Lynne Featherstone

We are celebrating Newroz at City Hall – the Kurdish New Year. This time instead of just one day – the festival is running for two weeks and there are lots of events going on.

To my surprise, I am called to say a few words – which I do. I take the tack of the need for political representation. Their chief lobbyist, Ibrahim, came to see me a while back – and he is certainly doing a fantastic job of raising awareness among the political classes of the variety of barriers and challenges facing Kurdish-speaking people in England.

Relatively recent arrivals, Kurds have advanced very quickly into the infrastructure of society in terms of housing, work, health and education. It was a matter of survival on arrival and the barriers were immense. Twenty years on there are still barriers – like the failure to recognise that numbers of children at schools were not ‘Turkish speaking’ as they had been labelled – but ‘Kurdish speaking’. These problems are now being corrected. Still a way to go until we have a Kurdish GCSE though!

My main message is the need to move on from arrival survival into the landscape of the country. Lobbying is fine – but get involved (with whichever political party suits), get in there and get elected – to council, to Regional Assemblies and to Parliament.