News items of interest to Black, Asian and Ethnic Minority Labour Party Members and Supporters
Establishment figures – all of them white – smear MP after she challenges racism report’s positive treatment of slavery and colonialism, while …
White right-wing press and MPs minimise racism in ‘colonial’ attack on Labour MP Webbe
We have a large group of very active trade unionists in The Labour Party in Camden who support local campaigns, attend rallies and demos and support picket lines. Here are some of the Campaigns we have supported.
04 October, 2019 — By Angela Cobbinah
Source: Camden New Journal
JOHN Oke, who has died after a long illness aged 85, is remembered for dedicating himself to the frontline of grassroots politics in Camden for almost 40 years.
The two pioneering organisations he founded, Camden Black Parents and Teachers Association (CBPTA), and Odu Dua Housing Association, emerged out of the black self-help movement of the 1980s and from his own determination to make a difference.
Born in Oyo State, western Nigeria, in 1934, John Oluwole Oke arrived in Britain as a teenager in search of better opportunities.
After training as a civil engineer, he returned to Nigeria to work before making his way back to the UK during the 1970s and settling in Kentish Town, where he happily remained for the rest of his life.
As the father of four children, he realised that too many black youngsters were being failed by the schools system and leaving education without any qualifications with a damaged sense of self.
In response John set up the CBPTA in 1980, running it from the front room of his home before acquiring office premises.
The organisation spawned the Winnie Mandela supplementary school and Kuumba play centre, two Kentish Town-based schemes that emphasised African-centred education and activities through which hundreds of children passed.
In 1986, John established the Odu Dua Housing Association – named after a Yoruba deity – to initially tackle the high rate of homelessness among young black men in the borough before widening its remit to black and ethnic minority people living in Camden, Brent and Barnet.
Using short-life properties as its founding stock, at its peak it had a 300-strong portfolio, including flats and houses on the Lithos Road estate in West Hampstead.
John served as Odu Dua’s first chief executive and later its chairman, preventing it from being swallowed up by bigger housing associations in a mega merger.
He parted company with the organisation in 2015 but regarded it as his proudest achievement, his family said.
Gifted with great reserves of energy as well as a selfless determination to improve the lives of those around him, over the years John was also a parent governor at Acland Burghley School and a governor at Edith Neville and St Michael’s CoE primary schools. He was also an active member of the Labour Party.
“Our father was a 100 per cent people person and was uninterested in accolades,” said his youngest daughter Alicia. “His work inspired so many lives and he was still in touch with young people he’d mentored along the way and who’d gone on to do well. They would always address him as Uncle John.”
A convert to Buddhism, John was diagnosed with cancer eight years ago but continued to be as active as possible, only stepping down as a trustee of the Camden Community Law Centre last year following more than three decades of service. He died peacefully at his home of 35 years in Leighton Road on September 13 surrounded by his family. He is survived by four children and two grandchildren.
John’s funeral took place yesterday (Wednesday) at Golders Green Crematorium.
I first met John when he attended the event in Euston that I had organised for my local Labour Party branch ‘Let’s Talk About Windrush’ last year. After the event, he came over to me and we spoke about colonialism and how it has affected but also brought together different BAME communities. I met him again at another event I co-chaired in Kentish Town ‘In Conversation With Nah and Angela’, two local Labour Party members who had contributed to the book New Daughters of Africa.
Since then, I learnt a lot more about John and the amazing work he had done over his lifetime as an activist for BAME issues. His legacy will live on through the people who worked closely with him on his projects and through the students whose lives he touched through the African-centred schools he founded.
Read more about the African-centred School John founded here:
Source: Guardian Website – Schools –
by Felicity Heywood, Tue 11 Oct 2005
An excerpt:
Back in 1980, a group of single mothers in Camden were concerned about the exclusions and suspensions from school that their children were experiencing. Classes started and for the next five years, around 10 parents taught their children supplementary lessons from their homes.
John Oke, one of the founders, now chairman of the CBPTA, says: “Unfortunately, around that time, you didn’t find black people in the banks, in schools, even in government. It is more common now. So the role models were the parents.” The low self-esteem of the children, society’s racism and the schools’ general misunderstanding of their needs as black parents were identified as the root cause of poor educational achievement.
When the group staged a sit-in for four weeks at the Kentish Town law centre because repeated applications for permanent premises were denied, Camden council offered them a short lease. Since then, they have their own rented council space, are awarded a core grant of £50,000 a year from Camden council and have a waiting list.
