Coming of Age : 1976 and the Road to Anti-Racism

Coming of Age 

1976 and the road to anti-racism 

Coming of Age Final version 16.10.indd 1 17/10/2017 12:06

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Published by The Monitoring Group 

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First published 2017 

ISBN: 978-0-9576974-4-7 

British Library catalogue in data Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data Patel, Jagdish 

and Grover, Suresh. A title of a book : Coming of Age :The birth of anti racism ISBN 

978-0-9576974-4-7 

The main category of the book —History —Other category, Anti Racism Other category 3. 

Sociology 

Printed by Russell Press, Nottingham 

Cover Image 

Suresh Grover, and his friend Denis Almeida, creating a make shift rememberance for Gurdip 

Singh Chagger, June 1976 

2 | Coming of Age 


Coming of Age : 1976 and the road to anti-racism 

Edited by Suresh Grover and Jagdish Patel 

Contributions by Harsha Ahyave, Gautam Appa, Jenny Bourne, Avtar Brah, 

Gurinder Chadha, Karamjit Chaggar, Cecil Gutzmore, Jacqueline Jenkinson, Gus John, 

Balraj Purewal, Harsh Punja, Stafford Scott, and Ambalavaner Sivanandan 

Acknowledgements 

Many have contributed to our discussions on this project, and we wish to acknowledge 

the contributions of the following: the two volunteers on the project, Rohan Patel and 

Robbie Titmarsh, the TMG staff team, Abrar Javid, Dorothea Jones, Samantha Joseph, 

Mehar Brar, Amidou Njie, Sham Qayyum, Dr Ping Hua, Jawed Siddiqi and others 

including, Imram Khan, Shobhini Ehzuvan, Balvinder Gill, Roger Tanner, 

Panya Banjoko, Puska Lail, Anne Rossiter, Avtar Jouhl, Asoke Dutta, 

the family of Vishnu Sharma,Dr Arvind Sikand, Laxmiben Patel, the family of Karamjit 

Chaggar, Nick Stevenson, Liz Fekete, Harmit Athwal, Boston Din, Sajid Mohammed, 

Sujata Aurora, Rachel Cull, Savitaben Jairambhai Patel, Dan Jones, Tulsi Patel, 

Gaye Flounders, Merce Santos, Cindy Sissokho, Carolina Rito, 

Alba Colomo and Satnam Virdee for their support on the project. 

We also wish to thank the Heritage Lottery Fund for funding the project and 

Nottingham Contemporary for their assistance with this publication 

Coming of Age | 3 




Table of contents 

Introduction 

South Shields before 1919 : Portraits from South Shields 

6 

8 

Part 1 - 1919-1976 

Portraits from South Shields 

Introduction to part 1 

Jacqueline Jenkinson : Black Britain 1919 

A Sivanandan : From Rebellion to Riots 

Claudia Jones : A people’s art is the genesis of their freedom 

Gus John : Changing Britannia through the Arts and Activism 

12 

15 

19 

37 

65 

73 

Part 2 - 1976 

Introduction to Part 2 

Timeline of events during 1976 

Harsh Punja : The need for unity: An interview 

with Vishnu Sharma 

Karamjit Chaggar 

Suresh Grover 

Avtar Brah 

Balraj Purewal 

Harsha Ahyave : intervew with Laxmiben Patel 

Gautam Appa : My Political Journey to Grunwick and Beyond 

Stafford Scott 

Cecil Gutzmore : The Notting Hill Carnival 

Gurinder Chadha 

85 

89 

103 

117 

121 

127 

133 

143 

147 

161 

167 

173 

Endnotes 

Jenny Bourne : When Black was a political colour: 

a guide to the literature 

Timeline of anti racism 1900-1976 

Known racist murders durng the 1970’s 

Industrial disputes involving black and asian workers 1965-1975 

References 

179 

188 

202 

203 

210 



Introduction 

This project,‘Coming of Age’, has tried to harness the power of narratives of 

anti-racist resistance. It is about the stories people tell about their lives, and the 

cultural and political frameworks which form the context of those lives. The preservation 

of our past, and presenting the stories of extraordinary men and women is important 

for three reasons. Firstly, it allows us to learn how others in the past challenged racism, 

secondly we can learn from the issues they confronted, both outside their communities, but also 

within their own communities, and thirdly it enables us to imagine a different future by 

starting a new kind of historically grounded conversations about both racism, and anti-racism. 

When we relate stories of our lives, we implicitly say something to others of our political 

worldview. Our parents understtod the importance of this, and made us 

listen to the stories adults told each other, probably they had learnt in the same way, 

so now if we don’t tell these stories to our children, we can’t then complain that they 

don’t understand our past, nor should we be surprised if they in turn relate to the 

present only through media or academic texts. Although many do not see the 

relevance of history, they would be surprised how much of their own sense of self, of 

identity, has been constructed through historical narrative. We are not taught this 

history at schools, and often the history we are presented equates historical narrative with 

being ‘British’ with an acceptance of British history where the narratives of Black and Asian 

people, and specifically of the resistance is absent. Yet, many of the ideas of anti-racism 

have been assimilated into national policy, art and culture, without any recognition of where 

these ideas were derived, of the resistance which forced the country to change. Just think 

about asian and black art, food, music, race equality laws, and human rights laws. How 

many people really know how these changes occurred in Britain. If they did perhaps they 

would learn that that the very notion of ‘British democratic values’, are not British at all. 

We only have to look at the national curriculum to see the absence of black and asian 

history. In fact we teach the story of the American civil rights movements, but nothing 

about our own civil rights movement. This is not good for Britain. It means we are raising 

generations of children who do not fully understand the modern world. There are few landmarks 

celebrating the history of black and asian anti-racism, and this is something we need to address. 

We started this project with the assistance of a small grant from the Heritage Fund 

to share the history of Southall, and the Southall Youth Movement. It is from this past 

that both Southall Monitoring Group, now the Monitoring Group, and Southall Black 



Sisters began. These two organisations have been challenging both racism from white 

communities, but also issues around sexism, patriarchy and religious fundamentalism 

within our own communities. As we shall see, progressive political and cultural change 

necessitates that these issues are tackled in tandem with the struggle against racism. 

We found it difficult to talk about the events of 1976, without examining and charting the 

journey before this year. Afterall, each generation continues the story from where their 

elders left, and in part 1 of this book we have tried to chart the story from the racism in 

1919 through to 1976. Throughout the period from 1919 to 1976 black and asian communities 

often faced a onslaught on violent racism, enduring attacks upon either their person 

or their property, and yet we now teach that ‘British values’ equates with tolerance and 

harmony. Jacqueline Jenkinson, in the opening chapter, examines the circumstances which 

led to the 1919 race riots and she begins to unpick how ‘British values’ play out when there 

is a deep crisis in the country. In 1976 the journalist Paul Foot argued that “race hate and 

race violence does not rise and fall according to the numbers of immigrants coming into 

Britain. It rises and falls to the extent to which people’s prejudices are inflamed and made 

respectable by politicians and newspapers.’ (’What the Papers Say’, Granada TV 4 June 1976). 

In post Brexit Britain, do we think that our politicians and press have learnt from the past? 

In ‘Racialised Outsiders’, Satnam Virdee argued that after the defeat of the radical Chartist 

movement in the mid-nineteenth century, racializing nationalism began to permeate the 

working class imagination. This was carefully constructed through Britain’s policy in art and 

culture, as much as politics and economics. We only have to walk around our own towns and 

look at the statues, look in the museums and galleries to see evidence of this even today. 

It was Martin Luther King who reminded us form a prison cell in a Birmingham jail 

that, “In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable 

network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one 

directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you 

ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be... 

This is the inter-related structure of reality.” Yet, our structures of 

reality is distorted, since we have been woven out of British historical narrative. 

As we write, there are protests taking place near the statue of the Confederate General 

Robert E Lee in Emancipation Park, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA. The protests started 

after the local city council voted to remove the statue and change the name of the space 

from Lee Park to Emancipation Park, sparking protests from white nationalists, neo-Nazis, 

the Ku Klux Klan and members of the ‘alt-right’. During the protests Thirty-four 

people were injured in clashes and one person, Heather Heyer, was killed, when a Nazi sympathizer 

plowed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters. Our cities and town are also lit- 



tered with historical statues, art works, and street names recounting events around Britain’s 

Empire. We don’t propose destroying these items, but we do think that over the coming years 

we need to begin to address the legacies of this distorted historical narrative. If nothing else, 

the debate around ‘British’ identity in a post Brexit country will force us to address this, as 

we sometimes appear to be spiralling into the same racist environment which existed before. 

Everyone who grew up in the 1970’s will remember the long hot summer of 1976. 

However for many young people the summer was a ‘coming of age’, a moment when 

British youth, both black and white, challenged the engrained racism of the 1970’s and 

began to forge a new vision for Britain. This book tells the story of the young people 

from London, who in 1976 took direct action to tackle racism, altered the debate on 

racism, and in time developed the multicultural Britain we all know today. The stories 

focus on the series of events which occurred during 1976, including Malawi refugee crisis in 

January, the birth of Southall Youth Movement in June, the Notting Hill riots in August, the 

start of the Grunwick Strike in August, and the birth of Rock against Racism in November. 

There have been various projects which have told aspects of the different events, but no 

project has linked the series of events into a cohesive narrative. This is not surprising. Marable 

Manning (2011) reminds us that our political culture was hammered together over the years 

with the imperfect tools of survival, and capacity building from below, “evolving and oscillating 

constantly and often unpredictably between outright accommodation and overt resistance’. 

As Jenny Bourne reminds us in her review of Black historical literature, every piece of 

historical narrative is a contested space, and we have tried to consider these issues in our narrative. 

The book allowed us to document the stories of activists, and think about how they 

can be placed into this broader narrative. This book is therefore an attempt to present 

our history. We have done this through oral history, photography, academic 

writing, and activist personal memoirs, an approach called ‘living history’ by Marable 

Manning (Manning (2011) Living Black History : How Reimaging African-American Past Can 

Remake America’s Racial Future), and hopefully we have given the past another lease of life. 





February 1919 

60,000 people marched for work through Glasgow city centre. Although the march was peaceful, 

police charged into the crowd with batons resulting in running battles across the city. The following 

day, 1000 troops were moved from Edinburgh and Aberdeen into Glasgow city centre. The fear of 

a Bolshevik revolution led the authorities to place machine gun nests on the roof of the North British 

Hotel (now the Millennium Hotel) and the old central Post Office. There was a Howitzer outside the 

City Chambers and six tanks in the cattlemarket in the Gallowgate. The photograph above shows 

armed English soldiers on sentry duty at Glasgow’s Princes Docks in the days following the Battle of 

George Square. The English troops deployed in Glasgow were mainly young conscripts aged 

between 17 and 19, as can be clearly seen from the photograph 



Part 1 

1919-1976 



Portraits from South Shields 

Globalisation is not a modern phenomenon, the British Empire was global, 

not just in in trade, but people also travelled across the Empire. Men came from 

across the Caribbean, India, Somalia, Yemen and many other countries. The first 

Yemenis came to Britain in the 1850s. The country’s first community was in Hull, but in time 

smaller pockets developed up the North East coastline, and inland across South Yorkshire, 

in Sheffield and Rotherham. They came from the port city of Aden in Yemen, which was under 

British control, working on the ships that fuelled the economy of the British Empire. The community 

in South Shields started around the 1850s, and more formal records show that several 

hundred were living here in the 1890s. The community was settled, The men married, 

often local women, had families, opened shops, boarding houses, mosques and 

by the 1900s they were a fully integrated part of the local community. We see similar 

patterns of migration in London, Liverpool, Glasgow, Cardiff and Bristol. 

This changed in 1919, and the aftermath of World War 1 a combination of factors 

gave rise to a consciousness of white nationalism, and rampant racism 

ravaged the community for the first time in 70 years. It resulted in racist murders, 

deportations of black men, and many families and communities were torn apart. 



Above : Left: Amin Hamid, pictured here as a young man. He was born in 1919, the son of a Yemeni seaman and 

his English wife. Like many of the sons born into the Arab community, he followed his father into seafaring. 

(Courtesy of Mr Norman Hassan) 

Left : Norman Hassan, with Amin Kaid and firend Nasser, South Shields (Courtesy of Norman Hassan) 






Since Britain’s Empire was global, we should not be surprised to learn that some of Britain’s 

cities also had communities from across the globe. In some cities, including the 

ports of South Shields, Cardiff, Liverpool and London, there had been large asian and 

black communities since the 1850’s, and we start this publication with some portraits of 

South Shields Arabic community. These portraits were commissioned by the individuals 

themselves, and show their wish to be represented in a formal studio setting. There are 

many examples of formal studio portraits of Britain’s black and asian across the country. 

These images challenged the, often racist, representation of their communities in daily 

life. The American writer, W.E.B Du Bois, challenged the American representation of its 

black community in scientific typologies, criminal mugshots, racist caricatures and lynching 

photographs by commissioning 363 formal black and white photographs, mostly of middle 

class African Americans from Atlanta and parts of Georgia. He took these to the Paris Exhibition 

in November 1900 to show the world a different visual representation of black Americans. 

On the way, he stopped off in Britain to attend the first Pan African conference in London. By 

1900 Britain had established organizations and the first Pan African conference took place between 

Monday 23rd and Wednesday 25th July 1900. It was organised by Bishop Alexander 

Walters and Henry Sylvester Williams. It was well attended. Notable people present included 

W.E.B. Du Bois, John Archer, John Alcindor, Anna J Cooper and Henry Francis Downing, 

Dr. Mandelle Creighton. It was a important landmark in black self organisation in this country. 

However, things would change in the aftermath of World War 1. In 1919, the Allied Victors met 

at the Paris Peace conference, and began to redraw the map of the world, and establish the 

League of Nations. During these negotiations, they were momentarily forced to address the issue 

of race equality and minority rights when Japan proposed the inclusion of a “racial equality 

clause” into the Covenant of the League of Nations. Although many others raised the issue 

before, here in the aftermath of war, the Western colonial powers were being confronted with 

the question of equality, since clearly there would be no League of Nations if people across the 

globe were not equal. The proposed clause read, “The equality of nations being a basic principle 

of the League of Nations, the High Contracting Parties agree to accord as soon as possible 

to all alien nationals of states, members of the League, equal and just treatment in every 

respect making no distinction, either in law or in fact, on account of their race or nationality.” 

This was too radical for the European powers, and even though the debate on 

the clause was won by a majority vote, the vote was overturned. These discussions 

would have had wide ranging implications across a number of issues, such as 



minority rights in Poland and the Baltic states, the issue of Irish self-determination, Zionism 

and Palestine, the independence of colonial states, and segregation and racial 

equality in the USA. It is shocking how many of these issues still plague us in the present day. 

Our next chapter comes from Dr.Jaqueline Jenkinson’s study of the 1919 Race Riots. As we learn, 

in this year Britain increasingly feared a Russian inspired Bolshevik revolution, and bought out 

troops to quell worker’s gatherings. The main victims of this global and internal instability were 

Britain’s black and asian communities. Many of the former black soldiers who had fought for Britain 

during World War 1 now faced hostility both from the white working class and an indifferent state. 

Many were deported, and the linking of Black immigration as a problem with the idea that British 

nationality was something for whites only lasted for many years, perhaps even into the present. 

The period between 1919 and 1945 is an important period in the history for Black and Asian people 

in this country, yet there is surprisingly little written about this period in Black British history. 

It is during this period that we see people from across the colonies discussing political ideas, developing 

organisations and coalitions, the British state moving away from that of Imperial ruler, 

increased use of state surveillance and legislation against dissenters, debates around human rights 

and citizenship, all set against the background of the two world wars and communism in the East. 

In Britain, the black and asian population, consisting of former soldiers, students, artists, 

activists, and migrants from all parts of the colonies, lived in the same vicinity, they were 

brought into contact with one another, African, Asian, Chinese, Caribbean’s, Americans, 

others from throughout the empire, and Britons from across the socio-economic spectrum 

were able to talk and discuss about ideas in a way that hadn’t really occurred before. “Only 

in England,” C. L. R. James recalled, “did I learn to break through the inherited constraints 

of my environment….” (CLR James, Beyond a Boundary (Duke University Press 1993) p80. 

As a result, it was during this time that Black and Asian associations grew and became homes 

away from home. Centres of cultural and intellectual exchange sprung up in London, Manchester, 

Cardiff, Birmingham, Liverpool, Edinburgh and other places, and these gave rise to new means 

of voicing social commentary and political dissent. Through them, black and asian intellectuals 

influenced the political imagination of British colonial officials, politicians, and others interested 

in the colonies, contributing to the debates during the final decades of imperial rule. We can 

see this through the lives many of the individuals who returned to Africa, Asia and and the 

Caribbean in the years after World War II to become leaders of anti-colonial movements and 

prominent postcolonial politicians, such as Krishna Menon, Jomo Kenyatta, and Kwame Nkrumah. 

Some of these organisations during this time included the African Progress 

Union led by Dr John Alcindor in the 20s, Union for Students of African Descent, 

Gold Coast Students Association, West African Students Union (WASU), 

founded by Ladipo Solanke in 1925, the International African Service Bureau (IASB), 



founded by George Padmore in 1937 and the Pan-African Federation (PAF), founded in 1944. 

There were also many important buildings such as the West Indian Students Union, and 

India House, in Highgate. India House was opened in 1905 by Henry Hyndman and the 

MP Dadabhai Naoroji, the Irish Suffragist, Charlotte Despard and Bhikaji Cama. This 

building became an important meeting place for people from Asian, the feminist’s movements 

as well as Irish nationalist. Some of the prominent Indian revolutionaries and 

nationalists were associated with India House, including Shyamji Krishna Verma, Vinayak 

Damodar Savarkar, Bhikaji Cama, V.N. Chatterjee, Lala Har Dayal, and here the ideas around 

universal suffrage, self determination and equality in Britain were discussed and debated. 

Our third article charts this journey. From Rebellion to Riots was written by Sivanandan is an 

important article and we are pleased to be able to reproduce it for this publication. As we 

will see the issues around Internationalism, Pan-Africanism, anti-colonialism and the importance 

of solidarity with the white working class, were all themes which would characterise the 

British Black Power movement, and later the Asian Youth Movements, yet they were issues 

that were being discussed by black and asian organisations in Britain as far back as the 1920’s. 

The role of women within the anti-racist movement is deeply under 

researched, and rarely written about. We have tried to identify individuals 

who were active in the anti racist movement in our timelines, though we 

acknowledge that there are many more women present than we have mentioned. 

One person who we cannot ignore is Claudia Jones. Claudia Jones was a Trinidadian communist 

who came to London, via Harlem, courtesy of the red-baiting senator Joseph McCarthy. Jones 

moved to New York with her parents when she was seven. It was there, during the campaign to 

defend the Scottsboro boys, a group of young African-Americans framed for rape in the south, 

that she joined the American Communist party in which she was later to play a leading role. 

Twice interned for her political beliefs on Ellis Island - ironically, the spiritual home for immigrants 

fleeing poverty and persecution - she was eventually ordered to leave in 1955 and sent to England, 

and it was here that she established one the first Black newspapers, ‘The West Indian Gazette’. 

The events of 1958, in Notting Hill and Nottingham, and the murder Kelso Cochrane in 1959, had 

a profound impact on black and asian communities across Britain, and Claudia was determined 

to do something. “We need something to get the taste of Notting Hill out of our mouths,” she 

said. “Someone suggested we should hold a carnival,” says Donald Hinds, who was in the room 

at the time. “We all started laughing because it was so cold and carnival is this out-on-the-street 

thing. It seemed like a ridiculous suggestion.” But Jones had other ideas and set about making 

arrangements. A few months later, on January 30, 1959, London’s first Caribbean carnival was 

held in St Pancras town hall. Televised by the BBC for Six-Five Special - a forerunner to Top Of 



The Pops - it was timed to coincide with the Caribbean’s largest and most famous carnival in Trinidad. 

The brief introductory statement to the souvenir brochure came with the title “A Peoples’ 

Art is the Genesis of their Freedom”. Here we reproduce Claudia’s words from the brochure. 

This relationship between art, culture and politics has always been an integral part of the anti 

racist struggle. One person who understood this was another Trinidadian, John la Rose. After 

he passed the Guardian wrote, “John La Rose was the elder statesman of Britain’s black 

communities. Like Marcus Garvey, CLR James, George Padmore, Fidel Castro and Frantz 

Fanon, John belongs to a Caribbean tradition of radical and revolutionary activism whose 

input has reverberated across continents. The depth and breadth of his contribution to the 

struggle for cultural and social change, for racial equality and social justice, for the humanisation 

of society, is unparalleled in the history of the black experience in Britain.” One of 

John’s favourite sayings was “We didn’t come alive in Britain,” an allusion to the struggles 

that had been waged by Caribbean peoples in the Caribbean against colonialism and for 

workers’ and people’s power, something which had began with the first Carribean labour 

movements in 1919. In the 1940s in Trinidad, he helped to found the Workers Freedom Movement 

and edited its journal, Freedom. John’s influence on British anti-racism from the 1960’s 

through to the 1990’s has not been given the acknowledgement it deserves and we are 

grateful to Dr Gus John for his article charting John’s journey through art, culture and politics. 



Black 1919 : Riots, Racism 

and Resistance in Imperial 

Britain 

Jacqueline Jenkinson 

This extract comes from “Black 1919: Riots, Racism and Resistance in 

Imperial Britain’ by Jacqueline Jenkinson, 2009, and reproduced with 

permission from the author and publisher, Liverpool University Press. 

Photograph showing tanks 

stationed in the ‘Cattle 

Market’, Glasgow at the time 

of the strike in 1919 

The seaport riots of 1919 were part of a wave of global unrest that affected Britain, 

parts of its empire, continental Europe and North America during and in the wake 

of the First World War. The trigger for the violence in many of Britain’s seaports was 

dissatisfaction among sections of Britain’s working class at a range of unsatisfactory 

peacetime circumstances, the chief of which were severe post war competition for jobs, 

especially in the merchant navy, and local housing shortages. In the course of the seaport 

riots crowds of white working class people thousands strong targeted minority ethnic groups 

including African, African Caribbean, Arab, South Asian and Chinese workers, and their 

businesses and property. 1 The riots took place in Glasgow, South Shields, Salford, Hull, 

London, Liverpool, Newport, Cardiff and Barry between January and August of 1919. 

Further sporadic rioting took place in 1920 and 1921. Five people were killed, dozens were 

injured and at least 250 arrested in this major episode of twentieth century British rioting. 

This introductory chapter examines various themes that lay behind the events of the port riots. 



Economic and social context of the riots 

The onset of high unemployment in the merchant navy as the industry contracted to suit 

peacetime conditions posed problems for Britain’s large trading seaports during and after 1919. 

Falling strategic demand when combined with four years of disruption of traditional markets 

and routes meant that many British ships were being laid up just as thousands of merchant 

sailors who had joined the armed forces were returning to home ports in search of their former 

employment. In the meantime, many of the thousands of job vacancies created when British merchant 

sailors left for war service and seamen from enemy and non-allied nations were barred from 

British vessels had been filled by black, Arab, Chinese and South Asian colonial British workers. 

The post-war decline in the merchant shipping industry affected British sailors, of varied 

ethnicity; those recently demobilized and the currently employed. All feared for their future 

and came to believe that British workers were being squeezed out of the shipping industry as 

employers increasingly turned to cheaper overseas workers to reduce their wage bill and preserve 

profits. This fear of fair foreign competition was a long standing one in the merchant navy. 

In fact, the leading seamen’s unions had conducted a campaign to keep black, “Arab and Asian 

sailors off British ships since the Edwardian period. The move was designed to preserve white 

British workers jobs and did not distinguish between British and foreign black, Chinese, and 

“Arab sailors. Re-invigorated in 1919 after a period of enforced quiescence during the war, the 

attempt to enforce a union ‘colour’ bar was one of the chief sources of contention in the ports. 

Although the riots were triggered by the specific economic circumstances of the large 

seaports, it is important to place these riots within the wider wave of rioting and social protest 

across Britain during and in the months immediately after the First World War. Widespread 

anti-German riots occurred around Britain throughout the war. These peaked in the ‘Lusitania’ 

riots of May 1915 following the German submarine sinking of the Cunard cruise liner RMS 

Lusitania for the loss of hundreds of civilian lives. Some of the wartime anti-German protests 

became more broadly anti-alien in their focus. In addition, there were anti-Jewish riots in 

Leeds and the east end of London during 1917 as sections of the local white British populations 

took to the streets in the belief that Jewish families in these areas, including eastern 

European immigrant settlers, were reluctant to “do their bit by sending their sons to war. 2 

Rioting and street protest continued beyond the Armistice. Months of violent mass protest 

across Britain led Jerry White to label 1919 ‘ a troubled year.’ 3 Mass violence was often triggered 

by the difficult transition from war to peacetime conditions. For example, in January 1919 soldiers 

awaiting demobilisation went on strike all over Britain, demanding speedier release from the 

armed forces. There were also at least three riots involving many of the thousands of Canadian 

service personnel who were stationed at army camps around Britain in 1919 awaiting repatriation. 



‘Britishers 

first’ was the 

overriding 

sentiment 

during 

disorder in the 

ports 

Post-war mass protest and riot often involved organized ex-service 

groups out to draw attention to perceived injustice in the 

treatment of returning troops and their dependents. Many former 

soldiers and sailors were left disillusioned by their lot on demobilisation. 

The National Federation of Discharged and Demobilised 

Sailors and Soldiers staged a range of co-ordinated campaigns 

and demonstrations throughout the country in 1919 and 1920. Their 

‘monster’ demonstration outside parliament in May 1919 descended 

into violence and was broken up by a police baton charge. 4 In 

Luton in July 1919, rioters, including many ex-combatants, burned 

down the town hall. 5 There were also riots involving recently demobilised 

troops in London in March and in Edinburgh in July 1919. 6 

The prominence of service and ex-service personnel in social unrest, 

mass protest and rioting across Britain in the twelve months after 

the end of the First World War was a sign of the times. It is hardly 

surprising that individuals in uniform or sporting service ribbons would 

be visible in gatherings of people in the weeks and months after the 

Armistice given that Britain’s combined armed forces totalled 6.6 

million at war’s end. The violent participation of troops and former 

service personnel in the seaport riots was frequently highlighted in 

contemporary press reports.7 However, recent combatants were not 

the prime movers in the port rioting. The riots in Britain’s seaports 

mainly involved white local civilians, some of them merchant sailors. 

The myth that military service had brutalized those who served 

in the First World War leading to post war rioting and mass protest 

was used by contemporaries and later writers to account for 

the violence of this period. There was a widespread belief that the 

trauma of war led to uncontrolled aggressive tendencies. It was a 

truism that innocence had been irretrievably lost through wartime experience. 

This assumption follows the so-called ‘brutalization’ theory 

in which battle-hardened, war- weary men and women brought 

a tendency to violence into the domestic sphere. The work of Joanna 

Bourke has convincingly refuted this theory by examining the 

impact of war on the psyche of ex-combatants. Bourke suggested 

that contrary to promoting violent tendencies in a domestic setting, 

the leading desire among ex-combatants was for a return 

to domesticity and an urge to forget their recent experiences. 8 



Bourke cited detailed studies of the psychological impact of the Vietnam War on veterans 

which found no relationship (or even a negative relationship) between violent crime rates and military 

participation. Bourke’s study of twentieth-century ex-combatant letters and diaries found 

that veterans were not ‘numbed’ by killing, even when distanced from the enemy by technological 

development; on the contrary, … combatants themselves consistently raised issues of personal 

responsibility. 9 While this point is well made, it is important to remember that while ex-service 

personnel may not have been brutalized by war, their experiences and years of service left many 

disillusioned and prepared to organise and protest in large numbers against their peacetime lot. 

General demonstrations of post-war resentment across many sections of British society 

were in the large seaports specifically focused on the twin issues of job and housing shortages. 

National Identity, the Imperial Agenda and a ‘black Atlantic’ perspective 

The seaport riots and their aftermath posed a challenge to the nature of Britain’s imperial rule 

and raised questions about the identity and status of colonial peoples both within the metropole 

and in the colonies. Divergent interpretations of national identity emerged from metropolitan 

and colonial opinion during the 1919 riots. ‘Britishers first’ was the overriding sentiment during 

disorder in the ports, particularly when rioting broke out when sailors confronted each other 

directly in the hiring yards of merchant marine shipping offices. However, those on opposing 

sides during the riots held different opinions of what was meant by being British. An article in the 

Times written at the height of the rioting poked fun at the allegiance black Briton felt towards 

the Empire. “The negro [sic] is almost pathetically loyal to the British Empire and he is always 

proud to proclaim himself a Briton. 10 The seaport riots highlighted contested meanings of 

national identity: black British sailors protested about the employment of foreign white sailors; 

white sailors (including foreign-born) campaigned and rioted against the employment of black 

African, African-Caribbean, Arab, Chinese, and South Asian sailors, many of whom were British. 

The broad concept of British identity can be summed up in the phrase “civis Britannicus 

sum. This notion was derived from the Latin phrase “civis Romanus sum. Not everyone 

in the Roman Empire held citizenship: it was a privilege enjoyed only by a few (and could 

be inherited, merited, or won after long service). Many Roman citizens lived hundreds 

of miles from the city but still claimed the privileges of their status. In the British Empire, 

the phrase came to denote the rights and residence privileges of all British subjects under 

the British crown no matter where they lived. The rights given to British subjects were 

built on the confidence and feeling that subject status was an honour bestowed by British 

rule, it allowed any British subject right of entry into Britain. This status was reinforced 

in law in 1914 in the British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act which stated: “Any person 

born within His Majesty’s Dominions and allegiance [is] …a natural born British subject. 11 



Anxieties 

concerning 

class, public 

health, moral 

codes and 

above all, 

national 

identity were 

projected onto 

immigrants and 

minorities 

Despite the existence of such legislation, the possession 

of an empire led not to an inclusive, but to an exclusive notion of 

British national identity. According to Colley, the feeling of dominance 

over subject peoples permeated throughout metropolitan 

British society.12 In her influential essay on “Britishness and 

Otherness Colley described this feeling succinctly “… we usually 

decide who we are by reference to who and what we are not.13 

At times, Britishness was equated with possessing a white skin. 

During the seaport riots distinctions were frequently drawn between 

the rights of “British” on the one hand and black or more often “coloured”, 

sailors on the other. These distinctions were made by individuals 

across the social spectrum including white rioters, members of the 

police forces in the riot ports, trades unionists, magistrates and lawyers 

during riot trials and also in the press. Britishness was “colour” coded, 

and only grudgingly and infrequently were the rights of black British 

subjects recognised and considered, usually in the lip service paid to the 

notion of “white Britishers first, next, black Britishers, last of all aliens.” 

A study conducted in 1918 revealed strong “race” prejudice 

within British society. This prejudice was not based on hostility as 

a result of personal contact with black British colonial subjects but 

from the broad process of imperialism which brought the prejudices 

of colonial administrators and travellers back to the metropole.14 

Hence, British feelings of superiority over subject peoples were already 

well established by the time of the 1919 seaport riots. However, 

the recent experience of the First World War brought many 

native white people into first or extended contact with black colonial 

British subjects who came to Britain in their many thousands as 

workers, soldiers and sailors. The presence of black British troops 

and workers failed to alter popular one-dimensional perceptions of 

Britishness. Rose has made the point that “British identity” became 

more sharply defined in times of war. “War exaggerates the significance 

of the nation as a source and object of identity.”15 Kushner and 

Ceserani have also noted that anti-alien sentiment was exacerbated 

by participation in war. “Anxieties concerning class, public health, 

moral codes and above all, national identity were projected onto immigrants 

and minorities.”16 Into the mid-twentieth century similar 

arguments about Britishness and national identity were rehearsed 

during the August 1947 riots in which British Jewish populations were 



attacked.17 Kathleen Paul has also written about constructions of national identity in relation 

to post-Second World War immigration to Britain. According to Paul a hierarchy of Britishness 

was created in which white Britons enjoyed a unique status; with black and South Asian Britons 

from the empire/Commonwealth regarded as possessing a different (lesser) British identity.18 

Research into the issue of British national identity is linked to the broader study of imperial 

inter-connectedness, with the relationship between colony and metropole subject to much 

scrutiny. The notion of such inter-connectedness was developed by French West Indian writer 

Franz Fanon who stated that empire building affected not only the colonised but also the colonisers.19 

Issues of citizenship, national identity and equality were subsumed into the wider 

dichotomy between colonisers and colonised. For Catherine Hall this relationship was a power 

struggle: “The relations between colony and metropole were relations of power.”20 Given 

the ethnic make up of Britain’s empire (in 1919 an estimated 100 million of the empires total 

population of 550 million were white),21 such a notion became “colour” coded: in war and in 

peace, imperial subjects with dark skin pigmentation were less well regarded than were white 

colonials. According to Hall: “Metropolis and colonies, nation and empire, were demarcated by 

racially defined difference: some races, it was thought, were more advanced than others.” 22 

The transfer of imperial power relations into the British merchant shipping industry led ship 

owners to: “… extend colonial levels of control and exploitation to workers in the metropole.” 

23 Black colonial workers serving in the merchant navy during and after the war were almost 

inevitably placed in a subordinate position. According to Tabili’s study of “workers and racial 

difference” : “… the few thousand Black seamen living in Britain were only the most visible of a 

global and multiracial colonized population whose labor sustained Britain’s imperial power.” 24 

Colonial connections and power relationships were highlighted too, in the names of some 

of the black people involved in the seaport riots. In Glasgow, two West Africans charged with 

rioting shared the common name of “Tom Friday”, meanwhile “Sunny John” was found not 

guilty of assault and riot charges in Liverpool. In Newport, five brothers from Sierra Leone, all of 

whom were ship’s firemen were each called “Tom Savage”. The identical names, and indeed, 

the surname “Savage”, evoke the slave trading and paternalistic missionary past of coastal West 

Africa.An expanding empire and healthy global trading links brought black sailors in increased 

numbers into the metropole in the decades up to the First World War. Yet by 1919 the position 

was altered. Britain’s empire was shaken by the war and the end of the conflict brought incipient 

decline of the merchant shipping industry. Together these events combined to make the 

outbreak of the seaport riots a cause of grave concern in both colonial and metropolitan Britain. 

In 1919 the British Empire was simultaneously expanding with the annexation of former German 

colonies in Africa and at the same time fragile; as the declaration of martial law in Egypt and 

the deaths of close to 400 political protesters at the hands of the British army under General 

Dyer at the Amritsar temple in India demonstrated. According to May and Cohen “… at home 

many observers pointed out that racial disturbances in England [sic] would have serious re- 



“I am seriously 

concerned at 

the continued 

disturbances 

due to racial ill 

feeling against 

coloured men 

in our large 

sea ports. 

These riots are 

serious enough 

from the point 

of view of the 

maintenance 

of order in this 

country, but 

they are even 

more serious 

in regard to 

their possible 

effect in the 

colonies…‟ 

Colonial 

Secretary Lord 

Milner 

percussions for the European presence in the colonized world” 25 

In the Caribbean, British governors were acutely aware of the 

potential challenge to colonial rule posed by increasing black political 

awareness, especially when it was combined with the return of 

disaffected repatriated black Britons and ex- service personnel following 

the seaport riots. In the metropole, Colonial Secretary Lord 

Milner expressed similar anxiety: “I am seriously concerned at the 

continued disturbances due to racial ill feeling against coloured men 

in our large sea ports. These riots are serious enough from the point 

of view of the maintenance of order in this country, but they are even 

more serious in regard to their possible effect in the colonies...” 26 

British newspaper editorials also expressed a fear that the seaport 

riots could provoke disorder among the overwhelming black majority 

in the colonies. The South Wales Daily News noted that since Britain’s 

post-war obligations “to the dark races” were in the process of extension 

via mandate under the Treaty of Versailles: “it is all the more 

necessary to insist upon fair play and equal treatment to everyman, 

whatever his colour…”. 27 This viewpoint was persuasively stated in an 

editorial in the Liverpool Daily Post and Mercury on 11 June 1919: Careful 

and commonsense handling of the “colour” disturbances is necessary 

if what at present is little more than a local disorder is not to develop 

into a serious Imperial problem. There would be infinite possibilities of 

mischief if any idea gained ground in India and Africa that the isolated 

conduct of riotous mobs represented the prevailing British attitude 

towards the black members of the Empire who are in our midst. 28 

Some of the more sympathetic white public reactions to the plight 

of black people attacked during the riots also revealed a deeper concern 

for the future of the imperial/colonial relationship. Perhaps predictably, 

white-dominated Christian and humanitarian groups were prominent 

in expressing these sentiments. Local Anglican clerics raised the 

possible imperial repercussions of the rioting in a letter to Liverpool 

corporation (council) in July 1919: “the racial riots, [are] … a blot upon 

the fair name of the city, and a danger to the commonwealth at large… 

calculated to hinder the progress of Christ’s kingdom at home and 

abroad.” 29 John H. Harris, organising secretary of the Anti-Slavery 

and Aborigines” Protection Society, demonstrated Britain’s imperial inter-connectedness 

in an interview conducted at the height of the port 



ioting: You cannot prevent the black man from coming here, because this is the centre of his 

empire. You could no more tell him that he must not come to London, Liverpool or Cardiff than 

he has the right to tell you that you must not go to Lagos or Durban or Johannesburg. 30 Neil 

Evans has perceptively described this as the “we are here because you are there viewpoint. 31 

The rioting around Britain’s major sea ports led to feelings of metropolitan betrayal and unrewarded 

wartime “blood sacrifice” among Britain’s black colonial population. London-based 

black political organisation, the Society of Peoples African Origin (SPAO) and its newspaper, 

the African Telegraph, edited by Felix E.M. Hercules strongly voiced such sentiments. On 14 

June 1919, the SPAO staged a meeting in London’s Hyde Park in protest against the riots. A 

leaflet was circulated entitled “Has the African any Friends?” Addressing the crowd, Hercules, 

also the society’s general secretary, emphasised the common British identity of black 

and white workers. 32 Hercules was not averse to dabbling in the populist xenophobic views 

towards aliens demonstrated so forcibly in the anti-alien rioting of the war years. He blamed 

unidentified white foreigners for dividing white and black workers. The British workingman is 

being used as a tool by alien agitators. There are in this country dangerous foreigners well 

supplied with money and they are plotting the downfall of the British Empire. To do that 

they are trying to sew dissension between the British workingman and Black Britishers. 33 

Similar xenophobic views were also held by individual black British residents. An unnamed 

African Caribbean resident in Glasgow questioned: “why [should] aliens who had 

done nothing for the country remain here and peaceable British subjects be forced to 

go? 34 SPAO protest against the treatment of black people in the heart of the metropole 

reached a peak in July 1919 when the government decided not to allow black troops 

to take part in London’s victory celebrations: the “Peace March” of 19 July 1919. Hercules 

drew parallels between this decision and the government’s attitude during the riots: In 

the face of official silence on the absence of black troops, and the suppiness of the Imperial 

Government during the recent race riots, we can only conclude that it is the policy 

of His Majesty’s Ministers to ignore the services of the black subjects of the Empire. 35 

The resentment of black colonial subjects against their post-war treatment in Britain 

and growing displeasure about the uneven imperial relationship was expressed in 

a letter by a long-time black resident of Glasgow to the press at the height of the summer 

1919 riots. The letter was published in several local newspapers. It provides further 

insight into the reactions of middle class black colonials living in Britain to the rioting. 

“We, the members of the African Races Association of Glasgow, view with regret the recent 

racial riots in different parts of Britain, and resent the unwarrantable attacks that have been 

made upon men of colour, without exception as one common herd of inferior beings… Did not 

some of these men fight on the same battlefields with white men to defeat the enemy and make 



secure the British Empire? Why can’t they work now in the same factories with white men? Did 

they not run the risks of losing their lives by the submarine warfare in bringing food for white 

women and children in common with white men? Is the treatment meted out to them now compatible 

with the British teaching of justice and equity, or is it an exhibition of British gratitude? ” 36 

The letter was signed by Leo W. Daniels, secretary of the African Races Association of 

Glasgow (ARAG). Daniels, an African Canadian who had lived in Glasgow since 1886, was 

joined on the ARAG committee by representatives from British colonies in West Africa and the 

Caribbean. The Association membership consisted mainly of professionals and students. 37 

The ARAG, like the SPAO represented a black intellectual response to the rioting. Evans 

has noted that working class black and “Arab” Britons also attempted to use their British 

identity as a means of defence during the riots. In south Wales colonial service personnel 

wore their military uniforms in an attempt to deter potential white attacks. At the funeral of 

Mohamed Abdullah, a victim of the Cardiff riots, a Union flag was draped over the coffin. 38 

The feeling of British national identity under threat was made clear by a group of 44 Jamaican 

sailors repatriated in the wake of the port rioting. In August 1919, they petitioned Acting 

Governor, Colonel Bryan, to express anger at their ill-treatment while in Britain and to request 

financial redress for losses they had suffered. “.. We feel aggrieved at our ill-treatment by the 

white people of Great Britain, they like ourselves being British and we forming an integral part 

of the British empire… this being so our constitutional rights and privileges were attacked…” 39 

In June 1919, various black and “Arab” residents of Cardiff formed a common bond. In 

the midst of the rioting, they held a joint meeting to discuss the attacks upon them: “A 

meeting was held at Cardiff docks yesterday of Arabs, Somalis, Egyptians, West Indians 

and other coloured races, to protest against the treatment to which they are being 

subjected. It was pointed out that they had done nothing to originate the disturbances.... 

They claim that as British subjects, they are entitled to protection, and a resolution 

was passed calling upon the Government to take measures with this end. 40 A few days 

later, at the funeral of Mohammed Abdullah, thirteen “Arabs” attended at the graveside, 

while several hundred “Negroes of all types participated in the general service.” 41 

The notion of a common identity was not necessarily shared among all British colonial subjects. 

There were instances when colonial Britons fought each other in Britain’s seaports for privileged 

access to employment opportunities. On several occasions in the early twentieth century 

groups of black sailors brawled among themselves for berths on merchant ships and black 

British sailors also turned on Chinese sailors who they believed threatened their livelihood.42 

During the 1919 riots a letter from a “Barbados Negro” published in the Newport local press 

sought to differentiate between African Caribbeans and West Africans in terms of the violence in 



the ports. The author branded “ignorant” West Africans as the trouble makers. “There is as much 

difference between West Indians and West Africans as chalk and cheese... We are accustomed 

to living in houses in the West [sic] not grass huts; neither did we come to England to learn the use 

of a knife and fork” 43 The debate regarding cultural differences between African Caribbeans 

and West Africans was also raised in Glasgow by an African Caribbean caller to the office of local 

newspaper the Evening Times during the summer seaport riots.44 Similar rivalry between the 

African and African Caribbean intelligentsia was displayed in the inter-war years, when it was 

a contentious topic among West African and African Caribbean student groups in Britain.45 

In both metropole and colony in 1919 black workers challenged prevailing notions of British 

identity and undermined the view of black people as powerless in the imperial relationship. 

This was most forcibly demonstrated in the resort to riot of repatriated black sailors in the 

West Indies which had a discernible impact on imperial government policy on wages in the 

Caribbean. In metropolitan Britain, black colonial subjects contested the existing balance of 

power in the relationship between coloniser and colonised by their actions in travelling to 

Britain for work; in their membership of sailors unions (and, indeed, the formation of specific 

unions for black sailors); in their demands for true recognition of their wartime efforts; 

and even in battles between colonial racialised minority ethnic groups for jobs. Yet, despite 

fierce resistance from black rioters to police intervention evident in rioting in Liverpool and 

Salford and also the outbreak of post-war riots in the Caribbean, the relationship between 

coloniser and colonised, as that of employer and employee, remained a largely unequal one. 

Urban riots similar in several respects to the British seaport riots took place elsewhere 

around what has come to be termed the “black Atlantic” as both France and North America 

experienced waves of violence during and immediately following the First World War. 

For Gilroy, the “black Atlantic” is an all-encompassing phrase which describes the area of 

enforced settlement of Africans through slavery; the colonial process and the reflective cultures 

and consciousness of European settlers and the Africans they enslaved and re-settled; 

and also the inter-actions between subsequent groups of colonisers and the colonised.46 

The black sailors embroiled in the riots in some respects exemplify Gilroy’s notion of the “black 

Atlantic” as they criss-crossed the ocean experiencing the competing and complementary cultures 

and pressures of life in colonial and metropolitan Britain. Participation in the First World War 

re-enforced the notion of the “black Atlantic” as troops from British and French colonial Africa 

and the Caribbean enlisted to defend their empires alongside African Americans and black British 

volunteers. The war also brought British imperial subjects, French colonial citizens and African 

Americans to metropolitan Europe, in large numbers at the same time for common purposes. 

There was awareness among the black intelligentsia of these overlapping identities. 

For example, in African Caribbean Claude McKay’s 1929 novel Banjo: a sto- 



y without a plot, a Nigerian character named Taloufa was caught up in the Cardiff 

seaport riot. McKay portrayed Taloufa as an archetypal black colonial subject. 

Educated at a British mission school in Nigeria, he was taken to Britain as a servant “boy” 

by a British civil servant when aged thirteen. He then worked for three years in the Midlands as 

a servant before tiring of his existence and running away to Cardiff. Taloufa worked out of the 

port as a ship’s boy: “he was there during the riots of 1919 between colored and whites, and he 

got a brick wound in the head. He went to America after the riots and jumped his ship there.” 

47 Taloufa”s life and experience in Africa, Britain and America was the fictional embodiment 

of a “black Atlantic” experience, with a hint of a twentieth century triangular slave trade thrown 

in. McKay may well have based his fictional account of Taloufa’s life and the experience of the 

Cardiff rioting on incidents that he had heard while working in Britain as a journalist in 1919. 

In almost every urban metropolitan setting where riots broke out during and after the 

First World War, black people had arrived in increased numbers and, of necessity, competed 

with working class white people for jobs and housing. In these international riot episodes, 

black troops, civilians and wartime workers became the focus for wartime and post war dissatisfaction 

among sections of the urban white working class. Evans, in his article on the 

“Red Summers of 1917-1919” has described the 1919 rioting in Britain and elsewhere 

in the Atlantic basin as the “… pinnacle of a period of intensified racial conflicts 

across the north Atlantic world which was rooted in the established patterns 

of migration but which was brought to a head by the First World War.” 48 

The summer 1917 riots in France were a product of “war weariness” among white subjects 

who accused colonial workers and troops of enjoying life in metropolitan France while 

white French soldiers were sent to the front. 49 A similar viewpoint was expressed by 

white British crowds and in the press during the seaport riots. The comparison between the 

French and British rioting can be taken further with respect to “official” responses towards 

colonial workers in the metropole. Horne’s study of immigrant workers in France during the 

First World War revealed that tensions between governors and the governed in the colonies 

were replicated in mainland France. “The internal frontiers of colonialism… between white 

and native… were for the first time transported from the colonies to metropolitan France.” 

