Introduction

Over the last 20 years there has been a transformation in the way in which the South Asian community has been constructed by mainstream public discourse as well as in the way it has seen itself. The primary identity with which South Asians are framed in Britain today is a religious one. Academic scholarship research on South Asians has been focused within religious or cultural identity discourses (Ahmad 1998, Benson 1996, Handa 2003, Maira 2002, Sharma et al. 1996), its varied political traditions rarely recalled. The development of this book was motivated by the desire to give expression to forms of political and cultural identity amongst South Asians that hailed from a left and anti-colonial tradition but were rooted in a concern for the transformation of British society. In 2003, following the start of the 'war on terror', the ways in which South Asians were represented became further entrenched to the point where the representations felt so discordant to myself and many others of my generation that I decided to collect the history of the Asian youth movements (AYMs) in Britain in order to represent a different picture of South Asians – one in which identities were focused around a commitment to a set of political beliefs and values that had increasingly come under attack since the collapse of the Soviet Union. As someone who was involved in the anti-racist movement in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I knew many of those who had been active in the youth movements of the mid 1970s and early 1980s – a period which marked the height of the anti-racist movement in Britain. Constructing a digitised archive of extant materials was to leave these documents as proof of a different political identity and history. This book makes use of this archive as well as oral histories that I later collected to present the history of a movement that was the first organisation of South Asian youth in Britain, a movement that was driven not by religious or cultural identities but by a left tradition and anti-imperialism.

Such a history challenges the 'notion of coherent ethnic communities [that] lie at the heart of mainstream liberal understandings of racial and ethnic difference' (Rattansi 1992:12). Culture amongst South Asians has often been represented as unchanging tradition rather than a dynamic process impacted by political values. The AYMs expressed the concerns of a second generation of South Asians in Britain who did not have the same ties to their countries of origin as their parents. Their political activity was based on their desire to be accepted as equal citizens and to belong in Britain.

Youth are often understood as a symbol of change and of crisis' (Alexander 2004:24). Like all young people, those involved in the AYMs wished to shape their future. In the context of widespread racism and economic hardship suffered by black communities, the AYMs struggled to change their situation and address the major domestic and international political issues of the time. They wished to influence the development of British society, its culture and its politics. They were part of a host of black organisations that played a key role in the development of a broader anti-racist movement.

This period signified a shift in British society, which although never homogenous, had changed culturally and ethnically more rapidly as a consequence of post-war migration than in any previous period. Scholarship on the anti-racist movement in Britain has referenced the contribution of South Asian youth but there has been no systematic study of the movements to date (Ramdin 1987, Renton 2006, Shukra 1998, Sivanandan 1982). This book seeks to fill this gap and to analyse their pivotal contribution to the anti-racist struggle and to the political black identity that was forged in Britain at that time.

The late 1970s saw the children of the post-war migration, who were brought up in Britain, reach adulthood. The AYMs that formed in Bradford, Sheffield, Manchester, Coventry, Leicester, Birmingham and London, as well as in small towns such as Bolton, Burnley, Luton and Watford, were mainly made up of young men. While many members were of college age, they included individuals that were as young as 15 and others that were in their late twenties with experience of political organisation and the workplace. The AYMs did not have fixed age restrictions but wished to create organisations to represent the concerns of young South Asians and their families. In this sense they were organisations of youth but not simply for youth. They took up issues that impacted on their communities as a whole to respond to the climate of racism, which young people and their families experienced in a period of rising unemployment caused by an economic downturn that led to the decline of the manufacturing sector in Britain.

They understood racism as being more than prejudice and saw it as embedded in the power relations of the British State and imperialism worldwide. In Britain in the 1970s, the state through its policies fuelled the notion that black people were a problem. Interpreted as 'a problem', young children were being bussed to school outside of their areas. Immigration laws were also brought in to restrict black immigration which caused heartache with families divided across continents, and large sections of the police viewed men of African and Asian origin with suspicion. Life on the street was also more violent fuelled by frustrations over the lack of jobs that was felt by all sections of society. 'Paki-bashing' became a pastime for racists and fascists – an activity rarely and reluctantly investigated by the police. As organisations the youth movements cut across the stereotype of the Asian as victim that was so frequent in the press during these decades and provide an expression of self-help by the youth of communities who felt disenfranchised. In organising themselves as a movement, they were different to the other new social movements of the time, since they did not wish to challenge the importance of class as the basis for political organisation but to highlight the importance of tackling racism within the class struggle (Melucci 1980, Touraine 1981). The period was one in which black self-organisation was seen as a key method in the struggle against racism and the search for equality.

The AYMs present an image of the youth that challenges the image of them as problems and explores the way they mobilised and organised to change the conditions of their lives. While focused on Britain, these young people saw a direct connection between the global political context and their own experiences. They were inspired by both the anti-colonial struggles of the previous decades as well as the civil rights and Black Power movement in America. The global needs of capital had...