Today (2005) the Mandela school teaches children from four to 16 years and employs (and pays) eight teachers to lead one hour of English and maths a week and 50 minutes of black history. All are trained teachers, including two who are senior maths teachers at London secondary schools. The secondary pupils attend on Tuesdays after school hours, and the primary school-age pupils on Saturdays. With a focus on individual need, there is a maximum of 15 to a class. Boys outnumber girls almost three to one. Parents pay £35 each term to send their children. Camden Council stipulates that 75% of the pupils who attend must live in the borough.
Read full article here
“It’s obvious that the strike has enormous support amongst postal workers, but as Labour Party members, we must also place this struggle in the foreground of our vision .”
Every member of the Labour Party is now deeply aware that an election is looming, but whilst elections can sharpen our political focus, we must not allow it to narrow our political vision. This week, the Communication Worker’s Union, which represents over one hundred thousand workers, voted by an enormous 97% (with a huge 76% turnout) in favour of strike action. Their strike comes in response to the Royal Mail bosses breaking the terms of an agreement reached last year to protect worker’s jobs and conditions. It’s obvious that the strike has enormous support amongst postal workers, but as Labour Party members, we must also place this struggle in the foreground of our vision. It would be easy to imagine that, as long as we win the election, everything else can come afterwards; but this has it backwards. The first battle of the election is already underway, and it is the CWU’s fight for their hard-won worker’s rights.
Privatised in 2013, the Royal Mail is the latest in a long line of privatisations, which have been central to the project of neoliberalism taken up by the ruling classes forty years ago. Starting with Thatcher, the forces of capitalism have waged relentless class warfare on the working classes, selling off public assets to be run on the sole principle of profit, whilst ruthlessly attempting to break the unions that resisted; an objective pursued with complete disregard for the lives and communities destroyed in the process. To legalise their war on the unions, the Tories have passed a series of reforms stripping away our labour rights. The most recent, the Trade Union Act 2016, was intended to make legal strikes harder than ever to organise. That the CWU passed a major legal strike motion despite this is a triumph, and a crucial show of defiance against those that have worked so hard to crush trade unions. If the strike succeeds, it represents the first victory in Labour’s fight to transform Britain in the interest of working people. To win the election we need the support of an organised working class that is mobilised to fight the ruling classes, exactly as the CWU is doing now.
This support will be especially necessary if we are to sustain a socialist government and implement our programme in power. Nationalisation, an irreplaceable part of any plan to reverse neoliberalism, includes the re-nationalisation of Royal Mail. To do this requires the support of postal workers to achieve, as the bosses will do everything they can to hold onto their profits. In all those industries we plan to run in the interest of the workers, we must have those same workers mobilised to succeed. Even more widely, we know that Royal Mail’s owners want to strip down the company into a gig-economy delivery business, so as to compete with the behemoth of Amazon. Rather than allowing Amazon’s exploitative practices to spread, we should instead be working to bolster the CWU’s workers to build an alternative, and to build a base for the unionisation and strengthening of Amazon workers rights and protection. After all, if we are bringing down neoliberalism and creating a new society, this is one place to start.
‘Labour & Palestine’ was launched at the 2018 Labour Party Conference. We are currently in the process of setting up a ‘Highgate Labour & Palestine’ comprising of local activists from Labour & Palestine, JVL and Camden PSC. We hope to launch in late September, details will be publicised in due course.
Labour & Palestine is supported by Aslef, CWU, NUM, TSSA, Unison and Unite, and our founding statement has been signed by over 2500 Labour members from over 450 CLPs.
Our purpose is to build solid support for Palestine across the Party and the labour movement.
If you are interested in being informed and helping promoting Palestine within Labour please sign the ‘Speaking Up for Palestine’ statement here.
Labour & Palestine have a model motion for Labour Party Conference 2019. Here is the Peace & Justice for Palestine Model Motion and accompanying Q&A. Please pass it in your CLP and Trade Union branches.
Morning Star article A new political network is to be launched in order to “stop the silencing” of the Palestinian cause within Labour. The movement is intended to temper fears from Palestinians and Palestine solidarity campaigners that the cause of the state has been “pushed under a bus” by the British labour movement.
Many of our members are active in one of our local branches. These branches are the bedrock of our campaigns, winning support from individuals and groups in their areas. Below you will find contact details for all of the current PSC local branches.