Assumptions of the childlike and dependent status of the colonials characterized their 

distinctive treatment by officials, as did the need to maintain certain barriers. 50 A similar 

pattern can be detected in the relationships between British black colonials and government 

departmental representatives before, during and after the seaport riots. Wartime population 

shifts lay behind the American rioting of 1919. According to Segal’s 1960s work on racist 

violence: “white labour in the North, reacting strongly to Negro encroachments on the 

city slums and industrial plants, barred Negro workers from the unions and agitated for their 



dismissal from the more desirable jobs that the labour shortage of the war years had allowed 

them.” 51 In Chicago, which witnessed the most serious American riot of that year, 

an increased black population caused pressure on segregated leisure facilities. A black 

person swimming in a beach resort area designated for white bathers was killed by a rock 

thrown by a white. The precipitating cause of the Chicago riot was the racist police response 

to this event. A white police officer refused to arrest the person alleged to have 

thrown the rock, while he later arrested a black person at the behest of a white local. 52 

The emphasis on the cultural dimension of shared identities and common experiences 

among black people in the “black Atlantic” world provides a valuable addition to the debate 

on identity and the inter-connectedness of colonial and metropolitan experience. The 

international framework of shared experience and the outbreak of collective protest occasioned 

by world war forms a wider perspective in which to place the outbreak of the seaport 

riots in Britain. This methodological approach is most useful in discussions on repatriation 

and the international consequences of the port riots in chapter six. However, this theory 

does not overturn the argument that the 1919 seaport riots were underpinned by economic 

and social pressures. As Stovall has noted, some historians have contested this cultural approach 

to “race” rioting: “the stress on the subjective, culturally driven character of racial 

violence has not remained unchallenged, however, as some scholars have re-emphasized 

the important, if not exclusive, role of material conditions in generating racial conflict.” 53 



From resistance to rebellion : a 

journey through photographs 

The West African Students Union developed out of the activities of earlier student organizations such as the 

Union of Students of African Descent and the Nigeria Progress Union, established by Ladipo Solanke and Amy 

Ashwood Garvey in London in July 1924. It was in London August 1925 by Ladipo Solanke and Herbert Bankole-Bright, 

a member of the National Congress of British West Africa, the West African Students’ Union (WASU) 

became the key political, social and cultural organisation for West Africans in Britain and the main African organisation 

in the country for over thirty years) 



Right : An appeal for funding support from the International African 

Friends of Ethiopia, 1935 (Courtesy of the Modern Records Centre, 

University of Warwick) 

Middle left : Middle Right : 

Bottom spread : Meeting of the International African Friends of Ethiopia, 

London, 1935, A photograph of people on the platform at a meeting of 

the International African Friends of Ethiopia in Trafalgar Square, taken 

by Tomlin 

(Courtesy of Daily Herald Archive) 



PHOTOs : 

Top left Sir Oswald Mosley 

being saluted by his followers, 

London, October 1936. 

Photograph: Bettmann 

Top right : Dr Harold Moody’s 

League of Coloured Peoples 

(LCP) was founded in 1931 to 

focus on the needs of African, 

Caribbean and Asian people 

here in Britain. The LCP executive 

had amongst its most 

active and prominent members, 

the West Indian activist 

and poet, Una Marson, W. 

Arthur Lewis, cricketer, Learie 

Constantine, Indian solicitor, 

R.S. Nehra, Robin Rutman, 

from Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) 

Middle left : Madan Lal Dhingra 

shot Sir Curzon-Wyllie on 1st 

July 1909. at India House, 

London. 

Right: Amy Ashwood Garvey 

moved to London and 

established the Florence 

Mills Nightclub, a popular 

meeting place for the city’s 

black intellectuals. Ten years 

later in 1945, Ashwood helped 

organize the 5th Pan-African 

Congress which met in 

Manchester, England. 

Bottom : 5th Pan African 

conference chaired by 

Ashwood Garvey, was held in 

Manchester in 1945 



PHOTOS 

Above : Daily Mail reports on 

the arrival of people from the 

Carribean, April 29th, 1954 

Above right : Nottingham 1955 

: Following the ongoing dispute 

to stop of the colour bar to 

prevent black workers from 

dirving bus in the city, the City 

Council Transport commitee 

came to a agreement to partially 

lift the colour bar. 

Middle left : newspaper 

clipping from Nottng Hill 1958 

right : In 1958 Colin Jordan 

established the White Defence 

League (WDL). in the Notting 

Hill area of London in 1956. 

The WDL flooded London 

with anti-immigration leaflets 

and posters, introducing the 

slogan, ‘Keep Britain White!’ to 

British street politics - abbreviated 

to the initials ‘KBW’, the 

slogan appeared across London 

painted on walls, bridges 

and other structures. 

Right : Boston Din (from 

Pakistan) was 26, living in St 

Annes, Nottingham in 1958, 

and was labelled by the press 

as ‘the man alleged to have 

sparked the first 

Notitngham race riots’.’ 

Bottom Right : Guardian 

report about Nottingham riots, 

25 August 1958 

Bottom right : Nottingham Evening 

news reports on the visit 

of Norman Manley to the city 

of Notitngham after riots. 



PHOTOs : 

Top left Demonstration 

against the 1962 Immigration 

Bill, with Vishnu Sharma (fifth 

from left) 

right : Bristol Bus boycott April 

1963 

Middle left :Coordinaton Committee 

Against Racial Discrimnation 

(CCARD) was a federation 

of immigrant organisaiotns 

in Birmingham. Established by 

Jagmohan Joshi in 1961 it was 

sponsored by IWA, Pakistani 

Workers Assoicaitons, Birmingham 

University Socialists 

and the West Indian Workers 

Association. This image from a 

demonstration in Birmingham 

in Sep 1961. 

Middle right : Photograph of 

a demonstration against the 

Colour Bar Immigration Bill in 

Trafalgar Square. The demonstration 

was organised by the 

Movement for Colonial Freedom, 

and was attended by Dr. 

Orbach, John Stonehouse MP, 

Laurence Parvitt MP, Mr. Pitt, 

Mr. Qureshi secretary of the 

Pakistani Welfare Association, 

Ratta Singh president of the 

Indian Workers Association 

and Claudia Jones editor of 

the West Indian Gazette. 

Left : In April 1968, on the very 

same day that the 

dockers and porters marched 

in support of Powell, 

representatives from more 

than fifty organisations came 

together to form the Black 

People’s Alliance (BPA), a 

‘militant front for black 

consciousness and against 

racialism’. 



Above left: The Imperial Typewriters 

strike on the summer 

of 1974, South Asian workers 

went on an unofficial strike 

and had little support from 

the TGWU. The strike lasted 

from May to August 1974 and 

can be seen as a low point in 

the relations between black 

and white workers Above 

right : ritain’s first Black Power 

organisation and the precursor 

to the Black Unity and 

Freedom Party, 

Middle left : The Brixton Black 

Women’s Group was started 

by Olive Morris and other 

women who had been active in 

the Black Panther Movement. 

The Group was formed to address 

the specific issues faced 

by Black women, and to offer 

advice and support, 

Right : BPFM newspaper from 

1972 supporting Pakistani 

workers in Crepe Sizes ltd, 

Nottingham 

Right : From the trial of the 

Mangrove Nine. In the tenth 

week flyers were created to 

build awareness around the 

case. 

Bottom Right : Grassroots 

covering the Spaghetti House 

seige, 1975. Laer, the police 

raided the printers of 

Grassroots and the houses of 

BLF members, including those 

in which they had housed 

homeless youths, where two of 

the accused had stayed. 



From Resistance 

to Rebellion 

Reproduced courtesy of the Institute of Race Relations, publisher of Race & Class, 

Vol XXIII, nos 2/3 1981 

On 25 June 1940 Udham Singh was hanged. At a meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society and the East India 

Association at Caxton Hall, London, he had shot dead Sir Michael O’Dwyer, who (as the Lieutenant 

Governor of the Punjab) had presided over the massacre of unarmed peasants and workers at 

Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar, in 1919. Udham was a skilled electrician, an active trade unionist and a delegate to the 

local trades council, and, in 1938, had initiated the setting up of the first Indian Workers’ Association, in Coventry. 

In October 1945 at Chorlton Town Hall in Manchester the fifth Pan-African Congress, breaking with its earlier 

reformism, pledged itself to fight for the ‘absolute and complete independence’ of the colonies and an end to 

imperialism, if need be through Gandhian methods of passive resistance. Among the delegates then resident 

in Britain were Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, George Padmore, Wallace-Johnson, C.L.R. James and Ras 

Makonnen. W.E.B. DuBois, who had founded the Pan-African Congress in America in 1917, presided. In September 

1975 three young West Indians held up a Knightsbridge restaurant for the money that would help set up 

proper schools for the black community, finance black political groups and assist the liberation struggles in Africa. 

Of such strands have black struggles in Britain been woven. But their pattern was set on the loom of British racism. 



In the early period of post-war reconstruction, when Britain, like all European powers, was desperate for labour, 

racialism operated on a free market basis — adjusting itself to the ordinary laws of supply and demand. So that 

in the sphere of employment, where too many jobs were seeking too few workers as the state itself had acknowledged 

in the Nationality Act of 1948 — racialism did not debar black people from work per se. It operated 

instead to deskill them, to keep their wages down and to segregate them in the dirty, ill-paid jobs that white 

workers did not want — not on the basis of an avowed racialism but in the habit of an acceptable exploitation. 

In the sphere of housing, where too many people were seeking too few houses, racialism operated more directly 

to keep blacks out of the housing market and to herd them into decaying inner city areas. And here the 

racialism was more overt and sanctioned by society. ‘For the selection of tenants’, wrote Ruth Glass scathingly, 

‘is regarded as being subject solely to the personal discretion of the landlord. It is understood that it is his privilege 

to bar Negroes, Sikhs, Jews, foreigners in general, cockneys, socialists, dogs or any other species which he wants to 

keep away. The recruitment of workers, however, in both state and private enterprises is a question of public policy 

— determined explicitly or implicitly by agreements between trade unions, employers’ associations and government. 

As a landlord, Mr. Smith can practice discrimination openly; as an employer, he must at least disguise it. In the sphere of 

housing, tolerance is a matter of private initiative; in the sphere of employment, it is in some respects ‘nationalised.’ (1) 

That same racialism operated under the twee name of colour bar in the pubs and clubs and bars and 

dance-halls to keep black people out. In schooling, there were too few black children to cause a problem: 

the immigrants, predominantly male and single, had not come to settle. The message that was generally 

percolating through to the children of the mother country was that it was their labour that was 

wanted, not their presence. Racialism it would appear, could reconcile that contradiction on its own — without 

state interference, laissez-faire, drawing on the traditions of Britain’s slave and colonial centuries. 

The black response was halting at first. Both Afro-Caribbean’s and Asians, each in their own way, found it difficult 

to come to terms with such primitive prejudice and to deal with such fine hypocrisy. The West Indians, who, by and 

large, came from a working-class background -- they were mostly skilled craftsmen at this time — found it particularly 

difficult to accept their debarment from pubs and clubs and dance-halls (or to put up with the plangent racialism of 

the churches and/or their congregations). Fights broke out — and inevitably the police took the side of the whites. 

Gradually the West Indians began to set up their own clubs and churches and welfare associations or met in barbers’ 

shops and cafes and on street comers, as they were would do back home. The Indians and Pakistanis, on the 

other hand, were mostly rural folk and found their social life more readily in their temples and mosques and cultural 

associations. Besides, it was through these and the help of elders that the non-English speaking Asian workers could 

find jobs and accommodation, get their official forms filled in, locate their kinsmen or find their way around town. 

In the area of work, too, resistance to racialism took the form of ad hoc responses to specific situations 

grounded in tradition. Often those responses were individualistic and uncoordinated, especially as between 

the communities —- since Asians were generally employed in factories, foundries and textile mills, while recruitment 

of Afro-Caribbean’s was concentrated in the service industries (transport, health and hotels). And 

even among these, there were ‘ethnic jobs’, like in the Bradford textile industry, and, often, ‘ethnic shifts. 



A racial division of labour (continued more from Britain’s colonial past than inaugurated in post-war Britain) kept the 

Asian and Afro-Caribbean workers apart and provided little ground for common struggle. Besides, the black workforce 

at this time, though concentrated in certain labour processes and areas of work, was not in absolute terms 

a large one — with West Indians outnumbering Indians and Pakistanis. Hence, the resistance to racial abuse and 

discrimination on the shop floor was more spontaneous than organised — but both individual and collective. Some 

workers left their jobs and went and found other work. Others just downed tools and walked away. On one occasion 

a Jamaican driver, incensed by the racialism around him, just left his bus in the High Street and walked off. (It was a 

tradition that reached back to his slave ancestry and would reach forward to his children.) But there were also efforts 

at collective action on the factory floor. Often these took the form of petitions and appeals regarding working 

conditions, facilities, even wages but unsupported by their white fellows, they had little effect. On occasions, there 

were attempts to form associations, if not unions, on the shop floor. In 1951, for instance, skilled West Indians in an 

ordnance factory in Merseyside (Liverpool) met secretly in the lavatories and wash rooms to form a West Indian 

Association which would take up cases of discrimination. But the employers soon found out and they were driven to 

hold their meetings in a neighbouring barber’s shop — from which point the association became more community 

oriented. Similarly, in 1953 Indian workers in Coventry formed an association and named it (in the memory of Udham 

Singh) the Indian Workers’ Association. But these early organisations generally ended up as social and welfare associations. 

The Merseyside West Indian Association, for instance. went through a period of vigorous political activity — 

taking up cases of discrimination and the cause of colonial freedom — but even as it grew in numbers and out of its 

barber’s shop premises and into the white run Stanley House, it faded into inter-racial social activity and oblivion. (2) 

Discrimination in housing met with a community response from the outset: it was not, after all, a problem that 

was susceptible to individual solutions. Denied decent housing (or sometimes any housing at all), both Asians 

and Afro-Caribbean’s’ took to pooling their savings till they were sizeable enough to purchase property. The 

Asians operated through an extended family system or ‘mortgage clubs’ and bought short lease properties which 

they would rent to their kinsfolk and countrymen. Similarly, the West Indians operated a ‘pardner’ (Jamaican) or 

‘sou-sou’ (Trinidadian) system, whereby a group of people would pool their savings and lend out a lump sum to 

each individual in turn. Thus, their savings circulated among their communities and did not go into the banks or 

building societies to be lent out to white folk. It was a sort of primitive banking system engendered by tradition 

and enforced by racial discrimination. Of course, the prices the immigrants had to pay for the house and the interest 

rates charged by the sources that were prepared to lend to them forced them into overcrowding and multi 

occupation, invoking not only further racial stereotyping but, in later years, the rigours of the Public Health Act. 

Thus, it was around housing principally, but through traditional cultural and welfare associations 

and groups, that black self organisation and self reliance grew, unifying the perspective 

communities. It was strength that was to stand them in good stead in the struggles to come. 

There was another area. too, where such organisation was significant — and offered up a different unity: the area 

of anti-colonial struggle. There had always been overseas students’ association — African, Asian, Caribbean — but 

in the period before the First World War these were mostly in the nature of friendship councils, social clubs or debating 

unions. But after that war and with the ‘race riots’ of 1919 (in Liverpool. London, Cardiff, Hull and other port 

areas where West African and lascar seamen had earlier settled) still fresh in their mind, West African students 



formed the West African Students’ Union in 1925, with the explicit aim of opposing race prejudice and colonialism. 

It was followed in 1931 by the predominantly West Indian, League of Coloured Peoples. This was headed by 

an ardent Christian, Dr Harold Moody, and devoted to ‘the welfare of coloured peoples in all parts of the world’ 

and to ‘the improvement of relations between the races’. But its journal. Keys, investigated and exposed cases 

of racial discrimination and in 1935, when ‘colonial seamen and their families’, especially in Cardiff, were being 

subjected to great economic hardship because of their colour, indicted ‘the Trade Union, the Police and the 

Shipowners’ of ‘cooperating smoothly in barring coloured Colonial Seamen from signing on ships in Cardiff’. (3) 

The connections — between colonialism and racialism, between black students and black workers — 

were becoming clearer, the campaigns more coordinated. And to this was added militancy when in 

1937 a group of black writers and activists — including C.L.R. James. Wallace-Johnson, George Padmore, 

Jomo Kenyatta and Ras Makonnen — got together to form the International African Service Bureau. 

In 1944, the Bureau merged into the Pan-African Federation to become the British section of the 

Pan-African Congress Movement. From the outset, the Bureau (and then the Federation) was uncompromising 

in its demand for ‘democratic rights, civil liberties and self-determination’ for all subject peoples. 

As the Second World War drew to a close and India’s fight for Swaraj stepped up, the movement for colonial 

freedom gathered momentum. Early in 1945 Asian, Africans and West Indians living in Britain came together in a 

Subject Peoples’ Conference. Already in February that year, the Pan African Federation, taking advantage of the 

presence of colonial delegates at the World Trade Union Conference, had invited them to a meeting at which the 

idea of another Pan-African Congress was mooted. Accordingly, in October 1945 the Fifth Pan-African Congress 

met in Manchester and, inspired by the Indian struggle for independence, forswore all “gradualist aspirations’ 

and pledged itself to ‘the liquidation of colonialism and imperialism’. Nkrumah, Kenyatta, Padmore, James — 

they were names that were to crop up again (and again) in the history of anti-racist and anti-imperialist struggle. 

Three years later India was free and the colonies of Africa and the Caribbean in ferment. By now, there was 

hardly an Afro-Caribbean association in Britain which did not espouse the cause of colonial independence 

and of black struggle generally. Asian immigrants, however, were past independence (so to speak) and the 

various Indian Leagues and Workers Associations which had earlier taken up the cause of swaraj had wound 

down. In their place rose Indian Workers’ Associations (the name was a commemoration of the past) concerned 

with immigrant issues and problems in Britain, though still identifying with political parties back home, 

the Communist Party and Congress in particular. So that two broad strands begin to emerge in IWA politics: one 

stressing social and welfare work and the other trade union and political activity -- though not exclusively so. 

In sum, the anti-racialist and anti-colonial struggle of this period was beginning to break down island and 

ethnic affiliations and associations and to re-form them in terms of the immediate realities of social and racial 

relations, engendering in the process strong community bases for the shop floor battles to come. But 

different interests predicated different unities and a different racialism engendered different though similar 

organisational impulses. There was no one unity — or two or three — but a mosaic of unities. However, 

as the colonies began to be free and the immigrants to become settled and the state to sanction and insti- 



tute racial discrimination, and thereby provide the breeding ground for fascism, the mosaic of unities and organisations 

would resolve itself into a more holistic, albeit shifting, pattern of black unity and black struggle. 

By 1955 the first wave of immigration had begun to taper off: a mild recession had set in and (he demand for 

labour had begun to drop (though London Transport was still recruiting skilled labour from Barbados in 1956). 

Left to itself, immigration from the West Indies was merely following the demand for labour; immigration from 

the Indian subcontinent, especially after the restrictions placed on it by the Indian and Pakistani governments 

in 1955 was now more sluggish. But racialism was hotting up and there were calls for immigration control, not 

least in the House of Commons. There had always been the occasional call more for political reasons than economic; 

now the economy provided the excuse for politics. Pressure was also building up on the right. The loss 

of India and the impending loss of the Caribbean and Africa had spelt the end of empire and the decline of 

Britain as a great power. All that was left of the colonial enterprise was the ideology of racial superiority; it was 

something to fall back on. Mosley’s pre-war British Union of Fascists was now revived as the Union Movement 

and was matched for race hatred by a rash of other organisations: A.K. Chesterton’s League of Empire Loyalists, 

Colin Jordan’s White Defence League, John Bean’s National Labour Party, Andrew Fountaine’s British National 

Party. And in the twilight area, between these and the right wing of the Tory Party, various societies for 

‘racial preservation’ were beginning to sprout. Racial attacks became a regular part of immigrant life in Britain. 

More serious clashes occurred intermittently in London and several provincial cities. And in 1954, in a small street 

of terraced houses in Camden Town [London], racial warfare was waged for two days, culminating in a petrol 

bomb attack on the house of a West Indian. (4) Finally, in August 1958 large-scale riots broke out in Nottingham 

and were soon followed in Netting Hill (London), where teddyboys, directed by the Mosleyites and the White 

Defence League, had for weeks gone on a jamboree of “nigger-hunting’ under the watchful eye of the police. 

The blacks struck back, and even moderate organisations like the Committee of African Organisations, having 

failed to obtain ‘adequate unbiased police protection’, pledged to organise their own defence. The courts, in 

the person of a Jewish judge, Lord Justice Salmon, made amends by sending down nine teddyboys and establishing 

the right of ‘everyone. irrespective of the colour of their skin... to walk through our streets with 

their heads erect and free from fear’. He also noted that the teddy-boys’ actions had ‘filled the whole nation 

with horror, indignation and disgust’. It was to prove the last time when such a claim could be made on behalf 

of the nation. Less than a year later a West Indian carpenter, Kelso Cochrane, was stabbed to death on 

the streets of Notting Hill. The police failed to find the killer. It was to prove the first of many such failures. 

The stage was set for immigration control. But the economy was beginning to recover and the Treasury was known 

to be anxious about the prospect of losing a beneficial supply of extra labour for an economy in a state of expansion — 

though the ongoing negotiations for entry into the EEC promised another supply. Besides, the West Indian colonies 

were about to gain independence and moves towards immigration control, it was felt, should be postponed till after the 

British plan for a West Indian Federation had been safely established. Attempts to interest West Indian governments in 

a bilateral agreement to control immigration failed. In 1960 India withdrew its restrictions on emigration. In 1961 Jamaica 

withdrew its consent to a Federation. In early 1962, the Commonwealth Immigrants Bill was presented to parliament. 



If the racial violence of Nottingham and Notting Hill had impressed on the West Indian community the need for 

greater organisation and militancy, the moves to impose ‘coloured’ immigration control strengthened the liaison 

between Asian and West Indian organisations. Already, in 1957, Claudia Jones, a Trinidadian and a communist, 

who had been imprisoned for her political activities in the US and then deported, had canvassed the idea of a 

campaigning paper. In March 1958 she, together with other West Indian progressives — Amy Garvey (the widow 

of Marcus Garvey) among them — brought out the first issue of what was to prove the parent Afro-Caribbean 

journal in Britain, the West Indian Gazette. (5) In 1959, after the Kelso Cochrane killing, Claudia Jones and Frances 

Ezzrecco (who had founded, in the teeth of the riots, the Coloured Peoples Progressive Association) led a deputation 

of West Indian organisations to the Home Secretary. And in the same year, to get the taste of Notting 

Hill out of their throats’, the West Indian Gazette launched the first Caribbean carnival in St Pancras Town Hall. 

At about the same time, at the instance of the High Commission of the embryonic West Indian Federation 

(Norman Manley, Chief Minister of Jamaica, had flown to London after the troubles), the more 

moderate Standing Conference of West Indian Organisations in UK was set up. Although its stress 

was on integration and multi-racialism, it helped to cohere the island groups into a West Indian entity. 

Nor had the Asian community been unmoved by the 1958 riots, for soon afterwards an Indian 

Association was formed in Nottingham and, more significantly, all the local IWAs got together 

to establish a central IWA-GB. (Nehru had advised it on his visit to London a year earlier.) 

Now, with immigration control in the offing, other organisations began to develop — among them the Pakistani 

Workers’ Association (1961) and the West Indian Workers’ Association (1961). And these, along with several 

other Asian and Afro-Caribbean organisations, combined with sympathetic white groups to campaign 

against discriminatory legislation. The two most important umbrella organisations were the Coordinating Committee 

Against Racial Discrimination (CCARD) in Birmingham and the Conference of Afro-Asian-Caribbean 

Organisations (CAACO) in London. The former was set up in February 1962 by Jagmohan Joshi, of the IWA 

Birmingham, and Maurice Ludmer, an anti-fascist crusader from way back and later the Founder-editor of 

Searchlight. CCARD itself had been inspired by a meeting at Digbeth called by the West Indian Workers Association 

and the Indian Youth League to protect Patrice Lumumba’s murder. That meeting had led to a march 

through Birmingham and through the streets of Birmingham in a demonstration against the Immigration Bill. 

CAACO, initiated by the West Indian Gazette and working closely with the IWA and Fenner Brockway’s Movement 

for Colonial Freedom, had its meetings and marches too, but it concentrated more on lobbying the High Commissions 

and parliament, particularly the Labour Party which had pledged to repeal the Act (if returned to power). But 

in August 1963, after the Bill had become Act and the Labour Party, with an eye to the elections, had begun to slide 

out of its commitment CAACO (with Claudia Jones at its head) organised a solidarity march from Notting Hill to the 

US embassy in support of ‘negro rights’ in the US and ‘against racial discrimination in Britain’— three days after Martin 

Luther King’s People’s March on Washington. But international events also had adverse effects on black domestic 

politics. The Indo-China war in 1962 had split the communist parties in India. It now engendered schisms in the IWA-GB. 

In April 1962, the Bill was passed and the battle lost. Racialism was no longer a matter of free enterprise; it 



was nationalised. If labour from the coloured’ Commonwealth and colonies was still needed, its intake and deployment 

was going to be regulated not by the market forces of discrimination but by the regulatory instruments 

of the state itself. The state was going to say at the very port of entry (or non-entry) which blacks could 

come and which blacks couldn’t -- and where they could go and where they could live — and how they should 

behave and deport themselves. Or else... There was the immigration officer at the gate and the fascist within: 

racism was respectable, sanctioned, but with reason, of course; it was not the colour, it was the numbers 

— and for the immigrants’ sakes — for fewer blacks would make for better race relations — and that, surely, 

must improve the immigrants’ lot. It was a theme that was shortly to be honed to a fine respectability by 

Hattersley (6) and the Labour government. Evidently, hypocrisy too had to be nationalised. And in pursuit of 

that earnest, the Labour government of 1964 would make gestures towards anti-discriminatory legislation. (7) 

Meanwhile, the genteel English ‘let it all hang out’. In April 1963, the Bristol Omnibus Company discovered that it did not 

‘employ a mixed labour force as bus crews’ — and freed from shame by the new absolution, it announced fearlessly 

‘a company may gain say fifteen coloured people and lose, through prejudice, thirty white people who decide they 

would sooner not work with them’. But if Bristol — with three generations of black settlers and built on slavery — was 

only weighing up the statistics of prejudice, Walsall (with its more recent experience of blacks) made the more scientific 

pronouncement that ‘coloured can’t react fast in traffic’. Bolton simply refused to engage ‘riff-raff any longer. (9) 

The police felt liberated too. They had in the past appeared to derive only a vicarious pleasure from attacks on 

blacks; they had to be seen to be neutral. Now they themselves could go ‘nigger-hunting’ — the phrase was theirs — 

while officially polishing up on their neutrality. In December 1963, the British West Indian Association complained of 

increasing ‘police brutality’ stemming from the passing of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act. In 1964 the Pakistani 

community alleged that the wrists of Pakistani immigrants were being stamped with indelible ink at a police station 

in the course of a murder investigation: it was irrelevant that they had names and, besides, they all looked alike. (10) 

In 1965, WISC (the West Indian Standing Conference, which replaced the more moderate Standing Conference of 

West Indian Organisations in UK after the fall of the West Indian Federation in 1962) documented police excesses 

in Brixton and surrounding areas in a report on Nigger-hunting in England. (11) And at the ports of entry immigration 

officers, given carteblanche in the ‘instructions’ handed down by the government, were having a field day. 

At the local level, tenants’ and residents’ associations were organising to keep blacks out of housing. The number 

of immigrants had increased considerably in the two years preceding the ban: they were anxious to bring 

in their families and dependants before the doors finally closed. Housing, which had always been a problem 

since the war, became a more fiercely contested terrain. The immigrants had, of course, been consigned to 

slum houses and forced into multi-occupation. Now there were fears that they would move further afield into 

the white residential areas. At the same time, public health laws were invoked to dispel multi-occupation. 

Schooling, too, presented a problem. as more and more ‘coloured’ children began to enter the country and sought 

places in their local schools. In October 1963, white parents in Southall, which had a high proportion of Indians, demanded 

separate classes for their children because coloured children were holding back their progress. In December 

the Commonwealth Immigrants’ Advisory Council (CIAC), which had been set up to advise the Home Secretary 

on matters relating to ‘the welfare and integration of immigrants’, reported that ‘the presence of a high proportion 



of immigrant children in one class slows down the general routine of working and hampers the progress of the whole 

class, especially where the immigrants do not speak or write English fluently’. This, it said, was bad for immigrant 

children too for ‘they would not get as good an introduction to British life as they would get in a normal school’. 

Besides, there was the danger of white parents removing their children and making some schools ‘predominantly 

immigrant schools’. (12) In November Sir Edward Boyle, the avowedly liberal Minister of Education, told the House 

of Commons that it was ‘desirable on education grounds that no one school should have more than about 30 per 

cent of immigrants’. Accordingly, in June 1965 Boyle’s law enacted that there should be no more than a third of immigrant 

children in any school; the surplus should be bussed out’ (13) — but white children would not be bussed in. 

As for West Indian children, whose difficulties were ostensibly ‘Creolese English, low educability 

and behaviour problem’, the solution would be found in remedial classes and even ‘special’ schools. 

None of these measures, or the various instances discrimination - went without protest, however. 

The Bristol Bus Company, for instance, was subjected to demonstrations for weeks until 

it finally capitulated. Police harassment, as already mentioned, was documented and published 

by West Indian Associations. The relegation of children into special classes continued to be fought 

- first by the North London West Indian Association and then by other local and nationwide organisations. 

But, by and large, the unity - between West Indians, Asians, militants and moderates — that had spring 

up between the riots of 1958 and the Immigration Act of 1962 had been dissipated by more immediate concerns. 

Now there were families to house, children to school and dependants to look after: the immigrations 

were becoming settlers. And since it was Asian immigrants who, more than the West Indian, had come 

on a temporary basis — to make enough money to send to their impoverished homes — before the Immigration 

Act foreclosed on them, it was their families and relatives who swelled the numbers now. And their politics 

tended to become settler politics — petitioning, lobbying, influencing political parties, weighing-in on 

(if not yet entering) local government elections — and their struggles working-class struggles on the factory 

floor — and they, by virtue of being fought in the teeth of trade union racism, were to prove political too. 

In May 1965 the first important ‘immigrant’ strike took place — at Courtauld’s Red Scar Mill in Preston — over the 

management’s decision to force Asian workers (who were concentrated, with a few West Indians, in one area of 

the labour process) to work more machines for (proportionately) less pay. (14) The strike failed, but not before it 

had exposed the active collaboration of the white workers and the union with management. A few months earlier, 

a smaller strike of Asian workers at Rockware Glass in Southall (London) had exposed a similar complicity. 

And the Woolf Rubber Company strike later in the same year, though fought valiantly by the workers, supported 

by the Asian community and by the IWA, lost out to the employers through lack of official union backing. (15) 

The Afro-Caribbean struggles of this period (post 1962) also reflected a similar community base, 

though different in origins. Ghana had become free in 1957, Uganda in 1962 and Jamaica and Trinidad 

and Tobago in the same year, but there were other black colonies in Africa and the Caribbean 

still to be liberated. And then there was the black colony in North America, which, beginning with Mar- 



tin Luther King’s civil rights movement, was revving up into the Black Power struggles of the mid-1960s. 

King visited London on the way to receiving his Nobel prize in Oslo in December 1964. And at his instigation, 

a British civil rights organisation, the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination (CARD) was formed in February 

1965 — federating various Asian and Afro-Caribbean organisations and sporting Labour Party (radicals). 

More significantly, however, was the visit of Malcolm X. Malcolm blitzed London in February 1965 and in his wake was 

formed a much more militant organisation, the Racial Action Adjustment Society (RAAS) (16) with Michael de Freitas, 

later Abdul Maiik and later still Michael X, at its head. ‘Black men, unite’, it called, ‘we have nothing to lose but our fears.’ 

It is the fashion today, even among blacks, to see Michael X only as a criminal who deserved to be hanged for murder 

by the Trinidadian government (1975). (The line between politics and crime, after all is a thin one — in a capitalist 

society.) But it was Michael and Roy Sawh (a Guyanese ‘Indian’) and their colleagues in RAAS who, as we shall see, 

more than anybody else in this period freed ordinary black people from fear and taught them to stand up for their 

rights and their dignity. (17) It was out of RAAS, too, that a number of our present-day militants have emerged. 

It is also alleged, in hindsight and contempt, that RAAS had no politics but the politics of thuggery. But it was RAAS who 

descended on Red Scar Mills in Preston to help the Asian strikers (at their invitation). And the point is telling — if only because 

it marked a progression in the organic unity of the (Afro-) Asian, (coolie\ and (Afro-) Caribbean, slave, struggles 

in the diaspora, begun in Britain by Claudia Jones’ West Indian Gazette and Afro-Asia Caribbean News on which Abimanyu 

Manchanda, an Indian political activist and a key figure in the British anti-Vietnam war movement, was to work. 

But RAAS, or black militancy generally, would /not have had the backing it did but for the growing disillusion with 

the Labour Party’s policies on immigration control and, therefore, racism. The ‘coloured immigrants’ still had hopes 

in the party of the working class and of colonial independence and sought to influence its policies. But after the 

1964 general election, Labour’s position became clearer. Peter Griffiths, the Tory candidate for Smethwick (an ‘immigrant 

area’ in Birmingham), had campaigned on the basis of ending immigration and ‘repatriating the coloureds’. 

If you want a nigger neighbour 

Vote Labour 

he had sloganised - and won. But Labour won the election and Harold Wilson, the incoming Prime Minister, denounced 

Griffiths as ‘a parliamentary leper’. However, Wilson’s policies were soon to become leprous too: the Immigration Act 

was not only renewed in the White Paper of August 1965 but went on to restrict ‘coloured immigration’ further on the 

basis that fewer numbers made for better race relations. In pursuit of that philosophy, Labour then proceeded to pass a 

Race Relations Act (September 1965), which threatened racial discrimination in ‘places of public resort’ with conciliation. 

It was prepared, however, to penalise ‘incitement to racial hatred’ —- and promptly proceeded to prosecute Michael X. 

Equally off-target and ineffectual were the two statutory bodies that Labour set up, the National Committee for 

Commonwealth Immigrants (NCCI) and the Race Relations Board (RRB) — the one chiefly to liaise with immigrants 

and ease them out of the difficulties (linguistic, educational, cultural and so on) which prevented integration, and 



the other, as mentioned above, to conciliate discrimination in hotels and places through conciliation committees. 

To ordinary blacks these structures were irrelevant: liaison and conciliation seemed to define them as a people 

apart who somehow needed to be fitted into the mainstream of British society — when all they were seeking were 

the same rights as other citizens. They (liaison and conciliation) were themes that were to rise again in the area of 

police- black relations — this time as substitutes for police accountability — and not without the same significance. 

But if NCCI failed to integrate the ‘immigrants’, it succeeded in disintegrating ‘immigrant’ organisations — the 

moderate ones anyway and local ones mostly — by entering their areas of work, enticing local leaders to cooperate 

with them (and therefore government) and pre-empting their constituencies. Its greatest achievement 

was to lure the leading lights of CARD into working with it, thereby deepening the contradictions in CARD (as 

between the militants and the moderates). WISC and NFPA (18) disaffiliated from CARD and the more militant 

blacks followed suit, leaving CARD to its more liberal designs. The government had effectively shut out one 

area of representative black opinion. But an obstacle in the way of the next Immigration Act had been cleared. 

When CARD finally broke up in 1967 the press and the media generally welcomed its debacle. They saw its sometimes 

uncompromising stand against racial discrimination as a threat to ‘integration’ (if not to white society), resented its 

outspoken and articulate black spokes-men and women, denouncing them as communists and maoists, and feared 

that it would emerge from a civil rights organisation into a Black Power movement. The ‘paper of the top people’, 

having warned the nation of ‘The Dark Million’ in a series of articles in the months preceding the August 1965 White 

Paper, now wrote, ‘there are always heavy dangers in riding tigers — and these dangers are not reduced when 

the animal changes to a black panther’ (The Times, 9 November 1967). And a Times news team was later to write 

that ‘the ominous lesson of CARD... is that the mixture of pro Chinese communism and American-style Black Power 

on the immigrant scene can be devastating’. (19) (International events were beginning to cast their shadows.) 

The race relations pundits added their bit. The Institute of Race Relations (some of whose Council members 

and staff were implicated in CARD politics) commissioned a book giving the liberal version. Although an independent 

research organisation, replete with academics, the IRR had already been moving closer to government 

policies on immigration and integration — backing them with objective’ findings and research. (20) 

The race scene was changing — radically. The Immigration Acts, whatever their racialist promptings, had 

stemmed from an economic rationale, fashioned in the matrix of colonial capitalist practices and beliefs. 

They served, as we have seen, to take racial discrimination out of the market-place and institutionalise 

it — inhere it in the structures of the state, nationally. So that at both local and national level ‘race’ became 

an area of contestation for power. It was the basis which local issues of schooling and housing and jobs 

were being, if not fought, side-tracked. It was an issue on which elections were won and lost. It was an issue 

which betrayed” unions’ claims to represent the whole of the working class so betrayed the class. It had entered 

the arena politics (not that, subliminally, it was not always there) and swelled into an ideology of racism 

to be borrowed by the courts in their decision-making and by the fascists for their regeneration. (21) 

Racial attacks had already begun to mount. In 1965, in the months preceding the White Paper but after Griffiths 



victory. (a Jamaican was shot and killed... in Islington, a West Indian schoolboy in Notting Hill was nearly killed by 

white teenagers armed with iron bars, axes and bottles... a group of black men outside a cafe in Notting Hill received 

blasts from a shot-gun fired from a moving car, hate leaflets appeared in Newcastle upon-Tyne, crosses 

were burnt outside ‘coloured citizens’ homes’ in Leamington Spa, Rugby, Coventry. Ilford, Plaistow and Cricklewood 

and a written warning (allegedly) from the Deputy Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan was sent to the Indian secretary of 

CARD: “You will be burnt alive if you do not leave England by August 31st”(22) The British fascists, however, denied 

any connection with the Klan — not, it would appear, on a basis of fact, but in the conviction that there was 

now a sufficient ground-swell of grassroots racism to float an electoral party. Electoral politics, of course, were 

not going to bring them parliamentary power, but they would provide a vehicle for propaganda and a venue for 

recruitment — and all within the law. They could push their vile cause to the limits of the law, within the framework 

of the law, forcing the law itself to become more repressive of democratic freedoms. By invoking their democratic 

right to freedom of speech, of association, etc. —by claiming equal TV time as the other electoral parties and 

by gaining legitimate access to the press and radio — they would propagate the cause of denying others those 

freedom legitimacies, the blacks in the first place. They would move whole debate on race to the right and force 

incoming governments to further racist legislation - on pain of electoral defeat. And so, in February 1967, the 

League of Empire Loyalists, the British National Party and local groups of Racial Preservation Societies merged 

to form the National Front (NF) – and in April that year put up candidates for the Greater London Elections. 

But they – and the government – reckoned without the blacks. The time was long gone, when black people, with an 

eye to returning home, would put up with repression: settlers now. And state racism had pushed them into higher 

and more militant forms of resistance - incorporating the resistances previous period and embracing both shop 

floor and community, Asians and Afro-Caribbeans, sometimes in different areas of struggle, sometimes together. 

RAAS, as we have seen, was formed in 1965. It was wholly an indigenous movement arising out of the opposition 

to native British racism but catalysed by Malcolm X and the Black Muslims. And so it took in, on both counts, the 

African, Asian, Afro-Caribbean and Afro-American dimensions of struggle and the struggles in the workplace and 

the community. It had, almost as its first act, descended on the Red Scar Mills in Preston to help the Asian strikers. 

It then set up office in a barber’s shop in Reading and worked and recruited in the North and the Midlands with 

Abdulla Patel (one of the strikers from Red Scar Mills) and Roy Sawh as its organisers there. In London, too, RAAS 

gathered a sizeable following through its work with London busmen and its legal service (Defence) for black people 

in trouble with the police. It was written up in the press, often as a novel and passing phenomenon, and appeared 

(in a bad light) on BBCs Panorama programme. The disillusion with CARD swelled RAAS’s numbers. And the indictment 

of Michael X in 1967 for ‘an inflammatory speech against white people’ – when white people indulged in racist 

abuse - served to validate RAAS’s rhetoric. At Speakers Corner Roy Sawh and other black speakers would inveigh 

against against the ‘the white devil’ and the Anglo-Saxon swine’, and find a ready and appreciative audience. 

In June 1967 the Universal Coloured People’s Association (UCPA) was formed, headed a Nigerian Playwright 

Obi Egbuna. It too arose from British conditions, but, continuing in the tradition of the struggle against 

British colonialism, stressed the need to fight both imperialism and racism. The anti-white struggle was also 

anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist – universal to all coloured peoples. And so its concerns extended from rac- 



ism in Britain and elsewhere to the war in Vietnam, the independence of Zimbalbwe, the liberation of ‘Portuguese 

Africa’, the cultural revolution in China. It was, of course, inspired and influenced by the Black Power 

struggle in America and, more immediately, by Stokele Carmicheal’s visit to London in July that year. 

‘Black Power’, Egbuna declared at a Vietnam protest rally in Trafalgar Square in October 1967, ‘means simply that 

the blacks of this world are out to liquidate capitalist oppression of black people wherever it exists by any means necessary.’ 

Black people in Britain, the UCPA pointed out, though numerically small, were so concentrated in vital areas 

of industry, hospital services (a majority of doctors and nurses in the conurbations were black) and transport that a 

black strike could paralyse the economy. Some UCPA speakers at meetings in Hyde Park urged more direct action. 

Roy Sawh (the members of one organisation were often members of another) ‘urged coloured nurses to give wrong 

injections to patients, coloured bus crews not to take the fares of black people... [and] Indian restaurant owners to 

“put something in the curry” (23) Alex Watson, a Jamaican machine operator, was reported to have exhorted coloured 

people to destroy the whites. (24) Ajoy Ghose, an unemployed Indian, pointed out that to kill whites was not 

murder and Uyornumu Ezekiel, Nigerian electrician, having derided the prime minister as a ‘political prostitute’, said 

that England was ‘going down the toilet (25) They were all prosecuted, Ezekiel was discharged, the others fined. 

But UCPA rhetoric was helping to stiffen black backs, its meetings and study groups to raise black consciousness, 

its ideology to politicise black people. The prosecution of its members showed up the complicity 

of the courts — ‘protection rackets for the police’, the secretary of WISC was to call them. 

And its example, like that of RAAS, encouraged other black organisations to greater militancy. 

RAAS. it would appear, stressed black nationalism, while the UCPA emphasised the struggles of the international 

working class. But they were in fact different approaches to the same goals. RAAS’s ‘nationalism’, 

stemming as it did from the West Indian experience, combined an understanding of how colonialism 

had divided the Asian and African and Caribbean peoples (coolie, savage and slave) with an awareness 

of how that same colonialism made them one people now: they were all blacks. Hence the BIack House 

(and the cultural groups) that RAAS was briefly to set up on 1970 did not, like Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka’s 

Spirit House which was its inspiration, exclude other ‘coloureds’; the historical experience was different. 

Meanwhile, the number of black strikes — mainly Asian, because it was they who were employed in the menial jobs 

in the foundries, the textile and paper mills, the rubber and plastic works — began to mount, and nearly all of them 

showed up trade union racism. Working conditions in the foundries were particularly unendurable. The job itself 

involved working with molten metal at 1400 degrees centigrade. Bums and injuries were frequent. The wage was 

rarely more than £14 a week and promotion to skilled white-only jobs was unthinkable. Every action on the part of 

the Asian workers was either unsupported or opposed by the trade union to which they belonged, for example 

in the strike at Coneygre Foundry (Tipton) in April 1967 and again in October 1968, at the Midland Motor Cylinder 

Co in the same year and at Newby Foundry (West Bromwich) a year later. But the support from their communities 

and community organisations was unwavering. The temples gave free food to strikers, the grocers limitless 

credit, the landlords waived the rent. And joining in the strike action were local organisations and associations 

— IWAs and Pakistani Welfare Associations and/or other black organisations or individuals connected with them. 



Some issues, however, embraced the whole community more directly. For, apart from the general question 

of wages, conditions of work, etc., quite a few of these strikes also involved ‘cultural* questions, such as the 

right to take time off for religious festivals, the right to break off for daily prayer (among Moslems), the right 

of Sikh busmen to wear turbans instead of the official head-gear. And because of trade union opposition to 

such practices’, the struggles of the class and the struggles of the community, of race, became indistinguishable. 

These in turn were linked to the struggles back ‘home’ in the sub-continent – if only through family obligations arising 

from economic need. Predicated by under-development caused by imperialism. The connections were immediate, 

palpable, personal. in was not a thing apart, a theoretical concept; it was a lived experience – only one removed 

from the experience of racism itself. And for that reason, too, the politics and the political organisations of the ‘home’ 

counties had a bearing on the life and Indian and Pakistani settlers in Britain now – not just in terms of electoral political 

parties so much as in terms of the resistance movements to the authoritarian state (26) — which, in turn. had 

resonances for them in Britain. Asian-language newspapers kept them in constant touch with events in the subcontinent, 

and the political refugees whom they housed and looked after not only involved them in their movements, 

but fired their own resistances. Reciprocally. their people back ‘home’ were keened to the mounting racism in Britain. 

On all these fronts, then, blacks by 1968 were beginning to fight as a class and as a people. Whatever the specifics 

of resistance in the respective communities and however different the strategies and lines of struggle, the 

experience of a common racism and a common fight against the state united them at the barricades. The mosaic 

of unities observed earlier resolved itself, before the onslaught of the state, into a black unity and a black struggle. 

It would recede again when the state strategically retreated into urban aid programmes and the creation 

of a class of black collaborators — only to be forged anew by another generation, British-born but not British. 

In March 1968 the Labour government passed the Kenyan Asian Act this time barring free entry to Britain of its citizens 

in Kenya — because they were Asians. O.K. so they held British passports issued by or on behalf of the British 

government, but that did not make them British, did it? Now, if they had a parent or grandparent born, naturalised, 

or adopted in the UK — like those chaps in Australia, New Zealand and places — it would be a different matter. But 

of course the government would set aside a quota of entry vouchers especially for them - for the Asians, that is. The 

reasons were not racial as Prime Minister Wilson pointed out to the Archbishop of Canterbury, ‘geographical’. (27) 

Between conception and passage the Act had taken but a week. The orchestration of public opinion that preceded 

it had gone on for a year, but it had risen to a crescendo in the last six months. Enoch Powell, man of the people, had 

warned the nation that there were ‘hundreds of thousands of people in Kenya’ (28) who thought they belonged to 

Britain ‘just like you and me’. In January the press came out with scare stories, as it had done before the Immigration 

Act of 1962, except this time it was not smallpox but the clandestine arrival of hordes of Pakistanis. In February 

Powell returned to his theme — and other politicians joined in. Later in the month the Daily Mirror, the avowedly 

pro-Labour paper. warned of an ‘uncontrolled flood of Asian immigrants from Kenya’. On 1 March the bill was passed. 

Blacks were enraged. They had lobbied, petitioned, reasoned, demonstrated — even campaigned alongside 

whites in NCCI’s Equal Rights set-up — and had made no impact. But the momentum was not to be lost. Within 

weeks of the Act Jagmohan Joshi, Secretary of the IWA Birmingham, was urging black organisations to form 



a broad, united front. On 4 April Martin Luther king was murdered... ‘I have a dream.’ They slew the dreamer. 

Some two weeks later Enoch Powell spoke of his and the nation’s nightmare: the blacks were swarming 

all over him, no. all over the country, ‘whole areas and towns and parts of towns across England’ 

were covered with them, they pushed excreta through old ladies’ letter boxes; we must take ‘action 

now’, stop the inflow, promote the outnow, stop the fiancés. stop the dependants, the material of the future 

growth of the immigrant descended population’, the breeding ground. Numbers are of the essence.’ 

