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

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
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