For details of upcoming branch events, either visit the branches’ own websites and Facebook pages (where available) or try our events page.
Please note you do not need to be a national PSC member to attend branch meetings, but why not join us now!
Camden Palestine Solidarity Campaign: Email, Facebook page
Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) is a network for Jewish members of the Labour Party. Our political priorities are universal human rights and dignity; justice for all; freedom of expression; and democracy in the Labour Party.
Our mission is to contribute to making the Labour Party an open, democratic and inclusive party, encouraging all ethnic groups and cultures to join and participate freely.
Source: Camden Council website London, 16 May 2019
Camden’s Mayor for 2019-2020 was appointed at the annual Mayor-making ceremony on Wednesday evening.
Councillor Maryam Eslamdoust succeeds outgoing Mayor Councillor Headlam-Wells. The new Deputy Mayor is Councillor Sabrina Francis.
She is the first Iranian-born woman ever elected to public office in the UK, and currently due to give birth this month, she will be the first Camden mayor to give birth in office.
Councillor Maryam Eslamdoust was born in Tehran and moved to London as a child, with her family making their first home in Kilburn, where she has been a Labour councillor since 2010.
Before her election to the council, Maryam studied in two of the borough’s universities – the School of Oriental and African Studies and at University College London. She started her early career in the legal and charity sector.
Pained by her own experiences in discrimination, Maryam has devoted her time on the council towards elevating the lives of Camden people from marginalised sections of society. She has campaigned on race, gender and disability issues and led on policies to protect Camden residents.
The Mayor’s chosen charity is Solace Women’s Aid.
Councillor Maryam Eslamdoust, Mayor of Camden, said: “Domestic violence should have no place in Camden. I want to raise awareness and encourage people to speak out when they see signs of abuse. My chosen charity, Solace Women’s Aid, offers free advice and support to women and children in London to build safe and strong lives – free from abuse and violence.
“By this time next year, I hope that everyone in our borough recognises the wider impact of domestic abuse on individuals and on their families. My aim is to put this issue firmly in the spotlight.”
Mary Mason, CEO for Solace Women’s Aid, said: “We are absolutely delighted to be chosen as the Mayor’s charity for 2019-20, as Camden is one of the boroughs where Solace first began supporting women over 40 years ago – so is a place which is very dear to my heart and is part of our DNA. Since then Solace has grown to become the leading specialist charity in London supporting women and children experiencing domestic abuse and sexual violence and we have supported thousands of families in Camden during that time.”
In the UK, two women are killed every week by a partner or ex-partner, while one in four women and one in six men will experience domestic abuse in their lifetime. It can happen to anyone – regardless of age, gender identity, sexual orientation or culture. Domestic abuse isn’t just physical – it can include verbal, psychological, sexual, financial, and emotional abuse including controlling and manipulative behaviour.
Camden Council has a dedicated support service, Camden Safety Net, with trained advisors who can offer impartial and confidential advice to any resident who has concerns about their relationship. Camden’s message to anyone experiencing domestic abuse is you’re not alone – we’re here to help.Residents can contact Camden Safety Net on 020 7974 2526 or visit camden.gov.uk/know, where they can also watch our short film that highlights some of the different forms domestic abuse can take.
Domestic abuse and sexual violence can take many forms. Solace provides life-saving support to over 16,000 women and children in London every year. They run 37 refuge and move on accommodation properties with space for 168 women and their children. Last year 139 women and children lived in their Camden refuges giving them somewhere safe to stay when they had nowhere else to turn. In the Camden refuge women and children would have built their new lives with support from Solace staff, everything from overcoming trauma to starting a new school. Across Camden, Solace Women’s Aid supported 377 women and children to rebuild their lives, with therapy, group work and other support that meant they had a strong future.
For more information on Solace Women’s Aid visit solacewomensaid.org
Mayor of Camden gets a new escort as she gives birth to baby boy
Source: Camden New Journal 13 June, 2019 — By Richard Osley
CAMDEN’S mayor has given birth to her own first citizen!
Maryam Eslamdoust was caught by surprise when new baby boy Xerxes arrived on Wednesday, two weeks earlier than expected.
“I was doing mayoral events right up until the day before,” she told the New Journal. “I was at a memorial service for the London Fire Brigade and then baby came early. We rushed to University College London Hospital late on Tuesday evening – and then he arrived on Wednesday afternoon.”
