Cambridge: In a heartfelt parting speech, Baiju Thittala Varkey, the first Malayali to serve as Mayor of Cambridge, laid bare the emotional toll of rising anti-immigrant rhetoric in Britain.

"Why are immigrants being subjected to this humiliation whenever it suits the politicians... Do we immigrants have to do something extra to please our politicians?" Thittala, a Labour councillor, said.

His words resonated far beyond the walls of the Cambridge City Council chamber. Thittala, a social justice advocate, criticised the right-wing political climate for routinely scapegoating immigrants while ignoring their contributions to British society, including those of his own family.

Speaking on May 22 at the end of his mayoral term, Thittala did not hold back. "Why are immigrants blamed for everything? Are we criminals?" he said, his voice steady but heavy with emotion.

As a criminal lawyer, he said, no data substantiates the narrative that the majority of immigrants are criminals. "When I go to court, when I go to the police station, I don't see only immigrants there."

Thittala, the son of paddy farmers from Arpookara in KOttayam, is among the first-generation migrant from Kerala to arrive in UK in 2004. He arrived in Cambridge with his wife, Ancy, a nurse, and together they started from scratch. He worked as a care assistant while studying part-time, eventually qualifying as a criminal solicitor.

As a lawyer, councillor, and the outgoing mayor of this historic city, Thittala said the immigrant story is misunderstood and often maligned.  

He noted that immigrants from 90 countries work in the Cambridge University Hospital. "My wife, she is a nurse, she has been looking after our sick and elderly population of Cambridge for 25 years, and my daughter, she wants to be a medical professional and she will be looking after the ill and elderly population of Cambridge and beyond.

"My son wants to be a lawyer, he wants to serve the community and my little one wants to be a politician, they want to serve the community where they live, yet why are immigrants a target?

"It is painful in a country where you live, you work, you left everything behind back home and you build your life here, but yet you have been subjected to this kind of rhetoric. It is unacceptable," said Thittala.

In 2018, he was elected as a City Councillor for East Chesterton, becoming one of the few first-generation minority ethnic representatives in Cambridge City Council’s history. In May 2023, he became Cambridge's first Asian deputy mayor, and a year later, its mayor.

Thittala also spoke of the casual prejudice his family has faced. "My wife was asked if someone like me should be mayor," he said.

In his speech, he invoked the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919 and the 1921 Wagon Massacre in Tirur, Malappuram. He also remembered those who fought in World Wars I and II, and the Windrush generation- Caribbean migrants who arrived in the UK after WWII and helped rebuild the country "brick by brick." "Yet why are migrants being subjected to this unacceptable, intolerable humiliation-  whether it be on social media, whether it be in the news, whether it be in politicians' ambitions."

Thittala’s speech was a direct rebuke of the rise in right-wing narratives that pit immigrants against native-born citizens. But in Cambridge, he said, the story has been different. "This is a city where migrants and natives work shoulder to shoulder... Cambridge is a city that will never fall into the trap of divisive politics," he said.

For Thittala, being Mayor of Cambridge was not just an honour, it was a quiet defiance, a way to affirm that migrants are not outsiders, but leaders too.