What Powell says today, the Tories say tomorrow and Labour legislates the day after. Immediately, it was public 

opinion that was aroused. The press picked up Powell’s themes and Powell. The unspeakable had been spoken, 

free speech set free, the white liberated: Asians and West Indians were abused and attacked, their property 

damaged, their women and children terrorised. Police harassment increased, the fascists went on a rampage and 

Paki bashing emerged at the national sport. A few trade unionists made gestures of protest and earned the opprobrium 

of the rank and file. White workers all over the country downed tools and staged demonstrations on 

behalf of Powell. And on the day that even handed Labour, having passed a genuinely racist Immigration Act, was 

debating a phoney anti-racist Race Relations Bill, London dockers struck work and marched on parliament to demand 

an end to immigration. Three day’s later they marched again. (this time with the Smithfield meat-porters.) 

But the blacks were on the march too. On the same day as the dockers and porters marched, representatives 

from over fifty organisations (including the IWAs. WISC, NFPA, UCPA, RAAS, etc.) came together at Leamington 

Spa to form a national body, the Black People’s Alliance (BPA), a militant front for Black Consciousness and 

against racialism. And in that, the BPA was uncompromising from the outset. It excluded from membership immigrant 

organisations that had compromised with government policy or fallen prey to government hand-outs (Labour’s 

Urban Aid programme was beginning to percolate through to the blacks) or looked to the Labour Party 

for redress. For, in respect of ‘whipping up racial antagonisms and hatred to make political gains’, there was 

no difference between the parties or between them and Enoch Powell. He was ‘just one step in a continuous 

campaign which had served to give the green light to the overtly fascist organisations... now very active in organising 

among the working class’.(29) Member organisations would continue to maintain their independent existence 

and function at the local level, in terms of the particular communities and problems; the BPA would operate 

on the national level, coordinating the various fights against state racism. And, where necessary, it would 

take to the streets en masse — as it did in January 1969 (during the Commonwealth Prime Ministers Conference), 

when it led a march of over 7,000 people to Downing Street to demand the repeal of the Immigration Acts. 

From Powell’s speech and BPA, but nurtured in the Black Power movement, sprang a host of militant black organisations 

all over the country, with their own newspapers and journals, taking up local, national and international 

issues. Some Jamaican organisations marched on their High Commission in London, protesting the banning of the 

works of Stokely and Malcolm X in Jamaica, while others, like WISC, RAAS and the Caribbean Artist’s Movement, 

sent petitions. On the banning of Walter Rodney from returning to his post at the university, Jamaicans staged a 

sit-in at the High Commission. A ‘Third World Benefit’ for three imprisoned playwrights, Wole Soyinka in Nigeria, 

LeRoi Jones in America and Obi Egbuna in Britain - was held at the Round House with Sammy Davis, Black Eagles 



and Michael X. But Egbuna’s imprisonment (with two other UPCA members), for uttering and writing threats to 

kill police, also stirred up black anger. ‘Unless something is done to ensure the protection of our people/ wrote 

the Black Panther Movement in its circular of 3 October 1968. (we will have no alternative but to rise to their 

defence. And once we are driven to that position, redress will be too late, Detroit and Newark will inevitably 

become part of the British scene and the Thames foam with blood sooner than Enoch Powell envisaged (30) 

Less than six months after Powell’s speech. Heath, the Tory leader, having sacked Powell from the Shadow Cabinet, 

himself picked up Powell’s themes. Immigration, he said, whether of voucher-holders or dependants, should 

be ‘severely curtailed’ — and those who wished to return to their country of origin should ‘ receive assisted passage 

from public funds’. But Powell outbid him in a call for a ‘Ministry of Repatriation’ and ‘a programme of largescale 

voluntary but organised, financed and subsidised repatriation and re-emigration’. Two months later Heath 

upped the ante: the government should stop all immigration. Powell, who was on the same platform, applauded 

him. Callaghan, the Home Secretary, however, derided Heath’s speech as ‘slick and shifty’. Three days later Callaghan 

debarred Commonwealth debarred Commonwealth citizens from entering Britain to marry fiancées and 

settle here, ‘unless there are compassionate circumstances’. And in May 1969, in a even more blatant piece of 

‘even-handiness’, Callaghan sneaked into the ‘liberal’ Immigration Appeals Bill (31) a clause which stipulated that 

dependants should henceforth have entry certificates before coming to Britain. And with that he set the seal on 

the prevarications, delays and humbug that British officials in the country of emigration, mainly India and Pakistan 

now, subjected dependants to – till the young grew old in the waiting and old folk just gave up or died. It 

was a move in Powell’s direction, but he meanwhile had moved on to higher things, like calculating the cost of 

repatriations. Before Callaghan could move towards him again, Labour lost the election (1970). It was now left to 

a Tory government under Heath to effect Powellite policies (on behalf of Labour) in the Immigration Act of 1971. 

The new Act topped all primary (black) immigration dead. Only ‘patrials’ (CaIIaghan’s euphemism for while Commonwealth 

citizens) had right of abode now Non-patrials could only come in on a permit to do a specific job in a specific 

place for a specific period. Their residence, deportation, repatriation and acquisition of citizenship were subject to 

Home Office discretion. But constables and immigration officers were empowered to arrest without warrant anyone 

who had entered or was suspected (‘with reasonable cause’) to have entered the country illegally or overstayed his 

or her time or failed to observe the rules of the Act in any other particular. Since all blacks were. on the face of them, 

non-patrials, this meant that all blacks were illegal immigrants unless proved otherwise. And since, in this respect, 

the Act (when it came into force in January 1973) would be retrospective, illegal immigrants went back a long way. 

Entry of dependants of those already settled in Britain would continue to be made on the basis of entry certificates 

issued by the British authorities, at their discretion, in the country of emigration. Eligibility — as to age, 

dependency, relationship to the relative in the UK, etc. — would have to be proved by the dependant. Children 

would have to be under 18 to be eligible at all and parents over 65. But ‘entry clearances’ did not guarantee entry 

into Britain. It could still be refused at the port of entry by the immigration officer on the ground that (false representations 

were employed or material facts were concealed, whether or not to the holder’s knowledge, for the 

purpose of obtaining clearance. (When, in 1980, Filipino domestic workers who had entered legally were to ask to 

bring in their children, they would be deported — on the basis of this clause -- for having withheld information (re 

children) which they were not asked for in the first place.) And as for those who wanted to be repatriated, every 



assistance would be afforded. On the face of it, the Act appeared no more racist than its predecessors. Bans 

and entry certificates, stop and search arrests and (Sus* (under section 4’of the 1824 Vagrancy Act anyone could 

be arrested ‘on suspicion’ of loitering with intent to commit an arrestable offence), detention and deportations 

were already everyday aspects of black life. Even the distinction made between the old settlers and the new migrants 

to them all migrants again did not seem to matter much: never been anything but ‘coloured immigrants’. 

But there something else in the air. The ‘philosophy’ had begun to change, the raison d’etre of racism. It 

was not that racism did not make for cheap labour any more. but that there was no need for capital to import 

it. Instead, thanks to advances in technology and changes in its own nature, capital could now move to 

labour and did — the transnational corporations saw to that. (32) The problem was to get rid of the labour, 

the black labour that was already here. And racism could help there — with laws and regulations that kept 

families apart, sanctioned police harassment, invited fascist violence and generally made life untenable for 

the black citizens of Britain. And if they wanted to return home, assisted passages would speed their way. 

To get the full flavour of the Immigration Act of 1971. however, it must be seen in conjunction with the Industrial Relations 

Act of the same year. For if the Immigration Act affected the black peoples (in varying ways), the Industrial Relations 

Act, which put structures on trade unions and subjected industrial disputes to the jurisdiction of a court, the National 

Industrial Relations Court (NIRC), affected the black working class specifically. As workers, they were subject to the 

Industrial Relations Act’s overall attack on the class (and later to the government’s three-day week). As blacks, they 

were subject to the Immigration Act’s threat of deportation — as illegal immigrants or for acting in ways not ‘conducive 

to the public good’. As blacks and workers, they were subjected to the increasing racism of white workers and 

trade unions under siege — and more susceptible to being offered up to the NIRC for the adjudication of their disputes. 

Together, the Acts threatened to lock the black working class into the position of a permanent under-class. Hence, 

it is precisely in the area of black working class struggles that the resistance of the early 1970s becomes significant. 

But these were not struggles apart. They were, because they were black, tied up with other struggles in the community. 

in turn was involved in the battles on the factory floor. The community struggles themselves had as we have seen become 

increasingly politicised in the Black Power movement and organised in black political groups. And they after the 

failure of the white left to acknowledge the special problems of the black working class or the need for black self-help 

and organisation, began to address themselves to the problems of black workers in the factories, in the schools, in their 

relationship with the police Which in turn was to lead to more intense confrontation with, if not the state directly, the 

instruments of state oppression. But since these operated differentially in respect of the Asian and West Indian communities, 

the resistance to them was conducted at different levels, in different venues, with (often) different priorities. 

The energies of the Asian community, for instance, were taken up with trying to get their families and dependants 

in — and once in, to keep them (and themselves) from being picked up as illegal immigrants. Since these required 

a knowledge of the law and of officialdom, it was inevitable that their struggles in this respect would be channelled 

into legal battles — mainly through the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) (33) with its expertise 

and commitment — and into petitioning and lobbying. This aspect was further reinforced by the issue of the 

‘shuttlecock Asians’, those British Asians in East Africa who (for one reason or another) were bandied about from 



country to country before eventually being imprisoned in Britain prior to admission. (34) From 1972 Asian leaders 

and organisation were also preoccupied with the resettlement of British Asian refugees from Amin’s Uganda. 

If the struggles to gain entry for their families and dependants drained the energies of the Asian community 

at one level, the abuse and the humiliation that those seeking entry were submitted to by immigration officials 

served to degrade and some demoralise it. The instances are legion and have been documented elsewhere 

(35). But the most despicable of them all was the vaginal examination of women for virginity – in itself 

appalling violation but, for women from a peasant culture, a violation beyond violence. Further debilitating of 

the community was the police use of informers to apprehend suspected illegal immigrants individually and 

through ‘fishing raids’, generating thereby suspicion and distrust among families. In turn. against battle against 

channelled the community’s energies into getting the retrospective aspect of the Immigration Act regarding 

illegal immigrants repealed (and was finally ‘rewarded’ by the dubious amnesty of 1974 for all those who 

had entered illegally before 1973). But the police’s Illegal Immigration Intelligence Unit remained in force. (36) 

The Afro-Caribbean community, for its part (excepting the workplace, which will be treated separately) was occupied 

fighting the miseducation of its children and the police. Both problems had existed before, but they gathered 

momentum. West Indian children were consistently and right through the schooling system treated as uneducable 

and as having unrealistic aspirations’ together with a low IQ. Consequently, they were ‘banded’ into classes for 

backward children or dumped in ESN (educationally subnormal) schools and forgotten. The fight against categorisation 

of their children as under-achieving, and therefore fit only to be an under-class begun in Haringey 

(London) in the 1960s by West Indian parents, teachers and the North London West Indian Association (NLWIA) 

under Jeff Crawford, now spread to other areas and became incorporated in the programmes of black political 

organisations. An appeal to the Race Relations Board (1970) elicited the response that the placement of West Indian 

children in ESN schools was no unlawful act. The Caribbean Education Association then held a conference on 

the subject and in the following year, Bernard Coard (now Deputy Prime Minister of Grenada) wrote his influential 

work, How the West Indian child is made educationally subnormal... Black militants and organisations, meanwhile, 

had begun to set up supplementary schools in the larger conurbations. In London alone there was the Kwame 

Nkrumah school (Hackney black teachers), the Malcolm X Montessori Programme (Ajoy Ghose), the George Padmore 

school (John La Rose” and the Black Parents Movement), the South-east London Summer School (Black 

Unity and Freedom Party) Headstart (Black Liberation Front) and the Marcus Garvey school (BLF and others). (38) 

Projects were also set up to teach skills to youth. The Mkutano Project, for instance, started by the BUFP (in 

1972) taught typing, photography, Swahili; the Melting pot, begun about the same time by Ashton Gibson 

(once of RAAS), had a workshop for making clothes; and Keskidee, set up by ex-CARD Oscar Abrams, taught 

art and sculpture and encouraged black poets and playwrights. For older students, Roy Sawh ran the Free University 

for Black Studies. And then there were hostels for unemployed and homeless black youth — such as 

Brother Herman’s Harambee and Vince Hines’ Dashiki (both of whom had been active in RAAS) — and clubs 

and youth centres. Finally, there were the bookshop cum advice centres, such as the Black Peoples Information 

Centre, BLF’s Grassroots Storefront and BWM’s Unity Bookshop, and the weekly or monthly newspapers: 

Black Voice (BUFP), Grassroots (BLF), Freedom News (BP: Black Panthers), Frontline (BCC: Brixton and Croy- 



don Collective), Uhuru (BPFM: Black Peopled Freedom Movement), BPFM Weekly, the BWAC Weekly (Black 

Workers’ Action Committee) and the less frequent but more theoretical journal Black Liberator — and a host 

of others that were more ephemeral. Some of these papers took up the question of black women, and the 

BUFP, following on the UCPA’s Black Women’s Liberation Movement, had a black women’s action committee. 

RAAS’s Black House was going to be a huge complex, encompassing several of these activities. But hardly had 

it got off the ground in February 1970 than it was raided by the police and closed down. And RAAS itself began 

to break up. Members of RAAS. however, went on to set up various self-help projects — as indicated above. 

By 1971 the UCPA was also breaking up into its component groups, with the hard core of them going to form the 

BUFP. (National bodies were by now not as relevant to the day-to-day struggles as local ones and the former’s 

unifying role equally be fulfilled by ad hoc alliances.) The UCPA, RAAS, Black Panthers and other black organisations 

had in the previous two years began increasingly occupied with the problem of police brutality and facist 

violence. The success of Black Power had bought down on its head the wrath of the system. Its leaders were persecuted, 

its meetings disrupted, its places of work destroyed. But it had gone on gaining momentum and strength, 

it was not a party, but a movement, gathering to its strands all the strands of capitalist oppression, gathering to its 

program all the problems of oppressed peoples. There was hardly black in the country that did not identify with 

it and through it, all the non-whites of the world in one way or another. And as for the British-born youth who had 

been schooled in white racism, the movement was the cradle of their consciousness, Vietnam, Guinea-Bissau, 

Zimbabwe. Azania were all their battle lines, China and Cuba their exemplars. The establishment was scared. The 

media voiced its fears. There were rumours that Black Power was about to take over Manchester City Council. (40) 

In the summer of 1969 the UCPA and the Caribbean Workers’ Movement were documenting 

and fighting the cases of people beaten up and framed by the police — in Manchester and 

London. In August the UCPA held a Black Power rally against organised police brutality’ on the streets of Brixton. 

In April 1970 the UCPA and the Pakistani Progressive Party staged a protest outside the House of Commons over 

‘Paki-bashing’, in the East End of London. And the Pakistani Workers’ Union called for citizens’ defence patrols: 

a number of Asians had been murdered in 1969 and 1970. A month later over 2,000 Pakistanis, Indians and West 

Indians marched from Hyde Park to Downing Street demanding police protection from skinhead attacks. In the 

summer of 1970 police attacks on blacks — abuse, harassment, assaults, raids, arrests on sus, etc., in London, 

Manchester, Bristol, Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool. etc. — put whole black communities under siege. In July and 

August there were a series of clashes between black youth and the police in London and on one occasion over 

a hundred youth surrounded the Caledonian Road police station demanding the release of four black who been 

wrongfully arrested. Things finally came to a head in Notting Hill on 9th August, when police broke up a demonstration 

against the proposed closure of the Mangrove restaurant with unprecedented violence. The blacks 

fought back, a number of them were arrested, and nine of the ‘ring leaders’ charged with riot, affray and assault. 

The Mangrove was a meeting place and a eating place, a social and welfare club, a advice and resource 

centre, a black house for black people, a resting place in Babylon. And if only for this reason, 

the police could not leave it alone. They raided it and raided it, harassed its customers and re- 



lentlessly persecuted its owner. Frank Critchlow. They made it the test of police power; the blacks made 

it a symbol of resistance. The battle of the blacks and the police would be fought over the Mangrove. 

The trial of the Mangrove 9 (October-December 1971) is too well documented to be recounted here, but, briefly, 

they won. They did more: they took on what the defence counsel called ‘naked judicial tyranny’ — some by conducting 

their own defence — and won. Above all, they unfolded before the nation the corruption of the police 

force, the bias of the judicial system, the racism of the media — and the refusal of black people to submit themselves 

to the tyrannies of the state. Other trials would follow and even more bizarre prosecutions be brought, as 

when the alleged editor of Grassroots was charged with ‘encouraging the murder of person’s unknown’ by reprinting 

an article from the freely available American Black Panther paper on how to make Molotov cocktails. But 

they would all be defended — by the whole community — and become another school of political education. (41) 

If the Mangrove marked the high water-mark of Black Power and lowered the threshold of what black people 

would take, it also marked the beginnings of another resistance: of black youth condemned by racism to 

the margins of existence and then put upon by the police. Sus had always laid them open to police harassment, 

but the government’s White Paper on Police-Immigrant Relations in 1973, which warned of ‘a small minority of 

young coloured people... anxious to imitate behaviour amongst the black community in the United States’, put 

the government’s imprimatur on police behaviour. The previous year the press and the police had discovered a 

frightening new strain of crime’ and ‘mugging’ was added to Sus’ as an offence on which the police could go 

on the offensive against West Indian youth. (42) The courts had already nodded their approval— by way of an 

exemplary twenty-year sentence passed on a 16-year-old ‘mugger’. From then on, the lives of black youths 

in the cities of Britain were subject to increased pressure. Their clubs were attacked on one pretext or another 

their meeting places raided and their events - carnivals, bonfires, parties – blanketed by police presence. Black 

youths could not walk the streets outside the ghetto or hang around streets within it without courting arrest. And 

apart from individual arrests, whole communities were subjected to road blocks, stop and search and mass arrests. 

In Brixton in 1975 the para-military Special Patrol Group (SPG) cruised the streets in force, made arbitrary 

arrests and generally terrorised the community. In Lewisham, the same year, the SPG stopped 14.000 people on 

the streets and made 400 arrests. The pattern was repeated by similar police units in other parts of the country. 

The youth struck back and the community closed behind them at Brockwell Park fair in 1973, for instance, and at the 

Carib Club (1974) and in Chapeltown, Leeds, on bonfire night (1975), and finally exploded into direct confrontation, with 

bricks and bottles and burning of police cars., at the Notting Hill Carnival of 1976 — when 1,600 policemen took it on 

themselves to kill joy on the streets. Clearly the politics of the stick had not paid off — or perhaps needed to be stepped 

up to be really effective. But by now a Labour government was in power and the emphasis shifted to social control. 

Meanwhile, the struggles in the workplace were throwing up ‘another community, a community of black class interests 

— linking the shop-floor battles of Pakistanis. Indians and West Indians, sometimes directly through roving strike 

committees, sometimes through black political organisations, while combating at the same time the racism of the 

trade unions, from within their ranks. Where they were not unionised, black workers first used the unions, who were 

rarely loth to increase unionisation – and then took on the racism of the unions themselves. Unions, after all, were the 

organisations of their class and, however vital their struggles as blacks, to remain a people apart, would be to set back 



the class struggle itself. They had to fight simultaneously as a people and as a class – as black and as workers – not 

by subsuming the race struggles to the class struggle but by deepening and broadening class struggle through 

its black and anti-colonial, anti-imperialist dimension. The struggle against racism was a struggle for the class. 

A series of strikes in the early 1970s in the textile and allied industries in the East Midlands and in various factories in 

London illustrate these developments. In May 1972 Pakistani workers in Crepe Sizes in Nottingham went on strike over 

working conditions, redundancies and pay. They composed the lowliest two-thirds of the workforce. were subjected 

to constant racial abuse by the white foreman and worked, without adequate safety precautions and toilet and canteen 

facilities, an eighty four-hour week for £40.08. And yet five of their number had been made redundant — after 

the workers had joined the Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU). There was no official support from the 

union, however, till a Solidarity Committee composed of the wives and families of the strikers and of other Asian workers, 

community organisations and the Nottingham-based BPFM forced the TGWU to act. In June the management 

capitulated, agreeing to union recognition and the re-instatement of the workers who had been made redundant. 

The strike of Indian workers at Mansfield Hosiery Mills in Loughborough in October 1972 was for higher wages and 

against the denial of promotion to jobs reserved for whites. The white workers went along with the wages claim 

but not promotion. and the union, the National Union of Hosiery and Knitwear Workers, first prevaricated and then 

decided (after the strikers had occupied the union offices) to make the strike official, but not to call out the white 

workers. Once again, community associations, Asian workers at another company factory and political organisations 

like the BPFM and the BWM provided, in the Mansfield Hosiery Strike Committee, the basis for struggle. 

So that when strikes by Asian workers at the Courtauld owned Harwood Cash Lawn Mills in Mansfield and E.E. 

Jaffe and Malmic Lace in Nottingham broke out in the middle of 1973, the Mansfield Hosiery Strike Committee 

was at hand to give them support. More importantly - from a long-term view - the Strike Committee, pursuing 

its policy of pushing the trade union movement to fight racism not just in word but in deed, now called 

for a Conference of Trade Unions against Racialism. Accordingly, in June 1973 350 delegates from all the major 

unions and representatives from black community groups and black organisations came together at a conference 

in Digbeth Hall, Birmingham. From this emerged the Birmingham Conference Steering Committee, 

which in turn led to the setting up of the National Committee for Trade Unions against Racialism (NCTUAR). 

Meanwhile, in the London area in June 1972, West Indian workers at Stanmore Engineering Works struck work demanding 

wage increases recommended by their union, the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers (AUEW). 

They went further, they staged a sit-in. But although the union was prepared to award strike pay, it was not prepared 

to bring its national weight to bear on the strike — by, for instance, getting workers and unions in the motor industry to 

‘black’ products from Stanmore Engineering. The strikers were eventually removed by a court injunction and sacked. 

Trade union racism showed up again a year later in the strike at Standard Telephone and Cables (New Southgate), 

a subsidiary of ITT, over promotion of West Indians to ‘white only jobs’. The craft unions, like the Metal Mechanics, 

remained stubbornly craft/race oriented. The Electrical Trades Union (ETU) opposed the strike as detrimental to its 

(white) members, into whose ranks blacks sought promotion. The local AUEW shop steward, though supporting the 

strikers, could not get the support of his union on a national basis. The NCTUAR called on the trade unions and trade 



unionists to back the workers in official strike action against racial discrimination – and leafleted the Trade Union Congress 

Conference at Blackpool. Once again, all the black political organisations, the London based BUFP, BCC, BWCC 

and the BWM, along with the BWAC and the BPFM from the East Midlands, came to the aid of the strikers. The BWAC sent 

a cable to the Non-Aligned Conference in Algiers pointing out the international depredations of ITT. But all to no avail. 

In November 1973, in a strike at Perival Gutermann, a yearn factory in Southall, over the question of ages and productivity, 

Indian and Pakistani workers struck work and were sacked. The TGWU branch supported the strike but gave no 

strike pay till February the following year. Management tried to introduce their version of the Indo-Pakistan war into 

the factory, but failed to inflame communal passions. The workers once again turned to the communities for help and 

were assisted by Indian and Pakistani workers’ associations, Gurdwaras and local shops, who between them collected 

money and supplied the men on strike with free sugar, Hour, oil and essential groceries. The TGWU, which, like most 

unions, had hitherto refused to cooperate with the government’s restrictive Industrial Relations Act, now referred 

the case of the dismissed workers to the NIRC — which of course ruled against the men. The strike was defeated. 

The apotheosis of racism, however, and therefore the resistance to it, was reached in 1974 at the strike in Imperial 

Typewriters (in Leicester), a subsidiary of the multinational Litton Industries. For here the white workers, 

management and unions worked hand in glove and were backed up by the violent presence of the National 

Front at the factory gates. Over a thousand of the 1,500 workforce were Asians, a large section of them women, 

most of them refugees from Uganda, and the strike itself arose from the usual practices of racial discrimination 

and exploitation. The TGWU refused to support the strikers with the hoary excuse that they had not 

followed correct negotiating procedures, and even prevailed on some of the Asian workers to remain at work 

by insisting that ‘the tensions are between those Asians from the subcontinent and those from Africa’. By now, 

of course, there was virtually a standing conference of black strike committees in the Midlands and a network 

of community associations and groups plus several black political organisations, all of which came to the aid 

of the strikers. And money came in from. amongst others, the Southall IWA, Birmingham Sikh temple, a women’s 

conference in Edinburgh, the Birmingham Anti-racist Committee and the European Workers’ Action Committee. 

The strikers won, but the firm was closed shortly afterwards by the multinational parent company. (45) 

By the middle of the 1970s, the youth had begun to emerge into the vanguard of black struggle. 

And they brought to it not only the traditions of their elders but an experience of their 

own, which was implacable of racism and impervious to the blandishments of the state. 

The daily confrontations with the police, the battles of Brockwel Park and Chapeltown and Notting Hill with the 

judicial set-up had established their hatred of the system, and they were now beginning to carve out a politics 

from the experience of their own existence. Already by 1973, ‘marginalised’ young West Indians in the ghettos 

of Britain were being attracted to the popular politics of Rastafari. Bred in the ‘gullies’ of Jamaica, the Rastas 

were mortally opposed to consumer-capitalist society and saw in their own predicament the results of 

neo-colonial and imperialist intervention. (46) And in their locks and dress and music they signified their deadly 

opposition. They were the ‘burning spear’ of the new resistance. The police took note, the state also. 



The Labour government^ White Paper of September 1975 and the Race Relations Act that followed it in February 

1976 spelt out between them the anxieties of the state. Having noted that ‘about two out of every five 

of the coloured people in this country now were born here and the time is not far off when the majority of the 

coloured population will be British born, the government warned that it was ‘vital to our well being as a society 

to tap these reservoirs of resilience, initiative and vigour in the racial minority groups and not to allow them 

to lie unused or to be deflected into negative protest on account of arbitrary and unfair discriminatory practices’. 

Hence the government would pass a Race Relations Act which would encompass whole areas of discrimination 

and vest the new Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), a merger of the CRC (47) and the RRB/with a 

few more powers to deal with it - and develop in the process a class collaborators who would manage racism 

and its social and political fall out. At the same time, it would hand out massive sums of money from its Urban 

Aid programme to key black self help groups and so stamp out the breeding grounds of resistance. (48) 

The strategy worked in the short run. But even within a year, it was showing signs of failing in the long term. 

In September 1975 three young West Indian (two of them youngsters) in the hope of financing black political 

groups that had refused to be corrupted by state benefice and of setting up black schools and self-help groups, 

held up the Spaghetti House, a restaurant in Knightsbridge. At the end of a five-day siege, they were arrested 

and charged and received sentences from seventeen to twenty years. For Sir Robert Mark. Metropolitan Police 

Commissioner, the Spaghetti House case... was the most difficult and potentially explosive of all the various 

problems’ (49) he had to deal with in his career but it was also one in which his strategy to by-pass his 

political masters and go direct to the media for the legitimation of police practice had paid off. It was an entente 

that, given the endemic racism of the media and the police, operated naturally vis-a--vis the black population, 

but would now be extended to other areas of society and substitute legitimation for accountability. (50) 

Among the Asians, too, it was the youth who were moving into the forefront of struggle. Like their Afro-Caribbean 

peers, they had been bred in a culture of racism and, like them, were impatient though not dismissive 

of the forms of struggle that their elders conducted. The fascist attacks in their community had gone on 

mounting, the police afforded no protection against them, condoned them, even, by refusing to recognise 

them as racially motivated. And the police themselves subjected the community to racial abuse, arbitrary arrest 

and ‘fishing raids’ for ‘illegal immigrants’. And then, in June 1976, opposite lWA’s Dominion Cinema, Southall, 

a symbol of Asian self-reliance and security, 18-year-old Gurdip Singh Chaggar was set upon by a gang of 

white youths and stabbed to death. (The motive, announced Sir Robert Mark, was not necessarily racial.) 

A few months earlier, the government (Labour) had announced a Green Paper on Nationality (on the lines of the present 

Tory Act) which would ‘rationalise’ the law which they themselves had fouled up in 1968. (Of course they had, as 

was their wont, balanced it with an anti-discriminatory Race Relations Bill which was just then, March, going through 

parliament.) In April, the NF staged a march through the black areas of Bradford under police protection, but were 

beaten back by the people of Manningham, Asians and Afro-Caribbean’s, young and old. In May, the press started 

a concerted campaign against immigration with the revelation that a homeless British Asian from Malawi was being 

housed in a four-star hotel at a cost £600 per week to the British tax-payer. Later that month, Enoch announced that 

he had secret information from a supposed government report which said that bogus dependants and their wives 

from India making their way into the country. The press picked up PoweII, as PoweII had picked up the press. And the 



attacks on the ‘Asian invaders’ became more intense through the days of May. On 4 June Chaggar was killed. (51) 

The community was stunned. A meeting was held and the elders went about it in the time-honoured way, passing 

resolutions, making statements. The youth took over — marched to the police station, demanding redress, stoning a 

police van en route. The police arrested two of them. They sat down before the police station and refused to move — 

until their fellows were released. They were released. The following day the Southall Youth Movement (SYM) was born. 

Various Asian youth movements sprang from this initiative — whenever and wherever there was need and in response 

to specific circumstances. But since these circumstances were invariably connected with fascist attacks and 

murders and/or police inability either to protect or apprehend (an inability so massive that it had taken a qualitative 

leap into connivance) (52) the youth movements tended to centre largely around the defence of their communities, 

and their organisations to reflect that purpose. (Their intervention in the campaigns against deportation would 

come later.) In the course of the next couple of years a number of youth organisations and defence committees 

sprang up, in London, Manchester, Leicester, Bradford, several of them in London alone in Brick Lane after the murders 

of Altab Ali and Ishaque Ali, in Hackney after the murder of Michael Ferreira, in Newham after the murder of 

Akhtar Ali Baig. And, like the strike committee earlier, the youth groups moved around aiding and supporting each 

other – joining and working with the West Indian youth groups in the process, sometimes on an organisational basis 

(SYM and Peoples Unite, Bradford Blacks and Bradford Youth Movement), sometimes as individuals, often coalescing 

into political groups (Hackney Black People’s Defence Organisation and Bradford United Black Youth League). 

At another level, political groups were consciously formed by Afro-Caribbean’s, Asian and Africans who had been 

active in white left movements but had left them white left movements but had left them because they did not speak to 

the black experience. And they took on, not only the black condition in Britain, but that of black peoples everywhere. 

They were anti-racist and anti-imperlaist ; and they were active in their communities. Their publications showed these 

concerns and helped further to politicise black people. Samaj in’a Babylon, in Urdu and English, and the group that 

produced the paper, came out of Chaggar’s murder (June 1976), the Notting Hill riots (August 1976) and Soweto 

(June 1976). Black Struggle was its theoretical but accessible counterpart. Mukti its successor. Black Socialist Alliance 

(BSA) would comprehend them all for a while and shift the emphasis to campaigning material. Blacks Against State 

Harassment (BASH) would later address / itself specifically to state racism. Other papers and journals and defence 

committee sheets and newsletters came and went, like their organisations, as the struggle rose and fell, moved and 

shifted, re-formed — but moving always in one direction: against the police, the government, racism. And the sheep/ 

goat distinction that the state had hoped, by selective openings in higher education, to achieve, had broken down: the 

educated gave of their skills to the community and the community grounded them in the realities of political struggle. 

Stop at Heathrow a minute, at the airport, as you are coming in or, if you are lucky, going out. Look around 

you, and you will see the division of labour that characterises the workforce of Britain. Cleaning and sweeping 

the (women’s) lavatories, the halls, the stairways are Asian women from nearby Southall. Among 

the porters, you will find a scattering of Asian and West Indian men. In the catering section, white women 

pack the food on the trays, while Asian women pack the same trays with cutlery (for £10 less per week). 



The menials in the kitchen are invariably Asian women — plus a few men, perhaps, for the heavier work. 

And, of course, there is no question of promotion. Indeed, they are lucky if the agency that employs them does not 

sack them and re-employ them at some other terminal, at the same wage if not a lower one. Their union, the TGWU, 

has been indifferent to their demands and in 1975, when 450 Asian workers on their own initiative, the union declared 

the strike. The women managed, though, to elicit a few concessions on their won – and went back to work. (53) 

The strike at Grunwick Film Processing plant in North London in August 1976 is. of course, more celebrated — 

not only because the Asian workers, most of them women from East Africa, sustained it in wet and snow and 

police harassment of pickets for over a year, but also because the whole force of the unions and of government 

appeared to be gathered at last on behalf of black workers. Not only were the strikers given strike pay 

by their union, but were also supported by the national unions — TGWU, TUC and UPW (Union of Post Office 

Workers) — and by local union branches, shop steward’s committees, trade councils, the lot. And cabinet ministers 

appeared on the picket lines. The basic issue for the strikers was the question of racist exploitation with 

which union recognition was involved, but, in the course of accepting union support, they also accepted the 

union line that union recognition by management was really the basic issue, losing in the process the lasting 

support of the black community. Union recognition would not have of itself got the vast backing of the unions, 

let alone that of cabinet ministers — it had never happened before — but there was now a deal between the 

government and unions (the Social Contract) which in exchange for workers not striking ensured, through the Employment 

Protection Act, that employers did not prevent unionisation. And that put Grunwick in the middle of it. 

As the strike dragged on into a year and the media and the management and its supporters threatened to involve 

more fundamental political issues such as the closed shop and the mass picket, the unions lost interest and 

left. In November 1977 four strikers, two of them women, started a hunger strike outside the TUC headquarters. 

They were immediately suspended by their union and their strike pay withdrawn. Len Murray, General Secretary 

of the TUC, suggested that they take up their hunger strike at the factory gates and not outside his office. (54) 

The lessons of the earlier strikes – that black workers needed to rally the community behind them and from that 

base force the unions on to their side – had been temporary unlearnt by workers who had not had the benefit of 

that tradition. On the other hand, the persistence of Asian women in going on the picket lines, month after month, 

against the pressure of their husbands and their fathers, the deception of the union and the attacks of the SPG – supported 

consistently by women’s groups – had established the strength of the emerging black women’s movement. 

In 1977 the National Front, encouraged by their performance (in terms of the percentage of 

votes cast) in previous local elections, staged several marches through black city areas, with 

the police ensuring for them the freedoms of speech and assembly They were closely attended 

by anti-racist groups — and black youth took the opportunity to stone both police and fascists alike. 

In January 1978 Judge McKinnon ruled that Kingsley Read’s pronouncement on Chaggar’s death — ‘One down, one million 

to go’ — did not constitute incitement to racial hatred. ‘In this England of ours,’ the Judge observed, ‘we are allowed to 

have our own views still, thank goodness, and long may it last.’ Kingsley Read was the head of the fascist National Party. 



In the same month, in the run-up to the local elections, itself a run-up to the general election of the following 

year, Margaret Thatcher assured the nation that her party would ‘finally see an end to immigration, for this country 

might be rather swamped by people with a different culture’. Since primary immigration had ended with the 

1971 Act, she was clearly referring to dependants. Shortly afterwards, the House of Commons (all-party) Select 

Committee on Race Relations and Immigration, sounding a similar note, went on to recommend ‘new procedures 

to tighten up identity checks’ and ‘the consideration of a system of internal control on immigration’. The 

Tones promised to go further: they would ‘improve’ existing ‘arrangements... to help those who are really anxious 

to leave this country’. The existing arrangements’, such as the SPG and the IIIU, the immigration officials, and 

the Home Office, the courts and the media, were obviously not enough; the Tories would reverse policies of reverse 

discrimination’ and amend the law on incitement to racial hatred, requiring it to prove ‘an intent to offend’. 

The media quickly tuned into Thatcher’s warning about swamping’. The Daily Mail, in a series of articles on immigration, 

with headlines such as ‘they’ve taken over my home town’, gave real life stories of culture swamping. A BBC 

television discussion programme on immigration afforded Enoch Powell enough latitude to enlarge on his theme of 

‘induced repatriation’. In the local elections that followed in May, candidates reiterated and justified Tory proposals. 

Hardly had the orchestration ceased than white fascist maggots began to crawl out of the decaying 

capitalist matter. Whole communities were terrorised. Three Asians were murdered in London within 

a period of three months, a shot-gun attack was mounted on West Indians in Wolverhampton, places of 

worship were desecrated and properties damaged and vandalised. And Tory-controlled local councils, mandated 

by their victory at the polls, set out to pursue Thatcherite policies in preparation for her victory. (55) 

Emboldened by these events, but also wishing to show the country that they were the true party of fascism, the 

NF in April the following year requested permission from the local council to hold an election meeting at Southall 

Town Hall. Permission had been refused elsewhere and, even in Ealing, refused by the previous Labour-controlled 

council. Now, however, the Tory majority, after little prevarication, granted permission. Five thousand people demonstrated 

before the Ealing Town Hall the previous day, demanding that the meeting be called off, but to no avail. 

Instead the council Haunted the Union Jack. the NF’s symbol, from the roof of the town hall. It was St George’s 

day, a day celebrated by the NF. The Southall community planned a peaceful protest…’but on the day, 2,756 police, 

including SPG units, with horses, dogs, vans, riots shields and a helicopter, were sent in to crush the protest’ 

– and the whole town centre declared a ‘sterile’ area. (56) People were penned in, unable to get to the town hall 

or back home - and began milling around. Police vans were driven at crowds of people and when they scattered 

and ran, officers charged after them, hitting out at random. Blair Peach, a relentless ant-racist campaigner and 

teacher, was beaten to death and hundreds of others injured, many seriously. The offices of Peoples Unite (an 

Afro Caribbean Asian meeting centre) were vandalised by police in readiness for the Tory council to demolish them 

– years before the scheduled date. Asian newspapers recalled the Amritsar massacre of that other April in 1919. 

The trials of the Southall 342 were held twenty-five miles away. far from the eye of the community, in Thatcher 

country. The magistrates rushed rapidly through the cases, convicting with abandon — 80 per cent in 



the first weeks of the trials — before the community could alert public opinion and the conviction rate 

was brought down to 50 per cent. The SPG officer who had bludgeoned BIair Peach to death remained unidentified 

and untried. The (Tory) government refused to hold an inquiry. The Home Secretary tut-tutted 

the SPG and, despite a massive public outcry against the unit (in which even the media was caught up), let it 

go back to its former devices. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir David McNee, summed it all up in 

an epigram: ‘If you keep off the streets in London and behave yourselves, you won’t have the SPG to worry 

about.’ But Southall, Southall knew, would not lightly be invaded again, as the third of July was to prove. (57) 

The Tory government of 1970, with its Immigration Act and Industrial Relations Act, its White Paper on Police-Immigrant 

Relations and other bits and pieces of policy, had begun the moves from the control of blacks at the gates 

to their control within. The Labour government had continued in the same vein, and not always by default: there 

was the Child Benefit law (58) and the Green Paper on Nationality — and, of course, there was their unwavering 

support for the police and their practices. The Tory government of 1979 now sought to perfect these measures, 

carry them to a logical conclusion, a final solution, within an overall attack on the working class and the welfare 

state in the framework of a law-and-order society. In articulating and clarifying the ideology of British racism in the 

run-up to the elections, Thatcher had established a climate in which officials in the health service, employment, 

education, housing, social and welfare services would, without benefit of edict, insist on passports and identity 

checks before affording a service to black citizens. Her Nationality Bill, by providing for various classes of (black) 

citizenship, would tend to regularise these practices. (59) Britain was effectively moving to a pass-law society. 

In fighting for educational and social and welfare services for the whole community. Asian and Afro-Caribbean women 

pinpointed the parallel histories of a common racism. In health care, for example, black women fought against the neglect 

of ‘black disease’. Simultaneous campaigns were mounted in Brent against sickle-cell anaemia (affecting West Indians) 

and Vitamin D deficiencies causing pickets (affecting Asians). And issues such as forcible sterilisation, arising from the 

health services obsession with black fertility, or the easy consignment of black women to mental hospitals, arising from 

its stereotyped understanding of ‘black psyches in captivity’, were fought by black women from both communities. 

Asian women in AWAZ (Voice) and Southall Black Sisters (set up in the wake of 23 April 1979) continued to lead 

the protest against the virginity testing and X-raying of immigrants. Here they gave the lead not only to other 

women, but to long established, male-dominated Asian organisations such as the IWA, which eventually joined 

them. And when Asian youth groups began to campaign in the community over specific immigration cases, it 

was the black women that helped keep the names of Anwar Ditta and Nasira Begum in the public consciousness. 

Black women have also been active in working-class struggles, as in the strike of Asian women at Futters (March- 

May 1979) and at Chix (1979-80), worked in local community self defence groups and combined in national black 

campaigns such as BSA and BASH. And from the richness of their struggles — at the factory gate, on the streets, in 

the home, at the schools, in the hospitals, at the courts — and from their joint initiative with IWA and BASH arose the 

first national black demonstration against state brutality (June 1979), when blacks, with the violence of virginity tests, 

the fascists and the SPG still fresh m their minds, marched in their outraged thousands through heart of London. (60) 

The loom of British racism had been perfected, the pattern set. The strands of resistance were meshed taut 



against the frame. The frame had to give. Instead, it was screwed still tighter in the unexplained death of Rasta 

‘Cartoon’ Campbell in Brixton prison (61) (March 1980), the murder of Akhtar Ali Baig on streets of Newham 

(July 1980) and the burning to death of the thirteen young West Indians in a New in New Cross (January 1981). 

It was clear to the black community from the evidence of a black witness, if not the evidence of their whole history 

in Britain ‘that the fire had been started by the fascists. But even before (he investigation was concluded. the police, 

with the aid of the press, had put it about that it was the work of a disaffected black party-goer, or a prank that went 

wrong or maybe an accident. Finally, they ‘proved’ through forensic expense that the fire had been self-innicted one 

way or another. Just nine months earlier, the police had ‘raided’ a black meeting place in St Pauls Bristol, only to be 

beaten back by the youth and routed by the community. Now the community closed ranks again. From all over the 

country they gathered at meetings in New Cross. A day of action was planned. The Race Today Collective (62) took 

over its organisation. And on 2 March over 10,000 blacks downed tools and marched through the heart of London, past 

the halls of imperial finance, past the portals of the yellow press, past the Courts of Justice, past the proud shopping 

centre of consumer society, past Broadcasting House and into the anointed place of free speech — Speakers’ Corner. 

It had been, for its size and length and spread of time, a peaceful march. There had been a few skirmishes, 

a window or two broken and a few arrests made. But the banner head-lines in the peopled press spoke 

of ‘mob violence’, ‘blacks on the rampage’, the invasion of privacy, the damage to property. The quality 

press mourned the breakdown of police/black relations, the frustration of the blacks, even at times white insensitivity 

to Black problems -- and went back to sleep again. The Home Secretary muttered something 

about an inquiry into racial violence. White society ensconced itself in its goodness and thanked God for the 

British bobby and, heartened, the bobbies went back to baiting Brixton. the fascists to baiting Southall. 

In April, Brixton exploded in rebellion. in July, Southall — blacks. Afro-Caribbean and Asian alike, all distinction between 

police and fascists had faded – and in the days following, Liverpool, Manchester, Coventry, Huddersfield, Bradford, 

Halifax. Blackburn, Preston, Birkenhead, Ellesmere Port. Chester. Stoke, Shrewsbury, Wolverhampton, Southampton, 

Newcastle. High Wycombe, Knaresborough, Leeds, Hull, Derby, Sheffield. Stockport, Nottingham, Leicester, Luton. 

Maidstone, AIdershot and Portsmouth, black and white — rebellion in slum city for the deprived, the state was the police. 

Nowhere have the youth, black and white, identified their problems with unemployment alone. That has 

been left to the social analysts of a past age. The youth know, viscerally. that there will be no work for them, 

ever, no call for their labour: it was not just a matter of the recession (the rich were doing all right), technology 

was taking over and the recession just gave ‘them’ the chance to get rid of the workers and bring in the 

robots. Society was changing, and they didn’t need the secretary of the British Association for the Advancement 

of Science to tell them that it was ‘a fundamental and irreversible change’. But they do not want to be 

pushed into artificial work schemes or institutionalised leisure or receive hand-outs from the enemy state. 

There is enough to go round and they want a part of it, a say in its giving. Or they will get it by thieving and 

‘loitering’ and hustling — those things which pass for normacy in a slum but threaten established society. 

They are not the unemployed, but the never employed. They have not, like their parents, had jobs and lost them -- 

and so become disciplined into a routine and a culture that preserves the status quo. They have not been organised 



into trade unions and had their politics disciplined by a labour aristocracy. They have not been on the marches of 

the dis-employed, so valiantly recalled by Labour from the hunger marches of the 1930s. Theirs is a different hunger 

— a hunger to retain the freedom, the life-style, the dignity which they have carved out from the stone of their lives. 

The police are not an intrusion into that society but a threat, a foreign force, an army of occupation — the thick end 

of the authoritarian wedge, and in themselves so authoritarian as to make no difference between wedge and state. 

That authoritarianism had been perfected in the colonies, in Ireland, in the fields of British racism, and, 

as it grew, it ways to by-pass its political masters and become accountable to no one but itself -- by obtaining 

legitimation for its actions from the silent majority through its cultivated liaison with the media. 

It was once held that the British police were governed more by popular morality than by the letter of the 

law. They have now become the arbiters of that morality. There is no criticism of them they would brook, no 

area of society they do not pronounce on (with the shadow of force behind them). Look at the ferocity with 

which they attack their critics (even the parliamentary tribunes of the people) (63) their refusal to be accountable 

to elected local police authorities, their pronouncements on the jury system, the unemployed, homosexuality, 

etc.(64) the press campaign mounted by their PRO, the Police Federation, for increased police 

powers (in various submissions to the Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure for instance) or the 

bon mots of their police chiefs to understand how the police have moved from accountability to legitimation. 

But then a government which is not accountable to the people — a government which governs with the politics of 

the stick and the policies of a thousand cuts, which is anti-working class and anti-women and anti-youth — must 

have a police force that is accountable to it and not to the people. In turn, the government itself needs itself needs 

to be legitimated by an ideology of repression. Ant it is not merely that a free market economy requires a law 

and order state but that, even in its passing, it leaves only the option of a mixed economy with a corporate state 

maintained by surveillance. They are but two shades of the same authoritarianism, the one more modern than the 

other, but neither speaking to the birth of a new society that waits in the wings of the new industrial revolution. 



Claudia Jones 

Top left : Claudia Jones leads 

civil rights march through 

Notting Hill, 1963. Right : March 

watched by locals 

Left : Malcolm X, with copy 

of West Indian Gazette, 1965. 

Claudia died on 24th 

December, 1964. She had 

arranged the MalcomX visit to 

Britain, including his infamous 

trip to Smethwick with the 

Indian Workers Association, 

but sadly passed before 

Malcolm’s arrival to the UK. 