It is three four since Cllr Eslamdoust became Mayor of Camden at a special council meeting.
Her consort is husband Thomas Gardiner, a fellow Kilburn councillor and now a proud father. The baby’s full name is Xerxes Arthur Gardiner.
His first name is pronounced Zerk-seez, the Mayor said, explaining that several well-wishers had asked about this. Cllr Eslamdoust, the first Iranian-born woman to become a mayor in the United Kingdom, writes an unusual new chapter in Camden’s political history as the first mayor in the borough to give birth in office.
She said at her mayor-making ceremony that her yet-to-be-born son would be one of her escorts.
Over the next 12 months, she has resolved to use her time wearing the mayoral chain to raise money for Solace Women’s Aid, which supports women and children who have experienced domestic abuse. The charity helps with refuge places and assists with therapy, with the aim of giving women a chance to make fresh starts.
Cllr Eslamdoust was first elected in her Kilburn ward, alongside Cllr Gardiner, in 2010. The couple, part of the left-wing caucus on Camden’s Labour group, had been politically active beforehand, however; the picture below shows them marching against the Iraq War.
While council staff often take around nine months of maternity leave, Cllr Eslamdoust is expected to be back on the beat in about four weeks.
Her deputy, Sabrina Francis, was on duty at events this week as the new family returned home from hospital.
“We are so happy about our beautiful son arriving,” said Cllr Eslamdoust. “I must give huge thanks to the NHS staff at the UCLH for how they looked after Xerxes.”
Source: RightsInfo.org by By Meka Beresford
Freelance News Editor, 8th May 2019
Ahead of the second phase of the inquiry, 38 families representing 46 of the 72 people who died in the fire worked with the charity Inquest to release the report, Family reflections on Grenfell: No voice left unheard.
The report criticises the first phase of the inquiry and sets out concerns and recommendations for how to continue.
A key criticism in the report was the decision to hold the hearing in Holborn Bars, as families said that there was too much distance between the inquiry and the Grenfell fire site.
“Families [wanted] to be situated in front of those speaking, so they could see their faces as they spoke, and believed anyone being questioned should do so while face to face with those bereaved by the fire,” the report noted.
“It is high time the inquiry team and the government listened to these voices and provide an inclusive and truthful inquiry that delivers structural change and accountability.”
Deborah Coles, director of Inquest
As well as a location change, it suggested that anyone dealing directly with families of the victims should have proper training and that each survivor have a key caseworker present who is independent of the council and can work as a liaison providing information and updates on the inquiry.
The report also called for an independent, diverse decision-making inquiry panel, for public authorities to be franker in their approach to the inquiry and for a change in the way witnesses are questioned. A plan to help coordinate emergency services in the event of future disasters was also proposed.
One Grenfell survivor, Sadik Kelbeto, explained that it was essential the report is taken into consideration to pay respect to those who died.
“My whole family was wiped out by the fire. Their voices can no longer be heard. I have to represent them. I owe it to them,” Kelbeto said.
“This report is important because these are our words and our voices. The government have an obligation to listen to us. If they don’t listen to us, then who will they listen to?”
This report is important because these are our words and our voices. The government have an obligation to listen to us. If they don’t listen to us, then who will they listen to?
Sadik Kelbeto, a bereaved family member
The report insisted that so far, the bereaved families and survivors had been “left questioning the effectiveness of an inquiry that is failing to recommend life-saving changes as early as possible.”
“It is high time the inquiry team and the government listened to these voices and provide an inclusive and truthful inquiry that delivers structural change and accountability,” added Deborah Coles, the director of Inquest.
The report was welcomed by the Grenfell Inquiry, with a spokesperson saying that making it “as accessible as possible has always been a priority”.
Tribune Magazine by Emma Dent Coad 30.04.2019
As the second anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire approaches, there is a feeling of desperation and growing panic in the air from those with responsibility for rehousing the homeless.
This also applies to those responsible for the mental and physical well-being of the community, and for the long-term future of a neighbourhood which will always bear the scars of what happened on 14th June 2017.
This determination to get everything under control, to clear the decks, to get back to ‘business as usual’ has produced a hardening of attitude from some who should know better.
There are officers in the Council, and indeed councillors of all political persuasions, who have worked admirably, and been patient, kind, empathic and understanding with the hundreds of affected people they have met.
Then there are the others.
