Black Handsworth. Kieran Connell

established AYM took part in many of the same campaigns and shared broadly similar political perspectives with the older organization.

      A key plank of the ideology of both organizations was the adoption of a strategically wide political viewpoint that situated their contemporary activities in Britain alongside both historical struggles against empire and present-day global liberation movements. The IWA’s constitution included a commitment to waging “militant . . . struggle in every possible way against racialism and fascism,” for example, and to “support the national liberation struggles of the Asian, African and Latin American peoples.” Similarly, the AYM pledged to “fight against racism in all its forms” and “to support all anti-imperialist and national liberation struggles.”⁶³ References to historic anticolonial figures featured prominently within each organization. In May 1978, for example, the IWA opened a welfare center at 346 Soho Road, Handsworth’s main shopping street, less than two miles from AFFOR’s base on the Lozells Road. The center was named after Shaheed Udham Singh, the Indian anticolonialist who in 1940 murdered the lieutenant general of the Punjab in retaliation for his ordering of a massacre of more than three hundred people. Singh also featured in AYM literature, including in a 1986 calendar that attempted to situate the group’s activities in Handsworth in relation to historic anticolonial struggles. On one side of the calendar was a photograph of Udham Sing following his arrest for the 1940 murder; on the other was a photograph of a contemporary demonstration that had been organized by the AYM.⁶⁴

      Arguably the most significant convergence between the two organizations was their ideological commitment to black as a political color. Like the early ideology of the British Black Panthers, which was influenced by the radical politics of figures such as the Trinidadian writer C. L. R. James, within the IWA this came from a particular reading of Marxism. Avtar Jouhl, a senior member of the IWA in Handsworth who drank with Malcolm X on the latter’s 1965 visit to a Smethwick pub, argued that it was important for black and Asian communities in Britain to unite because he understood them to be at the forefront of a wider struggle against capitalism. Immigrant communities were regarded as playing a particularly important role in this struggle, both because of a recognition of the racism of parts of the white working class and from the conviction that black and Asian workers alike could draw directly on their own experiences of struggle against empire and colonialism abroad, as well as against contemporary racism in Britain. Unless black workers “raise their voice the solidarity will not be there. Black people’s unity,” Jouhl emphasized, “is of utmost importance.”⁶⁵

      For the AYM, a unified black identity was necessary because, according to one activist, it would allow “a solidarity to develop in the struggle against the racism of the street.”⁶⁶ The influence of Black Power on the group was emphasized by the decision of the Southall Youth Movement to use the clenched fist as its logo.⁶⁷ In the aftermath of the 1985 riots in Handsworth, both the AYM and the IWA were vocal exponents of the need for interethnic unity. Writing in the IWA’s journal Lalkar, for instance, Jouhl warned of a plot to “set the Asians and the Afro-Caribbeans at each other’s throats” and reminded his readers that his organization was “for the unity of the West Indians and Asian communities.”⁶⁸ Likewise, the AYM’s organ Asian Youth News—which on its masthead also displayed the Black Power clenched fist—called for its readers to see through portrayals of the unrest that presented it as the result of interethnic tensions. The police, the newsletter warned, were “trying to divide our community by making a pretence of sympathy towards the Asian shopkeeper”; people “should not to let this affect relations between Asian and African communities where they live side-by-side.” The AYM denounced the actions of community leaders in the aftermath of the rioting, who they claimed had “strong links within the racist Tory party” and were willing to “sell their communities for the reward of white status and privilege.” The AYM instead urged its readers to see what happened in Handsworth through a global lens. The United States and Europe were seen to “hold the world’s purse strings while our countries in Asia, Africa and South America are wracked with poverty and starvation.” The “black ghettos” of Handsworth, Brixton, and elsewhere, which “our parents and grandparents struggled for years . . . to build” and which in the 1980s had become scenes of violence and looting, should be seen from a geo­political perspective. They were, the AYM concluded, the inevitable result of the continued “racism of white domination.”⁶⁹

      Unlike the older generations active in the IWA, a significant number of AYM activists were university students and were influenced by political theory—specifically by the writings of Ambalavaner Sivanandan, who, having usurped the white establishment of the London-based Institute of Race Relations in the mid-1970s, set about radicalizing both the institute and its journal so that both adopted class-based, anticolonial campaigning stances. Just as Sivanandan viewed the multiculturalist programs of local and national authorities alike as a tool to “blunt the edge of black struggle,” Bhopinder Basi—who was active in the Handsworth AYM throughout the 1980s—understood that “the real purpose behind multiculturalism wasn’t to help us all live together better, but to create the necessary divisions in our communities so that an oppressive process could be maintained.”⁷⁰ Just as Sivanandan—writing in the Institute’s newly radicalized journal Race and Class—argued that Asian and Afro-Caribbean activists in the 1970s were united over their “parallel histories of common racism,” the Handsworth AYM in 1985 pledged to “work for black unity . . . against divisions based upon caste, religious, national and cultural prejudices.” The writings of Sivanandan were reproduced in AYM journals, and Basi even remembered quoting him directly at AYM meetings.⁷¹

      There was, however, often a schism within these organizations between an ideological commitment to a unified black platform and practical programs that focused on more ethnically specific themes. There was an ambivalence toward ethnicity in the politics of these groups. On the one hand, the appeal of Black Power corresponded with a commitment to secularism that saw many activists consciously refuse religious social codes. Yet on the other hand, both the IWA and the AYM printed much of their campaign literature in South Asian languages and used Punjabi slogans and musical instruments at demonstrations, while religious institutions inevitably continued to exert an influence through family and other ties. This ambivalence was to some extent embodied by Sivanandan himself, who cultivated ties with Black Power but in a celebrated essay simultaneously stressed the political potential of a particular community using its own traditions, cultures, and languages as a tool of opposition to British racism.⁷² Certainly by the late 1970s and 1980s, in its practical operations in Handsworth if not in its ideological approach, the IWA in particular had seemingly begun to function primarily as an advocate for the Indian community specifically.

      These tensions are apparent in the IWA’s internal correspondence. In one 1982 memo, for example, IWA members were reprimanded for their “absolutely disgraceful” behavior in not attending a specifically inclusive conference of all “the various organisations of black people in Britain.” But the same memo also called for members to be vigilant with respect to the threat posed by the Punjabi separatist group Akali Dal in British Sikh temples, an issue that could have had little or no resonance beyond the Sikh community.⁷³ By the 1980s such ethnically distinct themes had begun to dominate the IWA’s agenda. Thus, although the Udham Singh Welfare Centre claimed to offer welfare and legal advice on a broad range of issues relating to immigration, police harassment, housing difficulties, and passports, the latter had taken precedence because of the large number of Indian migrants who had arrived in Britain with forged papers, a situation that required bilingual negotiations with both British and Indian officials.⁷⁴ The IWA was able to distinguish itself from the services offered by white groups such as AFFOR by drawing on its expertise in issues that specifically affected South Asian and particularly Indian communities, in the native language of Indian immigrants. The group spoke out against other issues of particular significance within the Asian community. It took a leading role in campaigning against domestic violence, for example, issuing a leaflet expressing its concern “about the mounting violence against women” in Asian communities. In March 1986 it organized a public meeting to discuss these issues, with the intention of drawing attention to the presence of “feudal customs” within Asian communities, which, the IWA stressed, “must not be tolerated.”⁷⁵