'The ghosts of yesterday are awakening'

FORMER LORD MAYOR'S WARNING ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF FATHER'S DEATH

- By OLIVIA SHEED

Habib Rahman built a career as a campaigner and later a politician

THE killing of Azizur Rahman has always been a scar on the North East, especially in communities that still contend with racism to this day.

Now, nearly 50 years later, Azizur’s son reflects on a ‘growing threat of racism, Islamophobia and far-right politics in modern Britain’.

It is exactly 49 years since former Newcastle Lord Mayor Habib Rahman’s father was killed while working at a restaurant in Wallsend in 1977. Habib was just three years old at the time.

The dad-of-six lived and worked in Newcastle for just 10 days before he was brutally stabbed by a customer who was unhappy about the size of a takeaway curry.

Azizur was attacked with a kitchen knife by then 28-year-old Norman Patterson of York Drive, Wallsend, who pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility.

Decades later, the now 52-year-old former councillor, anti-racism campaigner and former mayor asserts that fighting racism has always been deeply personal.