Bottom right : 

A. Manchanda, editor of the 

West Indian Gazette and 

Afro Asian News at funeral of 

Jones. This photo was on front 

page with headline: 

DEAR CLAUDIA! WE SHALL 

HOLD HIGH YOUR BANNER OF 

ANTI-IMPERIALISM 



PHOTOS Top left : Crowds at 

the funderal of 

Kelso Cochrane, 1959 

Right : Kelso Cochrane 

Middle left : Amid allegations 

of a police cover up (nobody 

was charged for the death of 

Cochrane) protests were held 

in Whiitehall 

Right : Claudia Jones speaking 

at the funeral of Cochrane 

Right: With Manchanda at the 

offices of West Indian 

Gazette. Manu and Claudia 

met after joining the 

Communist Party of Great 

Britain. Experiencing the same 

cold-shoulder the Communist 

Party had shown Claudia, he 

joined her and others to form 

the Committee of 

Afro-Asian-Caribbean 

Organisations. Claudia 

appointed him managing editor 

of the West Indian 

Gazette. In April 1964, with 

three members of the African 

National Congress, he went 

on a seven-day hunger strike 

in the courtyard of St Martinin-the-Fields 

in support of the 

worldwide campaign for the 

release of Nelson Mandela, 

Walter Sisulu and 

Rusty Bernstein. 



A Peoples’ Art is the Genesis 

of their Freedom 

Claudia Jones 

(from Claudia Jones : Beyond containment Ed.Carole Boyce Jones) 

Rarely have the creative energies of a people indigenous to another homeland been so quickly 

and spontaneously generated to such purpose as witness the work of the Caribbean Carnival 

Committee of 1959 set up last November under the sponsorship of the West Indian Gazette. 

It is as if the vividness of our national life was itself the spark urging translation to new 

surroundings, to convey and to transplant our folk origins to British soil. There is a comfort 

in this effort not only for the Carnival Committee and the West Indian Gazette, for the 

fine artists participating in our Carnival who have lent of their talents here, but for all West 

Indians, who strain to feel and hear and reflect their idiom even as they strain to feel the 

warmth of their sun-drenched islands and its immemorable beauty of landscape and terrain. 

There is of course another cause to be assessed to their response to those who 

have filled St. Pancras Town Hall. That reason is the event of Notting Hill and Nottingham 

- an event which was the matrix binding West Indians in the United 



Above : Photo from the first Carnival in Kings Cross 



Kingdom together as never before, determined that such happenings should not recur. 

If then, our Caribbean Carnival has evoked the wholehearted response from the peoples from 

all the Islands of the Caribbean in the new West Indies Federation, this is itself testament 

to the role of the arts in bringing people together for common aims and to its rising of the 

cultural, spiritual, as well as political and economic interests of West Indians in the UK and at home. 

A pride in being West Indian is undoubtedly at the root of this unity; a pride that has its origin 

in the drama of nascent nationhood and that pride encompasses not only the creativeness, 

uniqueness and originality of West Indian mime song and dance - but is the genesis of the nation itself. 

It is true to say that pride extends not only to what the West Indians have 

proudly established in the culture of the Caribbean but to the treasury or world culture. 

In the midst of our revelry let us remember that it is a world on eve of conquest of Space - tribute to 

man’s unconquerable quest for adventure, achievement and mastery over Nature and himself. 

Our multi-racial culture should be the front, helping the universal quest to turn the instruments 

of science everywhere for the good of all mankind, for the freedom of all the world’s peoples, 

no matter what the pigment of their skin, for human dignity and friendship of all people here. 

If our Carnival is a triumphal success, it is not only as a result of the inspired spirit that has permeated its 

preliminary activities from its inception, but also the moral and material support given generously 

by our friends and neighbours in the British Isles representing tangible evidence of their goodwill. 

For me and the management of the West Indian Gazette and to all of the Carnival Committee 

I say a deep thank you. It would be unfair for me not to tell you that we have still 

another determination, that is, to make the WIG Caribbean Carnival an annual event. 

In that endeavour, we know we can count not only on - the artists, the decor, the 

committee heads, our friends and neighbours but many who we have not yet reached. 

May the aim of our mutual efforts to help build the West Indian Gazette and above all 

in that endeavour help to extend the already acknowledged cultural influence of the 

Caribbean throughout the Commonwealth. And may that be the leaven to weld still 

more firmly the brotherhood and unity of West Indians and other peoples of colour 

as well as the friendship for all peoples that will be the fruit of this cultural exchange. 



John la Rose 

Top left : 

Samuel Selvon, John LaRose 

and Andrew Salkey. - 

founders of the Caribbean 

Artists Movement. 

Top right :campaigning against 

aparthied 

Right: New Cross Massacre 

Action Committee demonstrators 

outside County Hall, 

London, in 1981. The inquest 

into the deaths of thirteen 

young people in a New Cross 

house fire was due to begin. 

Picture: PA 

Bottom left : John La Rose was 

the Chairman of the New Cross 

Massacre Action 

Committee and gave tremendous 

support the bereaved 

families Some 20,000 people 

marched through 

central London on the Black 

People’s Day of Action in 

March 1981 (Pic: John Sturrock) 

Bottom right : Poster made to 

advertise the event 



Top left :Ben Okri, James 

Kelman and Kole Omotoso at 

the prose evening, Camden 

London, 23 March 1990 

Top right :John La Rose 1981 

by Toni Gorton 

Middle left : 

Cover of his selected 

writings. His work explores 

John La Rose explores what 

Linton Kwesi Johnson calls in 

his introduction “the 

conjunction of the personal 

and the political”, to give an 

alternative global history 

where “the writer and the 

crowd have emerged to play 

their roles on the stage of the 

world.” 

Middle right : John La Rose 

with Linton Kwesi Johnson. 

Pic: Guy Farrar 

Bottom right : Victory 

demonstration on the way to 

Hornsey Police station after 

Cliff McDaniel case 1975 (North 

London school boy beaten 

outside school by police) 



Above : John La Rose launches the latest book by the Cuban writer Nicolas Guillen in New Beacon Books in 1976 

…..And so 

if you see me 

looking at your hands 

listening when you speak 

marching in your ranks 

you must know 

I do not sleep to dream but 

dream to change the world. 

Martin Carter - Poems of Succession (1977) 



Changing Britannia through 

the Arts and Activism 

A Public Lecture at the British Library to Mark 

50 Years of New Beacon Books 

by Professor Gus John. 

Friends and Comrades! 

It is a privilege and an honour to deliver this lecture to mark 50 Years of New Beacon Books. 

I aim to do two things: to reflect upon the many political and cultural institutions and movements that inspired 

its formation, as well as the political and cultural movements that it spawned and to share some thoughts as to 

why New Beacon is arguably even more relevant and necessary now as we approach the third decade of the 

millennium than it has been in the last five decades. 



I am presenting the lecture with the help of a number of extracts from that wonderful film ‘Dream to Change the 

World’, a film which links John La Rose’s early life and political activism in Trinidad & Tobago with his political 

and cultural activism here in the UK throughout the rest of his life. At this point, let me acknowledge my sincere 

thanks to Horace Ove for that excellent film and for allowing us to use it in telling the story of 50 Years of New 

Beacon Books. 

A couple weeks ago, at the George Padmore Institute, we also celebrated 50 Years of CAM, the Caribbean 

Artists Movement. We are gathered here today in the 10th year of the death of John La Rose, the inspiration 

behind the founding of both institutions, institutions that constitute historic political interventions in the ongoing 

and troubled process of ‘Changing Britannia’. 

So, today is a day for celebration, celebration with pride and treasured memory. Celebration of 50 Years of 

New Beacon, 50 Years of CAM and 40 years of John La Rose with both New Beacon Books is one of the most 

important and influential institutions in post-war Britain. For the last 50 years it has operated on the axis of culture 

and politics, epitomising the symbiotic relationship between the two; on the axis of communities’ struggles 

for self-determination and for fundamental rights and entitlements and on the axis of struggles for racial equality 

and social justice in a nation that has failed and stubbornly continues to fail to acknowledge the political and 

policy imperative that the legacy of empire and of its colonial past has placed upon it. 

New Beacon Books was founded by John La Rose in 1966 and became the first African heritage publishers and 

booksellers in the UK. La Rose had had a ‘life experience with Britain’ in his native Trinidad & Tobago prior to 

continuing to chart a life experience with Britain right here, in a nation seeking to redefine and reconstruct itself 

after two devastating world wars in less than a quarter of a century. 

John La Rose had not only been engaged in radical and revolutionary politics, he was immersed in the literary 

tradition of Trinidad & Tobago and the Caribbean generally. When La Rose was still a toddler, CLR James started 

the ‘Beacon’ group which was dedicated to writing and promoting literature that dealt with ‘ordinary life’ in 

Trinidad. Between 1931 and 1939, they published the ‘Beacon’ journal which carried short stories about ordinary 

folk and their lives in their communities, as well as novels based on the struggles of workers and peasants that 

were framed within the politics and dynamics of race and class in colonial Trinidad. As a teenage activist, therefore, 

La Rose was nurtured within that tradition and was inspired by the creative writing and political commentaries 

of a vibrant generation of writers and political theorists. 

By the time John left the Caribbean to come to Britain, therefore, he had formed a view of the world. He had 

seen evidence of imperialist plunder and exploitation, of the relationship between labour and capital accumulation, 

evidence of people’s struggle for economic and cultural emancipation, evidence of the strength of a united 

labour movement and of the lengths to which the oppressive state would go to subdue the people and crush 

their will as they struggled for self-determination and for bread, freedom and justice. 

John was nurtured as a young activist, not just by Caribbean intellectuals, but by the lessons of the courageous 



struggles of the masses of working people at home and abroad, people who 

demonstrated strength in unity of organisation and of purpose, against the might 

of colonial police and armies. 

The great American abolitionist, Frederick Douglass famously said: “Find out just 

The great 

American 

abolitionist, 

Frederick Douglass 

famously said: 

“Find out just what 

any people will 

quietly submit to 

and you have the 

exact measure of 

the injustice and 

wrong which will 

be imposed on 

them! “Frederick 

Douglass (1857) 

what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the 

injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them! “Frederick Douglass (1857) 

The enslaved and subjugated peoples of the Caribbean knew that very well. And 

that is why, throughout history, in the face of the barbarism of the British Crown 

and the colonial armies of Europe, they resisted, rebelled and revolted. From the 

revolution of enslaved Africans in Haiti, to the Morant Bay rebellion and the massacre 

by Governor Edward John Eyre in Jamaica, to the labour revolts across the Caribbean 

in the middle to late 1930s, history recorded the most profound examples 

of struggle in the Caribbean against enslavement and barbarism on the plantations, 

against state oppression and capitalist exploitation and for fundamental freedoms 

and human dignity. 

That history also taught John La Rose the familiar patterns of colonial domination 

and subjugation, through religion, through schooling and education, through the 

peddling of cultural supremacy and the forcible erasure of the culture that colonised 

people carried and created, through psychological warfare and the systematic 

process of making the colonised to deny their very essence and adopt 

mindsets that affirmed white supremacy and cultural hegemony, while apologising 

for and bemoaning their blackness. 

So dominant and prohibitive were those processes, that we were coerced into 

being apologetic about ourselves, our capacity to interpret our world, to interpret 

colonialism to itself, to tell our own stories, to critique and debunk the colonialists’ 

representation of us and to shape our own destiny as nations and as people with a 

common history and a common African heritage. 

The Caribbean project therefore had two main purposes. One was to struggle 

against colonialism and against people like ourselves who were only too eager and 

happy to be handpicked, groomed, deployed, validated and if necessary defended 

militarily to be efficient neo-colonialists in the service of the Crown, in the service 

of the plantation economy and in the interests of western capitalism. The other 

purpose was to forge an identity as creative people, with a creative spirit and capacity 

that was not crushed and obliterated by enslavement, but that empowered 

and inspired us to make sense of our existential reality and to be actors on the 

world stage. 



But, if colonialists engaged with us in those familiar ways and installed neo-colonialists 

to succeed them and take care of business at home in their interests, they 

did even worse as we left the colonies to come to the ‘Mother Country’, here to 

experience the racism that was in the very DNA of the nation. We were expected 

But, what we 

leave, we 

carry. 

to abandon the self-assertiveness we had practised back home and the experience 

of struggle in the cause of freedom and human liberation and of sharing our stories 

that had made us what we were. 

We bring 

what 

we are and 

we are 

what we 

bring. 

But, what we leave, we carry. We bring what we are and we are what we bring. 

And that is how we engaged with the society that we found. But, we don’t just 

bring what we are, we also bring what we have the potential to be, what we have 

the capacity to grow and become. And that capacity includes impacting upon the 

society and changing it, even as we too are changed by it. We therefore discover 

not just the society, its physical and human geography, its multiculturalism in all its 

whiteness, its customs, traditions and cultural norms; we discover ourselves and 

one another and become identified as a people. 

So much so, that it took some of the natives a long time to understand that the 

‘West Indies’ is not one continuous land mass called Jamaica, full of rebellious and 

talawa people. If I had been given a fiver every time I was asked which part of 

Jamaica was Grenada, by now I would have been a millionaire. So, we discovered 

one another in Britain and we were seen as One People, even if we did not acknowledge 

one another as such. 

What we leave we carry; including our history of struggle and our awareness 

of just how much we had been denied access to knowledge of our own history, 

knowledge of the contribution of our Ancestors to the evolution of history and the 

development of humankind, knowledge of the massive extent of their contribution 

to the economic, scientific and cultural development of Britain and of Europe itself. 

What we leave, we carry. 

It was not surprising, therefore, that John La Rose chose to call his publishing, book 

selling and book distribution company ‘New Beacon’ and that his mission as both 

a writer and a publisher was rooted in what the ‘Beacon’ represented and did in 

Trinidad society. It is as part of that genre that CLR James produced his first novel, 

Minty Alley, which was one of the first titles published by New Beacon Books. 

New Beacon therefore had a number of key objectives which were very much 

related to the state of Britain in the 1960s and the following decades. Broadly 

speaking, one can identify 10 objectives which could be summarised as follows:To 

be an outlet for the creative products of writers, poets and academics who typi- 



cally had had to leave the Caribbean for the UK, elsewhere in Europe and North America in order to write and be 

published 

To make literature from Africa and the Global African Diaspora available to a UK and wider European audience 

and to Africa and the Diaspora itself. I am sure some of us remember well the Heinemann African Writers Series, 

distributed by New Beacon, that brought us books such as Chinua Achebe’s trilogy (Things Fall Apart, Arrow of 

God and No Longer at Ease), and those of other writers, including: Steve Biko, Ama Ata Aidoo, Nadine Gordimer, 

Buchi Emecheta, and Okot p’Bitek. 

To encourage and give exposure to the work of young writers from among the African Diaspora in the UK 

To help inform and give direction to political struggles on the axis of race and class in the UK 

To publish and otherwise distribute curriculum material that was inclusive of the massive contribution to human 

knowledge and the development of societies, especially the economic and cultural development of Europe, that 

Africa and its Diaspora have made throughout history 

To write, publish and distribute the outcomes of the process in which we interpreted the society to itself through 

the prism of our experience of it, here and in the countries from whence we came 

To publish and otherwise distribute resources that could propel the development of an independent black working 

class movement in schooling and education 

To publish and otherwise distribute resources that connect the struggle for human liberation and for racial equality 

and social justice across the five continents 

To ensure that there could be no excuse for imposing upon the nation’s children, of any class and any ethnicity, a 

white, eurocentric curriculum and pedagogy 

To encourage and support the development of other African publishers and booksellers that are equally 

grounded in communities and that have a mission to support independent organisation and free, open and democratic 

debate within those communities and in the society generally 

From its inception, New Beacon Books has been organic to the communities whose struggles it seeks to inform 

and support. Its rootedness in those communities, combined with John La Rose’s leadership as an experienced 

political/cultural activist and political strategist is evidenced by the following: 

The founding of the Caribbean Artists Movement, also in 1966, and CAM’s focus on art and culture in its most 

inclusive sense, of which, more later 

New Beacon’s presence at community meetings, rallies and cultural events both as active participants and as 

booksellers 

New Beacon was central to the formation in the late 1960s of the Caribbean Education and Community Workers 

Association (CECWA) and to the formulation of CECWA’s position on pressing education issues, e.g.: 

The disproportionate number of African heritage children being sent to schools for the educationally subnormal. 

CEWCA commissioned Bernard Coard to write the seminal work ‘How the West Indian child is made educationally 

subnormal in the British school system’, which New Beacon first published in 1971 



The practice of banding and busing children from the Caribbean Diaspora on the basis of racist stereotypes and assumptions. 

The licence given to schools by the department for education to bus such children away from their local 

area to schools elsewhere once their number in any one school was in excess of 30% of the school’s roll 

The culturally and racially biased intelligence tests that were administered to our children with dire consequences, especially 

if the children had recently arrived from the Caribbean to join parents/relatives 

Police in schools, not just for community liaison purposes but in order to perform clandestine and often not so overt 

policing functions and place our children in the school-to-prison pipeline, a system imported from the USA 

The criminalisation of our youth, including school students 

Police aggressive and illegal ‘Stop & Search’ operations 

Careers officers and their low expectations of and aspirations for our children, often pointing them in the direction of 

dead end jobs 

The development of Saturday/Supplementary Schools and strategies for dealing with mainstream headteachers, as well 

as the police, who sought to obstruct those schools and victimise students who attended them. 

New Beacon was instrumental in the formation of the Black Parents Movement and the Black Youth Movement 

New Beacon provided advice and guidance to groups wishing to set up supplementary schools, drawing upon the 

experience of the Black Parents Movement in running its own, viz.: the Albertina Sylvester Saturday School and the 

George Padmore Supplementary School 

New Beacon introduced many school students and their families to writers in the community, or/and to those visiting 

London from the wider Diaspora whom New Beacon persuaded to come and talk about their work in the bookshop or 

some other community venue. That was something Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications also did and to a far greater extent. 

School students would crowd into the bookshops with their teachers and hear and interact with established publishers 

whom they and their parents never thought they would ever set eyes upon. Such was the organic rootedness of our 

bookshops and publishing houses in our communities. 

For example, it was hugely inspiring, motivating and self-affirming to be able to discuss with writers such as Andrew 

Salkey, John La Rose himself, Eddie (later Kamau) Brathwaite, George Lamming, Sylvia Wynter, Sam Selvon at our regular 

meetings at the West Indian Students Centre in Earls Court, the base of the Caribbean Education and Community 

Workers Association. 



New Beacon provided stocks of books to public libraries and to local education authority Teachers Centres/ 

Professional Development Centres and ran training and development workshops for teachers and curriculum 

development staff on the books/teaching resources and how they might be used 

New Beacon organised public seminars otherwise on policy matters and state practices that impacted negatively 

and disproportionately on African heritage communities 

When in 1981 the government established Special Access Courses to provide alternative entry routes to higher 

education for black and ethnic minority adults who had missed out on, or had had poor educational outcomes 

from, mainstream schooling, New Beacon provided essential advice both to individual mature students who 

were pursuing those courses and to the leaders and teaching staff on those courses. Such courses, led principally 

by African Diaspora staff, were in every sense the adult equivalent of the Black Supplementary Schools, 

except that unlike the latter, they were full-time, one- or two-year courses 

Over time, New Beacon came to be seen as the ‘go to’ place for guidance and advice on thesis proposals, ethnographic 

research methods, course material, potential interviewees, etc. 

New Beacon, with the Black Parents Movement and other partners with whom it worked in alliance, intervened 

on the issue of criminal prosecutions that were politically motivated and developed a method for defendants 

and their families/supporters/campaigns to take control of their defence against those charges and ensure that 

their legal team acted under their instructions 

On January 1981, 13 young people lost their lives in a house fire at 439 New Cross Road in Deptford, South London. 

One more was to die later. Within days of that tragedy, the New Cross Massacre Action Committee was 

formed, with John Las Rose as its Chair, and it went on to organise the New Cross Massacre Black People’s Day 

of Action on 2nd March 1981, which brought 25,000 predominantly African people to march from Deptford to 

the Houses of Parliament and then to Hyde Park on an ordinary working Monday. New Beacon was involved in 

the activities of both formations 

Between 1982 and 1995, New Beacon, Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications and Race Today Publications ran an 

international book fair and book fair festival that spanned all five continents and was located in Bradford/Leeds, 

Manchester and London. Fittingly, the first book fair was opened by CLR James at Islington Town Hall in 1982. 

As the years progressed, New Beacon remained the only publisher organising the book fair 

New Beacon established the New Beacon Educational Trust and the George Padmore Institute (GPI) was founded 

in 1991 by John La Rose and a number of political and cultural activists associated with New Beacon and 

with many of the movements, initiatives and organisations outlined above. The GPI is an archive, educational 

resource and research centre that houses “materials relating to the black community of Caribbean, African and 

Asian descent in Britain and continental Europe” 



By the time New Beacon, Bogle L’Ouverture Publications and Race Today Publications came together to organise 

the International Bookfair of Radical Black and Third World Books, each of them in their own right and working 

together had engaged with political struggles and literary and artistic developments and creative products across 

the five continents. To give just a few examples: 

Political repression in Daniel Arap Moi’s Kenya: 

In 1986, having returned to Kenya, Wanyiri Kihoro, a founder member of the Committee against Political Repression 

and for the Release of Political Prisoners in Kenya, was himself imprisoned without trial. In response to the 

international pressure put upon Daniel Arap Moi as a result of the campaigning work of the Committee and a barrage 

of letters from its Chair, John La Rose, a frustrated Moi was heard to exclaim: ‘What does this descendant of 

slaves know about Kenyan affairs and about Africa?’ One helpful aide, no less affronted than his tyrannical master, 

then interjected without hesitation: ‘Why don’t you have him arrested?’ John La Rose and his committee continued 

their campaign in spite of the repressive Kenyan secret service, publishing the campaigning bulletin, Kenya 

News, until 1989. http://www.georgepadmoreinstitute.org/trinidad-memorial-owtu-2006 

The Anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and across the world and support for political exiles from the South 

Africa liberation struggles living in Britain and continental Europe, especially Germany 

The Soweto massacre and its aftermath 

The struggles of Nigerian academics against persecution and political repression, especially the work of the 

Association of Staff of Universities (ASU) against state tyranny, especially as perpetrated by successive military 

regimes 

Workers’ struggles across the Caribbean, in Southern Africa and in the USA 

Antiracist and anti-fascist struggles across Europe and in France, Germany and Italy in particular 

The Black Studies Movement in the USA 

The Civil Rights Movement in the USA 

The independence struggles in Guadeloupe and Martinique 

The perennial threats facing the revolutionary government in Cuba 

The perennial threats, internal and external, facing the revolutionary government in Grenada 

Workers’ struggles here in the UK and not least the onslaught on the National Union of Mineworkers by Margaret 

Thatcher and her government in the early 1980s 

The fatwa pronouncedby Ayatollah Khomeini against the writer, Salman Rushdie, following the publication of The 

Satanic Verses in 1988 and the burning of the book by Muslims in Bradford in 1989. Across the free world, there 

was outrage at the fatwa and at what the burning of the book heralded in terms of attitudes to free speech and 

to judgements about ‘blasphemy’ on the part of certain sections of Islam. Intervening in relation to both matters, 

John wrote: 

‘Believers have their right to believe. Writers have their right to write. Between belief and expression there is a 

right to statement and counterstatement, to argument and counterargument. That is where I stand. Let those who 

disagree make their case in the open forums of the world. Death and sentencing to death have never triumphed 

over ideas and belief. Christianity and Islam are proof of this.’ 

To digress for a moment, one might observe at this time that the Khomeini fatwa, the burning of the Satanic verses 

in Bradford in 1989 and the murder of Charlie Hebdo journalists in Paris in January 2015 all lie along the same 



continuum and all have the issue of ‘blasphemy’ at their core. 

Against that background of solidarity with and active support for struggles and 

movements across the world, the book fair organisers could be confident, therefore, 

that when the Call went out for the first and every other book fair, there 

would be an enthusiastic response from political and cultural activists, including 

publishers, abroad and at home. 

The name John La Rose is synonymous with New Beacon Books and with the 

Despite that 

history I have 

charted thus far 

and the 

incontrovertible 

impact New 

Beacon and its 

satellites have 

had on political 

life in post-war 

Britain, the sad 

fact is that a 

large 

percentage of 

people born in 

1980 and after 

have not even 

heard of New 

Beacon Books 

or John La 

Rose. 

movement of which New Beacon Books itself has been a part since its birth in 

1966, including CAM, the book fair and the George Padmore Institute. 

As evidenced above, New Beacon has never been just about publishing, marketing 

and selling books. Indeed, its practice these last 50 years has been consonant 

with the 10 objectives listed at the top of this paper. 

It has undergirded a political movement and inspired many generations to find 

and use their voice and to connect with current and past struggles and learn from 

our advances as well as our defeats. 

Despite that history I have charted thus far and the incontrovertible impact New 

Beacon and its satellites have had on political life in post-war Britain, the sad fact 

is that a large percentage of people born in 1980 and after have not even heard 

of New Beacon Books or John La Rose. 

Maybe that’s not so surprising when one considers that most people in the media 

would also have heard of neither. 

A quick anecdote in this regard. When John died in February 2006, Ngugi wa 

Thongo and I were invited to appear on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme to talk 

about his life and work. We were interviewed by John Humphreys and Edward 

Stourton. At the end of the interview, Edward Stourton accompanied us out of 

the studio and said: ‘I cannot believe that this man has done so much and been 

such a huge cultural figure right here in London and I have not even heard of him. 

I really must find out some more about him and the work that you all do’. 

Such is the reality of marginalisation of our contribution to Changing Britannia and 

our efforts to get this nation to wake up to the fact that we are not on the margins 

looking in but very much part of the process of transforming the society and 

helping it to understand its internal contradictions and to be at ease with itself. 

So, where now for New Beacon Books? 

As you gathered for this lecture you will have been handed a statement indicat- 



ing the changes there have been in the operation of New Beacon Bookshop and that are planned in 2017. There is no 

doubt that New Beacon like so many other independent publishers and small bookshops have had to confront many 

challenges, from on-line shopping to Kindle, electronic publishing and much else besides. These changes have markedly 

impacted the viability of small bookshops. It is reassuring to learn that the publishing and bookservice will continue. 

I want to suggest, however, that ways be found of enabling New Beacon Books to continue to perform the following 

key functions: 

Confronting the process of writing us out of British social and cultural history 

Encouraging and assisting young people to understand New Beacon’s history and purpose and to draw upon it as they 

discover and use their own voice and continue to change Britannia and shape the future they want, rather than allow 

others to shape that future for them based on insularity, chauvinism, isolationism and backwardness 

Continuing to influence new social and cultural movements, e.g., ‘Why is my curriculum white?’; ‘Why isn’t my professor 

black?’, the decoloniality movement and the growing body of young writers, playwrights and spoken word artists that 

is emerging, especially in urban Britain which has become home to so many of them 

Linking them to the work of iconic pioneers such as Una Marson, Edric and Pearl Connor, Geraldine Connor, Yvonne 

Brewster, Mona Hammond, Joan Hooley, Carmen Munroe, Corinne Skinner-Carter, Norman Beaton, Earl Lovelace, Aubrey 

Williams, Edna Manley and many, many more 

Confronting the challenges of Brexit and the resurgence of fascism in Britain and Europe 

Subverting the neo-liberal schooling project whereby government expands the process by which schooling displaces 

education and produces a nation of certificated (if not certified) ignoramuses, devoid of any understanding of their 

own history and of the history and reality of how the global majority population, as well as globalism and globalisation 

changed Britain and its relationship with the rest of the world. 

The international bookfair provided opportunities for young people, including aspiring writers and cultural activists, to 

self-educate and make sure that, in Mark Twain’s famous words, they never let their schooling interfere with their education. 

I regularly meet many who tell passionate tales of how much the book fair and book fair festivals contributed 

to their education, self affirmation and self development. 

If New Beacon has never been just about book selling, the challenge for that historical movement and for us is how to 

shape and structure it to perform all the above functions and more, so that in the same way that John La Rose built 

upon the praxis of the Beacon group and the political and cultural movement of which they were a part in Trinidad & 

Tobago and the Caribbean in that volatile period of Caribbean history, New Beacon could continue to inspire new generations 

and help shape their struggles as they build a new order in Britain, long after the likes of me have popped my 

clogs and popped along to the realm of Ancestors. 

And talking about ‘Ancestors’, it is now 10 years since John La Rose joined them. Let us remember him through some 

poignant tributes that his comrades, including Professor Stuart Hall, shared the day we celebrated his life and returned 

him to Mother Earth. 



Part 2 

1976 






As you have seen the backdrop to the racism of the 1970s began way back in 1919, but 

it was Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of blood’ speech which gave it a huge revival during the 70’s. 

Powell’s words still have a deep impact on British politics, but during the early 70’s it directly 

led to the growth of racist attacks, and far right groups such as the National Front. The 

National Front grew on the words of Powell, and the campaign to oppose Britain’s membership 

of the European Economic Community, which began on 1 January 1973. By 1976 it had 

14,000 registered members, and polled nearly 20% of votes in local elections in Leicester. 

Yet, it was in 1976 that communities across the country began to come out and fight back 

against racism. 

Racism was rife. The Institute of Race Relations closely monitored the press in 1976 

and noted the close correlation between press reports and families facing racist violence. 

Jenny Bourne writing in Race and Class noted, “On 2 May, the News of the World headline 

read: ’One slips through on every boat’; three days later Asian parents in Redbridge made 

an appeal for the safety of their children after they were constantly attacked in the school 

playground. On 6 May the Sun headlines read, ’Another 20,000 Asians are on the way’ and 

’Storm over two-wife immigrant’. That night an Asian shop in West Essex was repeatedly 

attacked. On 7 May the Sun reported, ’4-star Asians run up £4,000 bill’ and’ Queue jumping 

rumpus’. The Guardian on 9 May headlined ’Asians rile neighbours’ (the report was, in 

fact, on how the Malawian family was set upon by white families at the ’reception centre’ to 

which they were moved from the hotel). The next day a concrete slab was thrown through 

the window of a Asian’s house in Hackney, paraffin was poured over the furniture and it 

was set alight. Four days later a 40-year-old Bengali in Oldham was beaten and knifed by 

a-gang of fifteen white youths. Shopkeepers and restauranteurs reported continual attacks. 

On 17 May the Daily Express wrote of ’Asian flood warning’. The next day the Sun told of 

’New Asian invaders’, and the Mirror headlined ’Our Asian burden by Mellish’. Two days later 

a West Indian mother in Poplar asked for help against constant attacks, threats on her children, 

obscene letters and paint daubed on her house. That same’ night, two students, one 

Indian, the other Jordanian, were stabbed to death in Woodford, three miles away. “ (Race 

and Class, XV111, 1(1976) 

On Friday 4th June, Granada TV broadcast a short film by Paul Foot in which he argued 

that “race hate and race violence does not rise and fall according to the numbers of immigrants 

coming into Britain. It rises and falls to the extent to which people’s prejudices are 

inflamed and made respectable by politicians and newspapers.’ (’What the Papers Say’, 

Granada TV 4 June 1976). That same evening a young Asian boy, Gurdeep Singh Chagger, 



was stabbed to death outside the cinema in Southall, west London. It was clear to young 

Asian people who had grown up in Southall, this was the racist prejudice that they had 

been watching, now landing on their town. 

Following the death of Gurdeep Singh Chaggar in June 1976, the youth marched to 

the police station demanding protection from racist violence and declared ‘We shall fight 

like lions’. The police station was surrounded, the youth staged a sit in refusing to leave 

until two Asian men that had been arrested during the commotion were released. They 

won their demands and held another meeting later in the evening to organise defence 

units. With this demonstration and show of force the Southall Youth Movement was born. 

The SYM was dedicated to ‘physically keeping racism off the streets of Southall’ and 

countering the ‘lack of youth provision in the Borough’. Within months Asian Youth Movements 

appeared across the country, in East London, Luton, Nottingham, Leicester, Manchester, 

Sheffield, Burnley, Birmingham, Luton and Watford. 

In this section we begin by recounting the story of Southall through the words of long 

time activist, Vishnu Sharma. Sharma was born in the Punjab in 1921, Sharma was active 

in the peasant movement and later in trade unions, becoming Assistant General Secretary 

of the Punjab Provincial TUC at a time of the British Raj. Because of his militancy, he 

was arrested six times and imprisoned for a total of 31/2 years. He was forced to stay 

in his village for 21 months and visit the police at 11am every Sunday. Sharma joined the 

Communist Party of India in 1937. He left for Britain in 1957, arriving on a Friday, speaking 

no English and with just three pounds in his pocket. On the Monday, he joined the British 

Communist Party. He worked in a rubber factory in Southall, taught himself English and 

immersed himself in trade unionism; Sharma became a member of the British Communist 

Party’s Executive Committee from 1971. Long active in the Indian Workers Association, he 

was elected President of the Southall IWA in 1977. He was also Vice-Chair of the Campaign 

against Racial Discrimination, a founder member and full time worker for the Joint 

Council for the Welfare of Immigrants and a member of the National Council for Commonwealth 

of Immigrants, the forerunner of the Commission for Racial Equality, from which he 

resigned in protest at the 1968 Immigration Act. He was a member of the original Steering 

Committee of the Anti-Nazi League. His career therefore charts the long struggles against 

colonialism in India, through to the modern anti racist movements. 

In this section we also have contributions from Karamjit Chaggar, the older brother of 

Gurdeep Singh Chaggar. He movingly recounts the days and days following his brother’s 

death. We rarely hear the voices of families and we are grateful for the time he provided 

to us. We also recount the story of Southall Youth Movement through the words of Suresh 

Grover, Avtar Brah, and Balraj Purewal. 



These individuals came to the Youth Movement through different strands and their 

words recounts the different approaches to the events in June 76, perhaps showing that 

there is never one coherent voice in our communiites at any given moment. 

In August 1976, we also saw the start of the Grunwick strike. In 1976, led by Jayaben Desai, 

a group of mainly Asian workers walked out in protest against low pay and poor treatment 

by managers at the Grunwick Film Processing Laboratory in Willesden. They staged a 

strike against their poor working conditions, demanding the right to join a union. Less than 

two years later, those six had been joined by 20,000 supporters in an historic dispute fighting 

for better rights for poorly treated workers. Predominantly Asian women, these strikers 

shattered stereotypes, challenged the establishment, brought a community together to 

support the rights of workers and changed the face of trade unionism. Here we recount 

the strike through the words of Laxmiben Patel, who was interviewed by Harsha Ahyave, 

her daughter. This is followed with the thoughts of Gautam Appa, who supported the strike 

through his role at the Indian Workers Association (IWA GB). The IWA (GB) had, by then, 

spent almost a decade supporting asian workers through industrial disputes, and some of 

these previous disputes are listed in the endnotes. 

During the summer heatwave of 1976, England started the series of cricket games 

against the West Indies, in confident mood, with their captain Tony Grieg, arrogantly proclaiming 

before TV cameras that England would make West Indies “grovel”. These comments 

along with the racist coverage of the series, left the West Indians, players and fans 

alike so fired up, that by the end of the test series it was the England team that was on its 

knees. In 2010 the story was made into a documentary, ‘Fire in Babylon’. The documentary 

describes how the West Indians earned the respect, admiration, and love of cricket fans and 

even opposing teams from across the world. It was against this background that we witnessed 

increased racial tensions due largely in part to the police’s ‘stop and search’ policy. 

Three thousand police officers – 10 times the usual number – were assigned to the Notting 

Hill Carnival in 1976. According to police reports, on August 30, the last day of the festivities, 

officers attempted to arrest a pickpocket near Portobello Road. A number of carnival-goers 

– both black and white – came to the pickpocket’s aid and within minutes, this incident escalated 

into violence. Those caught up in the riots included Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon, 

who later went on to form the band The Clash. The events of August 30 inspired their 1977 

song White Riot. In this section we have reproduced the words of Cecil Gutzmore, former 

worker at the Notting Hill Advice and Information centre, recounting the story of the Carnival, 

and the changes which came about during 1976, and its lasting legacy. 

Lastly, we reproduce the words of film-maker, Gurinder Chadha, who attended one 

fo the first Rock against Racism concerts.Rock Against Racism (RAR) was a campaign set 

up September 1976 as a response to an increase in racial conflict and the growth of white 



nationalist groups such as the National Front. The campaign involved pop, rock, punk and 

reggae musicians staging concerts with an anti-racist theme, in order to discourage young 

people from embracing racism. The campaign was founded, in part, as a response to statements 

and activities by well-known rock musicians including Eric Clapton and David Bowie. 

At its height, in spring 1978, 100,000 people marched six miles from Trafalgar Square to the 

East End of London (a National Front hotspot) for an open-air music festival at Victoria to 

counteract the growing wave of racist attacks in the UK. 

These series of events, all occured in London, and people went from one event to another, 

and the influences across the wide spectrum of the black, asian and white communities 

since have been huge. indeed, much of what we see in modern day art, politics and 

culture can be traced back to this period of political activism, yet this contribution is rarely 

talked about today. 



Timeline of events in 


03 January 1976 

LB Ealing council faces criticism over continued 'bussing' of Asian school children to areas where schools 

capable of accommodating them exist instead of building infrastructure in the local area to accommodate 

them, claimed the policy of doing so contravenes the Race Relations Act 

Enoch Powell inflames debate about racism by highlighting 'quietly corrected' net immigration figures 


Civil rights pioneer Paul Robeson dies 


Paul Robeson dies in Philadelphia 

01 February 1976 

First reading of Race Relations Act 1976 in House of Commons 


Runnymede Trust criticizes the Race Relations Commission's plan not to take up individual cases of 

discrimination 


Report reveals hundreds of Ugandan Asians who sought refuge in England three years’ prior now live in 

poverty and destitution 

National Front picket outside Heathrow and Gatwick airport 

03 March 1976 

The BBC is criticised for platforming racist propaganda on 'Open Door' programme 


Application for injunction against broadcasting of programme by 'British Campaign to Stop Immigration' 

submitted. It also faces protest at the Birmingham and Glasgow studios for rerunning racist TV programme 

produced by 'British Campaign to Stop Immigration' 




National Front propaganda circulated in run-up to 1974 general election ruled racist by judge 

Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police claims it was entirely his decision not to prosecute National Front 

supporters who 'smashed up' National Council for Civil Liberties meeting 


Black community shocked by verdict of Carib Trial as Dennis Bovell and Royfield Dockery sentenced to three 

years in prison 

02 April 1976 

Home Secretary urged by West Indian Standing Conference to launch full inquiry into the relations between 

police and young black people in Britain 

Relations between young black people and police deteriorated with a massive lack of confidence on the part of 

young black people in the police according to Runnymede Trust 


The Sun front page headline 20,000 exiled Malawian Asian to come to Britain, The Mirror 'New flood of Asian in 

Britain', Telegraph 'Invasion of Asians force boroughs to call for help' 


New report examining Britain as a multiracial society declares that young blacks look forward to a future which 

holds no hope 


News of World - 'scandal of £150,000 mansion given to Asian refugee' 


More inflammatory remarks from Enoch Powell as he claims mugging is an issue connected with a 'racial shift in 

Britain's cities' 


Increasing unity between anti-racist/anti-fascist organisations as plans form for counter march against National 

Front's 'St George's Day March' 


Asian youth and police clash after NF march on Brick Lane 


5000 strong anti-fascist march through Bradford to counter 800 strong National Front demo. Twenty-one 21 

anti-fascists were arrested and charged after clashes with National Front 



02 May 1976 

New of the World headline: ‘One slips through on every boat’ 


Asian parent in Redbridge appeal for safety of their children after they are constantly attacked in the school 

playground 


Sun headline - another 20,000 Asians on their way 

Asian shop in West Essex attacked 


Four star Asians run by 4,000 bill 


Guardian report Asian rile neighbor 


Concrete slab through through window of Asian house in Hackney 


40 year Bengali man in Oldham was beaten and knifed by gang of 15 


Daily Express 'Asian flood warning' 


The Sun headline, ‘New Asian invaders’ 

Mirror headline’ ‘Our Asian burden’ 


West Indian mother ask for help against racism in Poplar 

Two student - one Indian one Jordanian stabbed to death in Woodford 


Times headline, ‘100 more Goans refugees from Malawi expected tomorrow’ 


1000 strong anti-racism march held in Blackburn (called by newly formed Blackburn Action against Racialism 



Council to combat new NF presence) 


National Party and National Front demo at Gatwick Airport as 40 refugees arrive from Malawi 


Mirror headline, ‘Another race war warning by Enoch Powell’ 

Mail headline, ‘Vast queues all planning to surge in Britain’ 


National Front march to Stafford Jail in support of 'jailed racist' Robert Relf 

01 June 1976 

Representatives from 120 organisations of Britain's 200,000 strong Pakistani community call on government to 

ban racist marches through black communities 


West Indian cricket team start Test match against England 

Appeal to Pakistani premier, Benezir Bhutto, by Britain’s Pakistani community in the UK to put pressure on PM 

James Callaghan to protect Asian community in the UK 


Paul Foot 'What the papers say' Granada TV race hate and prejudice 

Gurdeep Singh Chagger murdered in Southall 


3000 person strong march in Southall to commemorate the death of Gurdeep Singh Chagger 

Spaghetti House trial - Black people refuse to accept legitimacy of English courts 


Clashes between Indian community and police in Southall 

West London Asian community leaders demand PM to show 'good faith' towards the immigrant communities 

and repudiate racism 

Two white youths attacked In Southall, one stabbed, one mugged, near the spot where Gurdeep Singh Chagger 

was murdered 

7 out of 8 or 9 Asians arrested after picking up sticks to defend themselves when surrounded by an estimated 

150 whites in Barking 

Pakistani shop in Barking 'up in flames' after being set on fire 

Labour forms plans for a major campaign to fight racism following increases in racist and fascist activities as well 

as increased support for the National Front 



Police arrest 2 demonstrators after youth picket Southall Police station 


Southall Youth Movement formed 


Relations between black community and police are bad according to Robert Mark’s, Metropolitan Police 

commissioner, annual report 

Trail of 11 black and 1 white youth in Leeds Chapeltow 

People throwing stones at police cars in Rossington Green near Spencer Place Leeds - 12 people randomly 

selected 


Local anti-racists outline plans of the Blackburn Action against Racism group at press conference in Blackburn 

Friends Meeting House 

Four young Asian men charged for unlawfully fighting in the altercation which led to the murder of Gurdeep 

Chagger 

Met Police Commissioner Sir Robert Mark joins attack on black youth, criticising 'a growing tendency of groups 

of black people to react in violent opposition to the Police' 

Engineers' leader George Carbon invites all organisations in Sheffield area opposed to racism to a meeting in 

order to plan counter-demo against National Front in Rotherham 

Vishnu Sharma, chairman of the Broad Alliance of Asian organisations in Southall urges support for 'March of 

Unity' in West London that day 


5 point plan drawn up to tackle racism by 37 community relations council officers 


Families and children as to move from Canning Town after repeated attacks 

Fire bomb on Brentford family 


Archbishop of Canterbury condemns racism and its advocates 

Calls for the arrest of Mr. Kingsley Read, leader of National Front, after inciting race hatred and violence in an 

East London speech 

7000 strong march in Southall to commemorate Gurdeep Singh Cahgger 


Sir Robert Mark publishes annual talking about trouble with black youth 




National Union of Journalists boycott coverage of National Front meetings after some of its members are 

refused entry to meetings due to their skin colour 


West Indian community faces crisis according to conservative cabinet minister, Peter Walker, if unemployment 

and bad housing is not tackled 

South Yorkshire county council calls for a ban on upcoming National Front march in Rotherham 


Soweto massacre of student protestors in South Africa 


300 march in Cardiff to show solidarity with those murdered in Soweto 


Bengali family in Popular East forced to flee hosing estate after repeated attacks 


Asian community leaders visit Downing Street to deliver word of declining race relations to PM Callaghan, with 

concern about the East End where assaults on members of the community and their property occur nightly 


4000 strong anti-racist march in Rotherham 

Wandsworth community despair as attorney general Sam Silkin decides not to prosecute NF candidate after 

distributing leaflet inciting racial hatred 


Clashes in Nottingham as teddy boys assault black residents in the local area 

Robert Relf released from prison after hunger strike, upon release refused to remove sign outside house 

stating it was for sale to 'an English family' for which he was originally imprisoned 


Largest ever emergency meeting called by Barking Community Relations Council to decide on programme to 

deal with racism locally 

Racial violence reached levels not seen since events of Autumn 1958 in Notting Hill and Nottingham 

Six black women beat up by police at Burning Spear nighclub Harlesden – afterwards there is a picket outside 

Harlesden police station 




Labour MP for Ealing-Southall Syd Bidwell calls for resistance to racism in article titled, 'Time to Fight Back' 


8,000 strong march in London to condemn Soweto massacre 


Incendiary bomb thrown in home of West Indian family in Bath 

01 July 1976 

Mass sit down at Piccadilly circus in protest against increased racial violence 


1,000 strong funeral procession for Gurdeep Singh Chagger 

Protest in West London following the funeral of Gurdeep Singh Chagger 


Miners Union unanimously votes to condemn the National Front 

Home Secretary Roy Jenkins sets up parliamentary committee to look at proposal for a register of dependents 

of families in British minority communities 


Home Secretary Roy Jenkins declares there will be no change to government policy on race relations after 

visiting the site of Gurdeep Chagger's murder in Southall 


Tory attempt to derail Race Relations Act in House of Commons fails after '22 hours of poisonous debate' as it 

continues through to third reading 

New inflammatory outburst by Enoch Powell claiming Britain had a political death wish as symptom of a 

multicultural society 


In Deptford far right poll 44.5% 


Housing Chief of biggest local housing authority in Britain admits that black people get the worst offers from 

council housing 

The opening ceremony of the 21st Olympic Games in Montreal has been marred by the withdrawal of 25 

African countries. 




South Africa expelled from International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) for practicing racial discrimination 

in athletics 

Final two defendants in the Carib Club trial case freed by appeal court 


United front of campaigners launch campaign to fight 'race-hate myths with the facts' 

Home Secretary Roy Jenkins calls on nation to 'ignore' National front demonstrations 

01 August 1976 

Nation's 3rd largest Union, the General and Municipal workers, sends out pamphlet to all its shop stewards 

and branch officials setting out reasons why racial division is against the interests of union members as part of 

campaign against racism in the work place 


Prime Minister Bhutto of Pakistan writes to Prime Minister Callaghan to request the return of the Koh-i-Noor 

diamond, which is part of the Crown Jewels. 


