COME WHAT MAY, WE’RE
HERE TO STAY – The Story of South Asian Resistance in Britain
TAJ ALI
Manchester University
Press £20
Taj Ali is to be
congratulated for bringing together a highly readable book on a subject rarely
broached by the media and political commentators.
It is also great that
he is putting in the miles to travel right across Britain to speak to meetings
big and small and persuade people to buy the book and find out more. Many
buyers will discover things they had never previously heard of.
Come What May, We’re
Here To Stay is a bold slogan only made possible today for the present South Asian
communities because of the resistance of those who came before them, many of
whom first arrived on what they imagined was a temporary basis to allow for the
earning of sufficient monies to provide for their families back home.
This included Lascar
sailors who, because European sailors found conditions in the Indian
subcontinent deadly, were employed in large numbers by British merchants who
then frequently dumped them without any means of returning home once they
reached Britain with their stock.
The destitute Lascars
set up lodging houses in port cities, ‘laying the foundation for Britain’s
first multicultural neighbourhooods.’ The
sailors also began to assert their need for better treatment at sea and were
successful in winning improvements.
Decades later as the
long reign of the Empress of India, Queen Victoria, came towards its end, the
growing demands for Indian independence were given increased impetus by Indian
students.
They had been forced
to come to London because any examinations that were required to work in the
Indian civil service or as lawyers could only be taken in England’s capital
city.
India House was
founded in July 1905 and went on to become a hot bed of radical activity in
support of the demand for independence from Britain. Activists were spied upon
and followed. Britain’s capitalist class were not going to give up their main
source of income easily.
Nevertheless, such an
atmosphere did not prevent over one million Indian seamen and soldiers rallying
to Britain’s cause when WWI kicked off.
Yet their sacrifices, once the carnage had ended, were swiftly forgotten
amidst the economic decline of the British economy.
South Asians who had
settled in port cities and towns such as South Shields in the northeast of
England were violently attacked and, in some cases, killed.
The newcomers had few
friends with the Trade Union Congress passing a notion condemning “Asiatic
Labour”. Go Home was the message. It was one that was opposed by the newly-formed
Communist Party of Great Britain which toiled to create solidarity between
British and colonial workers.
The Labour Party’s first
black MP, Shapurji Saklatvala, drew on
the radical history of the Battersea North constituency when he was elected
there in 1922.
And South Asian
workers again rallied, this time alongside West Indian workers, to Britain’s
needs after WWII when manpower shortages in key sectors such as the NHS,
transport and the textile mills needed filling.
They had been
encouraged to quit their homelands after the passing of the 1948 Nationality
Act gave British citizenship to all citizens of Britain’s colonies. By the end
of 1958, the South Asian community in Britain totalled 58,000, a large minority
of which was in Southall, West London.
Most new arrivals imagined they could earn enough
monies to set up their families back home and where they intended returning to.
However, when the
Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 began restricting the rights of their families
to follow them then many of the arrivals were placed under pressure to put down
permanent residency and bring their loved ones to live alongside them.
There then
began a long, ongoing struggle to win better rights in all walks of life
including at work. Workers were assisted by the
Indian Workers’ Association (IWA), founded in the 1930s, and later the
Pakistani Workers’ Association who both really came into their own once South
Asian workers got to fully understand how they were being so badly
discriminated against compared to their fellow white workers.
Ali highlights
numerous workplace struggles including at Mansfield Hosiery Mills at
Loughborough in 1972 and at Imperial Typewriters in Leicester in 1974 when in
both cases their trade union failed to support mainly Asian striking workers.
That was not the case
at the Grunwick film processing plant in West London two years later when one
of the highlights of the strike was the arrival of Arthur Scargill and many
National Union of Mineworkers members at the picket line. The strike though, by
mainly Asian female workers, was still defeated.
On the streets there
were numerous, often planned, racist and fascist attacks. This led to dozens of
murders or crippling, lifelong injuries and none of which seemed to bother the
police, who often arrested South Asians when they resisted attacks.
It was a case of sink
or swim and self defence was the solution.
Following Enoch
Powell’s infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech in 1968, the Kent Asian Youth
Federation was established to oppose the rising tide of racism. Members learned
all about the stories of the Indian anti-colonial revolutionaries. In 1970,
citizens’ defence patrols were formed in East London by the Pakistani Workers’
Union following the murder of Tosir Ali.
By the end of the 1970s
there had been formed numerous Asian Youth Movements (AYM) across cities and
towns. Although never officially linked they often worked closely and learnt
from each other. They guarded people’s homes and chaperoned those most in
danger of attack when they went about their everyday business such as going
shopping. They also showed racists that they too could fight.
When Altab Ali was
murdered in Whitechapel in 1978, 7,000 people marched from Brick Lane to Hyde
Park and then on to Downing Street with protestors holding placards reading
‘Here to stay, here to fight’ and ‘Self defence is no offence’.
The latter slogan was to
be highlighted by the Bradford 12 in 1981-82 when they won a famous court case
after they were prosecuted following their manufacturing of petrol bombs just in case the fascist
National Front made good on their promise to attack the Asian community across
the city.
1981 itself proved to
be a year of riots in which inner city black and Asian youth – joined in some
cases by their white counterparts who were often unemployed and struggling to
earn an income – refused to lie down in the face of racist attacks and the
hostility of the police.
Monitoring groups such
as the Newham Monitoring Project (NMP), funded by the left-leaning Greater London
Council of Ken Livingstone, were opened to provide support to victims of racist
attacks and monitor the response of the police and local authority. Radical
solicitors such as Gareth Pierce were only too happy to offer their services to
represent those arrested by police for simply standing up for their community.
The Asian community
was also happy to offer solidarity to others under attack and one of my
favourite chapters in the book is the heroic support – which I witnessed in
Birmingham myself – for striking miners during the year-long 1984-85 strike.
Huge amounts of food
and monies were donated from some of the poorest households across Britain. There
was also solidarity on picket lines with some Asians joining the 18 June 1984
picket at Orgreave when the police rioted.
The author is brave
enough to recognise that amidst such determination and courage there have been
weaknesses to the resistance. This includes the question of gender with Asian
women often struggling to find a welcoming space.
Initially this might
have been excused by communities having come from rural settings but even after
many successful family reunification campaigns that were led by women there
remained reticence from parents to allow young women to be involved in
organised political campaigns. Unsurprisingly, Asian women set up their own
groups and their work remains inspirational with Southall Black Sisters
particularly noteworthy.
The book cannot avoid
the generally poor state of politics within the South Asian communities today
where, like the labour and trade union movement, there has been a decline in
progressive bodies.
This has allowed for
religion, with divides between Hindu and Muslim, and nationalism (Pakistan –
India), to come to the fore. The British state, which always has an eye out for
how to create division, has also encouraged the rise of community leaders – and
the funding of their preferred projects – that
can be guaranteed not to rock the boat by becoming too political and agitating
for change.
These weaknesses clearly
cause the author concern because when he spoke in Halifax on Saturday 24
October at the Unity premises on Queen Street he suggested there was now a need
to seek to establish new groups everywhere.
So, please do buy this
book.
Criticism – I think it
is a mistake to have not included Kashmir born Mohammad Taj in this work. He is
the only South Asian worker to be elected as the TUC President. He was a bus
worker for over 40 years and his work as a union representative was exemplary.
He has spoken out against the oppression of women in his own community and
following the Bradford riots in 1995 he refused to put his name to the
subsequent community report that he was involved in drawing up as he knew it would
not call for much needed additional resources from either local or national government.
Taj also refused numerous attempts by the state to incorporate him into their
operations.
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