Bishop James Jones’ Charter for Bereaved Families was established in response to the treatment of families of the Hillsborough disaster. In late 2017, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Council signed up to the Charter and its six principles which commit the Council to the following:
However, the hiring of a large and well-funded Media Communications team at the same time caused concern, and some of their actions since then have rung alarm bells. Loud and often. I could give countless examples, but here are a few:
While defending the Council’s indefensible actions at every turn, MediaComs refuse to support traumatised survivors who have been hounded and persecuted by the press.
The government-appointed Task Force is about to report back for the fourth time. They have demanded cultural change for which there is little evidence. Instead, I see the Council placing their own reputation above public interest, I see candour only when it suits their purpose, I see few learning from past mistakes. Officers and councillors too often defend the indefensible, and too often affected people are treated with disdain.
Quite a few of the 186 households who have moved into permanent accommodation are unhappy for various reasons and have come back to me for help. When they ask to be moved, they are treated as a nuisance. When one expressed his anger in words, he was called “volatile.”
These families are treated as troublesome rather than troubled. I have heard of four suicides, two additional attempts and one sectioning in the past few months. It would be wrong to attribute them directly to the Council’s ineptitude and lack of care, but it is clear that many local people are struggling emotionally and mentally, and not getting the help they need from the £50 million of targeted NHS support.
The Council claims to have bought 300 properties for households made homeless. If 186 households have now moved in, what’s happened to the remaining 114? No one will say.
While spinning their webs with tales of community meetings, people being “engaged,” graphics, graphs and indecipherable management speak, the truth does eventually leak out.
Meanwhile, councillors dig in their heels. Comments reported in recent months have included “haven’t we [senior Tory councillors] suffered enough?” and “I don’t know why we’re wasting so much on mental health, they all seem fine to me.”
The “exciting and innovative” Council Plan and Review of the Scrutiny Process, currently being rushed through, would reduce councillors to community engagement officers and leave the decision-making to just nine senior councillors.
And this after the proposed Plan had “engaged” just 28 people in the whole of North Kensington, a number fewer than that which North Ken Councillors could “engage” on a local shopping trip. And the third Task Force Report said they must improve scrutiny.
Then there is the disastrous, unpopular and indefensible determination to end the Grenfell Recovery Scrutiny Committee, when it was just turning a corner and beginning to function.
A Council that has learnt so little cannot absorb such a large quantity of sensitive work. But no dissent is accepted. We must get back to “business as usual,” as a senior Director told me.
This flies in the face of the Task Force and Grenfell Recovery Strategy, which both state clearly that we should never consider returning to the previous administration of the Council which let 72 people burn to death in front of their families, friends and neighbours.
We have some lovely, empathetic, community-minded millionaires in Kensington, and not all vote Labour. But those in charge at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, many of whom can afford a high life of yachts, polo games and Lamborghinis, are not of that ilk.
I’ve met Brexit-supporting Tory MPs from the Home Counties with more empathy. One told me “they should have got the army in to house people, and the Commissioners in to take over the Council on day one.”
We need a team of people with intelligence, experience and humanity to deal with a mess of our Council’s own making. For as long as people are determined to point the finger of blame elsewhere for their own failures, I and many of my community will continue to distrust them.
Our demand is for #CommissionersNow.
Bishop John James’ report on Hillsborough was called The Patronising Disposition of Unaccountable Power. It has never been more apposite. Anyone interested to know why, almost two years on, those who suffered at Grenfell are still denied justice should read it.
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About the Author
Emma Dent Coad is the Labour Party Member of Parliament for Kensington.
Source: Jacobin Magazine by LUKE SAVAGE 04.23.2019
In the 1970s, Britain’s fascist movement was growing in strength.
Coming together in 1967 under the leadership of AK Chesterton — himself a veteran of Oswald Mosley’s Nazi-aligned British Union of Fascists — disparate factions on the far right had united to form the National Front (NF): a newly coherent electoral force that would rapidly gain momentum in the decade that followed.
Contesting both local and national elections, the NF made alarming gains, capturing more than 16 percent of the vote in a 1973 by-election in the West Midlands constituency of West Bromwich and winning nearly 114,000 votes in the October general election the following year. Its most menacing encroachments, however, came in London. Throughout council elections in 1977, the NF would receive a significant share of the vote in several boroughs, including Bethnal Green (19.2 percent), Hackney South (19 percent), and Stepney (16.4 percent). Its gains were significant enough that Guardian reporter Martin Walker, in a 1977 book on the party and its growth, even speculated that it might “conceivably explode into power.”