10,000 Northern Ireland women demonstrate for peace in Belfast 


Eric Clapton racist outburst at Birmingham Civil centre 


England loose series against West Indies cricket team 


Photographer, Red Saunders writes letter to Melody Maker and NME in protest to Eric Clapton’s racist outburst 


Asian women walk out and Grunwick strike begins 


Riot break out at Notting Hill carnival 

01 September 1976 

West Indian organisations meet to discuss defense of carnival amid calls for it to be banned 




Demands for public inquiry into Notting Hill clashes, Labour MP Syd Bidwell and others questioning the 

massive police presence 

Notting Hill carnival director Selwyn Baptiste describes event as more like a state of emergency than a 

carnival as police presence reaches 1600 in number 


Rock against Racism open letter to Eric Clapton published in 'New Musical Express' 


Young woman discloses racism and discrimination practiced by national employment agency and it's client 

firms 

4000 strong anti-racist march in Blackburn 


Conservative party annual conference agenda 'swamped by racist resolutions from constituency 

associations' with 45 calling for a complete halt to immigration, 17 demanding repeal of Race Relations Act 


Carnival meeting at Metro Youth Club questions whether the brutal attack on black people well planned 


Anti-racist 'carnival' march through Hackney in answer to National Front's racist activities in the area 


1,000 strong counter protest in Walsall against NF demo 


Public inquiry demanded into case of immigration officer at Heathrow airport admitting to being a National 

Front member 

02 October 1976 

Enoch Powell speech planned for the coming evening described as 'most vicious' yet in its call for public 

policy of repatriation 


Tory Deputy Leader William Whitelaw 'waves the racist banner' after spelling out a tough new immigration 

policy targeting the far-right vote 



Home Secretary Merlyn Rees, Tory Deputy Leader William Whitelaw and Powell's fellow United Ulster Unionist 

MP Jim Kilfedder condemn Powell's latest speech in which he demands repatriation 


Grunwick Strike march on Parliament 

100 strong group picket Enoch Powell's speaking event at school in Bromley 


Grunwick Strike enquiry called 

National Front banned from its annual meeting place, Conway Hall on Red Lion Square 

01 November 1976 

First Rock against Racism gig in east London 


Black People conference - Metro Youth club with Bryon Lawrence, Dr. David Pitt, Dr. Hinds, Ruddy Nareyen, Bro 

Tony St. Helene 


Race Relations Act 1976 get Royal Assent 





Southall : photographs from our past 

PHOTOS 

Above : Southall Dominion, 

1977 

Left : Woman working at printing 

press, Uxbridge Road, 1980 

Right Community protest at 

Acton town hall, 1974 

: 

Left: 

Supplementary school class, 

1963 

Right : Bookshop of Indian 

Youth office, 1979 

Bottom left : Sikh gathering 

Havelock Road 2001 

Bottom right : Indian Workers 

Association office, 1979 



PHOTOS CAPTION. Above : 

Southall Unity parade, June 

1976, Right : same location 

April 1979, 

Middle left : Southall Residents 

Associaton campaign , 1968 

Middle right: National 

Association of Indian Youth 

building, 1977 

Bottom left : Shopping on 

Southall High street, 1972 

Bottom right: early shops at 

the Green, Southalll, 1973 



Above : Vishnu Sharma 



The need for unity : 

an interview with Vishnu Sharma 

Reproduced courtesy of the Institute of Race Relations, publisher of 

Race & Class, 58/1. July 2016, ‘Race and class: the colour of struggle 

1950s-1980s’ in which this piece first appeared. 

Harsh Punja: How did Southall become the Asian town it 

is today? 

Vishnu Sharma: I came to this town in 1957 from India 

and then the population of Indian people was less than 

one thousand and very few factories employed Asians. 

R. Woolf factory was the first to recruit. There was a Mr 

Dunn, he had been in the army in Punjab and knew Asians; 

he said they are very hard-working and he started recruiting 

from Aldgate in East London. 

But then people began to come from central Punjab, from 

Hoshiarpur, Jullundhur and Ludhiana, for economic reasons. 

You know at independence in 1947 the two provinces 

of Punjab and Bengal were affected because of Partition, 

so most of the Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan had to 

migrate to what was then called the Indian Punjab. In the 

districts I mentioned before, the land holdings were not 

large, so there was too much pressure on land and they 

had to go somewhere to seek work. So some of them 

started coming to Britain. Most of them, till about 1963, 

were from the rural areas: they were either poor or middle 

peasants, or simply agricultural workers. But just before 

the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1962 some educated 

people from the towns and cities as well as retired 

soldiers started coming, and after that many teachers and 

businessmen, but the vast majority who came to this town 

were from the rural Punjab. 



First single men came, but when they had paid off their debts or whatever, after four or five 

years, they thought of bringing their families in. So people started buying houses. Before 1962 

there was no control on Commonwealth citizens, all they had to do was establish their identity. 

Most who came just arrived with addresses of their relations, village folk or friends. 

When I came, I brought only two addresses and one of the sons of my friends used to live in 

Southall, so I came to Southall. But he had moved to Derby. But I told the people at the address 

I had, ‘I came last night from India’, and they took me into their house! They did not know me at 

all. Then they asked who I was, from which village. Next morning (this man had been on night 

shift) three people at the factory who knew me from Punjab, who could not believe that I was 

here, came to greet me. In two days, I found forty people who knew me here in Southall so I felt 

at home. I was the third person who came from my village, but the first one in Southall. After 

me, twenty-three followed to Southall and all came to me, to my premises here, at this address, 

not even telling me beforehand – just came to the airport and had my address. When I saw a 

taxi parked outside my house, I immediately thought, oh another one has come from my village. 



This was happening not to me alone, this is how it worked. 

HP: And how was it working at Woolf’s rubber factory? 

VS: Most people coming from villages were not used to working in industry and it was difficult 

in the beginning for them to adapt to the new environment. There was the problem of 

language for many, and colleagues who knew English would interpret from charge-hand and 

foreman. We, with the Irish, Polish, few West Indians, were in the smelly jobs, burning rubber, 

and so on. White people were in the white- collar jobs like transport or admin. Immigrants 

were concentrated in production. [Woolf’s made rubber accessories and the process used 

carbon black and sulphur which made the work smelly and unpleasant. A sixty-hour week was 

considered normal and pay so low that most men did overtime, taking their week to some 

seventy-five hours over seven days. (1) 

There was no union in the factory for a very long time and people thought, because of the 

appalling conditions and very low wages, we must form one. Some of the people [Sharma 

himself] already had trade union activity in India so it was not difficult for them to realise that 

till we formed a union, our interests would not be protected nor could we compel management 

to accept our conditions. So, the first meeting for this purpose was held on 1 May 1957 

in the community center. But the management resisted and sacked one or two workers who 

wanted the union. [Attempts were made in 1958 and again in 1960 to establish a union.] But 

then in 1963, we in the Indian Workers’ Association brought in the Transport Workers’ union 

and tried to get everyone to join, but secretly, going house to house in the community, so 

management could not know the people who were actively behind this. After two, three, 

months majority of the workers in production department had become members of the union 

and then the matter was handed over to union officials to negotiate with factory management. 

HP: When did the Indian Workers’ Association form, then? 

VS: The first Indian Workers’ Association was formed in the UK in late 1930s, but with hardly 

any branches, perhaps London, Manchester, Huddersfield and Coventry. Southall people 

were first members of the London branch, but Southall branch had its inaugural meeting on 

3 March 1957 at the community centre and I think there were about 200 members. They 

had then no separate office but met at the community centre. IWA was set up for three 

main purposes: as a platform to make people realise they were no longer farmers but now 

workers – hence Indian Workers’ Association. (It was not a separate ethnic union, it was also 

encouraging its members to join a union to protect their rights.) Second, most of the people 

found difficulties in approaching doctors, going to hospitals, or solicitors to buy houses and 

such things, so IWA provided a free service, for example of interpreters to people in need. 

The third purpose was to organise a campaign against the overwhelming racial prejudice and 

discrimination we faced: IWA gave a lead. 



HP: How did the community respond when it came to the showdown with R. Woolf in the 

1965/6 dispute when a worker was sacked and the union refused to make the subsequent 

strike official? 

VS: The first dispute was for recognition of the union branch, so the management had to 

recognise the union but after a few years there was another dispute about wages, bonuses 

and working conditions in the factory. This second dispute went on for over one month. The 

community massively supported the dispute in many ways: landlords, for example, for weeks 

till it was over, did not ask for rent and the grocers were providing all kinds of goods to people 

on strike as a sort of loan and the Gurdwaras opened their kitchens for the strikers and 

the premises for us to organise meetings. The community was in many, many ways helpful to 

this dispute. 

HP: Can you tell us something about how the community developed, were people buying 

shops in Southall by now, for example? 

VS: In 1957 when I came there was only one shop, near the railway bridge, it was a cafe and 

they used to deliver groceries at home in vans. Later on, people worked hard and saved, 

working nightshifts, then slept for a while, then during the day [were] working at the shops 

and this is how businesses started. The population grew during the mid-1960s when thousands 

more people came here. 

The first problem that people faced was to get places in schools for their children, particularly 

those of, say, 10 to 13 who didn’t know a single word of English – so first enrolment was 

an issue, and then how to deal with the language ‘problem’. The local authority was just not 

ready to face these sorts of issues, although community leaders had been warning the 

local authority this was about to happen. 

HP: So racism was rife? 

VS: At this time, there was what I would call sheer hypocrisy because the politicians were 

saying there is no discrimination in this country – Britain is the most tolerant country, it just 

couldn’t be. But in 1963, when the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination (CARD) was 

formed, it studied local situations. There was for example in 1964 a team of students from 

Oxford university who were testing discrimination by sending a West Indian or Indian to a 

certain job to see if he was refused even at the factory gate. And later on a white person 

was sent, and invariably taken in, recruited. CARD did this sort of testing not just in factories 

but also in public bars which wouldn’t serve Asians or black people. (2) This kind of testing 

then compelled the government to pass the 1965 Race Relations Act, otherwise there would 

have been absolutely no realisation that discrimination existed in this society. 



HP: How did the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1962 affect levels of racism? 

VS: It created immigration controls on Commonwealth citizens via a system of employment 

vouchers so people could not come to Britain to settle without acquiring the voucher from 

the Ministry of Labour. Vouchers were issued in three categories, a, b and c. A was for 

skilled and highly qualified people, b for semi-skilled and c for unskilled people. The Act put 

first control on immigration and there was much talk among politicians about there being 

‘too many’ coming in. Yet they were talking all the time about those from New Commonwealth 

countries, those who were black or Asian, not immigration as a whole. In Southall, 

there were few people or organisations that were, you know, pro-immigrants. There were 

some trade unions that were trying hard to educate white workers that, if Commonwealth 

immigrants were in this town, it was because the British government wanted them to be 

here, had recruited them in certain countries and [they] were only let in when immigration 

officers allowed. So it was no sort of invasion as some rightwing lobby was propagandising 

at that time. Apart from a few in the unions, many people were hostile. Semi-fascist organisations 

were formed here, like The Southall Residents’ Association – this was not a Southall 

residents’ association, it was an association of Southall’s white residents. And people like 

john Bean who were fascist and belonged to British National Party in those days used to 

organise street meetings against immigrants coming in to the town. [Bean stood in Southall 

in the general elections of 1964 and 1966.] 

There were incidents of personal assaults during the first dispute at R. Woolf when people 

attacked Asians coming home. For some time, they tolerated these things, and then there 

was a fight back within the community. People organised themselves and gave on one or 

two occasions good hidings to Teddy Boys (as they were called in those days). Later, that 

stopped them wanting to do that sort of thing in Southall again. 

HP: Do you feel the community is stronger now in Southall? 

VS: The community now has grown enormously – out of a population of 78,000 almost half 

are Indians, West Indians, Pakistanis, with a few from Uganda, etc. So stronger in numbers. 

But also, stronger because they now have well-established community organisations – the 

IWA, at least three Sikh Gurdwaras, two Hindu Mandir, cultural and literary organisations, 

so now the community is more organised. And the people are more radicalised. Because 

the more they live in this country, the more they get aware of the political, socio-economic 

situation. And the more they are conscious of discrimination, the more they are keen to 

fight back and not to tolerate it at all. The community has built up, over the years, a great 

confidence. 



Southall has always been a town at the forefront of the fight against laws like immigration 

acts – from 1962 when the first Act passed and the IWA had a very big meeting. It was addressed 

by Fenner Brockway, George Pargiter, then the MP for this area, as well as members 

of the Pakistani community and Claudia jones who was in those days a great name 

within the black population. (3) 

The Labour government was elected in 1964 and in August 1965 it published a White Paper 

where the employment vouchers were reduced to 8,500 per year and much more restrictive, 

so again the IWA with CARD and others fought against it. 1968 another [immigration] 

act [largely directed at Asians from Kenya under threat of expulsion] was passed, controlling 

those citizens and British passport holders who had acquired that status overseas. 

Against the 1971 Act [affectively ending all primary immigration], again Southall was active. 

Southall was always active against such discriminatory immigration laws and also was campaigning 

to strengthen the 1965 Race Relations Act and exposing its weaknesses. 

We also had to fight at the local level too. When families started coming in the 1960s, the 

local authority was not ready to cope and then there were racially prejudiced organisations, 

and even fascist organisations like the British National Party, that started agitating that 

teachers were too involved in having to teach English to Asian children for whom it was a 

second language. They threatened the council that they would withdraw their white children 

from school, particularly from the junior School at Beaconsfield Road. And then Edward 

Boyle, minister of education, with Tories in power, he came down to Southall and with 

the council evolved a sort of formula that in any class or any school in Southall there should 

not be more than 33 per cent immigrant children. And those 33 per cent were even taken 

into a separate reception class, segregated as it were. And this is how a discriminatory 

attitude started. The surplus number of immigrant children were bussed away from Southall 

to schools as far as six miles from the catchment area. This caused controversy within the 

community – some Asian parents thought it might be for the long-term good of the children 

and others asked why they did not build new schools if there were not enough places in 

existing schools. It was around 1968 that people realised that bussing was racially discriminatory. 

Why did Asian parents not have the same rights under the education acts as white 

to choose the school for their children? Bussing started in 1965 and not stopped until a very 

extensive campaign was launched in the 1970s in Southall, going house to house, explaining 

how disastrous the policy was. In the 1974 local elections, bussing was one of the major 

issues in Southall and the case was taken to the Race Relations Board [in 1975] and heard 

by the High Court and then the local authority had to accept the ruling to phase out bussing 

over three years, which they have now. So for that they had to build three new schools in 

Southall. The community campaigned for years to win that battle. 

HP: Can you tell me a bit more about the campaigns against immigration laws? What kind of 

alliances did the IWA make? 



VS: There was the IWA and other organisations, and in September 1967 the Joint Council for 

the Welfare of Immigrants (4) was born in Southall in the Dominion Cinema. IWA was one of 

the sponsors and its first conference was held there. The main task of JCWI was to provide 

a free service to individuals who faced immigration difficulties – say, if at the airport, officials 

say, we are not satisfied that this is your wife or these are your children. So our job was to 

convince the authorities, this was his wife or his children and get all kinds of documentary 

evidence. We were deeply involved in providing a personal service to victims of discriminatory 

immigration policy and we used that information, based on concrete case- work, to 

campaign through JCWI and groups like the IWA as a pressure group to get changes and 

gradually to suggest to the government. This was great work done by JCWI, the IWA and in 

the beginning West Indian Standing Conference. 

This continuous work created a kind of consciousness about the discriminatory nature of the 

law. 

In Southall, the IWA the first body, provided facilities to other communities like the Afro-Caribbean’s 

of Southall under the guidance of Jimmy Barzie to organise themselves and Pakistanis 

were also encouraged to form their own organisation. There was a time in Southall 

when they could not even get premises in Southall for their Eid prayers, which are very 

auspicious, and we provided the hall in the Dominion Cinema to them and said, have Nawaz 

here. We had very close and cordial relations between the communities. 

HP: How were relations, though, with state agencies like the police? 

VS: Things were bad in Southall, particularly after the 1976 incident of Chaggar’s death 

[Gurdip Singh Chaggar was knifed to death on 4 June 1976 by a group of white youths, 

prompting the formation of the Southall Youth Movement (5) no doubt when youth organisations 

started forming here and West Indian youth had their own organisations. Park View 

centre, organised and managed by West Indian youth, was continuously subject to all sorts 

of attacks and all sorts of criticism by the police particularly. And no doubt the relations 

between black youth and Asian and police was very strained. Relations with the police never 

have been very good in Southall. (6) 

HP: Relations between Southall and the state seemed to come to a head in 1979 over the 

death of Blair Peach (7) and then the notorious virginity testing? 

VS: The IWA began to hear rumours that the local council had given permission to the National 

Front to hold one of their election meetings in the Southall town hall. So all organisations, 

irrespective of their political creed, community organisations, the people from churches, 

gurdwaras, West Indians, Pakistanis, all of them, their organisations were invited to a 



planning meeting on 12 April. It led to the whole community taking to the streets on 23 April 

to protest at the invasion of the town. Businesses, factories and transport were stopped 

from 1pm onwards. Anti-fascists from across London came to Southall in support. The protest 

was met by an enormous police presence of 2,700+ officers, including the Special 

Patrol Group, which first penned people between cordons, to protect the fascists, and then 

used inordinate violence to clear the streets, during which Blair Peach was killed by a blow 

to the head and others received serious injuries. (8) 

Virginity tests (intimate vaginal checks), supposedly to detect whether fiancées were bona 

fide, were carried out at points of entry to the UK not only outraged Southall but the whole 

country. And there was much more upheaval in India where every paper and magazine 

covered it, and for the first time there was a debate on UK immigration matters in the Indian 

parliament. The Indian government made strong diplomatic protests and took the case 

to the united Nations. In two days, the British government had to stop these shameful acts. 

(We had known that this was going on from 1969, and were complaining about it but government 

denied it was happening.) But a girl came from Delhi to Southall in 1979 and at the airport 

she was given a gynecological test. Suddenly, because the fiancé found she had signed 

a so-called letter of consent when she had no idea what she was signing, it became an issue. 

The consent form was brought to the IWA and then was publicly released and published on 

the front page of the Guardian and debates then held in the British parliament. The community 

had a great victory, they knew that they could move governments! 

HP: How do we fight on? 

VS: We have to be organised. And I am very proud of the Southall community, I can tell you, 

because here, not only the young people who have been victims of racism, not only women, 

the whole community, not just the black and Asian, even white people organised in trade 

unions and conscious, radical people, the whole Southall community, when it feels that it is 

threatened, all come out in the streets – this happened in 1976, this happened in 1979 and it 

happened last year in July 1981. These three examples show quite clearly not just that Southall 

community is able to fight back, but also Southall community is able to move international 

opinion on these sorts of matters. I am very proud that Southall is at the forefront of the 

overall fight against racism. 

In my view, racism has gone much further than just personal attacks and dam- aging property 

or daubing slogans, in areas where black people are settled like St. Paul’s Bristol, Chapeltown 

Leeds, Toxteth, Brixton, Southall, a whole town is being discriminated against – look at 

housing, streets, traffic, education. Local authorities are deliberately ignoring those towns, 

and that is where we must fight. 



There are sometimes differences on strategies and tactics, whether we should come out on 

the streets or not; businessmen might not want that, sometimes differences between West 

Indian community and Asian or amongst Asians, say, between Indians and Pakistanis, Sikhs 

and Hindus but all these are very minor things. I think our attitude in Southall clearly shows 

that if our existence is ever threatened, we act together like anything, and that is marvelous, 

that is what we need. That inspite of religious, political, ideological differences on country or 

national origin, we forget if our existence is at stake. And that is the need of the hour, complete 

unity on at least a minimum programme. 



The murder of 

Gurdip Singh Chaggar 

A large gathering came out 

for Chaggar’s 

funeral on 5th July 1976 

Middle and bottom : Marchers 

on the ‘March for Unity’ 14th 

June, 76 



Above : Almost 

immediately after the murder, 

Suresh Grover and his friend, 

Denis, write graffitti on the 

pavement reading, ‘this racist 

murder will be avenged’ 

Middle: March against racism 

in Southall 14th June 1976 

Bottom : Gathering on 

Southall Broadway after 

Chaggar’s murder 



PHOTOS 

Top left :Protests in Southall, 

June 76 

Top right : Newspaper 

coverage of the march 

Middle : Guardian reports on 

the weekend events 

immediately after the murder. 

The image shows the sit down 

protest outside Southall police 

station 

Bottom : Hostile press coverage 

of the youth people began 

almost immediately, with 

accusations of the ‘peril of 

black gangs’. 



PHOTOS 

Above left and right : 

Photographs from the ‘March 

of Unity’ June 76 

Middle : Newspaper coverage 

of the sit down protest by 

Southall Youth Movement 

Bottom : newspaper coverage 

of the trial 



Above : Funeral of Gurdeep Singh Chagger 



Karamjit Chaggar 

The brother of Gurdip Singh Chagger 

I was born in Hoshiarpur, India 1948, and was the 3rd of five children; two older sisters, 

one younger sister and my late brother Gurdeep, who was the youngest. My father found 

work in Tanzania, Africa, which is where we spent our childhood years. As with many other 

Indians I too left Tanzania for Britain in 1967, prior to a brief stay in India; leaving my family 

behind in Hoshiarpur. I lived in various places with friends and relatives while I studied, and 

looked for work. My parents and two younger siblings came to join my here in 1972 (my two 

older sisters were now married and settled in India). Our first home was in Ealing, (west London), 

but we soon bought a house in Southall, which is where we settled. I was married in the 

August of 1974, and my first son was born in the August of 1975. At this point my younger 

brother, Gurdeep was 16 years old. 

On Friday 4 June 1976, Gurdeep went to the Dominion cinema in Southall with friends, as 

he sometimes did. It was outside this cinema that the heinous murder was committed. This 

whole period of time, from the murder, to the court case, is very difficult to talk about. It is 

difficult, but it’s something that I won’t ever forget. 

He never came home on the night of 4 June. My parents were concerned, but I told them 

not to worry, as from time to time he stayed over at a friends. I thought it was just him being 

a teenager, having fun, and forgetting to call home. On the day after he died, I was at home 

when the police came to the house, and asked me to come with them to the police station 

as my brother had been in a fight. This was late afternoon. I went with them, and they asked 

me some questions, and gave me my brothers watch. I answered the questions and held 

the watch. I was shocked; they didn’t tell me that he had been stabbed. I confirmed that the 

watch was his, and answered some more questions, it was all very confusing. After questioning 

me, they dropped me at the top of the street. As I walked to the house, I met some people 

and they told me what had happened to Gurdeep. Our friends and family knew before 

me, I was in a complete state of shock. By the time I got home, the house was full of people, 

most of them were crying. My parents took it very badly, I watched them crying. The murder 



had a big impact; they were shocked for a long time, and they grieved for a long time. They 

never really recovered. In fact, my mother found it very difficult and in the end we left Southall. 

We went to the trial at the Old Bailey and sat in court, but were asked to leave. Our 

friends stayed on in court, but we were not permitted to be present, and had to leave. I 

didn’t know the outcome of the trial, the length of the sentences or anything until members 

of the public told me. We got a lot of support from the local community, everyone on 

our street supported us, and thousands attended the funeral. The streets were full of people, 

who wanted to support us, and talk about the racism, which had caused this. We also 

received many letters of support, from groups, individuals and total strangers who wrote 

simply to provide words of kindness. These were genuine acts of kindness. I can’t forget 

this. This is a very difficult thing to talk about, and I am still deeply saddened, but I have the 

memories of my innocent little brother, the loving memories, they will always stay with me. 



The famly received 

many letters of support 

after the death of 

Kuldip. This is one of 

letters they received 





Suresh Grover 

Here, Suresh Grover offers a personal account of what became to be known as 

the hot summer of 76. 

My friend, how will you ever thrive 

in his strange and loveless land 

Where hatred mocks you at every turn 

Where souls are as cold as ice 

Where the very soil is contaminated 

Oos Pardesh by Kala Preet 

Now yu si fire burning in my eye 

Smell badness pan mi breat 

Feel vialence, vialence 

Birstin outta mi 

Look out! 

It too late now 

I did warn yu 

Time Come lyrics by Linton Kwesi Johnson 



Over four decades ago, on Friday 4 June 1976, a young Asian teenager, Gurdeep Singh 

Chaggar, had made plans to see a Bollywood movie at a local Cinema Hall in Southall. When 

the film ended he was in a happy mood. Within minutes he was dead, fatally stabbed by a 

gang of white youths. The combined impact of his racist murder and the protests, including 

violent public disturbances and street occupations, that followed were historic. The events 

propelled a new generation of young street fighters and campaigners against state racism 

busting myths of Asian docility. A new voice emerged and it’s potency unleashed new political 

and artistic forces of dissent and victories. 

I first heard the terrible news on Saturday, a day after his killing when it was spreading 

throughout the town. I was outside the Dominion Cinema with my friend Denis Almeida and 

we bumped into a couple people who had taken Chaggar to hospital. They pointed towards 

a pool of blood across the road. A lone police officer was stationed near it. The image startled 

me because I realised that we were looking at a murder scene. I made my way to the 

officer and asked, ‘Is this where he was killed?’ but he didn’t respond and simply stared back 

at me. At that moment, Denis and other people joined me. I continued: ‘Whose blood is it’? 

His tone was unsympathetic, ‘He was just an Asian’. I was surprised by his answer and both 

Denis and I looked at each other in disbelief. I continued, ‘Why don’t you cover the blood or 

clean it? It’s disrespectful to leave it as it is, a young man has just died here’. He ignored my 

plea and without uttering a word simply walked away leaving a murder scene unattended. 

For a while we stood over the pool of blood in silence. We discussed the need to preserve 

a dead teenager’s dignity. The least we could do was ensure that no one would accidently 

trample over his blood. There was also anger in the air at the police officer’s attitude. 

He had shown no respect and revealed his bias in such a brazen and unkind manner and did 

so knowingly, and literally, over our dead brother’s blood. We wanted to contact his family 

but we didn’t know where they lived. Denis and I took the initiative by deciding to cover the 

pool of blood and the surrounding area with red cloth and write a message with paint on the 

pavement. The temporary shrine also carried a defiant message to racists and authorities 

alike. We had written: ‘this racist murder will be avenged. We’ll get you racist scum’! Our 

choice of words provoked a backlash from some of the journalists and politicians who had 

come to Southall that day. But we simply couldn’t hide the anger burning inside us. Chaggar’s 

murder was the latest injustice in a list of many others and we had little faith in the 

police to protect us. 

My own experience had already taught me this bitter lesson. I was only eleven years old 

when my family arrived in England in the cold winter of 1966. It was the end of a momentous 

journey and the beginning of new awakening. Our journey started in Nairobi, travelling in a 

people carrier through Kenya, a year earlier. We reached India by sea and after brief stay 

travelled across three continents via the Suez canal and Paris and finally ending in Nelson, 



No one 

warned me of the 

approaching storm 

of racism that had 

been festering in 

the underbelly of 

our society fuelled 

by the media and 

politicians. By the 

early 1970’s violent 

racism was rearing 

its ugly head in my 

town. In a deadly 

‘sport’ called ‘paki-bashing’, 

gangs of 

white teenagers and 

skinheads would 

target and damage 

Asian homes 

and businesses 

and provoke daily 

fights against Asian 

people in schools, 

sports fields and the 

streets. 

a small mill town hidden in the Pendle district of Lancashire, For a 

young child the journey was a momentous adventure and the first 

encounter with people of different cultures and nationalities. The 

French owned ship, Steam Ship Vietnam, had provided the very first 

opportunity to share my life and adventure, and in such confined 

space, with African children, a friendly English woman and Vietnamese 

cooks. But life in Nelson was hard. We learnt to endure the 

reality of freezing winters and cold rain. There was no luxury in our 

home. My parent’s made titanic efforts to provide human love and 

care but neither the harsh conditions nor the dripping affect of racist 

incidents allowed one to live a life on a feast of hopes and dreams. 

During my formative years, in a very short space of time, my ambitions 

were wrenched out of me, and I faced an uncertain future with 

trepidation. 

No one warned me of the approaching storm of racism that had 

been festering in the underbelly of our society fuelled by the media 

and politicians. By the early 1970’s violent racism was rearing its 

ugly head in my town. In a deadly ‘sport’ called ‘paki-bashing’, gangs 

of white teenagers and skinheads would target and damage Asian 

homes and businesses and provoke daily fights against Asian people 

in schools, sports fields and the streets. 

My parents had only drummed respect in my head. I had to learn 

to defend myself and overcoming fear was the first great obstacle. 

In my first confrontation I was terrified of being hit so I tried to reason 

with my assailants but my logical arguments proved fruitless. 

They certainly didn’t help me avoid the first hard punch to my face. 

But then the school bell rang and I was saved. In another encounter, 

I remember being hit without warning. My head rolled backwards. 

At first the fight seemed to slow down and then suddenly real time 

kicked in when both pain and senses became more pronounced and 

where you could smell your own blood. I had no time to fear and I 

managed to block and hit back. My reactions seemed to surprise 

every one including the assailant’s supporters who had surrounded 

us during the fight, purposely to deny me, their targeted victim, any 

escape route. This time I had survived and only suffered a black eye. 

At my school racism was never challenged either in the classroom 

or playground. Enoch Powell was viewed as a folk hero by 



some of my schoolmates. His name was often used as a chant to reinforce supremacy and 

as a signal to start or provoke a fight. We were always outnumbered and forced to fight 

in an unfair and unequal contest but we quickly learned that victory, especially when faced 

with a sea of hostility, didn’t always require a decisive win. It also meant carving an ending 

where one didn’t loose. 

We would regularly navigate our way to school by avoiding the main roads. One Saturday 

evening both my nephew and I couldn’t avoid a group of white racists. In a calculated 

brutal attack my nephew’s jaw was broken as soon as he opened his mouth and I was 

stabbed. We had just come out of the Cinema having watched Clint Eastwood’s latest movie. 

We reported the incident to the police and my father even arranged a meeting with a 

senior police officer but nothing happened. 

After some time, the storm of hatred receded in Nelson. It drifted away towards other 

cities bringing more pain and harm in its wake. I encountered an entirely different world 

when I enrolled for a sixth from college in a different town. The student’s common room had 

a visible presence of’ ‘hippy’ and left wing culture as well as world music. For a brief moment 

I was on safe ground and readily embraced this new free spirited wave with open arms. 

Our direct experience forced us to investigate the origins of racism and its global impact. 

People, throughout the world, struggling against oppression, inspired us. However, 

nothing changed at home. My parents were factory workers and their life was as hard as 

ever. Both my nephew and I knew we couldn’t survive in a town already devoid of any real 

and meaningful opportunities for working people. These were reduced even further for people 

like us. At a young age, both of us could feel the burden, not the expectations, of our 

families on our little shoulders. A year later, after repairing my confidence and armed with a 

new political consciousness, and on reaching my 18th birthday, we both left the warmth of 

our homes and headed down south on a night coach towards London. 

It is both remarkable and ironic how violence is tolerated in British society, especially in 

working class areas where it is perpetually promoted by the state as a basis of survival and 

manhood but then condemned when its usage is exposed. This allows a simmering and an 

‘acceptable’ level of violence to exist, unchallenged, and ready to be deployed, with impunity, 

against the most vulnerable or discriminated sections of our society. In this sense, the 

greatest tragedy of a killing in our communities lies not just in its painful occurrence but also 

in the State’s own bewildering impotence or complicity. Chaggar’s murder was no exception. 

In 1976, racism in our country had reached another peak. The tabloids fuelled anti immigrant 

sentiments by creating fake news that white Britain was on the verge of being 



Left : Suresh Grover 

in 1976 

swamped by Black and Brown people from the new Commonwealth. History tells us that 

when racial prejudice is constantly drummed up publicly, there is invariably a corresponding 

spike in ‘hate’ crimes against targeted groups of people and always disproportionally 

against the Black and Asian communities. A more deadly storm had risen and we began to 

experience racial attacks on our communities, No arena was spared: people, bookshops, 

centres, workplaces or places of worship. 

Our makeshift shrine for Chaggar began to attract large numbers of young people onto 

the streets. Initially we made spontaneous speeches and others joined in but by early that 

Saturday evening, there were over 500 young local people gathered round a corner and 

outbreaks of spontaneous violence began to occur, mainly directed at owners of cars who 

were perceived residents of a white enclave of Southall. The police responded by implementing 

a blanket stop and search policy of any Asian person living or entering the area. 

By mid evening arrests of young Asians began to take place. We responded by demanding 

the immediate closure of all Indian owned Cinemas and restaurants as a mark of respect for 

Chaggar. There were no formal discussion or meetings, but everyone engaged in discussing 

the next steps of action, gravitated toward the Dominion Cinema. `It was the only building 

where we could hold large meetings and where Chaggar had spent his last hours. It was a 

symbol of self-reliance, owned by the Indian Workers Association (IWA) Southall. By sheer 

coincidence the organisation had planned a conference on fascism at the Dominion Cinema 

the next day. The IWA tried to appease the youth by passing a general resolution against 

racism but this response only made people angry. Resolutions never worked, they were only 

symbolic. The time for symbols had gone, many in the audience wanted real change. The 

meeting descended into a ferocious and sometimes chaotic battle between two camps - 

those who wanted immediate action against racism and the police and those sought reliance 

or goodwill of politicians and the state. Despite being seasoned community politicians, 

many of whom had challenged discrimination in the UK and fought for independence in 

India, the IWA leadership couldn’t convince their own audience and some looked frightened 

at the prospect of a new power emerging in their town. Then a local young man called for 



an immediate demonstration outside the police station to demand protection against racial 

attacks. The conference ended and everyone began to gather outside the Cinema. We took 

over the main road. It was all very peaceful until a car pulled up and a couple of white man 

got out. One had a weapon in his hand and he shouted ‘you black bastards’. We ran after 

them but they drove away. The police cars could have chased them but remained motionless. 

When we reached the station, we found it barricaded like a fort ready for battle. By 

staging a mass sit-in, we occupied the entire area surrounding the station. The police tried to 

disperse us but failed miserably. They then responded by creating a sterile area around the 

entire town so that none could come in or leave. But more and more people, young and old, 

kept arriving to joint the protest. 

By late evening, despite police roadblocks and mass targeting of Asian car owners and 

condemnation by national politicians, there was new air of confidence in Southall. A call 

by some of the ‘community leaders’ to check our militancy and to keep a low profile was 

ignored. Our actions were driven by a common anger against undiluted racism but they 

had also rejected traditional politics in Southall. This also included a rejection of government-funded 

projects set up to mediate between our communities and the state. Neither 

sought fundamental shift in power relationships and both wanted to buy off our self – organisation. 

Within days a local group called the Southall Youth Movement was established. It 

carried the hopes a new generation. 

In reality the resistance inspired a new wider movement and different constellations 

began to assert their own influence over the next decade. Faced with incredible challenges, 

the young movement reacted in both a positive and destructive manner. Inspired by 

self-organisation and an uncompromising belief in their ability to provide its own solutions, 

it created a new political culture that forged new links between the Asian and West Indian 

youth. This unity became crucial in defending Southall from racist attacks and responding 

to the aftermath of the April 1979 events that led to the murder of the schoolteacher Blair 

Peach, by the Metropolitan Police’s Special Patrol Group; the arrest of 750 people for protesting 

against the fascist National Front; and destruction of the People’s Unite building. 

The events had ushered a new creative energy for young independent musicians and artists 

and provided space for local bands playing both Bhangra and Reggae music to flourish. It 

created youth clubs for young people to meet developing its own sports events and teams. 

It led to the development of new rights based agenda and the mushrooming of new community 

based organisations that both provided information on rights affecting young people, 

women and workers and campaigned with them to challenge discrimination. For an important 

moment in history, Southall had became a beacon for the Asian youth and communities 

nationally who, armed with fearless audacity, began to chart a new journey for the rest of 

Britain. 



Avtar Brah 

How did you become political? 

I was born in India, but grew up in East Africa, so I’m really a Ugandan Asian. From Uganda 

I went to University in the USA, and it was during my undergraduate days, when I was 

studying in California, that I really got involved in politics. This was during the time of Black 

Power movement and feminism was just beginning to take off the ground, so it was really 

at Davis, University of California, that I started to get involved with student politics. I was 

engaged with anti-racist politics on Davis campus. Politically, they were exciting times. For 

example, there was the Free Angela Davis campaign. We went on demonstrations and I 

remember going to Oakland for an anti -racist demonstration, and that was the beginning 

of my awareness of what was happening to black Americans. It was a very different situation 

for Asian students in those days, I am talking about the late 1960’s and early 1970s. We 

were, I would say, orientalised but that was different from what African Americans had to 

contend with. 



Coming to England marked a changing point, because it was here that I was called a 

‘Paki’ for the first time. Although I was involved in anti -racist politics in America, it was quite 

different to be called a ‘Paki’ yourself, it affects you personally, and at the level of the subjective 

experience it is a question of the difference between expressing solidarity with another 

group as opposed to facing racial abuse directly yourself. I was quite shocked and taken 

aback. This event set me on the path of anti- racist work here in Britain, and also socialist politics 

as well. My family wasn’t particularly political, I was the only one, but nor were my family 

right wing or anything like that so it wasn’t a big problem that I was political. I think they just 

saw me as rather eccentric. Although my father wasn’t involved in politics, I think he might 

have been a political person in a different era. He supported my desire for education though 

he wasn’t very happy about my going to America but when one of my teachers talked to him 

in my support he was fine about it. I found my father to be a supportive influence in my life. 

How did you end up in Southall in 1976, and what were the political dynamics? 

I came to Britain in 1971 and lived in London for a while and then went to work in Bristol. 

I was doing my PhD and working part time, undertaking research in the area of what was 

then described as ‘ethnic relations’, and came to Southall in 1976 to do field work for my PhD 

thesis. What I remember particularly about that year was that it was a very hot summer. In 

Southall, I was doing comparative research interviews with Asians and White people about 

intergenerational change. My focus was on the similarities and differences between what 

young people and their parents thought across ethnicity boundaries. I was talking to young 

people about their educational experiences and their experiences at home in Southall, and 

through our conversations I began to recognise that racism was a critical issue affecting 

the lives of these young people. So although my thesis was about intergenerational change 

rather than about racism per se, nevertheless racism emerged as an important factor. When 

Gurdip Chaggar was killed in Southall that summer, I was shocked and began to realise how 

critical the situation was. My job contract in Bristol came to an end before I could finish the 

PhD so that a year later in 1977 I moved to Southall to take up a new post with the National 

Association of Asian Youth. 

From 1977 onwards, as I started working at the National Association of Asian Youth I 

came to meet politically conscious young people and other activists in Southall. Two organisations 

were particularly active: the Southall Youth Movement and the Indian Workers Association. 

There were some tensions between the leadership of these two organisations. The 

IWA had been a left leaning organisation in relation to working- class politics in factories etc; 

and whilst these concerns were still around in 1976 they did not hold the same significance 

for young people. SYM seemed to feel the IWA had changed and it was not so radical anymore. 

SYM was more concerned with street level everyday racist conflict and questions of 

policing and so on. I should say that the membership of SYM was mostly young men, there 



weren’t many women involved in SYM. 

Before we formed Southall Black Sisters, that was in 79, there was a group of us who 

set up a Young Asian Women’s group. Some of us started meeting and became aware of 

the problems facing women in Southall in terms of, for instance, the effects of immigration 

legislation, problems related to housing and benefits, and violence against women; problems 

related to the state, but at the same time internal family problems; the whole question 

of the patriarchal values which prevailed not just amongst Asians, critical though this 

was, but also across the wider society. We formed Southall Black Sisters in 79 not just as a 

women’s group but as an explicit feminist project. This resonated across the country, so for 

example, at a later stage Pratibha Parmar and I helped set up Leicester Black Sisters. There 

was a Black Sisters group in Bristol as well. 

Left politics were quite complex in Southall. The Marxist left was quite active. On many 

issues we all worked together. But sometimes there was a feeling, that groups from outside 

Southall wanted to see things happen in their own way. This created differences. The IWA 

did have some members who had been members of the communist party in India, for example 

Vishnu Sharma was one such person, so it wasn’t as if there weren’t any political sympathies. 

But there were tensions when some outside organisations tried to impose themselves. 

In other words, there were differences as well as similarities, but what was good about that 

period was that despite all the that, people actually talked to each other, and there was a 

sense that Southall could be a space for political activism, where something could be done 

for the better, that certain types of politics, e.g. racist, and for us in Southall Black Sisters, 

sexist politics had to be challenged. We felt we were part of a community irrespective of 

any potential conflict. 

How important is the period from 76- 84 in our histories? 

Yes, its true, I think Southall has an important place in the political scene of 1976-84, but 

I think Birmingham, Nottingham, Leeds, Manchester, Bradford and other places are also 

important in this history. Apart from 1976, 79 was very critical in Southall when a large- scale 

police operation took place on 23 April. The police was there in thousands to enable the 

National Front to hold a pre-election rally at the local town hall. Southall residents and other 

supporters came out in force to protest as the fascist Right marched in their streets. Some 

people were trapped between police cordons and the police charged vans at others and 

hit them as they scattered. Blair Peach was killed that day by injuries sustained to the head 

at the hands of the police. Approximately 700 (predominantly Asian) individuals were arrested 

and 344 were charged and tried in court. We campaigned to try to get them free. I 

remember those yellow badges we all had in Southall in 1979, ‘free the Southall 344’ badges,. 

I still have them somewhere. There were other incidents such as the pitched battles in 



1981 between young Asian men and the skinheads who had arrived in Southall at a pub in 

buses decked with National Front banners. In the process the pub was set ablaze. In Bradford, 

12 Asian community activists were charged with conspiracy. All the defendants pleaded 

not guilty. This was really a period of political turmoil. A British born generation of Asian 

youth had come of age. The slogan ‘self defence is no offense’ took on a real meaning. At 

a personal level, these events had a huge impact on my academic work. In some sense I 

came to Southall as a naïve research student, but I learnt that I couldn’t be ‘objective’, not 

least because when I was interviewing white parents I was experiencing racism from them, 

they sat there and talked about Asians in very racist terms, as if I didn’t exist and I began to 

realise that actually something called ‘ objective research’ is a myth and we have to look at 

what we now call ‘situate knowledges’, -- that is to say that people speak from their own 

politically located position. 

In my work capacity with the National Association of Asian Youth I met with youth workers 

from across the country and we started a number of different groups in different cities 

whereby youth workers could jointly engage as professionals on their specific local and 

national concerns. People like Ravi Jain played an important role in supporting this initiative. 

We organised conferences, and set up locally relevant projects for young people in different 

parts of Britain. These youth worker forums were a conduit for a great deal of creative 

political energy. 

So yes, this period is a watershed in our personal and collective histories. There was 

a commonsense view at the time that Asian young people were much more radical than 

their parents, that the latter were conservative. I took issue with this position. The parental 

generation had been pretty radical in their own time. It’s just that young people expressed 

their politics in a different idiom. A number of these issues were placed in relief following 

Chaggar’s murder which became a focal point for the contestation of different generational 

political strategies in dealing with the aftermath. Questions about how to deal with racism 

on the streets and safety of the community became very prominent. Yes, 1976 was a watershed 

moment for Southall. Certainly it was. 

Unlike any other group, you, as Southall Black Sisters, were the first to use the term 

‘Black’ to talk about Asians and Caribbeans, that the women’s group chose to do this is very 

significant? 

Well, Asians women were always active in politics from the early years of Asian migration 

though this is not always recognised in narratives about Asian politics. For instance, 

Asian women were at the forefront of a number of well- known industrial strikes. In Southall 

itself Harbans Bains was exemplary in her activism, and she always grappled with how 

women were unacknowledged. In Southall Black Sisters, we were consciously giving priority 



to women’s experiences. We had to address the sexism in Asian and Black communities, 

alongside the racialised sexism of British society. There is a particularity about sexism that 

we experience as Asian women, partly because of the specificity of Asian culture, but also 

because, as I have said, patriarchal practices of British society at large impacts through the 

prism of racism, so we experience that as well, and we have to deal with both. Racism was 

an issue even in relation to white women. So, for example, as feminists we worked with 

white women, but at the same time we were aware that white women could also be racist, 

and there was a lot of debate between white feminism and black feminism, and the exclusion 

of our concerns by the white feminist movements was an actual real issue for us. 

It’s whilst we were doing all this activist work in Southall as Asian women, we came 

across African-Caribbean women who had similar problems to ourselves, different and distinctive, 

but similar kinds of problems. It was a period when black power ideology was very 

strong, so I know, when we came together we were reading about Steve Biko, and what was 

happening in South Africa, the struggles there. These sort of things, especially anti-racism 

and feminism were an important part of our developing consciousness. We realised we had 

common struggles, even though we had different shades of skin colour, we decided to call 

ourselves Black sisters, rather than something else because we wanted to create unity between 

people from African descent and people from Asian descent. 

Considering the importance of this period, why hasn’t much written or documented, 

certainly from the Asian perspective or the Black/Asian unity perspective, there is an almost 

absence of documentation? 

That’s a good question, well there have been some academic attempts but the academic 

research has its own agendas and takes a different form, but documentation of radical 

history hasn’t happened. I’m not exactly sure why, but we can speculate that the politics and 

class formation in Asian communities maybe an important factor. In class terms, Asians are 

characterised by significant class differentiation. We do have some vanguard intellectuals 

and academics, but the business community is more dominant amongst the Asians, and also 

the politics amongst the elite in the Asian community is not very radical. Moreover, sections 

of Asian communities are much more into consumerism, I mean if you look at the weddings 

nowadays, they cost some amazing amounts. There is a whole industry sprawled around the 

planning and execution of weddings. Celebrity culture is very much the thing. And identity 

politics is part of this. Nowadays you can’t talk about the ‘ Asian’ as a palpable category: its 

Muslims or Hindus or Sikhs or Christians. Over the last twenty to thirty years, the ‘Asian’ category 

is fractured along religious lines. The category black as a common referent for people 

of colour has also disappeared. Southall Black Sisters still call themselves Black Sisters, but 

black as a common symbol to refer to Asians and African- Caribbeans in our communities 

is gone now. We once had an organisation called Asian Women’s Network, that linked local 



Asian women’s groups to the national body, and that is gone too. 

But yes, the history is not written so young people can’t identify with it, there aren’t 

that many resources, so people don’t engage with it, but this needs to be tackled especially 

in our schools, and within the curriculum. In some ways, the relative success of the Asian 

groups undermines the radical politics in some sense, some people might gravitate towards 

a unified black history and think this only happened in the 70s and 80s, yet forget the 

Stephen Lawrence campaign which still resonates today, or more recently, the Rotherham 12 

campaign. 

Finally, how has your activism changed as you get older? 

In terms of your thinking you become more radical as you get older, both radical and 

angry, because you see things not changing as much or as fast as you would like them to. 

I am now involved in the editorial collective of the journal Feminist Review, and I am on the 

board of Feminist Review Trust. This keeps me quite busy alongside my academic work. As 

you get older your thinking becomes more acute, political commitments stronger, and you 

become clearer about priorities. But the situation is so dire at the moment, not just in Britain 

but globally too. But I see hope in intersectional politics, and in emerging movements for 

social justice. 



Balraj Purewal 

How did you develop an interest in political activism? 

I suppose there are distinct memories which had an impact on me growing up. Firstly, I 

was at school in Southall in the late sixties, and this was a difficult time for Asians in Southall. 

I think I recall my time at school like a prison sentence. I was in one of the top classes, but 

I hated being there because all the other kids were white, and I was alone. One day I ran 

away, and joined the lower class, 2b, just to spend time with my Asian friends, I’m not sure 

why, but it took them two days to find me and take my back to my class. Racism was fairly 

open in the class, and the teachers would regularly ask you questions, and point to you 

directly just to mock you. One of the other kids, Harpal stood up to the teacher one day, and 

told them he doesn’t want to be humiliated, some other Asian kids stood up, and eventually 

I did the same. The school expelled Harpal for a while, though he is now Dr Gill, a successful 

doctor. My worst experience was that of being chased by older white kids. We had to walk 

from one block to another, and we would get regularly chased through the corridors, and 

sometimes we would get beaten up. The teachers never intervened. Outside school was just 



the same, older white boys would hang about outside school simply to chase and beat us. 

We would have to walk into school through a different entrance. In the end, older Asian kids 

would also come and hang about outside school to get us home safely. They protected us, 

and this was perhaps the seeds of the Southall Youth Movement, an attitude that violence 

was prevalent everywhere, and we just had to deal with it ourselves. 

Secondly, I have a memory of a demonstration by some local white people along Southall 

Broadway in the late 1960’s, I can’t remember exactly what it was about, or if it was 

organised by a particular group, but I remember thinking, ‘they don’t want us here’. Around 

that time, we used to see a lot of British flag flying in Southall.... and people would often be 

aggressive to you, sometimes just shout at you, and it dawned on me from an early age 

that they were concerned about me, that they didn’t want us here, and that effected me. 

