quashed his conviction in 1998. He should never have needed history to clear his name.

Who we are today

The 2021 Census gives the clearest picture yet. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) found that 176,645 residents of England and Wales identified as Somali by ethnic group, national identity, or both. That is a rise of 78.5% in a decade.

We are a young community: 48.2% were under 21, twice the national share. We are a mostly metropolitan one, with 62.4% living in London.

And we are under real pressure. The ONS found that 72.0% lived in social rented housing, against 16.6% nationally. And 58.8% lived in overcrowded homes, against 8.4%. These are not footnotes. They are policy questions.

Contribution, not charity

British Somalis have given this country an Olympic champion in Sir Mo Farah, a Lord Mayor of Sheffield in Magid Magid and a Booker-shortlisted novelist in Nadifa Mohamed. Most of our contribution is quieter. It is the nurse on a night shift, the pharmacist, the bus driver, the teacher, the shopkeeper paying business rates in Tower Hamlets or Moss Side.

The gap we intend to fill

British Somalis appear in national coverage mostly when something has gone wrong. We are discussed in debates about migration, security and welfare. We are rarely asked what we think about housing, schools or the cost of living, although they shape our lives as much as anyone's.

There are excellent community organisations and a lively Somali-language media. What has been missing is an English-language publication covering British public affairs at the standard of the best national titles, and treating British Somalis as citizens rather than subjects.

What we will cover

We will report on politics, policing and justice, the economy, education, health and housing, and identity and society. We will cover the wider world only where it touches British Somali lives.

Our standards

• We will source and date every statistic.
• We will respect the courts, and use "alleged" and "charged with" wherever the law requires.
• We will not identify private individuals or children.
• We will correct our mistakes in public.
• We will not do clan politics, conspiracy or party endorsements.

And our solidarity will never be selective. If we condemn hatred against Somalis, we will condemn antisemitism, anti-Muslim hatred and every other prejudice in the same terms. A community that asks for fairness must offer it.

Britain has been home to Somalis for well over a century. It is time the conversation caught up.