The political ground in Britain seemed worryingly fertile for just such a development. Amid punitive austerity (from a Labour government, no less), faltering wages, and Britain’s recently Enoch Powell-ified discourse on race and immigration, the front’s xenophobic message was winning both Tory and Labour votes and securing new converts. Accounts of its membership differ, but one figure from the antifascist magazine Searchlight suggests it counted some 17,500 in its ranks by 1972, up from only 4,000 a few years prior. According to historian Richard Thurlow, the NF represented “an attempt to portray the essentials of Nazi ideology in more rational language and seemingly reasonable arguments” in an effort to “convert racial populists” into hardened practitioners of fascism.
Its bid at mainstreaming aside, the ideology and animating beliefs of the NF were avowedly fascistic, fusing white supremacist, antisemitic, and anti-black dogmas with various racist conspiracy theories. As their predecessors had once done in the 1930s, the NF’s leaders dreamt of burying Britain’s democratic, multicultural society and organized with this end in mind.
There has always been a street-corner machismo to the National Front — not least from its links back to Mosley’s Blackshirts — but from 1974 onwards deliberately provocative marches through immigrant neighbourhoods, intimidating pavement meetings and other aggressive occupations of public spaces became key NF tactics. Brick Lane in east London, a narrow, busy, mainly Bangladeshi street close to several areas known for decades as centres of racist politics, was a frequent target.
A report published by a local trades council in East London observed that there seemed to be “more and more racists selling [fascist newspapers] National Front News and Spearhead each week on the corner.” One passage vividly describes a typical NF street action:
Skinhead youngsters, many wearing badges saying “NF rules OK,” NF T-shirts, or with copies of NF News in their pockets, had been gathering at the top of Brick Lane since about 11 AM… Some had come from Peckham, Ealing, Putney. Some came in minibuses… At about 12 noon… after an NF meeting…a group of white youths marched down the Lane…clapping and shouting “the National Front is a White Man’s front”…The police had all suddenly disappeared…[Then] 150 white youths ran down Brick Lane shouting “Kill the Black Bastards” and smashing the windows of a dozen shops and the car windscreens of Bengali shopkeepers. 55 year-old Abdul Monan was knocked unconscious by a hail of rocks and stones hurled towards his shop window…The police said the “spontaneous outbreak” happened just at the time they were changing their shift and they were totally unprepared.
Titled “Blood on the Streets: Racial attacks in East London,” the report recorded over two hundred similar incidents, including two murders, between January 1976 and August 1978 — a number of them directly attributable to fascist militants.
Given this context, April 23, 1977 would mark one of the most critical and decisive efforts by antifascist campaigners in their struggle against the National Front poison. Assembling a contingent twelve-hundred-strong, NF members planned to descend upon the diverse North London borough of Haringey, with the aim of marching from Ducketts Common (a large public park) down a busy high street packed with Saturday afternoon shoppers.
Alarmed at the planned fascist demonstration, local councillors called on London police to ban the march — a request they firmly denied. Nevertheless, by bringing together a diverse coalition of community groups, organizers reportedly put some three thousand counter-demonstrators into the streets, outnumbering the fascists more than two to one and preventing most from reaching a planned rally to be held at the endpoint of the march. According to historian Keith Flett, the confrontation was made possible by effective planning efforts during which organizers extensively debated strategy and tactics and pursued an aggressive local leafleting campaign.
Acting as a coordinator for the local council was Jeremy Corbyn, then a twenty-eight-year-old Labour councillor and trade union official. The borough’s representatives, even several Tories, proved united in their opposition to the NF, with fifty-four of sixty sitting councillors gathering on the day behind a huge banner reading, “Haringey Councillors Against Racism.”
Others within the large counterdemonstration included trade unionists, socialists, radicals, and community groups (including the Indian Workers’ Association and members of Rock Against Racism), some of whom confronted the fascists directly. As Socialist Workers Party activist David Widgery recalled in his book, Beating Time:
The Front…were faced with a determined opposition armed with smoke bombs, flares, bricks, bottles and planned ambushes…there was a spontaneous move to block the road and attack the Front…Conventional anti-fascist politicos had been augmented by North London gangs, rockabillies, soul girls and tracksuited Rastas…a squad of black kids accurately hurling training shoes borrowed from Freeman, Hardy and Willis…
Historian David Renton’s account also takes note of the counterdemonstration’s more confrontational elements, noting that while “Communists and churchmen addressed a rally at one end of Duckett’s Common, a contingent composed of more radical elements in the crowd broke away and subjected the NF column to a barrage of smoke bombs, eggs and rotten fruit.”