It wasn’t political, I didn’t know about the National Front things like that but we knew that 

some white people didn’t like us. This wasn’t political, I don’t come from a political family, 

my father wasn’t political but when he came in the 1950s he was told to go and get his hair 

cut, but he didn’t, he said he was a Sikh and he didn’t do it and despite this he did eventually 

get work. He never complained about things to us, but he had strong values, and he taught 

us to do the right thing. I got the message from him, and my brother that you had to talk 

straight, and when I was younger I was very introverted, but I learnt to do this, and I still get 

impatient with people who speak with forked tongues. I think straight talking sits alongside 

honesty and trust, and this is important within communities. 

How did the Southall Youth Movement begin? 

I think all of us kids growing up in Southall were similar, and faced similar issues. We all 

grew up knowing we only had each other, because of this bond we never betrayed each 

other, that’s the sort of environment we moved in and experienced growing up all in Southall. 

So even before the Youth Movement started we already had these networks operating 

informally, and they worked quite well. The networks were came from a number of different 

places, the local pubs, the two kabbadi teams, the cricket teams, Southall college, and a 

number of different individuals. The Youth Movement was basically one or two people from 

each place, and everyone knew each other, though because we worked with one or two 

people from each place, not everyone knew everything. 

So, when the murder of Chagger happened we were able to react quickly, and we 

didn’t need a formal organisation to do this. The only reason we gave a name to this reaction 

was because people kept asking us, what is this? who are you? Everybody wanted a 

name, so we just said ‘Southall Youth Movement’(SYM). So, SYM was born. Also the Olympics 

was about to take place, and there was all this discussion about South Africa, and we 

kept seeing the image of John Carlos and the Black Power salute in the earlier Olympics, so 



we identified with that and we liked the torch, so we made a logo for SMY inspired by the 

Black Power salute. It was all very spontaneous and quick. We did have a committee, and in 

the beginning, we didn’t have a leader, but I was eventually asked to be the leader, because 

of my brother, I became the front man, and all it meant was that I would have contact with 

other people, whilst the others stayed in the background. We had the sense to know that we 

had to be careful, 

What sort of things did the Southall Youth Movement do? 

We came to find out about the National Front. Initially we didn’t know about the National 

Front, we know about skinheads, and we didn’t really care if the skinheads were part of a 

group or not, but we started talking to the different socialist groups which suddenly came to 

Southall. Working with the socialist groups and later the Anti Nazi League, helped us to understand 

about the workings of the far right. Some of the white people worked with us, they 

went to NF meetings and told us what was happening, where they were going to sell papers, 

and have meetings and if they intended to attack people in certain places. So, we found out, 

and we would get our squads together and fight them. We had a lot of volunteers, hard core 

people who wanted to fight the skinheads, this was an important part of the work. 

We wanted the make Southall a no-go areas for skinheads, and so if they came here we 

would fight, in that sense if was quite effective. Southall very quickly became a no-go area 

for skinheads, and the violent racist attacks ceased. I think a lot of families stopped getting 

harassed because of us so it worked. However, at another level nobody really wanted 

violence, but you need to understand that we had grown up facing violence, and nobody 

wanted to talk about the subject, it was if the violence we face didn’t exist, and before SYM 

many people had been beaten, and even when Chagger died, they wanted to present it as 

anything but a racist murder, nobody wanted to talk about violence or racism, and we were 

afraid that it would remembered as just another death, and so wanted to register its meaning 

to others. 

We didn’t totally like the white left groups. We had concerns that these white lefties kept 

coming to Southall, and telling us how we could achieve liberation. We kept saying to them, 

‘nobody tells us what to do’. We knew that they weren’t totally committed, because when 

things got difficult they just disappeared. We wanted to see things simply as black and white, 

but we also knew we had to learn about the left and right, about fascism, and other things 

and we attempted to do this. 

We also had an impact nationally, especially up north. We contacted young people from 

Bradford, they came to see us, and then we in 1981 we spent a couples of weeks with them 

in Bradford. The two communities were totally different, whereas Southall was vibrant, I 



found Bradford totally depressing, but they were also different because they had read a lot 

more political work, and they had more knowledge, but they had less connection with the 

community, it felt less of a movement, not that it was not there, the Asian Youth movements 

in Bradford, Batley, Dewberry and the others places were very important. They were trying 

to do their owns things, and they were inspired by us, in fact, in front of their office was 

huge wall with big letters ‘long live southall’. However, after the burning of the Hamborough 

Tavern we were under surveillance, they had been charged with conspiracy, so it was dangerous 

to meet up and develop things. 

Did you work with the Southall Indian Workers Association? 

The SYM didn’t get on with the Indian Workers Association. As soon as we met them we 

thought they had a mentality of appeasement, we viewed their views as a humiliation for 

our people, and that what they were doing didn’t represent any of us. The problem wasn’t 

just that of representation, but they really had no contact with us, and didn’t engage with 

our lives. They didn’t really know what we were doing, they didn’t influence our lives, they 

were of a generation who related more to my parents, they worked in factories, and we 

were in school and colleges, and they were totally disconnected. It was like two separate 

communities, and they couldn’t understand where suddenly this all came from. 

In those days, we saw the Southall IWA as collaborators with the state, and with the police. 

When there a racist attack, white on black, their message to us was always, ‘calm down, 

do not react’, and this is happened even so many racist attacks were occurring locally, so 

many people got injured, and even at the point where there was a death, a racist murder, 

here in Southall they did nothing. 

The Southall IWA had their own networks and it was huge. When they had meetings 

hundreds of people would come and talk and go to the elections, but they created their 

own community, amongst themselves, they argued and heckled amongst themselves, and 

they didn’t talk to or listen to the people outside of their own structures. So suddenly they 

found themselves in a powerless position, because we were doing something different, and 

we didn’t need to consult them. Suddenly, they were powerless, and they didn’t know how 

to talk to us. When we sieged Southall police station because they had arrested our members, 

they came and said we can get them out, instead they went in and made a deal with 

the police, and they came out and told us they won’t be charged and we should disperse, 

but this was not true, after this there was little trust between the SYM and the Southall IWA. 

They then treated us like we were hooligans, and they even told the media this, and the media 

treated us like we were hooligans. This leadership happens in all communities, certainly 

it’s something we are seeing in the Muslim community at the moment. 



By the time we met them, Southall IWA was huge, and wealthy and out of touch with the 

younger generation. Yet, it was once a leading organisation, and achieved a lot. And it is sad 

that when you look at the white left, the SWP and ANL they have books, pamphlets, website, 

and yet when you look at our community, there is nothing. Its political history, its legacy 

is slowly disappearing, nobody has written about it, and this is perhaps why we had no 

direction. When we only have white people’s history, rather than our own history we don’t 

know what the rules of engagement should be. As a young person growing up in Southall 

back then we had a series of encounters growing up, and when we did something they labelled 

us, and we had the whole media and state apparatus tell us we were just gang members, 

its something that still happens today. 

Are you less political as you get older? 

As you get older you get more political in the sense that when you are young you don’t 

have the range of vocabulary of words to really articulate things, but now now have the 

words, It’s not that I could see things when I was younger, but now I have more words, but 

the danger is that you just talk and become part of the system, because that is what the 

system wants you to do, just speak and not actually change anything. In some sense as you 

get older you can end of deskilling yourself by losing touch with the real issues. I try to do 

this by still speaking to people in Southall in Punjabi mostly, this helps maintain some sharpness 

and connection. 

it still makes me realise that sometimes you can get more change by hurling a brick 

than by keep going to meetings. that sometimes community leadership is best achieved 

through less knowledge and understanding of the establishment. SYM was powerful because 

we thought differently and didn’t want to listen what others had to say, this was both 

its strength and weakness. 



PHOTOS 

Photographs from the picket 

line 



Grunwick Dispute 

PHOTOS 

Above :Mass of protestors fill 

the streets of North London 

Left : Publicity posters to advertise 

the daily picket, 

Right: Newspaper clipping 

showing the strikers on hunger 

strike ouside the 

TUC headquarters 

Left : 

Mural remembers the strike on 

Chapter road, North Londo 

the former 

location of the Grunwick 

factory. 



Two images painted by artist Dan Jones 







Laxmiben Patel 

Harsha Ahyave, talks to her mother, Laxmiben, one of the women who went out on strike at the 

Grunwick factory in North London in 1976 

Although my memory is somewhat sketchy, there are some pivotal moments in my 

mothers’ life that remain permanently vivid and etched in my heart, because her thunderous 

quality left me spinning. Her education in Kenya was limited. English was not her mother 

tongue and she was not raised in a home where politics and current affairs were discussed 

at the dinner table. However I believe her fighting spirit is innate, but also stems from the 

many challenges she’s faced and knocked down. With endless ammunition she has always 

been equipped to cut through injustice, maybe the pace has slowed down but not the passion. 

She once said to me in Guajarati, “This generation has so much at their doorstep. You 

press a button and get an answer. You have access to all the education and knowledge from 

all over the world, but if you were stuck in a jungle or a city without your smartphone you 

wouldn’t know which direction to go. Wrong or right in my days we made a move, without 

the equipment you have.” 

My mother came to London on her own in 1966 on a Friday and the following Monday 

she was working as a machinist for Ladybird, a Children’s clothing company. Ten years later 

she was working for Grunwick, a film processing Laboratory in Willesden that soon made 

controversial headlines. 

Here is a small part of my mother’s journey… 

“It’s important to have guts in life because then you can do anything. With guts you can 

make the life you want in this world. If you sit in silence unhappy, than what is your life? 

In 1976, I walked out of my job at Grunwick to support the Grunwick Strikers. I was working 

for a photographic company in Willesden. The conditions there were not good, the pay 

was very low, people had to work very hard and you didn’t have your freedom like a normal 

human being, some workers had to ask for permission to go to the toilet. Some ladies 





mainly Asian were scared, but not me. Must be that I am mad, I didn’t think, in my mind I just 

wanted a Union in this company and to support my workers and friends. I was young and I 

didn’t even think what is going to happen in my life, I just thought if there is a union, my life 

will be better. 

After some years I went to work for Chemilines, we women wanted a Union there but it 

didn’t happen. 

Later I worked for another factory who make security alarms. It was Friday 3pm and 

after working here for 13 years the manager tells me and 20 others, ‘don’t come to work on 

Monday, there is no work.’ I said ‘Why do you say this to me? I know this is unfair dismissal, 

there are other workers who don’t even come to work, who don’t even work when they 

are at work, but I can see you have made some people your favorites.’ Myself and 2 others 

went to the citizen advice bureau and there I saw Mahmoud who used to work for Grunwick. 

I told him, ‘if you can win this, then I will take the action.’ Then I found Fatima my lawyer and 

she told me, ‘I used to come and stand on the Grunwick picket line and I will win for you.’ 

We didn’t win at the tribunal, but we went to the higher courts in London. At this same time 

I found another factory job, but I was so scared that I must be on a black list that I didn’t say 

one word about the court date. I start a new job and I take off a day to fight unfair dismissal 

for the old job, and this time we won. 

I have been standing up all my life. The Grunwick strike lasted two years, and APEX is 

the trade union that supported us and paid us some wage. We had caravans to sit in when 

it was cold and the people in Willesden would open their front doors and give us tea. Many 

people, all these ordinary men and women were there. We didn’t win this fight but just think 

how many thousands and thousands of supporters came, from Yorkshire we had the Arthur 

Scargill and many miners, we had Jack Dromey, in London the Post Office and so many other 

trade unions supported us. There were hundreds of police and everything started from 

one little Asian lady, Jayaben Desai who had the guts.” 

Image left : Grunwick strikers picketing on 

Chapter Road, NW10. Laxmiben is stood 

to the far left. 





My Political Journey to 

Grunwick and Beyond 

Dr Gautam Appa 

Today’s young progressive activists are not the sole bearers of the fight against racism 

and for a radical alternative, even though they are the beacons of hope for the future. 

I am 73 years old. I have been active since I was 14. Originally from India, I have been 

a Londoner since 1963. I regard myself a socialist and feminist political activist fighting for 

workers’ rights and against racism, Islamophobia and misogyny in this country. I am also involved 

in the fight against communalism and castism in India and for poor people’s, such as 

tribal people’s, rights. Furthermore, with my equally political Irish wife, a lifelong fighter for 

Irish women’s right to choose, I am engaged in supporting Irish women who come to London 

for an abortion denied them in both Irish states. 

The Grunwick strike was an important milestone in my political career. When the strike 

began in August 1976 I was the president of the Central London branch of the Indian Workers’ 

Association (GB) - IWA (GB). Together with my IWA colleagues I worked closely with the 

strike leader Mrs Jayaben Desai. We realised from the start that the dispute at Grunwick had 

three important elements - gender, race and class - a fight by largely female Asian workers 

to be treated respectfully as women, paid a living wage and to belong to a trade union. 

What follows is an account of my political journey to Grunwick and beyond – practical 

experiences from involvement in various struggles and ideological quests ranging from revolutionary 

paths to single issue campaigns. Of necessity there are several threads: early days 

in India before I came to study at the London School of Economics (LSE) in 1963; formative 

experiences in the student revolts at LSE from 1966 to 1969; a brief sojourn to India with 

dreams of revolutionary change; my involvement with the IWA (GB) led by anti-revisionist, 

pro-Chinese Indian communists supporting the Maoist Communist Party of India known as 

CPI (ML); Grunwick days and ultimately, post Grunwick, work on single issue campaigns with 

many organisations in India and here. Now at 73, with reduced mobility, I continue to do researching 

and writing to pursue the same political aims. 



Early days in India 

At the age of 14 I was radicalised in India during the Maha Gujarat movement that went 

on from 1956 to 1960 for the creation of the separate state of Gujarat for Gujarati-speaking 

people from the bilingual Bombay state. I took part in daily morning rallies; producing leaflets 

arguing the case for bifurcation under the guidance of my older and experienced Muslim 

mentor (1) Badamiya Peerzada; reading, analysing and trying to see in the broader context 

what was happening in my hometown of Ahmedabad. I saw first-hand how the Indian National 

Congress, using the state’s might to maintain the status quo, was forced to concede 

by dedicated non-violent protesters. 

Socialists at the London School of Economics 

While studying at the LSE I got involved in student protests which had an international 

dimension. In 1966 the LSE announced the appointment of Walter Adams, then director of 

University College in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), as the next director. Students, led by the 

Socialist Society, which I had joined, objected because Adams was a part of the racist regime 

in Rhodesia. Their concerns were ignored and the appointment confirmed in January 

1967. There were sit-ins, suspension of students and arrests followed by a sit-in outside the 

Bow Street police station. More sit-ins and occupations of administrative parts of the LSE 

followed throughout 1967 and 1968. I participated in all of these. Then came the closure of 

LSE in 1969 over students tearing down steel gates installed by the director to prevent us 

from occupying the admin buildings containing student files. What went on reminds me of a 

caustic saying in China after the Kuomintang (Chinese nationalist party that ruled China until 

1948) was defeated by the Communist Party: ‘Under the Kuomintang too many taxes, under 

the communists too many meetings.’ Sharing a flat with the socialist leaders of the LSE’s 

student movement as I was, I did attend too many meetings, but also learnt a lot about challenging 

the powerful and winning concessions. 

International dimension 

There were other events occurring which influenced politically aware and active students 

at the time. The volatile period of civil unrest among workers as well as students 

in France beginning in 1968 was punctuated by national demonstrations, massive general 

strikes as well as occupation of universities and factories across France. In March 1967 

there was the massive demonstration in London, the biggest in Britain until then, against 

the Vietnam War. All politically active left-wing students in the LSE protests were influenced 

by these events. All were searching for answers from radical literature and revolutionary 

movements. I read widely: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao, Che Guevara, Fanon, the history of the 

Chinese and Cuban revolutions and much more. 



Struggles in India 

I was also keeping abreast of developments within the communist movement in India 

(2) because I was determined to return home and join the struggle there. I had been following 

the Sino-Soviet split in the communist movement worldwide and the formation in 

India of three communist parties. The main point of contention was whether in a primarily 

agricultural feudal society such as India it was possible to grab state power with armed 

struggle by the peasantry rather than industrial workers. There had been two significant 

armed insurrections, the Telangana Rebellion between 1946 and 1951and the Naxalbari 

uprising in 1967. Both had started in tribal areas by peasants led by local communists who 

defeated feudal landlords but were rebuffed by the Communist Party they belonged to at 

the time. In the Telangana region of the princely state of Hyderabad the agitation led by 

communists belonging to the Communist Party of India – CPI - between 1946 and 1951 was 

successful in taking over 3000 villages from the feudal lords and distributing 1,000,000 

acres of agriculture land to landless peasants. Following the Soviet party’s line of peaceful 

co-existence with the capitalist world, the CPI asked them in 1951 to surrender their arms. 

By 1964, when the CPI had become completely Muscovite in its views and policies, a split 

occurred leading to the formation of the Communist Party of India Marxist - CPI (M). In 

spite of much local opposition, however, it rejected armed struggle and adopted the tactic 

of united fronts of progressive forces to win parliamentary elections. In May 1967, during 

the first term of the United Front government in West Bengal, in which the CPI (M) was 

represented, militants of the Naxalbari block in Darjeeling district occupied land illegally 

possessed by landlords, seized harvested paddy and successfully fought the local police 

and landlords’ gangs with primitive weapons. The West Bengal CPI (M), pressured by its 

coalition partners to maintain ‘law and order’, expelled nineteen party members in June 

1967. On the other hand, the Chinese party declared the armed uprising in Naxalbari as the 

birth of a great revolutionary movement in India. (3) 

Although the Naxalbari uprising was suppressed, it remained a landmark of the Indian 

polity which further led to several similar armed conflicts in parts of Bihar and Uttar 

Pradesh. (see Lal Sena and the Naxalite–Maoist insurgency). All were led by local communist 

groups which regarded the Chinese revolution and Mao’s philosophy of waging a class 

war in a feudal society as their guide. They branded the Soviet position which was considered 

to be abandoning the class struggle as revisionist (reformist), a term coined by the 

Chinese. The term ‘Naxalites’ came to be associated with all such groups. A Coordination 

Committee of some of these groups formed the Communist Party of India Marxist Leninist 

– CPI (ML) - in Calcutta in 1969. While a lot of factions emerged from the CPI (ML), all of 

them were Maoist groups loosely called Naxalites. 



Back to India with dreams of revolutionary change 

In 1973 I went back to Ahmedabad on a one-year sabbatical leave from my full time job 

as a lecturer at the Enfield College of Technology, now Middlesex University. The idea was to 

settle in India and support the emerging Naxalite movement. In Gujarat both CPI and CPI (M) 

had some presence but not CPI (ML) which had only a handful of sympathisers. Prominent 

among these was Kumarbhai, a sexagenarian communist from Kerala running a small trade 

union of pottery workers who was in contact with one of the factions of the Naxalite movement. 

I helped him run the union and also started a Slum Dwellers’ Association to protect 

slums from demolition by property developers in cahoots with the police. I ended up leading 

a strike by the union to get the employers to implement the minimum wage law that had 

been made applicable to potteries during my stay. 

It was a formative experience for me. Families of workers on strike had nothing to eat 

after the first week while I continued to eat well. Some of the employers turned out to be 

from the school I had attended; they tried to cajole and bribe me to suspend the strike, 

failing which they reported me to the police as a Naxalite. Indira Gandhi, India’s Prime Minister 

at the time, had declared Naxalites as the ‘single greatest threat to India’s security’ and 

sympathisers were being rounded up, imprisoned and tortured all over India. When sympathetic 

government officers let it be known to my friends that it was advisable for me to 

leave so I returned to London and joined the Central London branch of the Indian Workers 

Association known as IWA (GB). 

In 1974 the then president of the Central London branch, Ranjana Ash, a long –standing 

supporter of CPI (ML), stepped down and I was elected to the post. In 1975 I bought a house 

in East London with my politically active Irish partner but instead of working with the East 

London branch of the IWA (GB) continued as president of the Central London branch. 

Reasons for joining the IWA (GB) in 1973 

In a nutshell I joined IWA (GB) because it was run by anti-revisionist, pro-Naxalite Indian 

communists. When I returned from India there were two IWAs - IWA (Southall), effectively 

confined to the Southall area only, and IWA (GB) with 18 branches. (4 Both organisations 

were carrying out welfare work, trade union and anti-racist activities as well as international 

solidarity campaigns. But there was an important difference in the ideology of their leaders. 

IWAs led by Association of Indian Communists 

While all the IWA branches were mass organisations open to any Indian living in the UK, 

with a total of 20,000 plus members, each one of them was set up and run by Indian communists. 

On arrival in Britain they had joined the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), a 



evisionist organisation, but also set up their own communist organisation in 1966 called the 

Association of Indian Communists (AIC). 

The Sino-Soviet split was reflected in the CPGB with adherents and opponents of ‘the 

British Road to Socialism’, the pro-Soviet analysis published by CPGB in 1951 recommending 

fighting for socialism within the democratic framework by working within the Labour Party 

and trade unions rather than waging a class war. A similar split was also reflected among AIC 

members in their attitude and actions not only in this country but also in India. IWA (Southall) 

was led by the AIC followers of the Soviet line. In 1971 their leader Vishnu Sharma became 

a member of the Executive Committee of the CPGB. In India they supported the CPI (M). In 

contrast the IWA (GB) eschewed “entryism” (meaning infiltration in political organisations 

such as the Labour party and trade unions) in Britain and supported the CPI (ML). 

The IWA (Southall) and the IWA GB) also had different perspectives on race relations in 

Britain. The IWA (Southall) worked with government bodies whereas the IWA (GB) refused 

to become involved with state-sponsored organisations. The IWA (GB) claimed that the IWA 

(Southall) had an assimilationist philosophy and saw their role in educating Indians to make 

themselves acceptable to British society. This was in contrast to the IWA (GB) which considered 

the problem to be racism, and saw their role as one of fighting racism and not of Anglicizing 

Indians. After the passing of race relations legislation in the mid-1960s these differences 

had become more pronounced. 

I joined the IWA (GB) as a way of pursuing my revolutionary dreams without knowing 

about, leave alone joining, the Association of Indian Communists. Once Ranjana Ash left the 

branch there was no AIC member left but all the branch central committee members were 

sympathetic to the Naxalite cause. 

Activities of the Central London Branch 

As Indian ‘communists’ in London we primarily involved ourselves with Indian workers’ 

struggles in London which had two dimensions: fighting for rights at work and fighting 

against racism, The 1960s and 70s was a period of expansion of medium-sized manufacturing 

and engineering companies in West London. Many of these hired recently arrived Indian 

migrants from Uganda and Kenya as a source of cheap labour. (5) Struggles broke out 

all over the place for minimum wages, parity with white workers about wages and working 

conditions, proper work contracts, right to join trade unions and more. Strikes, walk-outs 

and other forms of struggle were commonplace. Among other things, we joined picket 

lines, distributed leaflets, sought support from other workers and from trade unions. The silk 

thread-making firm Perivale Gutterman’s strike in Perivale near Southall in 1973 and the strike 

at the film processing business run by Grunwick Processing Laboratories Ltd in Willesden in 



1976 were the most notable examples of this side of our work. 

Grunwick strike - August 1976 to July 1978 (6) 

Grunwick Laboratories was described in 1977 by Which? magazine as the most efficient 

and the least expensive of all the film-processing companies. From 100 employees in 1973, 

by 1976 it had grown to a workforce exceeding 480. Pre-tax profits were £13,500 in 1969, 

£126,719 in 1973-74 and £210,687 in 1975-76. By August 1976 when the strike broke out in 

the mail order department, Grunwick was occupying several properties within half a mile 

radius of Dollis Hill underground station in Willesden. (7) 

Grunwick exploiting a vulnerable workforce 

Grunwick was successful in persuading photographers from the Netherlands, Belgium 

and Germany as well as Britain to post their films directly to the company for rapid and good 

quality turnaround at cheap rates. The low prices it offered depended on hiring a cheap and 

vulnerable work force. In 1974 when Jayaben Desai, the leader of the strike, started work, 

the majority of her co-workers were white women. (8) The presence of a large and vulnerable 

workforce in the shape of thousands of Asians of Indian origin expelled from Kenya and 

Uganda and concentrated in a few areas of Britain, one being the borough of Brent in west 

London, meant that the company discriminated in favour of cheaper Asians. By 1976 over 

90% were people of colour whose wages in real terms were considerably lower than what 

was paid in 1974. Holiday entitlements were also reduced and compulsory overtime with little 

or no advance notice was enforced. 

The role of IWA (GB) 

We arrived at the Grunwick factory gate soon after the strike had begun. The starting 

point was a walk-out by Jayaben Desai, joined later by 130-odd workers, the majority of 

them women, over the humiliations they suffered. They were required to ask permission to 

go to the toilet and reprimanded for staying there for more than ten minutes even during 

pregnancy or menstruation. 

What began as a walk out for self-respect was soon to become a strike for the recognition 

of APEX (Association of Professional, Executive, Clerical and Computer Staff) as their 

union. The workers wanted APEX to negotiate on their behalf. The management was willing 

to take them all back but not recognise the union. The national press chose to present it as a 

story of poor, helpless Indian women in saris, speaking very little English, being denied their 

normal rights as workers. 



We worked with Jayaben to persuade those who had not walked out to join the struggle. 

As the only Gujarati speaker in the branch I took the lead in this. Armed with a list provided 

by Jayaben and accompanied by a woman member of our IWA (GB) branch, I visited 

the homes of non-strikers. I found a complex picture of why some women were not able to 

join – urgent financial need or disapproval by a dominant male member of the family being 

the chief reasons. All had stories to tell of their own experience of the humiliating treatment 

by management and compulsory overtime without prior notice - the two most common 

grievances. And almost all were apologetic about not joining. It is difficult to say if our visits 

made a difference or not, but more workers did join the strike during the weeks that followed. 

Late in October 1976 we accompanied Jayaben in directly approaching local post office 

workers to get them to stop delivering mail to Grunwick, which they did. Also we had a 

fund raiser event at the Brent Trades Union hall. During mass pickets we were at the factory 

gates and on a few occasions we were able to bring coach loads of IWA (GB) supporters 

from the Midlands’ branches. 

From the trade union side the key organiser was Jack Dromey, the Secretary of the 

Brent Trades Council who was a non-voting member of the strike committee. There was a 

major push by Jayaben and the strike committee to send deputations to factories, building 

sites and shipyards up and down the country to reach out to workers all over the country. 

This was followed by Jack Dromey’s successful appeal to Arthur Scargill, the leader of 

the Mine Workers Union, all of which resulted in massive pickets every day to stop the bus 

ferrying the scabs from going into the factory. The strike became the cause célèbre embracing 

Labour supporters, feminists and progressives of different political colours. Hundreds of 

chemists’ shops who used Grunwick’s film processing service boycotted the factory. There 

was wide and regular coverage in the media, including in the influential feminist magazine, 

Spare Rib. (9) The strike dragged on for nearly two years, from 20 August 1976 to 14 July 

1978, but failed to achieve its goals. 

The Grunwick strike was lost in spite of Labour government ministers joining the picket 

lines, first unofficial, and then official, stopping of postal delivery to Grunwick for a period 

and worldwide support from the trade union movement including the banishing of air transport 

of Grunwick’s goods from Europe. Furthermore, there were two favourable reports by 

ACAS, a High Court decision in favour of ACAS and against Grunwick, the Scarman Report 

recommending union recognition and the finding by Brent Magistrate’s Court of the police 

being guilty of arresting strikers without due cause. 

The employers were determined to hold out and were financed by the National Association 

for Freedom. Private planes were used to fly in films from all over Europe for processing. 

George Ward, the Anglo-Indian Managing Director of Grunwick, ignored ACAS reports 



labelling ACAS as the ‘Association of Comrades for the Advancement of Socialism’. Lord 

Denning’s Appeal Court ruling overturned the High Court verdict and declared the ACAS 

report invalid. The House of Lords confirmed Denning’s ruling against ACAS. The state deployed 

the Special Petrol Group (SPG) which used methods developed in Northern Ireland 

by the notorious Royal Ulster Constabulary. Again and again they tore into the mass pickets 

and used violence unseen in normal policing of strikes. The right wing tabloids were able to 

print images of ‘pickets fighting with the police’. The unions were not prepared to fight until 

the end. They tried to impose a limit on the number of pickets. For a while, anticipating an 

opportunity to gain a foothold among the Asian immigrant workers, they had paid double 

the strike pay and officially sanctioned the Union of Postal Workers (UPW) to ban postal deliveries. 

But they were losing control and faced with images in the tabloids of pickets fighting 

with police, feared a legal backlash which did materialise after Margaret Thatcher became 

the Prime Minister. As ‘the Grunwick Strike’ by A. Sivanandan clearly explains, the Social 

Contract, the government-trade union collaboration agreed by the Labour government and 

the trade union movement, ensured that both the TUC and the UPW withdrew support. 

For the Managing Director Ward, and his managers, the main issue was the workers 

joining a union which threatened their cheap source of labour. Race or gender were irrelevant 

to the bottom line except when they could use it to increase their profits. They did, of 

course, use race and gender to get their way. Having replaced the largely white workforce 

with vulnerable Asian immigrants from Kenya and Uganda, Ward had made a detailed study 

of workers’ home backgrounds and tried to use cultural and religious differences between 

different sub-groups of striking Asian workers to his advantage. 

Workers’ struggles in the 1970’s, including the one at Grunwick, were, among other 

things, about unions negotiating with employers on behalf of its members about wages, 

annual holidays, working conditions and other aspects of workers’ rights. Today in Britain 

we are fighting against zero hour contracts and a ‘self-employed’ workforce. The rights of 

workers to join picket lines in solidarity with others, as was done so dramatically by miners 

during the Grunwick strike, is now illegal. In France collective bargaining is still the norm but 

Macron, the new president of France is trying to outlaw it. The struggle goes on. 

Lessons learnt 

Experience of working in conflicts like Grunwick made me question my younger self’s 

belief that all-out revolutionary struggle is the only way forward. It reinforced my emerging 

view that to bring about change, working in broad-front organisations on single issue campaigns 

should not be dismissed. I came to understand the importance of forming alliances 

with sympathetic individuals and organisations to maximise the strength of one’s forces, 

even where they embraced views at odds with my own on fundamental issues such as hu- 



man rights, women’s rights, or even racism. One particular case stands out in my memory 

that concerns the leader of the Grunwick strike, Jayaben Desai. 

Jayaben was a fearless fighter for social justice for workers, but was also a member 

and supporter of the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS), the UK branch of the Hindu nationalist 

extremist group Rashtriya Swayamaevak Sangh (RSS) in India known for its hostility 

to and attacks on Muslims. I remember a conversation with her in which she was berating 

Muslims in India. ‘Their houses smell’, ‘they breed like rabbits’ etc. I pointed out that 

what she was saying about Indian Muslims was exactly the same as the far right National 

Front was saying about all the black migrants, including us. Her response was: “What I am 

saying about Indian Muslims is true, what the NF says about us is not”! 

On the other hand, it is fair to say that without Jayaben there would not have been 

a strike. 60% of those on strike were female, and the leading force was Jayaben Desai. 

There was a lot of simmering discontent among the workforce but no one else was able 

to articulate workers’ grievances in Gujarati as she did. Her English was far from perfect, 

but her fearless quick-witted retorts to rude managers gave courage to others to come 

out and stay out. The most famous one of these is the one where she says before walking 

out: 

“What you are running here is not a factory, it is a zoo. But in a zoo there are many 

types of animals. Some are monkeys who dance on your fingertips, others are lions who 

can bite your head off. We are the lions, Mr Manager.” 

Equally impressive is her retort to a manager who said ‘you can’t win with that Sari on. 

Why don’t you change into a mini-skirt?’ ‘I will tell you something, manager’ she retorted, 

‘Mrs Gandhi wears a sari and she runs a country of 600 million people. You can’t even run 

a little factory’. 

I also realised that strikers and their supporters had contradictory views on fundamental 

issues. Among the other contradictions that struck me at the time was the proud declaration 

by most female strikers, including Jayaben, that while picketing they had never 

failed to provide cooked meals, a clean and tidy house, and care of their children, no matter 

how early they had to rise each morning! British feminists who joined the picket would 

not have shared or appreciated this view! However, I found during our attempts to get 

more women to join the strike that the issue was much more complex. It is best articulated 

by Ann Rossiter (10) in an article published in Spare Rib. It says: “It takes a great deal of 

guts for an Asian woman to come out on strike and stand on a picket line in the full glare 

of publicity day after day. All sorts of psychological pressures are brought to bear on her. 

Members of her family may gossip and deprecate her, as it is considered a dishonour for 



a woman to put herself in the public eye.” 

Being the great strategist that she was, Jayaben came up with a practical solution. She 

and Jack Dromey got the strike committee to organise a meeting for the husbands and relatives 

of the women strikers. For three hours one Sunday forty of the husbands fired questions 

at Jack Dromey, Adrian Askew, an APEX official, and the officers of the strike committee. 

The meeting made a decisive contribution towards helping the women play a full part 

in the strike and brought into the dispute the families of those on strike. ‘I think a standard 

approach from now on in a strike situation like this must be to involve the strikers’ relatives’ 

remarked Jack Dromey. (11) 

I found to my amazement that disagreements about fundamental values were to be 

found among political activists as well. Male chauvinism was not the preserve of the strikers’ 

menfolk; it was widespread among IWA (GB) members whether they described themselves 

as ‘comrades’ or not. Added to this litany of contradictions was the existence of racism 

amongst Asian workers and IWA (GB) comrades towards African Caribbeans, and of white 

workers towards all people of colour. 

Post-Grunwick decades 

After Grunwick I began to veer towards single issue campaigns which is where I had 

started during the Maha Gujarat movement. Throughout the 40 years since the strike ended 

I have been involved in anti-communal, anti-racist and pro-poor struggles except for a brief 

period to follow my academic career at the LSE. There have been successes and failures. I 

record below only some of the major ones in which I think I played a meaningful part. 

Anti-communal work 

o Alliance Against Fascist Dictatorship in India (AAFDI) 1975 to 1977 

AAFDI was set up by the IWA (GB) in the autumn of 1975 after the introduction of Emergency 

rule in India by Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India, from June 1975 till 21 

March 1977. During this period she suspended elections, imprisoned leaders of all opposition 

parties as well as anyone suspected of being a Naxalite, curbed civil liberties, curtailed press 

freedom and endangered judicial independence. I was on the executive committee of AAFDI 

and also one of the editors of an occasional publication launched by the organisation called 

India Today which was produced from my home in the East End. By uniting with all those 

who opposed the emergency rule in India AAFDI was able to organise a massive demonstration 

in London on 26 January 1976 which got a lot of publicity in the Indian press. 

o Other anti-communal organisations 

Two important organisations were formed to tackle serious manifestations of commu- 



nalism in India by the Sangh Parivar - the family of organisations for students, women, tribals 

etc, - led by the RSS. In 1992 the Alliance Against Communalism and for Democracy in India 

was formed in the aftermath of the demolition of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, in India’s 

Uttar Pradesh state, which led to communal carnage in every district of India. It brought 

together not only left wing organisations but progressive organisations and individuals of all 

faiths and political colour to counter the propaganda being put out in Britain in the name of 

all Hindus by the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh - HSS. In 2002, Awaaz South Asia Watch was 

launched in the wake of the massacre of 2000 plus Muslims in Gujarat in March 2002 for 

which it is said that Narendra Modi, the current Prime Minister of India was culpable. On two 

occasions Awaaz was able to stop Modi visiting London to address HSS organised meetings 

while he was the chief minister of Gujarat. The editors of this book assure me that as the 

SMG and TMG were an important part of the founding and running of these two organisations, 

their work will be covered in the next book in the series. 

Anti-racist work 

o Newham 8 Defence Campaign and Newham Monitoring Project 

The 1980’s saw a spate of attacks on Asians in the East End of London by violent racists. 

(12) A high profile instance at the time was what came to be known as the Newham 8 case. 

Eight Asian youths were arrested on 24th September 1982 and faced charges of Threatening 

Behaviour and Actual Bodily Harm. All they had done was to defend themselves after 

repeated attacks on Asians at the Little Ilford School and East Ham and Manor Park underground 

tube stations. The Newham 8 Defence Campaign was launched by the Newham 

Monitoring Project (NMP) with the slogan “Self-Defence is no Offence”. The NMP was also 

active in other anti-racist campaigns which I participated in while I lived in East London. 

Pro-poor work 

o Mega-dam project on the river Narmada 

In 1991 the World Bank was forced to appoint a team to conduct an independent review 

of the human and environmental impact of a mega-dam and water distribution project on 

the river Narmada in India. I had been working with Medha Patkar, the dynamic Gandhian 

leader of Narmada Bachao Andolan - Save the Narmada Movement – (NBA) set up to fight 

for the rights of tribal people whose land was going to be submerged by the dam. The 

review team led by Bradford Morse asked me to help assess the problems caused to the 

people whose land was going to be submerged by the 75,000-km canal network being 

built for the project. The assessment was done jointly with my academic colleague Sridharan. 

Our report was a part of the so-called Morse Report which led to acrimonious debates 

(13) between the World Bank’s managers and its board of directors, ultimately leading the 

World Bank to withdraw from the project, annulling the large loan offered to the Indian state 

to carry it out. In its turn, the World Bank’s withdrawal was an important factor in the Indian 

Supreme Court’s decision in 1994 to stop further construction (14) pending a proper judicial 



eview. By now the dam has been built. Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared the work 

completed on 20th September 2017. Medha Patkar and the NBA spoke to the press on the 

day, saying ‘How can they declare the project is complete when rehabilitation of tribal people 

whose land and homes are submerged, is not complete?’ The fight for the tribal peoples’ 

rights goes on. 

Publications: 

The most important of these is the book, ‘Narendra Modi Exposed’, (15) prior to the 

general elections in India which brought Modi to power as Prime Minister of India. Among 

other things it exposes the myth that the Supreme Court of India has absolved Modi of culpability 

in the Gujarat riots of 2002. 

Finally 

In recent years, with increasing mobility problems and other health issues, the main work 

has been researching and writing for campaigns. With the Hindu Rashtra agenda of the RSS 

being implemented in India under Narendra Modi and zero hour contracts, Islamophobia and 

privatisation of education and National Health services becoming the norm in this country, 

there is no shortage of work for an activist - young or old! 



Notting Hill ‘76 

PHOTOS 

Top left, right and left, 

Carnival 76 Portobello Road 

@Vernon St Hilaire 

Bottom left and right: 

Don Letts at Notting Hill carnival 76 

Photo by Rocco Macaulay 

The image was later reused on the 

recod cover by The Clash on the 

cover of ‘Super Black Market Clash’ 



PHOTOS 

Too left : Police with 

truncheons and bin lids 

Top right 

Inside grassroots newspaper, 

providing a detailed account 

for the events under the banner 

‘Carnival jump-up’ 

Middle 

left: Grassroots 

newspaper cover , ‘Carnage 

76’ 

Middle right : 

Police take cover from bricks 

with bin lids 

Bottom 

Policeman watching crowds 



Stafford Scott 

Coordinator of Tottenham Rights 

The Uprising that they wish to forget 

August 1976 I had just turned 16 and was excited at the thought of attending my first 

Notting Hill carnival as an ‘adult’. I had been to the carnival the previous year but had gone 

on the ‘Family Sunday’ as a 15 year old school kid with some of my classmates. 

It had been fun, but this year I was going to Carnival with my brother and his friends on 

the biggest day of the 2-day event. This was going to be the real carnival that I’d seen on 

the black and white pictures in the press and on TV. Only this year I was going to be a part 

of it. 

I went expecting to see the colourful floats filled with happy smiling brothers and sisters 

adorned in their finest carnival outfits. I went expecting to hear the sound of the steel bands 

filling the air with the sunny Caribbean beats some of Calypso and SOCA. But most of all I 



had gone to hear the clash of the reggae sound systems. Carnival was the only place that 

you would have the chance to hear Jah Shaka, Coxsone, Sufferer and Tottenham’s finest 

Fatman Sound System all in the same place for FREE! 

On my way to the carnival I felt my excitement increasing with each stop that the tube 

made. For it seemed that this tube had been specifically reserved for young black carnival 

goers. At each stop more and more black youths got on. You could see groups from north, 

east, west and south London boarding the tube all with one destination in mind. 

There were lots of different groupings, many of them identifiable as such because they 

wore similar clothing to others in their group. Many had clearly put much time, thought and 

effort into their carnival outfits. Some had bought their ghetto blasters with them, as if, 

warming themselves, and everyone else in earshot, up for the carnival that was to come. 

The atmosphere on the train journey was electric, for this was 70’s England where there 

were few opportunities for the black community to gather together in remembrance and 

celebration of our culture. Back in those day the most that we had were parties in our living 

rooms, and underground blues dances which were always likely to be shut down or raided 

by the local police. But this was our day, for it was legal and outside in the basking sunshine 

of the famous 1976 heatwave, which was the hottest summer on record at the time. 

So its fair to say that I went to the carnival full of heightened expectations, knowing that 

I was going to have one of the best days of my young life so far. 

But instead it turned into something totally different. 

There was another backdrop to this years gathering that I had been unaware of at the 

time. It seems that 1976 was also the year that the Metropolian Police Service (MPS) decided 

that current legislation, as it was then, was simply not repressive enough when it came to 

policing the Black community. 

So they trawled old common law acts, that had been used and, most often, abandoned 

during Victorian times, and came up with an offence that no white person had been arrested 

for in this country in the past 100 years or more. 

The Suspicious Persons Act or the SUS law as it commonly known. 

The SUS law basically meant that police officers could, and did so in their thousands, 

arrest a person who they considered to be acting suspiciously and charge the said person 

with having committed the crime. The issue was that the officers did not need to have a 



victim of a crime or any witnesses to confirm that the arrested person, who nine times out 

of ten was black, was acting in a suspicious or criminal manner. 

This meant that in court it was the officers word against the word of young black kids. 

The black kids stood no chance, we knew this and of course the police knew it too. 

And, because the magistrates always believed the police, they used it only too well. The 

stats are available for all to see they used the sus laws to criminalise young black kids in 

much the same way that they use Joint Enterprise laws (also common law) to prosecute and 

persecute predominantly Black youths nowadays. 

SUS is often cited as similar to Stop and Search but the use of the SUS laws was much 

more pernicious and harmful than stop and search is; as it was an indictable offence that led 

to tens of thousands of young black youths receiving criminal records and custodial sentences. 

Well many of those who had been arrested under the SUS laws during the heatwave of 

76 were also attending the carnival that year. 

We were all disappointed at the large numbers of police officers that we found there. 

This was meant to be our carnival. The ONE day of the year that we hoped we would be 

free to enjoy ourselves instead we were being shepherded into the narrow passages beneath 

the flyover by aggressive burly and very surly police officers with their rolled up shirt 

sleeves and black gloved hands which were surly unnecessary in the middle of a heatwave 

but provided us with a clear indication of what was to come 

Rumours were spreading throughout the day that SPG officers, Special Patrol Group, 

were apparently being held in reserve, and were sitting in their vans showing off their NF 

badges to the crowds of carnival goers as they passed by them. The SPG were infamous in 

our community as the police force’s ‘storm troopers’ they had earned a reputation amongst 

us as hard bastards who should be avoided at all costs. 

Looking back I guess it had the makings of the classic storm. In that there were hundreds 

of thousands of mainly black youths, who simply wanted to enjoy the one-day of the year 

that they felt was ‘their/our day’. 

Amongst them would have also been a number of youths who had been charged and 

imprisoned for a crime that they had not committed, SUS, and many would have been awaiting 

their day in court. This would have been a day in which they would have just wanted to 

forget the everyday pressures, of growing up Black in a white mans world, and truly ‘let off’ 



some steam on the one day that such behavior was tolerated. 

What unified both groups wasn’t simply the fact that we were all black. It was more the 

fact that neither grouping wanted the police in such close proximity on this day of all days. 

The year before there had been no real reported trouble at the carnival, so no one understood 

why it was that they were there in such numbers and with such attitudes. 

For some reason it appeared that the police decided that they would ignore the stewards 

and manage the crowds themselves. This created tensions and ultimately led to some 

skirmishes between the police and the carnival goers as the police kept trying to move people 

on. 

At some point there was a confrontation and a woman was allegedly hit in the stomach 

by a police officer wielding a truncheon. Whether it was true or not it was enough to turn an 

already tense situation into a roaring street battle. 

If you ever see photographs from that uprising you will see that the police were ill 

equipped for dealing with large-scale disorder. The short truncheons that they’d been using 

to prod people to encourage us to move in the direction they wanted, were now proving 

useless as the police were coming under fire from a barrage of missiles including bricks,bottles 

and paving slabs. In those photos you may also see police offices using dustbin lids to 

shelter from such attacks. But if you look really closely you will see the shock and fear in 

their eyes because they had never come under attack like this before. 

Soon after the fighting had begun I got separated from my brother and his friends but 

there was no way that I was going to leave and miss all the ‘fun’. I started to hang out with 

a group of youths who I had bumped into, literally, as we were being chased down the road 

by a couple of SPG vans. 

They decided to go into a supermarket, not to loot but to get cans and bottles that 

could be used as missiles against the police. As it sounded like a good idea I followed them 

in to the supermarket grabbing a trolley and filling it with big cans of corned beef , baked 

beans and Heinz soup. I was so engrossed in what I was doing that I didn’t notice the shop 

had become much quieter until I heard the unmistakable sound of the cops “Oi you little 

black bastards. Stop right there!” I stopped and ran to the back of the store trying to find 

another way out but to no avail. I hadn’t really done anything but I wasn’t going to try to 

reason with these cops. I could tell from their tone and the way they were approaching that 

I was in deep trouble. “I’m only a kid, I’m only 16”, I screamed as they started to towards me 

with truncheons drawn. “Kick his fucking bollocks in”. I heard one screaming over and over 



so I cupped mine and took the truncheon blows to my head and shoulders until I succumbed 

to the beating. 

I woke up in a police cell with about 7 other brothers. I had been dumped on the cell 

floor and woke up to find myself laying in a pool of blood that turned out not to be mine. 

There was blood everywhere on the walls the door and somehow some there were even 

blood splatters on the ceiling. 

I looked at the others in the cell and decided that I had probably been one of the luckier 

ones even though my forehead was cut and my face was caked with dry blood. I had a broken 

tooth and later discovered that I had 2 dislocated fingers. 

I also had a number of bumps on my head but my Tom (hat) and small afro probably 

saved me from worse injuries. My shirt had been all but torn off of my back and I had bruising 

on my shoulders and wrists where it appears they may have handcuffed me. 

But I guess that I was lucky as I had been knocked out from the first blows and really 

was none the wiser in terms of what they had done to me. 

All of the other brothers had their own stories to tell, two of them swore that they had 

been arrested and beaten up before they had even gotten to the carnival. One said he was 

trying to help a woman pack up her stall when the cops just rushed the two of them. He said 

that they had beaten her worse than they had beaten him. 

Everyone had their story but there was one surprising common thread amongst all of 

our stories was about the police officers going for our balls. One had had his balls squeezed 

the entire time that he was being transported to the station in a police van. One who was 

vomiting and spitting blood said they’d purposefully positioned him so that they could slam 

the panda car door into his nether regions. Then they kicked him several times before nicking 

him. 

In the next hour at least four more brothers were thrown into the cell. After another couple 

of hours a cop came in an asked if any of us were juveniles. We all were! So they took a 

decision to let us out without charge. Before they let me go they took me into a room where 

I was beaten by 2 cops and warned not to go back at the carnival as there would be worse 

to come if I were to be caught a second time. 



