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

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
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