Some eighty-one people were arrested, seventy-four of them antifascists.
Reporting on the march on its front page in the following days, the local Hornsey Journal would carry a quote from Corbyn denouncing police passivity in the face of the fascist threat:
From Haringey Councillor Jeremy Corbyn on behalf of the organisers of the counter-demonstrations “Why did the police allow the National Front to march through the busiest shopping area of North London, an area populated by several of London’s largest immigrant communities? It must be clear from Saturday’s demonstration that there is the widest possible opposition to these modern day fascists. How much longer must it be before fascism is banned from our streets?”
Several months later at the Battle of Lewisham, organized antifascists would again challenge the NF — who, once again, would receive significant protection from London police. Taken together, the two confrontations contributed significantly to the demoralization of Britain’s fascist movement and, ultimately, to its decline as a political force.
In his influential 1979 essay “The Great Moving Right Show,” the late cultural theorist Stuart Hall cited the antifascist campaigns and direct actions of the late 1970s as a rare success story during a period otherwise characterized by left-wing retrenchment. Though there were certainly other contributing factors, the ensuing collapse of the NF’s electoral fortunes was swift and punishing, its total vote dropping to 27,065 nationwide by 1983 (down from 191,719). In Haringey, where it had previously secured 8 percent of the vote, its total dropped to under 3 percent in 1979, and by the following election it proved unable even to field a candidate.
Alongside the Battle of Cable Street in October 1936, the confrontation at Wood Green was undoubtedly a formative moment in the struggle against fascism in Britain. Commemorating the events of April 23, 1977 on their fortieth anniversary two years ago, Corbyn himself would link those struggles to the present day:
What we did that day in 1977 should go down in history…a community stood up and said the racists shall not pass. In the atmosphere [in] so many communities across this country over the last few months, the growth of xenophobia, the rise of the far right all across Europe, the antisemitism, the Islamophobia, the hatred that has developed — I simply say that hatred is a waste of time [and] a waste of energy and saps the moral fiber of an entire community. Young people growing up together, understanding and proud of the diversity of their communities, achieves so much more…You can never compromise with intolerance. You can never compromise with racism.
Source: Al Jazeera by Gouri Sharma, 23 Apr 2019
The blood had flowed from the body of Gurdip Singh Chaggar.
The 18-year-old student was killed the night before in a racist attack in the west London district, which had recently become home to a large South Asian population, particularly from India’s northern Punjab state.
Grover, now 62, said: “The next day we went to the police station, surrounded it, made speeches and Southall came to a standstill. By the end of the afternoon around 5,000 people – men, women, Asians, Afro-Caribbeans – had gathered in a show of unity, solidarity and defiance. It was the first time this sort of protest had happened and it had a profound impact on Southall. That day, the Southall Youth Movement was born.”
The Southall Asian Youth Movement was a group of mostly young Asian men from the area.
In the months that followed Chaggar’s murder, they campaigned for more rights and an end to racial hate crimes and police brutality.
The movement led to similar action in other cities, including Bradford, Manchester and Sheffield – together they would come to be known as the Asian Youth Movements (AYMs).
But three years later, little had changed in Southall.
The far-right National Front group announced a meeting in the area on April 23, 1979. Police ignored pleas to cancel the gathering, which the community considered provocative, and a large anti-fascist march was planned for the day.
Various accounts attest to the police violence in clashes that followed.
A report by the Metropolitan Police, which emerged in 2010, stated that Peach was “almost certainly” killed by police but no one has ever been held accountable for his death.
Tuesday marks 40 years since the demonstration and Peach’s death.
Campaigners have called for a new inquiry into his death.
To mark the anniversary, events will be held in Southall and other parts of the country to commemorate Peach, Chaggar and this significant period in Britain’s race relations history.
“For those of us who were part of this lived experience from 1973 onwards, we didn’t know what the history was, we just asserted ourselves because we were born or raised here and were not going back to our motherlands,” said Grover.
“In order to take on the struggles against racism nationally, we realised the need to link up with other communities who were going through similar experiences of racism. The youth movements didn’t last very long, but it was a very pivotal moment.”