I didn’t make it back to Tottenham that night. I went straight back to Ladbroke Grove 

with a couple of the other juveniles who I had shared a cell with. 

I had initially gone to the carnival looking for fun but now I was looking for revenge. 

It wasn’t the last uprising that I have been present at! 

I think that the Metropolitan Police FORCE with all of its, institutionalized, collective 

memory has been looking for revenge on the Black community ever since. 

I loved that summer 

Peace 



Cecil Guztmore 

This article first appeared in Marxism Today, August 1982 

On the final weekend of August 1982 some hundreds of thousands of people will take 

part in the 16th annual Notting Hill Carnival. Before the urban and largely black uprisings of 

1980 (St Pauls, Bristol) and 1981 (first in Brixton and then in at least 25 other centres), the 

Carnival had been the setting for the major street disturbances in Britain since World War II. 

At the same time, the claim that it is one of Western Europe’s premier cultural events proved 

difficult to dispute with attendances of up to half a million people in the mid-1970s. 

The connection between popular culture and challenges to constituted orders is by no 

means unique to the Notting Hill Carnival. Simply to say ‘football hooliganism’ is to indicate 

the truth of this in the United Kingdom context. It is not, though, to tell the whole story. Carnivals 

and festivals far and wide have displayed this connection. The observation of these by 

anthropologists in Africa has given us the notion of ‘rituals of rebellion’. Similar observations 

exist for South America. Indeed, ‘rituals of rebellion’ have been detected as far back as the 

Ancient Orient where an instance is given from Babylon. There they celebrated an annual 

religious festival called Sacees. This required the king to give a slave the chance to enact 

the role of king to the extent of . . . issuing orders and abandoning himself to luxury and 

debauchery with the king’s concubine. At the end of this the slave was hanged or crucified. 

In Sumer in a similar religious festival in 2050 BC the elevated slave-gardener usurped the 

throne, disposed of the king’s son and reigned for twenty five years. The pattern recurs in 

Europe in modern times in the cities of Italy and Germany. 



It has led to the conclusion that: ‘Carnival is a cultural institution which regularises 

and ritualises the permanent social conflict. It is a .. . form of class struggle. It enables the 

underprivileged class to make revolution without really performing it, and to improve its 

social position again and again for a short period of time without even touching the society’s 

existing power structure’.’ 

But this is not the whole story. Class struggle cannot always be ritualised. There are 

situations in which the existing structures of power, class or wealth are unstable; are the 

object of quests for fundamental change. One such is the colonial situation. For example 

under British colonialism in Trinidad in the Caribbean the Carnival broke the bounds of ritual. 

This was certainly so after slavery. The colonial order was too nervous to allow itself to be 

mocked. The danger that the masses (African and later African and Asian) might shift from 

mock to real rebellion was perceived as ‘a clear and present danger’. In the face of this 

fear suppression was attempted and this brought forth vigorous resistance from the people 

in defence of what they knew to be legitimate culture and against illegitimate (white, 

colonial) authority. And within the United Kingdom itself, well before football became a main 

focus of working class cultural expression, well before the sway of the music hall, there were 

what have come to be called the metropolitan fairs. 

The growth of the Carnival 

The Notting Hill Carnival is still with us. Alive, and on the streets of the Royal Borough 

of Kensington and Chelsea, London. It made its first appearance there in 1966. It is largely 

agreed that its founding spirit was a white social worker, Mrs Las- lette. The aim was to create 

a ‘West Indian’ carnival in this area of major black settlement in the UK. The model was 

the Eastern Caribbean and Trinidad in particular. But this was not the only model available. 

English people were not, after all, unfamiliar with the notion of ‘carnival’. Even in terms of 

the local history of North Kensington there appears to have existed an idea of carnival as 

an ‘olde’ English celebration. 

Thus the main local newspaper of the period, the Kensington News and West London 

Times, contains references to ‘carnivals’ in the area before 1966. The model_was last dusted 

off and used as recently as the present Queen’s silver jubilee. In any event elements of 

this ‘English’ idea of carnival were paraded at the first carnival in 1966. 

In the first eight years of its existence the Notting Hill carnival grew very slowly. Essentially 

it was small and run largely by people from the West Indies. The conflicts which appeared 

in those years were between West Indian individuals for control of the management of the 

event. Culturally its main contents were the music of the Trinidad originated steel band, 



costume bands from that same part of the world and African music from the band of the 

late West African player Ginger Johnson. Black and white people attended. The Caribbean 

people enjoyed the recreation of a little bit of’home’ in the brutal slums of Northern Kensington: 

the whites, it may be presumed, enjoyed the exotica of it all. It seemed in every respect 

unchallenging to the state, both national and local. The former, in the guise of its police 

force, made propaganda as its officers embraced booze, the odd ‘spliff’ (Indian hemp/weed) 

and black women. They got themselves photographed doing some of these things and that 

was said by many to be good for race relations. The latter, the local state, was only worried 

about expense and the feeling of its ‘residents’ and ‘ratepayers’ (all white for these purposes). 

Complaints were few. 

After Carnival 1973, certain important developments took place. A partly-owned agency 

of the local state called the North Kensington Amenity Trust had an ex-film director at its 

head. Understanding matters cultural, he took a benevolent interest in the Carnival intervening 

to secure or to help secure the directorship of the Carnival for an able and energetic 

young Trinidadian by the name of Lesley Palmer and to drum up good will for the event in 

the right quarters. 

Carnival 75 

In 1975 Palmer succeeded in organising the biggest Carnival ever in Notting Hill. He 

altered or broadened the cultural base of the event to include what was effectively the 

music of the black popular masses in the UK, namely the Jamaican originated reggae. It was 

brought via the agency of the best Sound Systems (black mobile discos of the sort treated 

in the film Babylon). Capital Radio, one of London’s two commercial sta• tions, attended 

and broadcast live from the event encouraging attendance. It is estimated that about half a 

million people came. Black attendance was on a country-wide basis. Suddenly the Carnival 

was the place to go to meet people one had not seen for years. It was also an important 

commercial venue for the sale of Afro-Caribbean foods as well as drinks at prices from 

which frankly massive profits could be made. Also, and not unimportantly, a single car driven 

by a white man tried to speed through the crowd and was wrecked at the centre of things 

at the junction of Portobello and Acklam Roads. 

Following Carnival 1975 things were never again the same. It may, in the words of the 

Deputy Council Leader — another Tory businessman have ‘. . . proved to be a colourful and 

happy event enjoyed by a lot of people and a good influence for race relations in the area.’ 

Nevertheless it had to go. The document just quoted was nothing less than his Memorandum 

of April 1976 to the Home Secretary in effect requesting a ban on the event. By then 

the Carnival was under wholesale attack from ‘local residents’, the local police commander 

and a local ‘community action group’, the Golborne 100, led by the well known activist and 

theorist of ‘community participation’ George Clarke. The Carnival was said to have become 



‘the victim of its own success’; to have become a ‘field day for every wide- boy and huckster’; 

to be disruptive of local community life. Incredible pressure was put on the carnival. The Royal 

Borough’s position was that the event had to leave its streets for either the nearby open 

space called Wormwood Scrubs or go to the Chelsea football ground. Its proposals involving 

the latter space amounted to nothing less than a municipal take-over of fundamental aspects 

of the Carnival. The Borough said additionally, that should the event remain on the street 

and should funds not be forthcoming from the national exchequer, its own financial support 

would be limited to the provision of additional public toilets and cleaning up the streets after 

the event. The Metropolitan Police through its Divisional Commander Patterson supported 

the Borough’s proposals. If they were not accepted the Carnival would be ruthlessly policed 

right there on the streets. Each band would be encircled by a ‘serial’ of 25 police officers: all 

previously permitted ‘illegal’ activity (from street selling to the vending of booze without a 

license, weed smoking etc) would be stamped out: the police would determine the routes of 

the Carnival procession and barricades would be used to prevent free flow within the terrain 

of the event which was to be ‘sectored’. More comically, one ‘white resident’ observed that 

the West Indians already had a Carnival in Trinidad, what did they want another for? 

While there were those within the black community who were prepared to accept the 

proposals of the Royal Borough and the dictates of the police for reasons either of idiocy, 

backwardness or self-seeking, others resisted. Those who resisted pointed out to the authorities 

including, by letter, the then Police Commissioner Sir Robert Mark that attempted state 

repression of the Carnival entailed an attack on a cultural form which had become important 

to the black community. 

These warnings were, indeed, heard but the response of the Metropolitan Police was arrogantly 

to hold to its line and to prepare for a battle in which it contemplated neither defeat 

nor serious losses. An event which in 1975 had been policed with some 80 officers saw the 

appearance in 1976 of hundreds of police persons on the streets. The Metropolitan Police 

staged a series of raids on all centres of entertainment on day one of the 1976 Notting Hill 

Carnival ‘stall holders were arrested for obstructing the highway; the sellers of booze were 

arrested or reported. This, and more, made for an atmosphere of palpable oppression and 

not a ‘carnival’ atmosphere. Not a carnival atmosphere certainly if that is taken to mean solely 

one of ‘jollity’ and yet in so far as it is also of the essence of carnivals as occasions of mass 

cultural expression that they are pregnant with rebellion, the police had succeeded in deepening 

the reality of this particular Carnival. 

A turning point 

Towards the end of day two of Carnival 1976 the resistance took on physical form. The 

police, who felt they had large enough forces to withstand anything, moved without restraint. 

They claimed to be making arrests of pickpockets. In reality they were laying into black 

youths with their truncheons with a certain abandon. The youths fought back. The battle 



spread to envelop large areas of the part of Notting Hill known locally as The Grove. Hundreds 

of youths joined battle against blatantly misused police power which is in reality part 

of the daily experience of the black community as a whole. It was on a terrain brimming over 

with missiles, with bricks, half bricks, bottles and canned soft drinks. More than 300 of over 

1600 officers deployed (officially) were injured. Pictures of these battles went round the 

world once more giving Notting Hill the notoriety it had not experienced since 1958, the year 

of its historic race riots. The battle of the 1976 Notting Hill Carnival gave world-wide confirmation 

to the fact that the culture of the black communities in the UK is inescapably one of 

resistance. 

The feeling that things have gone downhill all the way since 1976 for the Notting Hill 

Carnival must be resisted. The event has remained under internal and external attack in the 

last six years. The central source of internal attack has been an externally fostered disunity. 

Whereas up to 1976 there had never been any question of more than one organising committee 

for the event, afterwards a second was created with the active support of the Borough 

Council, the Commission for Racial Equality, Trinidad High Commission and West Indian 

Standing Conference. These agencies exploited the feelings of some ‘carnival people’ (steel 

and costume band devotees) that the ‘trouble’ at the Carnival was caused by youth and reggae-based 

culture. The solution they felt was to suppress this element —or at least abandon 

it to its fate. The police were a key external source of pressure. They reached for the myth 

that their attitude in 1976 had been determined by the need to fight street crime within the 

Carnival. Mark had spoken of his opposition to ‘no go areas’. Later still in his autobiography 

he was to compare the black community’s Carnival to the ancient crowds at Tyburn Field. 

But most importantly they mounted pressure for better protective gear for police officers. 

They were issued with riot shields before Carnival 1977. And by 1978 they had learnt a whole 

series of lessons about crowd control, space control and street clearance operations which 

were applied with absolute ruthlessness in Southall in 1979 in defence of the National Front 

and against the Asian community. It was in this assault upon black people and the Left that 

Blair Peach was murdered. Blood red is one of the colours of Carnival. 



Left : The letter sent to NME 

magazine by photographer 

Red Sauders, marking the 

beginning of Rock against 

Racism 



Gurinder Chadha 

The folllowing is part of the talk gave at the launch of ‘Reminances of Rock aganst Racism’, 

at Conway Hall, November 2016 

In 1976 I was a London school girl. I had no idea who Eric Clapton was, I used to watch 

Top of the Pops, but I was suspicious of glam rock and heavy metal, in fact all kinds of rock. 

It represented them, people different to me, not like the nice bands that my parents liked, 

the Beatles or Cliff. I liked the Jackson 5, never dreaming of seeing someone like me, up 

there on Top of the Pops. The only Indian i had ever seen on the show was Biddu, the singing 

boy vocals on the song, ‘Kung fu fighting’. 

My parents owned a shop, so most of my days were spent either at school or helping 

in the shop. I hated being in the shop, you never knew when a racist might come in, and at 

best call you a ‘Paki’, and brazenly steal something, or at worst, try and hurt you. Once a 

group of English boys came in and mooned my mum then ran off with crates of beer. Many 

years later, that unruly moment found its way into my first feature film, ‘Bhaji on the beach’. 

At that time, I was amazed how my parents took this in their stride. We often learned 

about how other Indian shopkeepers were brutally hurt and hospitalised. It happened to my 

uncle in a shop he ran with his wife in Lewisham. On the day the National Front marched 

through that part of London, he and his wife were beaten up and hospitalised. We went to 

visit them. My dad said afterwards, ‘this is life what can we do’. I was enraged, and helpless. 

Do we put up and shut up like that generation? Britain was tense, and years of immigrant 

bashing had succeeded in wearing down my parents. The racism on the streets was often 



supported by the police, and meant we were islands on our own, no wonder Indians took to 

owning shops, as they thought they could get some control of their lives, even as isolated 

units. 

At school I heard someone talking about a new group tackling anti racism and I was 

suspicious. It was about white male rockers with long hair, I thought this was a bizarre idea. 

Why would those white haired rockers stand up for people like me and my parents? By now 

punk had changed the music landscape, I was put off by the more aggressive bands like the 

Sex Pistols, ‘why would they want to put safety pins in their noses?’, but other bands like 

the Clash seemed to be different. They used black music, reggae, and played homage to it 

openly, clearly something was changing. 

I began reading about Rock against Racism’ and how they were going to have a march 

from Trafalgar square to Victoria park to stand up to the National Front in their own back 

yard. I was intrigued, I wanted to go and see what this was about. I told my parents I wanted 

to go on the march, but they were not happy, they said, “you’ll be protecting the NF, and 

they’ll be violent why would you want to put yourself up this in their way.. you’ll be beaten 

up and arrested.. no way.. your place is here with us, safe in the shop”. To be honest, part 

of me agreed with them. I must be mad putting myself in the way of all that aggression, but 

I also felt that I was on the brink of new ideas, of thinking that possibility I could climb of this 

sheltered trench. Afterall these bands putting themselves out there speaking out about racism, 

even if nothing came out, it worth at least checking out. 

So I misdirected them, I told my parents I was going to CandA to get a new —- jacket. I 

was too scared to go to Trafalgar square, so I went to Victoria park on my own. 

I arrived in the vast empty park while the clash were doing a sound check. Wow, Joe 

Strummer showed up, I watched them and when band finished I wondered around alone for 

a bit but nothing was happening, No crowds, no audience building nothing, and after a couple 

of hours hanging around I thought to myself it was a good try, but nobody cares enough 

to come out, or maybe like me they were intimidated by the threat of violence and stayed 

away. Either way I proceeded to the gate to make my way home, but as I approached the 

gate I started to hear this bizarre sound a kind of high pitch buzz that was growing louder 

and louder. What was it, should I run away? But then I heard music and chanting. I headed 

for the gate and found a old box to stand on. 

When I looked down the street what I saw changed my life forever, from that moment I 

became the political filmmaker I am today. What I saw was hundreds and hundreds of people 

marching side by side in a display of exuberance and solidarity, and most importantly 

victory. I couldn’t believe my eyes, these were quite English people, some with long hair like 



the rockers, marching and chanting to help me and my family find out place in our adopted 

homeland. I didn’t know any English boys, I went to a girls school so the sight of them along 

with all the other women and Blacks and Asians, made me feel like I belonged. I had found 

my tribe, my kindred klan. 

When I got home, I told my parents where I had been and what I had seen, and in a 

strange way my father was actually quite proud of me. He said you took a risk but you 

stood up for what is right. In years to comes these sentiments found their way in the final 

father and daughter scene in my film ‘Bend it like Beckham’. 

Rock against Racism helped to my find my voice, and it made me feel like I was part of 

something bigger. All my eight features film to date are about race, and what what possibilities 

exist are for us as a human race, without that division based on prejudice and hate. 

Above : Post for benefit gig for the defendants of Southall ‘79 





Endnotes 





When Black was a political colour: 

a guide to the literature 

Jenny Bourne 

Reproduced courtesy of the Institute of Race Relations, publisher of Race & 

Class, 58/1. July 2016, ‘Race and class: the colour of struggle 1950s-1980s’ in 

which this piece first appeared. 

Unlike in the US, there is no established Black Studies in the 

UK.(1) And, it is an obvious point, but one that needs making at 

the outset, that the idea that Black people (2) had agency, that 

their presence as New Commonwealth citizens, after the war and 

Independence, could be welcomed, that they were anything but a 

social problem (i.e., one that had to be integrated) was a long time 

in becoming accepted. And a very long time in entering the accepted 

literature on this period, probably not really there until the 

‘Windrushery’ from the late 1990s onwards.(3) 

..for many years 

and especially 

during the struggle 

to transform the 

Institute of Race 

Relations (IRR), 

the ‘narrative’ 

itself was a site of 

struggle.. 

I have to confess, therefore, that I spent half my professional 

life denouncing a section of the books I will refer to and another 

half retrieving information from them! The point I am making is 

that, for many years and especially during the struggle to transform 

the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), the ‘narrative’ itself was 

a site of struggle. For the research and many of the books that 

eventuated in the 1940s, ’50s, ’60s and ’70s either bore the colonial 

hallmarks of their disciplines or were policy oriented and 

therefore shamelessly geared to the dubious (and racist) concerns 

of government. Instead of looking at the colonial imperatives of 

migration, the literature stressed the neutral ‘push and pull’ factors; 

instead of looking at the racism that made for a second-class 

citizenship, it looked at the ‘problem’ black people posed to white 

society. Their underlying perspectives were anathema to people 

trying to find their own voices and own tales of migration in a 

hostile environment where their very presence was questioned re- 



peatedly. So these preliminary books are not recommended for their analyses but are valuable 

for their ‘facts’. Reading between the lines of their bibliographies and indexes one can, 

Sherlock-like, find out much about the starkness of the crude racism that had to be faced 

and fought in that period and the ways in which ‘coloured immigrants’ forged Black communities 

and Black became a political colour. 

And there is an additional impetus for needing to write on the literature about this period. 

Students who have approached the IRR over the last few years to find out about ‘Black 

Power’ have in the main been kept ignorant of a whole body of writing. It may be that students 

are anyway too used to Googling for everything and much of the literature predates 

the internet. It may be because there is no longer one library in London that specifically covers 

‘race’ (there used to be ourselves, the Commission for Racial Equality, the Runnymede 

Trust). But the pity of it is that they are either beginning their literature quest with that which 

is easily accessible, which begins in the 1990s, and/or seeking out a few primary source documents 

from Black archives (of which there are actually four in London)(4) without having 

the basic knowledge within which to contextualise them. My knowledge does not purport to 

be exhaustive (I am not going over ground that others have traversed) and there are areas 

which this small essay could not cover.(5) What I am interested in is opening out readers to 

a specific aspect of history to supplement the information in other articles in this July 2016 

issue of Race & Class. And for that I draw on the knowledge I have gained as researcher and 

worker in the IRR’s library services for over forty-five years. 

Apart from things like The Keys, the journal of The League of Coloured people (1937– 

1951) and the occasional and sometimes self-financed diary of a bewitched or alienated 

student, Black people’s presence and essence in the post-war period was being reflected 

in anthropological theses – the titles of which indicate in part the attitudes to the ‘subjects’ 

at the time: Negroes in Britain by Kenneth Little (1948) on Cardiff, The Coloured Quarter by 

Michael Banton (1955) on Stepney, Sheila Patterson’s Dark Strangers (1963) on Brixton. Similarly 

reflected were the experiences of overseas students: A. T. Carey’s Colonial Students 

(1956), Disappointed Guests: essays on African, Asian and West Indian students edited by 

Henri Tajfel and John Dawson (1965).(6) A book with a more progressive premise, perhaps 

because its author was not an anthropologist but worked in urban studies, was Newcomers: 

the West Indians in London (1960) by Ruth Glass, who is, incidentally, credited with coming 

up with the term ‘gentrification’. 

From 1958 and the ‘race riots’ in Nottingham and Notting Hill, when the authorities took 

fright that the UK might follow the pattern of racial strife in the US, race relations became a 

subject of study and this Institute its epicentre, producing a series of policy-oriented books, 

booklets, pamphlets and mimeographs on different communities and in different sectors 

until well into the 1970s.(7) The IRR, before it was reoriented in 1972, was to look at Maltese, 



... it is also 

abundantly clear that 

because Black, in the 

UK, had taken on a 

political meaning 

derived from its 

anti-colonial 

provenance, it 

attracted to its 

standard immigrants 

from the Indian 

sub-continent, 

Africans and 

Indo-Caribbeans. In 

fact, Ajoy Ghosh from 

India and Roy Sawh 

from Guyana played 

a large part in the 

UCPA, Farrukh 

Dhondy and Mala Sen 

in the Panthers, Tony 

Soares (from Goa) in 

the Black Liberation 

Front, and Sri Lankan 

A. Sivanandan as a 

fellow-traveller of the 

BuFP .... 

Chinese, Cypriots, Sikhs, children, youth, families, workers – 

literally hundreds of studies, which would now be called ethnographic, 

came from the IRR stable. And even when studies 

looked at political organisation within ethnic communities, they 

tended to be ethnographic rather than political and tediously 

detailed rather than enlightening – for example, Indian Workers’ 

Associations in Britain by Dewitt John (1969) and The Politics of 

the Powerless: a study of the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination 

by Benjamin Heineman Jnr (1972). But the latter and 

the comprehensive tome by Sheila Patterson Immigration and 

Race Relations in Britain 1960–1967 (1969), as well as the now 

notorious Colour and Citizenship by E. J. B. Rose, et al. (1969)(8) 

which summed up a whole plethora of research projects in the 

1960s, are well worth using as reference tools. 

However, the ‘them as a social problem’ tone was punctured 

by three key books by the subalterns: Journey to an 

Illusion: the West Indian in Britain (1966) was written by London 

Transport worker Donald Hinds, who was also a cub reporter 

for The West Indian Gazette and Black British: White British 

by Indian journalist Dilip Hiro (1973) both published by a mainstream 

publisher and the latter released as a Penguin paperback 

in 1992. Edward Scobie, a Dominican journalist who had 

edited the magazine Flamingo in the early 1960s, wrote the 

telling Black Britannia: a history of Blacks in Britain (1972) half 

on the post-war situation but, published in the US, it was hard 

to find copies in the UK. All of these, the latter two with useful 

indexes, give an excellent flavour of life in Britain from what 

some termed ‘the worm’s eye view’. 

But the worm had already turned! There may not have 

been in the 1950s and ’60s the time, the money, the contacts, 

for the writing of many Black books, but there was an extremely 

vibrant and variegated Black press – which ran the gamut 

from the coloured glossy Flamingo magazine with eye-catching 

women on the cover to small cyclostyled and folded occasional 

broadsheets like The Black Ram or Black Chat, clandestinely 

produced in someone’s front room – telling it like it was. At 

least forty black magazines/papers/journals were produced between 

1958 and 1970.9 one of the first and longest running was 



The West Indian Gazette (and Afro-Asian Caribbean News) founded and edited from 1958 

by Claudia Jones (10) and published until 1965; another was a large-size broadsheet paper 

Magnet, edited by Jan Carew and printed somehow on The Times’ press, which ran for some 

months in 1965. 

Looking at the magazines of this period reveals the gradual adoption of the term Black 

(as opposed to New Commonwealth, coloured, West Indian, Caribbean, Indian, etc.) and by 

1967 the term Black Power was part of the vocabulary. (11) In January 1967, the Universal 

Coloured People’s Association (UCPA) was formed by Nigerian playwright obi Egbuna and in 

October, as its leader, he was urging the need for Black Power ‘to liquidate capitalist oppression 

of black people wherever it exists by any means necessary’ at a Vietnam protest rally in 

Trafalgar Square.(12) The UCPA’s Black Power Manifesto was launched in pamphlet form on 

10 November 1967. The UCPA was to splinter in 1968. What emerged was the Black Panther 

Movement and later, in 1970, the Black unity and Freedom Party (BuFP) was formed, each 

with their own community-based political papers, sold to and by their members and on the 

streets, at public meetings, etc. (Commercial news-stand publications such as West Indian 

Digest, the West Indian World and later Caribbean Times, Asian Times and African Times 

appeared in the 1970s and some continued till 1997, but with a somewhat different political 

purpose! (13) By the early years of the 1970s, which could be considered the heyday of Black 

Power in Britain, there were effectively three black papers: Freedom News (strongly influenced 

by the US Black Panther Movement), Black Voice (which though clearly influenced by 

the US movement and anti-colonial movements in Africa took an openly Marxist Leninist and 

later Marxist Leninist Maoist line) and Grassroots (which grew out of Pan-Africanism and the 

more nationalist Black Liberation Front).(14) The Black Liberator was a theoretical magazine, 

instigated by BuFP’s Ricky Cambridge in 1971, and attracting black scholars like Cecil Gutzmore 

and Colin Prescod, which was published until 1978. 

And who, you might ask, self-identified as Black? on the face of it and following the 

influence of Black US politics, the majority of those in such Black Power movements in the 

UK were from the Caribbean. But of course, that does not mean that the majority of West 

Indians in Britain identified with such radical parties, only a small minority did. And it is also 

abundantly clear that because Black, in the UK, had taken on a political meaning derived 

from its anti-colonial provenance,(15) it attracted to its standard immigrants from the Indian 

sub-continent, Africans and Indo-Caribbeans. In fact, Ajoy Ghosh from India and Roy Sawh 

from Guyana played a large part in the UCPA, Farrukh Dhondy and Mala Sen in the Panthers, 

Tony Soares (from Goa) in the Black Liberation Front, and Sri Lankan A. Sivanandan as a 

fellow-traveller of the BuFP.(16) During the late 1960s and into the early 1970s, organisations 

which rallied ‘New Commonwealth immigrants’ to fight raw racism on a number of terrains 

– Powell, police racism, immigration laws, racial violence, for example in the UK, apartheid in 

South Africa and UDI in Rhodesia – used the term Black. People could therefore identify over 



certain issues (for example, working conditions, children’s education, religious observance) 

as, say, Indian, Pakistani or West Indian and on other issues, which addressed common racial 

oppression and class exploitation, as Black. (They were not categories in opposition to one 

another or seen then as exclusive.)(17) Thus the Black People’s Alliance, set up in 1968 as 

a response to Powell and his aftermath, was exactly an alliance under a Black umbrella of 

Indian Workers’ Associations, the National Federation of Pakistani Associations, the West 

Indian Standing Conference as well as the uCPA and the more uncompromising RAAS (Racial 

Action Adjustment Society, formed following Malcolm X’s 1965 visit to the uK18) and others. 

And a few books were now emerging on Black Power, though not perhaps always the 

most reliable of texts, for Black Power was generally regarded by the media as a frightening 

sort of extremism, and Black leaders (all male) enjoyed playing up to the stereotype. First 

there was The Black Man in Search of Power: a survey of the black revolution across the 

world (1968) written and published by the London Times News Team, a sensationalist, rather 

conspiratorial account. Then the self-publicist leader of RAAS wrote as Michael Abdul Malik, 

with the help of ghost-writer John X, the highly readable autobiography From Michael de 

Freitas to Michael X (1968)19 followed by Obi Egbuna’s more thoughtful but still very personal 

version, Destroy this Temple: the voice of Black Power in Britain (1971).(20) Roy Sawh’s 

1968 essay ‘Black Power in Britain’ appeared in Justice First edited by Lewis Donnelly (and 

later republished with a number of other pieces by or on Sawh in From Where I Stand: black 

people want to hear and white people fear by Hansib Publishing in 1987). And students were 

beginning to take Black Power on as a thesis topic.(21) 

The tendency to personalise the Black fight begun by Michael X, Obi Egbuna and Roy 

Sawh when writing about racism and political action was to colour a number of other works 

to emerge in the 1970s – for example, Black England by Rudy Narayan (1977), Britain, the 

Black Man and the Future (1972) and How Black Power Overcame Fifty Years of Oppression 

in Britain 1945–1995 (1998), both by Vince Hines, and A Savage Culture by Remi Capo (1981). 

But two books from the early 1970s manage to combine the existential with the political 

and each have chapters on Black Power: Because they’re Black by Derek Humphry and 

Gus John (1971) and Black Britain by Chris Mullard (1973). Shattering illusions: West Indians in 

British politics (1986) by Trevor Carter (Communist Party member and Black activist), though 

part personal testimony, was a later heartfelt political attempt to chart the fight for equality, 

including a section on Black Power. The first and still the seminal text to situate Black Power 

historically was by A. Sivanandan who, in 1981, in the wake of the inner-city ‘riots’, wrote 

the 10,000 word essay ‘From resistance to rebellion: Asian and Afro-Caribbean struggles 

in Britain’ still available in Catching History on the Wing (2008).(22) His analysis, situating 

black activism within both the larger class struggle and as a protest against state racism, has 

stood the test of time. It has necessarily made its mark on key works that came after, such 

as Peter Fryer’s path-breaking book which starts with the black presence under the Romans, 



... It is a pity 

that so many 

of those who 

were active in 

that period but 

in other factions 

of the movement 

have now 

‘gone home’, 

some have died, 

some left the 

fray or otherwise 

shunned publicity 

and accounting 

for Black 

Power in Britain. 

The full story is 

yet to be written. 

Staying Power: the history of Black People in Britain (1984) reissued 

in 2010 and Ron Ramdin’s The Making of the Black Working Class 

(1987) and more recently (and not always uncritically) Black Star: 

Britain’s Asian Youth Movements by Anandi Ramamurthy (2013), 

and, more sociologically, The Changing Pattern of Black Politics in 

Britain, Kalbir Shukra (1998) and Racism, Class and the Racialized 

Outsider by Satnam Virdee (2014). 

The kind of dispassionate analysis based on lived experience 

was continued in two key areas looking at the fight-back in the 

period under review – in relation to women’s experiences and local 

studies. Finding a Voice: Asian women in Britain by Amrit Wilson 

was published in 1978, followed by the collectively researched and 

written Heart of the Race: Black women’s lives in Britain by Beverley 

Bryan, et al. (1985). 

And local community histories, too, were a way of setting black 

agency into a historical material context: for example, the two 

pamphlets published by the Campaign Against Racism and Fascism 

(CARF), and distributed by IRR, ‘Southall: the birth of a black community’ 

(1981) and ‘Newham: forging a black community’ (1991). Four 

films, produced by Race & Class Ltd and directed by Colin Prescod, 

Struggles for Black Community, covered Cardiff, Notting Hill, Southall 

and Leicester (1983, reissued 2008). (23) Also in this area fall 

Lambeth Council’s ‘Forty Winters on: memories of Britain’s postwar 

Caribbean immigrants’ (1988), ‘The longest journey: a history of 

black Lewisham’ by Joan Anim-Addo (1995) and Brick Lane 1978 by 

Kenneth Leech (1980). 

With the move in academia away from political sociology and 

towards cultural studies, the interest in political blackness in the 

main gave way to discourse analysis, identity and ‘otherness’ studies 

during the 2000s – which also explains the fact that the ‘looking 

back’ books that came out commemorating the half century 

since the Empire Windrush are easily misread as the start of Black 

Studies in the UK. Windrush: the irresistible rise of multiracial Britain 

by Mike and Trevor Phillips (1998) is a useful journalistic narrative 

based on fifty interviews with members of the Windrush generation; 

Hurricane hits England: an anthology of writing about Black Britain, 

edited by Oneykachi Wambu (1998), is an anthology of previously 



published short fiction and non-fiction pieces by a range of writers; Changing Britannia: life 

experience with Britain, edited by Roxy Harris and Sarah White (1999)(24) encompasses narratives 

by and interviews with seven ‘prominent figures’. 

Slightly to one side stands Black British Culture & Society: a text reader edited by Kwesi 

Owusu (2000), which, while reflecting the interest in the cultural development of Black Britain, 

included within its forty-two contributions key historical political pieces by Claudia Jones 

and Obi Egbuna, Paul Gilroy’s ‘Black Atantic’ thesis and a strong hearing from Black women 

as well as original interviews debating ‘Black’ with Stuart Hall, and A. Sivanandan (the latter 

reproduced in this issue of Race & Class). It should be noted that the eminent black scholars 

Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy have primarily, in their many publications, discussed ‘Black’ as cultural 

theorists. But, although their focus has not been on the period under review here, both 

have written key texts on young black men and the state/policing in, respectively, Policing 

the crisis: mugging, the state and law and order (1978) and ‘Steppin’ out of Babylon’ in The 

Empire Strikes back: race and racism in 70s Britain (1982). Paul Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic: 

modernity and double consciousness (1993), published well after Black had ceased to be a 

political colour, can be seen as a useful (if rather theoretical) framing of and antidote to the 

essentialism and nationalism of the time. 

Students dipping into later reference tomes such as the beautifully produced Black 

Britain: a photographic history by Paul Gilroy and Stuart Hall (2007) or The Oxford Companion 

to Black British History by David Dabydeen, John Gilmore and Cicely Jones (2007) will 

be disappointed. Though the first is evocative and thus emotionally charged, it says next 

to nothing about Black Power as political agency; (25) the second, organised as a kind of 

dictionary of world events and people, is not just patchy in coverage but necessarily without 

coherence or narrative. 

However, two recently published memoirs from erstwhile Black Power activists may 

prove more fruitful. The first by Winston Trew, one of the (Black Power activist) Fasimbas 

in the 1972 ‘Oval 4 case’, Black for a Cause … Not Just Because: the case of the ‘Oval 4’ and 

the story of Black Power in 1970s Britain (2010) amongst other things graphically recalls in 

a telling chapter experiences at the hands of the police. The second book, a biography of 

activist Darcus Howe, largely based on interviews with him, partner Leila Hassan and friend 

Farrukh Dhondy, is more problematic. All renderings of history, especially from its protagonists, 

are going to be partial (Winston James, for example, finds Sivanandan a romantic (26), 

but this hagiographic rendering in a political biography by Robin Bunce and Paul Field (2013) 

tends to conflate one man’s story with the history of the time. Without doubt Howe, a former 

Black Panther, was involved in key moments of Black history – from the 1970 uprising in 

Trinidad to the Mangrove trial, the editing of Race Today to the Black People’s Day of Action 

– and was influential for some years (27) but in this retelling of history through Howe’s 



experience, the importance of the ideas of C. L. R. James (his great-uncle) to Black Power 

and black community perspectives appears overblown. (28) 

This same elevation of the importance of James’ anti-vanguardist line on the spontaneity 

of British black struggle can be read in Oobi B. Egbuna, C. L. R. James and the birth of black 

radicalism in Britain 1967–72’ also by Bunce and Field in Twentieth Century British History 22, 

no. 3 (2010), pp. 391–414. But Anne-Marie Angelo somewhat balances the historical account 

by revealing the influence of the US Black Panthers on the British movement in ‘The Black 

Panthers in London, 1967–1972: a diasporic struggle navigates the Black Atlantic’ in Radical 

History Review 103 (Winter 2009). And in Radicals Against Race: black activism and cultural 

politics (2002) Brian W. Alleyne seeks, in his account of the mainly educational/cultural work 

of the ‘New Beacon Circle’ around John la Rose, to further question the relationship between 

organisation and activism. 

It is a pity that so many of those who were active in that period but in other factions 

of the movement have now ‘gone home’, some have died, some left the fray or otherwise 

shunned publicity and accounting for Black Power in Britain. The full story is yet to be written. 





Timeline of 

events 

1900-1976 



Art, Activism, Race and Social Justice - 1900/1976 

1900 

1st Pan African 

Conference 

The Conference was 

primarily by the 

Trinidadian barrister 

Henry Sylvester 

Williams, and took 

place in July at 

Westminster Hall. It 

was attended by 37 

delegates and about 10 

other participants and 

observers from Africa, 

the West Indies, the US 

and the UK, including 

Samuel Coleridge 

Taylor , John 

Alcindor, Dadabhai 

Naoroji, John Archer, 

Henry Francis 

Downing, and W. E. B. 

Du Bois. 

Samuel Coleridge Taylor was a English 

composer of part Creole descent who 

achieved such success that he was once 

called the "African Mahler". 

John Archer was born in Liverpool. His 

father was from Barbados, and his mother 

was an Irish immigrant. In November 1906 

Archer became a councillor in the on 

Battersea Borough Council. He was a 

founding member of the African 

Progress Union. He was also a 

successful photographer 

Dadabhai Naoroji was the first 

Indian to be elected to 

Parliament in Britain.. 

John Alcindor was a physician from 

Trinidad who settled in London. He is known 

for his role in the African Progress 

Union. 

Bhikhaiji Rustom Cama (Bhikai Sorab 

Patel,) (left) was a Indian political activist and 

advocate for women’s rights who had the 

unique distinction of unfurling the first version 

of the Indian national flag—a tricolour of green, 

saffron, and red stripes—at the 

International Socialist Congress held at 

Stuttgart, Germany, in 1907. 

Shyamji Krishna Varma was a 

journalist who founded the Indian Home 

Rule Society, India House and The Indian 

Sociologist in London. 

1905 

India House 

India House was set up as a hostel for Indian students and became a hotbed for Indian 

revolutionaries, and others including the Women’s Suffrage movement. The House was opened 

on 1 July 1905 by H. M. Hyndman in Highgate. Other prominent figures present at the opening 

included Shyamji Krishna Varma, Dadabhai Naoroji, Charlotte Despard, Christabel 

Pankhurst and Bhikaji Cama. 




1905 

The Workers Welfare League of 

India 

In 1916 a body of British and Indian 

activists formed the Workers 

Welfare League to ensure Indian 

and British workers had the same 

rights, thereby ensuring that the 

labour conditions in India was not 

used to keep British labour 

conditions at a low level. 

1919 

Race Riots across UK 

In the wake of the First World War 

and demobilization, the surplus of 

labour led to dissatisfaction among 

Britain’s workers and across the 

seaport towns, white crowds 

attacked Black workers, their 

families and communities,. This 

was most intense in the places with 

the largest black communities, 

London, Glasgow, Liverpool, 

Cardiff, Salford, Hull, 

South Shields , Newport, and Barry. 

1925 

Shapurji Saklatvala was born in India. 

The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia of 

November 1917 was an inspiration to 

Saklatvala joined the Communist Party 

with Emile Burns, R. Palme Dutt, J. 

Walton Newbold, Helen Crawfurd, 

and others as part of an organised faction 

called the Left Wing Group, later they 

joined the Community Part GB. He 

attended the 2nd Pan-African 

Congress held in Paris in 1921 as a 

delegate of the CPGB. He was a MP in 

Battereas North for the Communist Party 

(GB). 

Amy Ashwood was born in Jamaica, on 10 January 1897. 

She met Marcus Garvey, with whom she founded the 

Universal Negro Improvement Association 

(UNIA) in 1914. She married Marcus 1919, but the marriage 

quickly broke down, ending in divorce in 1922. She moved to 

Great Britain, where she struck up a friendship with Ladipo 

Solanke. Together, they founded the Nigerian Progress 

Union, and she later supported Solanke's West African 

Students' Union. After a short spell in New York, she 

returned to London opened the Florence Mills Social 

Club a jazz club on Carnaby Street which became a gathering 

spot for supporters of Pan-Africanism. She helped to establish 

the International African Friends of Abyssinia with 

C.L.R. James, the International African Service 

Bureau with figures like George Padmore, Chris 

Braithwaite and Jomo Kenyatta, and the London 

Afro-Women's Centre. She chaired the first session of 

the 5th Pan-African Congress in Manchester in 

1945.She helped to set up the "Afro Peoples Centre" in 

Ladbroke Grove in 1953. She was a friend of Claudia Jones, 

and was on the editorial board of the Brixton-based West 

Indian Gazette, founded by Jones in 1958. In the wake of 

the Notting Hill riots in 1958, she co-founded the 

Association for the Advancement of Coloured 

People. In 1959, she chaired an enquiry into race relations 

following the murder of Kelso Cochrane in London. 

West African Students Union 

WASU was founded in 1925 to campaign for the improved welfare of African students. it was led by 

Ladipo Solanke and Herbert Bankole-Bright, with the Amy Ashwood Garvey. Over time its 

campaigns broadened to anti colonialism abroad and against colour bars in Britain. 




1925 

League of Coloured People 

(LCP) was a British civil-rights 

organization that was founded in 

1931 in London by Jamaican 

Harold Moody, Peter Abrahams, 

and Eric Williams with the goal 

of racial equality around the 

world. Although the League's 

primary focus was black rights in 

Britain, it also was involved in 

other civil-rights issues, such as 

the persecution of the Jews in 

Germany. 

1931 

Negro Welfare 

Association 

Formed by Arnold Ward 

and Chris Braithwatie the 

NWA become a promenade 

anti racist organisation 

during the 1930’s. 

Sulaiman Katwaroon set up the Indian Freedom Association, 

later called the Indian Home Rule League and then the Indian 

Freedom League. They appealed to the British working class through a 

common fight against capitalism, and the Universal Negro 

Improvement Association and Negro Welfare Association 

were allies. 

George Padmore (left) was born in Trinidad in 1902. He moved to 

the United States land there he joined the Communist Party. In 

1929, Padmore travelled to Moscow, where he met Rajani Palme 

Dutt. He re-located to London in 1935, where he became involved 

with, but never a member of, the Independent Labour Party, 

collaborating with Fenner Brockway and Reginald Reynolds. In 

1935, he also became close friends with T. Subasinghe, who would 

later become ambassador of Ceylon.K. D. Kumria, at an Indian 

National Congress rally. Swaraj House often become a venue for 

protest meetings of African groups. Padmore also became a close friend 

of Krishna Menon, In 1937, Padmore founded the International 

African Service Bureau and in late 1944, Later ee moved to the 

newly independent Ghana where he became Kwame Nkrumah's 

personal adviser on African affairs. 

1936 

Battle of Cable Street 

The Battle of Cable Street took place on Sunday 4 October 1936 in 

Cable Street in the East End of London. It was a clash between the 

Metropolitan Police, protecting a march by members of the British 

Union of Fascists, led by Oswald Mosley, and various anti-fascist 

demonstrators, including local Jewish, Irish, socialist, anarchist 

and communist groups. 




1937 

International African 

Service Bureau 

The International African 

Service Bureau (IASB) was a 

pan-African organisation 

founded in London in 1937 by 

West Indians George 

Padmore, C. L. R. James, 

Amy Ashwood Garvey, T. 

Ras Makonnen and Kenyan 

nationalist Jomo Kenyatta 

and Sierra Leonean labour 

activist and agitator I. T. A. 

Wallace-Johnson. 

1938 


The Indian Workers Associations was 

established in 1938 with the dual aim: to raise 

consciousness of the struggle for Indian 

independence among working-class Indians in 

Britain, and to protect and enhance their 

welfare. 

Ras Makonnen was a Guyanese-born Pan- 

African activist.He was deported for publishing an 

article that claimed that Denmark was producing 

the mustard gas being used to kill civilians in the 

Italian invasion of Ethiopia.. He became an active 

member of the International African Service 

Bureau that had formed under George 

Padmore's leadership. True to his 

entrepreneurial spirit, he opened four restaurants, 

the profits from which went towards his political 

work, and, along with George Padmore and 

Kwame Nkrumah, helped organize the fifth 

Pan-African Congress in 1945. 

C.L.R. James was a West Indianborn 

cultural historian, cricket 

writer, and political activist who was 

a leading figure in the Pan-African 

movement. 

James was certified as a teacher 

from Trinidad. In 1932 he moved to 

England, where he was a cricket 

correspondent for The Guardian 

(Manchester) and became 

increasingly involved in Marxist 

politics and the African and West 

Indian independence movements. 

His most notable work was The 

Black Jacobins (1938), a Marxist 

study of the Haitian slave revolution 

of the 1790s, which won him 

widespread acclaim. His political 

career spans the period from the 

Great Depression in the 1930’s to 

the birth of Black Power in the 

1970’s 

1944 

Pan African Federation 

PAF was a multi-national Pan-African organisation established in Manchester. It aims included the 

promotion of African people and their descendants across the UK, and to secure equality of civil rights. 

Its founding groups included the Negro Association (Manchester), Coloured Workers Association 

(London), Coloured Peoples Association (Edinburgh), African Union (Glasgow), United 

Committee of Colonial and Coloured Peoples' Associations (Cardiff), Association of Students of 

African Descent (Dublin), Kikuyu Central Association (Kenya) represented by Jomo Kenyatta, 

West African Youth League (Sierra Leone section) represented by Isaac Wallace-Johnson, Friends of 

African Freedom Society (Gold Coast) 




1945 

Fifth Pan African Congress 

After the end of World War 2, many felt that they now 

deserved independence. This Congress is widely 

considered to have been the most important. Organised 

by the influential Trinidadian pan-Africanist George 

Padmore and Ghanaian independence leader Kwame 

Nkrumah, it was attended by 90 delegates, 26 from 

Africa. They included many scholars, intellectuals and 

political activists including American activist and 

academic W. E. B. Du Bois, and black activists from 

across Britain. Some of the local groups who attended 

were League of African People (Birmingham), Young 

African Progressive League, International African 

Service Bureau, African Students Union, Edinburgh, 

Negro Welfare centre, Liverpool, Negro Association, 

Manchester, African Progressive Association, London, 

Coloured Workers Association, United Committee of 

Coloured and Colonial People, Cardiff. 

1945 

West Indian Students 

Union 

Formed in London in 1945 to 

promote the interests of West 

Indian students in Britain 

who campaigned for colonial 

freedom, and equality in 

Britain. It would later house 

the offices of the Caribbean 

Arts Movement, the 

Commission for Race Equality 

and the West Indian Standing 

Conference. 

Paul Robeson (below) and 

Eslanda Goode Robeson were 

civil rights activist. One of the most 

celebrated singers and actors of the 

20th century, Robeson was attacked, 

blacklisted and hounded by the 

government for his political beliefs. 

Eslanda Robeson, known by her friends 

as "Essie," was an author, an 

anthropologist and a globally 

connected activist who worked to end 

colonialism in Africa, England and in the 

United States. 

Bayard Rustin was close 

advisor to Martin Luther 

King and one of the most 

influential and effective organizers 

of the civil rights movement, He 

spent time with leaders of India’s 

Independence Movement and 

brought Gandhi’s protest 

techniques to the American civil 

rights movement. Rustin’s 

biography is particularly important 

for lesbian and gay Americans, 

highlighting the major 

contributions of a gay man to 

ending official segregation in 

America. He was friendly with the 

Quaker Movement in Britain, 

and through this he met Marian 

Glean, who helped him arrange 

King’s brief visit to Britain. 




1954 

Movement for Colonial 

Freedom 

After the end of World War 2, 

many felt that they now deserved 

independence. This Congress is 

widely considered to have been 

the most important. Organised by 

the influential Trinidadian pan- 

Africanist George Padmore and 

Ghanaian independence leader 

Kwame Nkrumah, it was 

attended by 90 delegates, 26 from 

Africa. They included many 

scholars, intellectuals and 

political activists including 

American activist and academic 

W. E. B. Du Bois, and black 

activists from across Britain. 