“We really believed that Britain didn’t do us a favour by bringing us here – it exploited our poverty to bring us here, then it exploited our labour when we got here and then made us live in slave-like conditions.” – Tariq Mehmood, writer
While figures suggest South Asians have been living in the UK for around 400 years, the community grew significantly in the post-war years as Britain faced a shortage of workers, including in factories and the health service after World War II.
From 1971 to 1981, the estimated number of South Asians more than doubled from 478,000 to 993,000.
“The first wave of workers were men who came without their families. But in the 1970s, as new immigration laws set in and people started to settle, things started to change. There was an increase in racism in the workplace, housing and for young people in schools,” said Anandi Ramamurthy, author of a book on Britain’s Asian Youth Movements and a lecturer in media at Sheffield Hallam University.
Tariq Mehmood, a writer, was one of the founding members of Bradford’s Asian Youth Movement. Born in Pakistan, he arrived in Britain with his father in the late 1960s.
“We grew up with a system of bussing. This meant that we were taken out of the areas where we were living and sent to school five or six miles away because they didn’t want too many non-white children in one area,” he said. “We were subjected to a lot of violence.
“The violence got so bad during secondary school that they used to release all non-white children half an hour before white children so we wouldn’t get attacked. So my very first impression of this country was the intensity of the racist violence against us.”
Grover had arrived from East Africa at a young age and lived in England’s northwest, but left after he was attacked by a racist gang.
By the mid-1970s, tensions were peaking.
“We were seeing the growth of the far right, a number of racist murders, the calling for the repatriation of black and brown people and protests at airports,” said Grover. “There were scaremongering stories in the tabloid press blaming immigrants for a shortage of jobs and housing, and for bringing diseases into towns.”
Grover said: “We were setting ourselves apart from our parents’ generation. We were saying we will not tolerate violence against us. We were mostly Sikh, Hindus and Muslim men.
“We began setting an agenda which was more youth-orientated and using music and culture to get our messages out there. There were lots of sit-ins in colleges, meetings with the Home Office and the police, with almost all of them ending with absolutely nothing given to us.”
Ramamurthy said that while some women were involved, the movements were male-dominated.
“There were gender dynamics within the community and some women weren’t as easily allowed to go out. There were some women, Manchester, for example, had a small women’s group who did a lot of work on immigration but there were degrees of machoism. It wasn’t that they didn’t want women, but many women did find it hard.”
Three years after Peach’s death, in 1981, there were race riots in around 30 cities across the UK and Southall was once again in the news.
“A skinhead band wanted to play at a local pub called the Hambrough Tavern,” Grover said. “Again, we wrote to the police saying we need to deal with this before it gets violent but there was no response and the group still came. We mobilised, there were some scuffles and the pub ended up being burned down.”
That same year saw a groundbreaking case involving Bradford’s youth movement, which was focused on, among other issues, hostile migration laws and family immigration.
In July, another provocative march through the city was being planned by far-right groups.
“We didn’t think the police were going to defend us or our areas, so we made petrol bombs. In the end, the fascists didn’t come but we were arrested on charges of terrorism,” said Mehmood.
During the trial, Mehmood and his 11 co-defendants argued that they had a right to defend themselves against racists coming into their community.
The case drew widespread support and the defendants were eventually acquitted. The case of the Bradford 12 made legal history, enshrining self-defence into English law.
But by the early 1980s, the movements had started to disintegrate.
In Southall, a new police commissioner began a new era of multi-intelligence profiling in areas known for their resistance, according to Grover.
“This crushed the Southall AYM,” he said.
Other factors such as government funding were also at play.
“What started to emerge was the division of groups into different ethnic categories like Gujarati and Punjabi for government funding. It was a very clear strategy on the part of the government and a deliberate attempt by the state to split the groups up,” said Ramamurthy.
Despite being fractured, the AYMs paved the way for the birth of self-organised groups in the years that followed, including anti-domestic violence organisation Southall Black Sisters and Southall-based anti-racist charity Monitoring Group, of which Grover is the director.
“I was playing cricket and not really interested in race, but the period totally politicised me,” said Grover.
“It was a period of youth assertiveness in anti-racist politics and a new defining era in race relations in Britain. What it encapsulates is fearless and audacious self-organising amongst black and Asian communities.
“The far right were a big threat, and the legacy is how we can learn from that past experience to develop resistance in our communities today, especially as we see the same fascist forces re-emerging in Brexit Britain.”
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