Marion Glean prominent role within 

the black community. Glean brought 

together Alan Lovell and Michael 

Randle, who were pacifists and former 

members of the Committee of 100, with 

other friends who had written for Peace 

News including an Asian woman, 

Ranjana Ash (an active member of the 

Movement for Colonial Freedom), 

C. L. R. James and Barry Reckord. 

The initial outcome was that a debating 

group called Multi-Racial Britain was 

formed; however, when Martin Luther 

King, Jr was on his way to Stockholm to 

receive the Nobel Peace Prize, Glean 

arranged with Bayard Rustin for King 

to come to London to address a meeting, 

which was chaired by David Pitt. 

According to The Guardian′s report at 

the time: "Mrs Glean, hastily assembled 

about 30 Indians, Pakistanis, West Indians, 

and Africans...at the Hilton Hotel in 

London, where Dr King spoke for only a 

few minutes. The whole discussion lasted 

only an hour and a half, but at the end of 

it the Campaign Against Racial 

Discrimination (CARD) was formed. 

1957 

Pakistani Welfare Association 

Established in 1957 to address the needs of the Pakistani community across 

the UK. 

1958 

Nottingham and Notting Hill riots 

On 23rd August 1958 civil unrest erupted in Nottingham as a result of racist attacks in the St. Annes 

area. A week later rioting erupted in Notting Hill. It began at around midnight on 30 August and 

lasted a week. Crowds of up to 400 white youths chased Caribbeans in North Kensington. Petrol 

bombs and milk bottles were thrown at houses. Trouble spread to Paddington, Notting Dale, 

Shepherd's Bush and Marylebone. Some 140 people were arrested, largely White, but including some 

of the Black victims who had armed themselves in self-defence. 




1959 

Association for the 

Advancement of Coloured 

People 

Established in 1959 in response 

to the death of Kelso Cochrane, 

and was a broad alliance of 

leftist, Caribbean, African and 

Asian organisations 

campaigning for race equality. 

1963 

Bristol Bus Boycott 

The Bristol Bus Boycott of 1963 

arose from the refusal of the 

Bristol Omnibus Company to 

employ black or Asian bus crews 

in the city of Bristol, England. In 

common with other British 

cities, Bristol was plagued by 

colour bars and the campaign 

helped to raise the issue across 

the country. 

Malcolm X visits UK 

Claudia Jones and Indian Workers 

Association invited Malcolm to visit 

Smethwick, a town plagued by colour bars 

and racism. “I have come,” Malcolm X told 

reporters as he posed for pictures in 

Marshall Street, “because I am disturbed 

by reports that coloured people in 

Smethwick are being treated badly. I have 

heard they are being treated as the Jews 

were under Hitler.” Reporters asked him 

what should be done. “I would not wait for 

the fascist elements in Smethwick to erect 

gas ovens.” 

1964 

Smethwick Election 

In 1964, the West Midlands constituency of Smethwick was the most colour-conscious place in the 

country, and the scene of a Tory campaign that successfully exploited anti-immigrant sentiment. 

In what is surely the most racist election campaign ever fought in Britain, the Labour incumbent, 

shadow home secretary Patrick Gordon Walker lost his seat and saw is vote reduced from 20,670 

in the previous election to 14,916. 




1965 

Campaign against Racial Discrimination 

The Campaign Against Racial Discrimination (CARD) was launched 1965 and lobbied for race relations 

legislation. The group's formation was inspired by a visit by Martin Luther King to London in 

December 1964. The Trinidadian pacifist Marion Glean, then a graduate student at the London School 

of Economics, arranged with Bayard Rustin for King to meet a group of Black spokespersons and 

activists at the Hilton Hotel, where an ad hoc committee was formed for a movement to "agitate for 

social justice and oppose all forms of discrimination”. CARD's founding members, as well as Marion 

Glean, included politician Anthony Lester, London County Councillor David Pitt, C. L. R. James 

and Hamza Alavi. 

1966 

Caribbean Arts Movement 

The Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM) was an 

influential cultural initiative, begun in London, 

England, in 1966. It focused on the works being 

produced by Caribbean writers, visual artists, 

poets, dramatists, film makers, actors and 

musicians. The key people involved in setting up 

CAM were Edward Kamau Brathwaite, John La 

Rose and Andrew Salkey. In its intense five-year 

existence it set the dominant artistic trends, at 

the same time forging a bridge between West 

Indian migrants and those who came to be known 

as black Britons. Other notable artists and 

intellectuals associated with CAM include C. L. R. 

James, Stuart Hall, Wilson Harris, Kenneth 

Ramchand, Ronald Moody, Aubrey Williams, 

Gordon Rohlehr, Christopher Laird, Louis 

James, Orlando Patterson, Ivan Van Sertima, 

Althea McNish, Donald Hinds, James Berry, 

Errol Lloyd, Anne Walmsley. and Linton 

Kwesi.Johnson 

Gus John - Augustine "Gus" John 

is a Grenadian-born writer, 

education campaigner, lecturer and 

researcher, and has been an activist 

in Britain for over five decades. He 

moved to the UK in 1964 and 

became a member of the 

Campaign Against Racial 

Discrimination (CARD), the 

New Cross Massacre Action 

Committee, and one of the 

organisers of the "Black 

People's Day of Action" held 

on 2 March, a response to the 

New Cross Fire. Following the 

uprisings in Moss Side in July 1981 

he chaired the Moss Side 

Defence Committee, he was 

adviser to the Liverpool 8 

Defence Committee following 

the Toxteth Uprisings that same 

year. He was the co-ordinator of 

the Black Parents Movement 

in Manchester, founded the 

Education for Liberation book 

service and helped to organise the 

International Book Fair of 

Radical Black and Third 

World Books in Manchester, 

London and Bradford. In 1989 he 

was appointed Director of 

Education in Hackney and was the 

first black person to hold such a 

position. 




1967 

Universal Coloured Peoples Association 

The UCPA was established in 1967 by Nigerian, Obi Bene 

Egbuna and Indian, Ajay Ghose. The UCPA took a militant stand 

against racism. Several members of UCPA were fined for 

incitement to racism, most noticeable was Roy Sawah. The use of 

Race Relations to fine leaders of the black power movement was 

fairly common in the late 1960’s. 

1967 

The Congress on the Dialectics of 

Liberation 

The congress on the 

Dialectics of 

Liberation was an 

international 

congress organised in 

London between 15 and 30 July 1967. Set 

against the backdrop of the war in 

Vietnam, uprisings in the US, the US Black 

Power movement and the the antipsychiatry 

movement, the aim of the 

Congress was ‘to form a long-term 

network of people who were interested in 

an in-depth, nitty-gritty examination of 

what seemed to be the most important 

critical areas in the state of the human 

species’. The wide spectrum of speakers 

included Herbert Marcuse, William 

Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, R.D Laing, 

and Stokely Carmichael. Whilst in 

London he addressed a meeting of 

activists in Hackney invited by John La 

Rose and CLR James, Micheal X, Stefan 

Darcus Howe (below) is a British 

broadcaster, writer, and civil liberties 

campaigner. Like his uncle, CLR James, 

Howe came from Trinidad. He arrived in 

England and throughout his life he spoke 

frequently with CLR James. He joined the 

British Black Panthers in 1970, and 

came to public attention as one of the 

Mangrove Nine, when he marched to 

the police station in Notting Hill, London, 

to protest against police raids of the 

Mangrove restaurant, and again in 

1981 when he worked with John La 

Rose, Gus John and others to organise 

a 20,000-strong "Black People's 

March" in protest at the handling of the 

investigation into the New Cross Fire, 

in which 13 black teenagers die. He is a 

former editor of Race Today, and 

former chair of the Notting Hill 

Carnival. He is best known in the UK 

for his Black on Black series on 

Channel 4; his current affairs programme, 

Devil's Advocate. 

Kalipha and Horace Ove. His scorn for 




1968 

British Black Panther Movement 

The Black Panther Movement was first Panther organisation to form outside of the USA. It was 

founded by Obi Egbuna in 1968, however after his arrest, the leadership was passed to Althea 

Jone-Lecointe. In 1970 Darcus Howe and Farrukh Dhondy joined the movement. Around 1970, 

the Panthers relocated the centre of their organization from Portobello Road in Notting Hill to 

Brixton and established separate branches in Acton and Finsbury Park as part of their push to 

establish roots in the poorest black communities. In doing so, the new leadership, in contrast to the 

old, focused on community outreach. A minority of Panthers were not happy with this new 

direction. Tony Soares, left the Panthers in 1970 to help form the separatist Black Liberation 

Front, In 1973, the BBPM ceased with some organized under the new name of the Black Workers’ 

Movement. Shortly afterwards Howe, Leila Hassan, and Dhondy started the Race Today 

Collective. 

1968 

RIvers of Blood 

Enoch Powell's April ‘68 address 

to the West Midlands Area 

Conservative Centre was a speech 

criticising Commonwealth 

immigration and antidiscrimination 

legislation. It was 

set against the the assignation of 

Martin Luther King a week earlier, 

riots in the US, and increasing black 

militancy in the Black Power 

movement. The racism unleashed 

by the speech lasted through the 

1970s, and led to the increasing 

popularity of the far right National 

Front. 

Olive Morris (right) was a community leader and activist in the 

feminist, black nationalist, and squatters' rights campaigns of the 

1970s in the United Kingdom. She was a founding member of the 

Organisation of Women of African and Asian 

Descent (OWAAD) in London, established the Brixton 

Black Women's Group, was a member of the British 

Black Panthers movement, and helped found the 

Manchester Black Women's Cooperative and 

Manchester Black Women's Mutual Aid Group. 




1968 

Black Peoples Alliance 

In 1968 the Black People’s Alliance was formed in response to Enoch Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ speech. 

It brought together more than 50 African, Caribbean and Asian organisations. In 1969 activists organised a march 

of more than 7,000 people, demanding that the legislation proposed to stop immigration from black 

commonwealth countries should be dropped. This was the largest such black demo to that date. 

1970 

Black Freedom and Unity Party 

Formed in 1970 by Alrick (Ricky) Xavier 

Cambridge, George Joseph, Danny Morrell and 

Sonia Chang, among others. In its early years the 

organisation had three branches, two in London 

and one in Manchester. The BUFP's actively 

sought solidarity with groups like the Indian 

Workers' Association (GB) and the Institute of 

Race Relations. From August 1970,t he BUFP 

also began publishing a newspaper, Black Voice. 

This was printed in the form of a tabloid 

newspaper with pictures and articles 

documenting British and international political 

developments and was an important publication 

until is demise at end of the 1980’s. Black 

Women's Action Committee was set up within 

the BUR by female member Gerlin Bean and in 

1971 it published a pamphlet called 'Black Women 

Speak Out, which gave a female perspective to 

racism. 

Mala Sen (above) is a writer who to 

writing through social activism, having 

taken up numerous causes in London in 

the 1960s, at a time when women's 

groups were emerging and there was a 

combined movement of black activist 

organisations. After her divorce, She 

fought for the rights of Indian factory 

workers in Leicester. She was a member 

of the Race Today collective, and 

she reported on how Bangladeshis in 

the East End of London worked in 

sweatshops. Together with her husband 

and other activists, Sen founded the 

Bengali Housing Action Group 

which led to Bengalis Youth Movements 

in east London. She is also remembered 

for her book India's Bandit Queen: 

The True Story of Phoolan Devi 

which led to the highly acclaimed 1994 




1971 

Mangrove 9 Trial 

The Mangrove was a restaurant in Notting Hill, owned by Frank Criclow, which quickly became 

centre for the black community, attracting intellectuals, creatives and campaigners. The restaurant 

was repeatedly raided by police. The central incident of the Mangrove affair took place when a 

deputation of 150 black people protested against long-term police harassment of the popular 

Mangrove Restaurant. The protest later led to nine arrests and 29 charges. The nine were 

Barbara Beese, Rupert Boyce, Frank Critchlow, Rhodan Gordon, Darcus Howe, Anthony Innis, 

Althea Lecointe Jones, Rothwell Kentish, and Godfrey Millett. The charges ranged from making 

an affray, incitement to riot, assaulting a policeman, to having an offensive weapon. 22 of the 

charges against the nine were dismissed including all the serious ones. Only seven minor counts 

were found proven. The high profile trial lasted for two months finishing in December 1971 with five 

of the defendants being completely acquitted 

1974 

Race and Class 

In 1972 Britain's oldest and largest non-governmental race 

relations organisation, the IRR changed beyond recognition when 

its staff voted against the wishes of their board of directors and 

financial backers to transform the organisation from 'a policyorientated, 

disinterested research body into a progressive thinktank 

in the service of the black community. Unbeknown to senior 

management, As a result, by 1974 the IRR had lost all its old 

sources of funding and its premises and consisted of just a library 

and three members of staff, Sivanandan, Bourne and Hazel 

Waters. They kept the Institute going with the help of unpaid 

volunteers from the black community, including several Black 

Power activists such as the BLF's Tony Soares, the BUFP's Roger 

Loftus and the BPM's Darcus Howe. In 1974 Race and Class – a 

journal for Black and Third World Liberation – became the 

leading international English-language journal on racism and 

imperialism, attracting to its editorial board Orlando Letelier, 

Eqbal Ahmad, Malcolm Caldwell, John Berger, Basil 

Davidson, Thomas Hodgkin, Jan Carew, Manning Marable 

among others. 

Two key figures in the work of the 


(GB) and the Birmingham branch 

were Jagmohan Joshi and 

Avtar Jouhl. Joshi, who spent his 

entire life engaged in revolutionary 

and campaigning activity, was General 

Secretary of the IWA (GB) from 

1964 until 1979 and was also involved 

in a number of alliances in which he 

established links with people like 

Maurice Ludmer, Roy Sawh 

and Claudia Jones. From 1972 

until his death in 1979, Joshi ran a 

bookshop called ‘Progressive 

Books and Asian Arts’ on 

Bristol Road. The bookshop sold 

Marxist and progressive literature 

from all over the world as well as 

Chinese arts and crafts. Jouhl was 

active as a union shop-steward in the 

foundries and served as secretary of 

the Birmingham branch and General 

Secretary of the Indian Workers 

Association (GB) from 1961 until 

1964. Both men came from the 

Punjab and were instrumental in 

leading local and national campaigns 




1974 

Imperial Typewriters strike, Leicester 

In May 1974, 1,100 Asian workers at the 

Imperial Typewriter Company in Leicester 

went on strike over unequal bonus payments 

and discrimination in promotion. The shop 

stewards committee and union branch 

refused their support, but the strikers, 

supported by Benny Bunsee, a South 

African Asian, the Indian Workers 

Association, Race Today and others, stayed 

on strike for almost 14 weeks. The dispute 

was important in shifting the attitude of 

British trade unionists to immigrant workers. 

This would bear fruit with much wider 

support for the largely Asian Grunwick 

dispute three years later. 

Bennie Bunsee (right) was born in Durban, 

South African in 1935 He joined the Pan 

Africanist Congress (PAC) in the early 1960s 

and was part of the first group that went to China 

for military training with other PAC stalwarts. 

Bunsee was influenced by the ideologies of 

Robert Sobukwe and, later, Steve Biko. He 

moved to Leicester in the late 1960s, and was a 

champion of black workers and blazed a trail as 

leader of Asian strikers at the Mansfield 

Hosiery Mills in 1972, and the Imperial 

Typewriters strike in 1974. 



Known racist murders in the UK 

during the 1970s 

1970 

April – Tausir Ali, east London 

December – Abdul Bari, Birmingham 

1971 

January – Chancal Singh, west Yorkshire 

1973 

April – Velma Murray, Coventry 

June- Jag Singh Kenth, Leicester 

July – Jennifer Williams, Birmingham 

1975 

January – Ronald Jones, south London 

February – Hector Smith, Glasgow 


May – Ribbi Al-Haddia, Woodford, Essex 

May – Dinesh Choudhury, Woodford, Essex 

June – Gurdip Singh Chaggar, Southall 

August – Mohan Gautam, Leamington Spa 

1978 

April – Kennith Singh, Plaistow, east London 

May – Altab Ali, Tower hamlets, east London 

June – Ishaque Ali, Hackney, east London 

July – Benjamin Thompson, northwest London 

September – Vernon Brown, Birmingham 

September – Amber Ali, north London 

December – Micheal Ferreira, Stoke Newington, east London 

1979 

January – Abdul Aziz, Peterborough 

August – Kayimarz Anklesaria, east London 

August – Sawdagar Khan, Birmingham 

Source : Cottle, S (1989) The Racist Murder of Stephen Lawrence, Media Performance and Public Transformation 



Industrial disputes involving black 

and asian workers 1965-1975 

Start date Name Location Notes 

Jun-65 

Nov-65 

Lancashire rubber firm 

R Woolf and Co Southall 

8 workers dismissed 

for refused to take 

orders from Pakistani 

foreman 

Strike of 600 Punjabi 

Dec-65 Middlesex rubber firm 

men over union rights 

Jul-66 

Feb-67 

NUP Euston 

West Bromwich 

West Indian guard 

applied for job at 

NUP Euston but told 

policy to not employ 

coloured guards 

300 white women 

May-67 Coneygre factory Tipton 

workers walk out 

after 15 year old 

Jamaican employed 

- agreement reached 

and the workers work 

alongside the colored 

woman 

TGWU members’ 

Aug-67 Newby foundry West Bromwich 

mainly Asian workers’ 

position was to work 

share instead of 

redundancies. But 

the AEU members 

who were mainly 

white were in favour 

of redundancies 

instead of work share. 

The strike lasted 10 

weeks. Employers 

brought scab labour 

but strikers did not let 

them cross the picket 

line. 

Newby foundry and 

Jul-68 Queensbury Middlesex 

the workers unitedly 

fought for their right 

Pakistani workers on 

strike over law pay 

and conditions 



May-69 

Jun-69 

Essex factory 

Lancashire Textile factory 

900 men went on 

strike over dismissal 

of Indian shop 

steward 

400 Indian and 

Feb-70 Dartmouth castings West Bromwich 

Pakistani operators 

went on strike over 

reduction in pay 

Workers went on 

Feb-70 Midland Motor Smethwick 

strike because 24 

Indians were refused 

to join the AEF 

Mr Shir Singh was 

Feb-70 Aluminium Dyecasting Birmingham 

promoted to job 

of moulder, white 

workers complained 

and Mr Shir Singh was 

sacked 

10 Kashmiris 

Apr-70 Courtaulds Wolverhampton 

complained that they 

had been sacked 

for attending prayer 

meetings 

Dispute around 

May-70 GKN Factory Birmingham 

Ronald Davidsonm 

a NF member and 

shop steward, He 

claimed white 

workers would strike 

if his bid to become 

shop steward was 

blocked by coloured 

workers - he expected 

Wolverhampton IWA 

would stop his bid to 

stand for NF in local 

elections 

Trouble started when 

the management put 

up a notice about 

the race relations 

act - white workers 

assumed that they 

had done wrong- but 

they claimed to get 

on well with black 

and Asian workers 

- strikers wanted a 

apology 



Dec-70 

Apr-71 

Birmid Qualcast foundry 

Bradford Mills 

Wolverhampton 

Bradford 

4,500 Asian Indians 

went on unofficial 

strike over a pay 

claim - the men acted 

independently of the 

union - 2 foundries 

closed for a month 

A dozen immigrants 

Dec-71 Green and Russell Wednesfield 

allege that they 

had been dismissed 

because of increase in 

work 

130 Indian went on 

Mar-72 ideal Casement Reading 

strike alleging that 

white men had been 

told by others to 

join a white man’s 

union, and that the 

management had 

promoted whites over 

Asians 

Two west Indians and 

May-72 Vicrafy Metal Spinning Smethwick 

Asian were ordered 

to withdraw strike 

notices 

TGWU claim colour 

Jun-72 Crepe Sizes Nottingham 

bar in operation over 

'toilets' - he claimed 

that Asians were 

threatened with a fine 

if they used toilets 

reserved for whites - 

over 30 men went on 

strike over the colour 

bars 

39 Pakistani workers 

Jun-72 Stanmore Engineering Wembley 

won their strike for 

the re-instatement of 

five men sacked and 

for union and shop 

steward recognition. 

140 machine 

operators, 120 

Asian - the Guardian 

(27/6/72) said it 

was the first strike 

to be organised by 

black workers with 

the support of the 

Panthers and the 

Black Workers League. 



Oct-72 

Nov-72 

Brillo Works 

British Army 

Maidenhead 

Tidworth Barracks 

90 Pakistani admitted 

that they were foced 

to pay bribes of 20 to 

get jobs at the factory. 

After a brawl between 

black and white 

soldiers, three white 

soldiers were fined 

at Winchester crown 

court 

Jan-73 

Midlands Motor Cylinder 

(Birmid) 

Smethwick 

Closure of 

Middlemore Road 

foundry threatened to 

start a row with over 

150 Asian complaining 

that the factory 

were being made 

redundant to make 

way for white workers 

Mar-73 

Mar-73 

Mansfield Hosery 

Zulu Seaman 

Loughborough 

Merchant Navy 

Dispute arose because 

an Asian was refused 

the job of knitter 

although he had 

worked in the factory 

- white were taken on 

a knitters only 

17 Zulu seamen 

May-73 Jaffe and Son Nottingham 

walked off British ship 

in Sweden for poor 

wage conditions. 

32 Asian went on 12 

day strike demanding 

reinstatement of 

a worker and poor 

working conditions 

Jun-73 

Midlands Motor Cylinder 

(Birmid) 

Smethwick 

180 Asian workers 

stopped work ofr 

more than a month 

because a white 

foreman had behaved 

unreasonably towards 

a Sikh shop steward. 

Jul-73 

Aug-73 

Crawley Moulding 

Artid Plastics 

Surrey 

Slough 


went on strike for 

a week after one 

workers was sent 

home for refusing to 

work faster. 

Pakistani strike 

for better pay and 

conditions 



Sep-73 

Nov-73 

Qualcast Lawn Moers 

Standard Telephone Company 

Derby 

New Southgate 

The Derby trades 

council urged its 

members to boycott 

products of the 

company after the 

company refused to 

allow Pakistani shop 

stewards to take a 

shop stewards course 

In August 300 black 

Nov-73 London Eating Housing Group 

workers went on 

strike for 8 weeks 

alleging vicitimisation 

of a black workers 

TGWU were involved 

Nov-73 GKN Bolts and Nuts Birmingham 

in negotiations to end 

a week long strike by 

450 Turkish workers 

Asian man went on 

Dec-73 Fords - Dagenham Essex 

strike because he 

wanted pay rise 

Arbitration rules that 

Dec-73 Perivale Gutterman Middlesex 

Fords had wrongfully 

dismissed Winston 

Williams after an 

incident in which 

it was claimed he 

threatened a foreman 

with a iron bar. 

After the dismissal 

in Sep 73, 2,400 

men walked out and 

8,000 workers were 

laid off. The dispute 

sprang from a incident 

where the foreman 

used excessive force 

on Mr Williams. 

TGWU supported Mr 

Williams 


maintained a picket 

line for 4 weeks after 

they were locked out 

by management. They 

alleged that the walk 

out was a result of the 

management slave 

owner management. 



Dec-73 

Mar-74 

British Steel works 

Art Castings 

Wolverhampton 

Nuneaton 

Industrial Tribunal 

heard that the case 

of Indian workers 

who had ignored the 

new shift system it 

was started because 

it interfered with 

their Sunday religious 

activities. The 20 

Indians, all from 

Wolverhampton, 

claimed unfair 

dismissal. 

83 Asian transport 

Apr-74 Mansfield Hosiery Leicester 

workers went on 

strike for three 

months’ official 

support by TGWU 

- white workers of 

TWGU refused to join 

the strike a few did 

600 employees were 

Apr-74 Laings (Barbican Art Centre) London 

involved in a protest 

stoppage over a 

report that a Indian 

girl linker was earning 

70 a week - they 

demanded higher 

wages, claiming they 

worked hard. NUHKW 

said the report was 

wrong 

Workers went on 

May-74 Imperial Typewriters Leicester 

strike in solidarity 

with a Sikh man who 

answered back to 

abuse from foreman. 

Biggest historical black 

strike after Mansfield 

Asian workers 

demanded equality 

for women, revision 

of PI Bonus system 

more shop stewards 

representation and 

equality in promotion. 

TandG and white 

workers did not 

support the strike. 

Tand G set up inquiry 

and backed strike 

demands 



Aug-74 

Aug-74 

Kenilworth Components 

Barrington Products 

Kenilworth Asian ladies and men 

twice came out on 

strike over low pay 

and long hours. The 

women being paid 

something like #12 for 

42 hour week 

Strike over low 

Aug-74 Combined Optical Industry Slough 

pay. Asian workers 

demanded an 

increase about 10 in 

their basic wages 

Pakistani strike 

Dec-74 Delta Mouldings 

for better pay and 

conditions 

Strike over low pay. 

Jan-75 

Feb-75 

Intax Ltd 

Yarnolds 

Asian workers came 

out on victimisation 

over white a shop 

steward 

Asian women strike 

over low pay 



References 



Jaqueline Jenkinson : Black Britain 1919 

1. It should be noted that many of the primary sources used to research this book provided little 

specific information on nationality, hence where such detail is missing or in cases where groups of 

people of 

various nationalities are involved, the term „black‟ is used to describe people from Africa, those of 

African Caribbean birth and persons of African descent. For people from Asia, the terms used are 

Chinese where this can be identified and South Asian for those from the Indian sub-continent. Readers 

may also need to know that all sailors from the Indian sub-continent were identified in contemporary 

accounts as „Lascars.‟ The term „Lascar‟ had its roots in the Urdu name for an army or camp: „lashkar‟ 

and had developed through usage of the term „gun-lascar‟ for artillery men used on board Royal Navy 

ships in the eighteenth century. Sailors from territories in East Africa, the horn of Africa and south west 

Arabia, including the then British port of Aden, the protectorate of Aden and Somalia (Somaliland) are 

referred to by nation where known. This type of information is frequently unknown, and in this instance, 

the contemporary catch-all term „Arab‟ is used in parenthesis. 

2. See chapter two for more on these wartime riots. 

3. J. White, „The Summer Riots of 1919‟ New Society 57 (3 August 1981), 261. 

4. See House of Commons (HOC) debates, vol. 116, 26 May 1919, col. 991. 

5. Neil Gordon Orr, „Keep the Home Fires Burning: Peace Day in Luton 1919‟ Family and 

Community History 2/1 (May 1999), 17. 

6. For the London Aldwich riot see the Times, 10 March 1919, 10; 17 March 1919, 8; for the 

Edinburgh Gayfield square riot see the Glasgow Herald, 10 July 10 1919, 3 and the Bulletin (Glasgow) 7 

July 1919, 

7. Press accounts of the time frequently commented on the involvement of service and ex-service 

personnel in the seaport riots, see chapter three for some examples. 

8. J. Bourke, Dismembering the Male: men’s bodies, Britain and the Great War (Reaktion Books, 

1996), 22 and 252. Note that where no place of publication is given books are published in London. 

9. J. Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing: face to face killing in twentieth century warfare (Basic 

Books, 1999), 207. 

10. Times, 13 June 1919, 5. 

11. British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act, 1914, 33. 

12. L. Colley, „Britishness and Otherness: an argument‟ Journal of British Studies, 31 (October 1992), 

324-5. 

13. Colley „Britishness and Otherness‟, (1992), 311. 

14. R. Lapiere, „Race Prejudice: France and England‟, Social Forces, 7 (1918), 111, cited in C. Holmes, 

John Bull’s Island: Immigration and British Society (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988), 106. 

15. See chapter by S.O. Rose in C. Hall, ed., Cultures of Empire: colonizers in Britain and the Empire 

in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: a reader (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 

247. See also Rose, Which People’s War? National Identity and Citizenship in Britain 1939-1945 

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 9. 

16. T. Kushner and D. Ceserani, The Internment of Aliens in Britain (Frank Cass, 1993), 12. 

17. T. Kushner, „Anti-Semitism and Austerity: the August 1947 riots in Britain‟, ch. in P. Panayi ed., 

Racial Violence in Britain in the 19th and 20th centuries (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1996), 

153. 

18. K. Paul, Whitewashing Britain: Race and Citizenship in the Postwar Era (Ithica, New York: Cornell 

University Press, 1997), xii. 

19. C. Hall, et al, Defining the Victorian Nation: class, race, gender and the British Reform act of 1867 

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 51. 

20. C. Hall, ed., Civilising Subjects: metropole and colony in the English imagination 1830-1867 

(Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002), 8. 

21. Liverpool Courier, 12 June 1919, 3. 



22. See Hall, et al, Defining the Victorian Nation, (2000), 182. 

23. L. Tabili, „We Ask for British Justice’: workers and racial difference in late imperial Britain 

(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 2 (1994), 3. 

24. Tabili, „We Ask for British Justice’, (1994), 2. 

25. R. May and R. Cohen, „The Interaction between race and colonialism: a case study of the 

Liverpool race riots of 1919‟ Race and Class 16 (1974), 113. 

26. TNA CO 323/814 282-283, Lord Milner, „Memorandum on the Repatriation of Coloured Men‟, 23 

June 1919. 

27. South Wales Daily News, 14 June 1919, 4. 

28. Liverpool Daily Post and Mercury, 11 June 1919, 3. 

29. Letter from the Clerk of Liverpool Presbytery, Church of England to Liverpool Corporation, 

Liverpool Watch Committee Minutes, 8 July 1919. 

30. Report from the Daily Graphic reprinted in the Liverpool Courier, 12 June 1919, 3. 

31. N. Evans, „Across the racial violence: racial violence in the post-war crisis in imperial Britain 1919- 

1925‟ in D. Frost, Ethnic Labour and British Imperial Trade: a history of ethnic seafarers in the United 

Kingdom (Frank Cass, 1995), 28. 

32. Hercules was also associate secretary of the African Progress Union. Hercules was an outspoken 

critic of the British government during the seaport riots and later toured the Caribbean to raise support 

for the SPAO. See P. Fryer, Staying Power: a history of black people in Britain (Pluto Press, 1984), 313-4. 

33. Report of the SPAO meeting in the Liverpool Courier, 16 June 1919, 8. 

34. Evening Times, (Glasgow) 19 June 1919, 1. 

35. African Telegraph, (London), 3 (July-August 1919), 243. 

36. Daily Record, (Glasgow) 25 June 1919, 8. 

37. ARAG affiliated with the West African Students Union in 1928. The latter London-based 

organisation was formed in 1925. For more information, see I. Geiss, The Pan-African Movement. 

(Methuen, 1974), 299 

38. N. Evans, „The South Wales Race Riots of 1919‟, Llafur 3 (Spring 1980), 20. 

39. TNA, CO 318/349, Enclosure in Government Despatch 1 October 1919: Petition by 44 signatories 

to Colonel. Bryan, Acting Governor of Jamaica, 29 August 1919. For further discussion of this petition 

see, R. Smith, Jamaican Volunteers in the First World War: race, masculinity and the development of the 

national consciousness, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 143-144. 

40. South Wales Echo, 14 June 1919, 1. 

41. Western Mail, (Cardiff), 19 June 1919, 7. 

42. See chapter three for more on the violence between black and Chinese sailors in Hull in 1919. 

43. South Wales Argus, 14 June 1919, 4. 

44. Evening Times, (Glasgow) 19 June 1919, 1. 

45. The longevity of such divisions is discussed in the journal of the League of Coloured Peoples, The 

Keys, (London). See issues 2/2 (Oct. - Dec., 1934) 22, and 4/2 (Oct. - Dec. 1936), 16. The Keys: the organ 

of the League of Coloured Peoples was reprinted in a single volume with an introduction by Roderick J. 

MacDonald (New York, 1976). 

46. See P. Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: modernity and double consciousness (Verso Books, 1993), 2. 

47. C. McKay, Banjo: a story without a plot (New York: Harper Brothers Publishers, 1929), 101. 

48. N. Evans, „Red Summers 1917-1919‟, History Today 51 /2, (Feb. 2001), 28. 

49. Evans, „Red Summers‟, (2001), 31. 

50. J. Horne, „Immigrant workers in France during World War One‟ French Historical Studies 14/1 

(Spring 1985), 80. 

51. R. Segal, The Race War, (Penguin, 1967), 230. 

52. A.D. Grimshaw, „Actions of the Police and the Military in American Race Riots‟, Phylon, 24/2 

(1963), 272 

53. A rare exception is J. Stevenson, British Society 1914-45 (Penguin, 1988), 98, which contains a 

passing reference to the riots. 



A Sivanandan : From Rebellion to Riots 

1. Ruth Glass and Harold Pollins, Newcomers, London: ban Studies and George Alien & Unwin, I960. 

2. D.R. Manley, The social structure of the Liverpool Negro community’ with special reference to the 

formations of formal associations7 published thesis (1958). 

3. 3. Keys, Vol. 3, no. 2, October-December 1925. 

4. 4. Edward Scobie, Black Britannia, Chicago: Johnson Publishing 

5. it sprang Link Carib, Anglo-Canbbean News, Tropic, Flamingo Daylight International West Indies 

Observer, Manget and others. 

6. “Without integration, limitation is inexcusable, without limitation integration is impossible’ Roy 

Hattersely, 1965 

7. That Fenner Brockway, a ceasless campaigner for colonial freedom had introduced a Private 

Member’s anti-dissemination bill year after year from 1951 had. of course, made no impact on 

Labour consciousness. 

8. West Indies Observer, Vol. 1, no. 19, 4 May 1963. 

9. West Indies Observer, Vol. 1, no. 22, 15 June 1963. 

10. West Indies Observer, No. 36, 18 January 1964. 

11. Joseph A. Hunte, Nigger Hunting in England, London: West Indian Standing Conference, 1965. 

12. Commonwealth Immigration Advisory Council, Second Report, London, 1964. 

13. Department of Education Circular 7/65, London, 1965. 

14. Paul Foot, The strike at Courtaulds, Preston’, IRR Newsletter Supplement, July 1965. 

15. Peter Marsh, The Anatomy of a Strike, London: Institute of Race Relations, 1967. 

16. Raas, a Jamaican swear word, gave a West Indian flavour to Black Power. I remember the time in 

South London when an old black woman was being jostled and pushed out of a bus queue. Michael 

went up and stood behind her, an ill-concealed machete in his hand — and the line of white queues 

vanished before her — and she entered the bus like royalty. 

17. The National Federation of Pakistani Associations was formed in 1963. 

18. Times News Team, The Black Man in Search of Power, London: Nelson, 1968. 

19. A. Sivanandan, Race and resistance: the IRR story, London: IRH, 1974. See also Jenny Bourne and 

A. Sivanandan, cheerleaders and ombudsmen: the sociology of race relations in Britain*, Race & 

Class, Vol. XXI, no. 4, 1980. 

20. In real life and real struggle, the economic, the political and the ideological move in concert with 

sometimes one and sometimes the other striking the dominant note —but orchestrated, always, by 

the mode of production. It is only the Marxist textualisms who are preoccupied with determinisms, 

economic and otherwise. 

21. E. Dilip Hiro. Black British. ‘White British, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 

22. The Times (24 October 1967) quoted in IRR Newsletter, December 24. IRR Newsletter, December 

1967. 

23. The Times (24 October 1967) 

24. IRR Newsletter, December 1967 

25. Ibid. 

26. Such as the Naxalites, Adivasis, Dalit Panthers in India, and the Pakhtun. Sindhi and Baluchi 

oppressed people’s movements in Pakistan. In 1974 organisations of untouchables in Britain came 

together at the (new) IRR to organise an International Conference on Untouchability (which for 

financial reasons never got off the ground). 

27. Quoted in EJ.B. Rose et at, Colour and Citizenship. London: Oxford University Press for IRR, 1969. 

28. There were in fact about 66,000 at this time who were entitled to settle in Britain. 

29. Jagmohan Joshi, quoted in C. Karadia, The BPA’, IRR Newsletter, June 1968. 

30. A reference to Powell’s Birmingham speech (April 1968) in which he said: ‘As I look ahead, I am filled 

with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see “the River Tiber foaming with much blood”.’ 

31. The Bill proposed to give immigrants who were refused entry the right of appeal to a tribunal. 

32. A. Sivanandan, ‘Imperialism and disorganic development in the silicon age’, see pp. 143-61 below. 

33. JCWI was set up in 1967 as a one-man welfare service for incoming dependants at Heathrow Airport, 

but later burgeoned into a case-work and campaigning organisation. 



34. According to a letter in the Guardian of 10 September 1981 from members of Jawaharlal Nehru 

University (Delhi), there are still ‘20,000 people of Indian origin from East Africa... waiting in 

India for their entry vouchers to the UK’. 

35. See, for example, Robert Moore and Tina Wallace, Slamming the Door, London: Martin 

Robertson, 1975. 

36. See ‘Notes and documents’ in Race & Class, special issue» ‘Rebellion and repression: Britain 

‘81’, Vol. XXIII, nos. 2/3, 1981/2”. 

37. John La Rose had been Executive of the Federated Workers’ Union in Trinidad and Tobago. 

38. It was one of the founders of this school. Tony Munro, who was later to be involved in the 

Spaghetti House Siege 

39. The BWM (Black Workers Movement) was the new name the black panthers took in early 

1970s 

40. Lois Kushnick, ‘Black Power and the media’, Race today, November 1970 

41. See IRR Police against black people, 1979 

42. Stuart Hall et al, Policing the Crisis, London: Macmillan. 

43. Institute of Race Relations, Police against black people 

44. These included representatives from Indian, Pakistani, and West India Associations such as 

the BPFM, BUFP, BCC and the Black Workers’ Co-ordinating Committee, etc. 

45. For all the above strikes, see various issues of the BPFM Weekly, (later Uhuru), the Black 

Weekly Review, Black Voice and Race Today. 

46. See Colin Prescod, *The people’s cause in the Caribbean’. Race & Class, Vol. XVII, no. 1, 1975; 

Horace Campbell, *Rastafari: culture of resistance’. Race & Class, Vol. XXII, no. 1, 1980 and 

Paul Gilroy, ‘You can’t fool the youths’, in Race & Class, Vol. XXIII, nos. 2/3, 1981/2. 

47. The Community Relations Commission (CRC) emerged as the successor to the NCCI in the 

Race Relations Act of 1968. 

48. A. Sivanandan, ‘Race, class and the state: the black experience in Britain’, see pp. 101-26 

below. 

49. Sir Robert Mark, In the Office of Constable, London: Collins, 1978. 

50. See Tony Bunyan, The Political Police in Britain, London: Julian Friedmann, 1976, and S. 

Chibnall, Law and Order News, London: Tavistock, 1977. 

51. ‘Race and the press’ in Race & Class, Vol. XVII, no. 1, Summer 1976. 

52. IRR, Police against black people, op. cit. 

53. Campaign Against Racism and Fascism/Southall Rights, Southall: the birth of a black 

community, London: Institute of Race Relations, 1981. 

54. See ‘Grunwick’, pp. 126-31 below, and ‘UK commentary* in Race & Class. Vol. XIX, no. 3, 

1978. 

55. A. Sivanandan, ‘From immigration control to “induced repatriation” ‘, see pp. 131-40 below. 

56. Campaign Against Racism and Fascism/Southall Rights, op. cit. 

57. 3 July 1981 — the day on which Asian youths burnt down a public house at which a racist pop 

group and its skinhead fans had gathered, This event was part of the 1981 uprisings. 

58. Tax relief in respect of dependent children was replaced by child benefit paid to wives — but 

those with children abroad were not entitled to it, even if they were supporting them. 

59. See ‘Notes and documents’ m Race & Class, Vol. XXIII, nos. 2/3, 

60. Symbolicaly, the man who had initiated so many of the black working-class and community 

movements of the early years clarified for us all the lines of race/class struggle, Jagmonan 

Joshi, died on the march, of a heart attack. 

61. Campbell was arrested on 1 March 1980 on charge she claimed were false. 

62. The Race Today Collective emerged from the radicalisation of the Institute of Race Relations 

(1969-72) as an independent black journal and had grown, under Darcus Howe and John La 

Rose, into an activist 

63. For example. Greater Manchester Chief Constable James Anderton referred to police critics 

*as creepy and dangerous minorities... who are obviously using the protection imparted by our 

very constitution in order first to undermine it and then eventually to displace it’ (September 



1980). 

64. Juries, opined Sir Robert Mark, ‘perform the duty rarely, know little of the law, are occasionally 

stupid, prejudiced, barely literate and often incapable of applying the law as public opinion is led to 

suppose they do) (Observer, 16 March 1975). 

65. Declaring that ‘prejudice is a state of mind brought about by experience’, Detective Superintendent 

Holland identified long-haired, unshaven youths as the ones likely to have cannabis and West Indians 

hanging around in jeans and T-shirts as likely

Jenny Bourne :When Black was a political colour 

1. There have been a multitude of attempts, from the Free university for Black Studies in 1969 

organised by Roy Sawh, the classes and projects run by black parties in the 1970s to the 

module on Race and Culture at Middlesex university from 1994 to 2002, to establish forms of 

Black Studies in the UK. 

2. The term Black is a contested one in the uK and has been used by different groups in different 

ways over time. 

3. SS Empire Windrush was the vessel that came in June 1948 from the West Indies, usually 

credited for bringing in the first tranche of New Commonwealth citizens – which somewhat 

goes against the facts. In 1998, fifty years on, the arrival of Windrush gained iconic status 

with several books and a series of TV and radio programmes. 

4. The Institute of Race Relations’ Black History Collection, the Black Cultural Archives, the 

George Padmore Institute and the Huntley Collection at the London Metropolitan Archives. 

5. For example, it does not cover fiction, purely academic works which touch on racism and 

hence the black presence, or the Black arts movement in the Uk. The Caribbean Artists 

Movement, begun in 1966 by influential writers like John La Rose, Edward Brathwaite and 

Andrew Salkey, has been written up by Anne Walmsley in The Caribbean Artists Movement 

1966–72: a literary and cultural history (1992). 

6. The experience of West African students was covered in Hakim Adi’s West Africans in Britain 

1900–1960: Nationalism, Pan Africanism, and Communism (1998). 

7. For a critique of IRR’s work, see Jenny Bourne, ‘Cheerleaders and ombudsmen: the sociology 

of race relations in Britain’, Race & Class 21, no. 4 (Spring 1980) and A. Sivanandan, ‘Race and 

resistance: the IRR story’, Race & Class 50, no. 2 (october–December 2008). 

8. For a discussion of the furore around the book which was part of the story of IRR’s 

transformation see Bourne, ‘Cheerleaders and ombudsmen’; Sivanandan, ‘Race and 

resistance: the IRR story’; and Robin Jenkins, ‘The production of knowledge in the IRR’ 

(London: ILP, 1971). 

9. Copies of many of these are in the IRR’s Black History Collection. 

10. There have recently been a series of books on Claudia Jones herself, including ‘I Think of 

My Mother’: notes on the life and times of Claudia Jones by Buzz Johnson (1985), Claudia 

Jones: a life in exile by Marika Sherwood (1999), Left of Karl Marx: the political life of 

Black Communist Claudia Jones by Carole Boyce Davies (2008) and Claudia Jones: beyond 

containment autobiographical reflections, essays and poems, edited by Carole Boyce Davies 

(2011). 

11. The term credited to US activist Stokely Carmichael was first used by him in a 1966 speech 

against racism in Mississippi. He wrote, with Charles Hamilton, Black Power: the politics 

of liberation (1967) and also in 1967 addressed the Dialectics of Liberation Conference in 

London. 

12. Quoted in A. Sivanandan, ‘From resistance to rebellion: Asian and Afro-Caribbean struggles in 

Britain’, Race & Class 23 (october 1981), pp. 111–152. 

13. For a fuller account see Asher Hoyles and Martin Hoyles, Caribbean Publishing in Britain: 

a tribute to Arif Ali (Hansib, 1970) and Marika Sherwood’s review at www.history.ac.uk/ 

review/1106. 

14. There was also the Black People’s Freedom Movement which produced a regular newspaper 

in Nottingham. 

15. As Sivanandan conceptualised it: ‘Black’, he wrote, ‘is the colour of our politics, not the colour 

of our skins.’ 

16. It should also be noted that Abhimanyu Manchanda (from India) was highly influential on The 



West Indian Gazette. 

17. It was later that the concept of Black began to break down. on the one hand, Pan-Africanists 

began to exclude East African Asians from their deliberations, Asians to carp against the 

descriptor Black as a denial of their identity. on the other hand, local and national governments 

began after the 1981 ‘riots’ and Lord Scarman’s recommendations, to funnel monies to 

community groups on the basis of ethnic, cultural and religious identification. In the event, by the 

mid-1980s Black became a highly contested term and inevitably most people began to use the 

initials BME and later BAMER (Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic and Refugee) as descriptors. 

18. It was considerably later that books appeared marking the importance of Malcolm X’s visits to 

and influence on the black movement in the UK: Jan Carew’s Ghosts in Our Blood: with Malcolm 

X in England, Africa and the Caribbean (1994), Marika Sherwood’s Malcolm X: visits abroad April 

1964–February 1965 (2011) and Saladin Ambar’s Malcolm X at Oxford Union (2014). 

19. Derek Humphry’s exposé False Messiah: the story of Michael X was published in 1977 after 

Michael X had been hanged for murder in Trinidad. 

20. Speeches from the acknowledged Black Power orator Roy Sawh at Speakers Corner, Hyde Park 

in the 1960s, are available on the web. A book of his speeches and reflections was published in 

1987: From Where I Stand: black people want to hear and white people fear (Hansib, 1987). 

21. See, for example, Susan Craig, ‘Black Power groups in London 1967–1969’, BSc thesis, university 

of Edinburgh, 1970; G. Llewellyn-Watson, ‘The sociology of black nationalism: identity, protest 

and the concept of “Black Power” among West Indian immigrants in Britain’, PhD thesis, 

university of york, 1972; Kalbir Shukra, ‘The changing patterns of Black Politics in Britain’, 

university of Canterbury, 1995. More recently Rosalind Wild, basing her PhD thesis for the 

university of Sheffield on retrospective interviews with activists of the time, wrote ‘Black was 

the colour of our fight: Black Power in Britain 1955–1976’ (2008); Robert Waters, ‘Imagining 

Britain through radical blackness: race, America and the end of Empire’ (PhD thesis Queen Mary 

university of London, 2014). 

22. A. Sivanandan had already written ‘Black Power: the politics of existence’, in Politics and Society 

1, no. 2 (1971) republished in A Different Hunger (Pluto Press, 1982) and ‘Culture and Identity’ in 

Liberator 10, no. 6 (June 1970). 

23. Two other films are worth noting here: Blacks Britannica (1978) dir. David Koff and Mangrove 

Nine (1973) dir. Franco Rosso. 

24. The book came out of a series of talks and conversations in 1997 organised by the George 

Padmore Institute on ‘Life Experience with Britain’. 

25. A photographic book which says much about such agency, and significantly includes Asians, 

unfortunately now out of print is The Arrivants: a pictorial essay on Blacks in Britain (1987). 

26. Winston James, ‘Migration, racism and identity: the Caribbean experience in Britain’, New Left 

Review (May–June 1992). 

27. There was, as he spent more time on his television career from 1985, a rift between him and the 

erstwhile Black ‘comrades’ with whom he had worked on community initiatives such as the Black 

and Third World Book Fair. 

28. It should be noted, though, that in the UK in August 1967 C. L. R. James gave an important 

speech ‘Black Power, its past, today, and the way ahead’ which can be accessed at: http:// 

www.freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/Black%20Liberation%20Disk/Black%20 Power!/ 

SugahData/Books/James.S.pdf.

Coming of Age : 1976 and the Road to Anti-Racism

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