Anti-Immigrant Riots in Britain

Events from history are a reminder that racism exists in many forms, often dressed with the biases and policies that make minorities their victims. Intellectuals think these sickening riots have exposed the British social model as a fraudulent sham. Rioters clashed with police and smashed windows of hotels housing asylum-seekers from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, chanting “Get them out” and “Stop the boats”—a reference to refugees arriving in Britain in small dinghies. Shops, including Asian-owned businesses, have been vandalised and looted. They have also pelted mosques with rocks. They had the plan to target asylum centres and immigration lawyers. A black man was punched and kicked by a large group of white men after the far-right riot in Manchester. Riots have been spreading in Northern Ireland as well as in Southport, Liverpool, London and other cities in England.

To share their concerns about racism in Britain, Indian Workers formed the Indian Workers Association (IWA), which eventually helped members of the Asian community voice their opinions.

In June 1976, an eighteen-year-old boy named Gurdip Singh Chaggar was murdered by racist thugs in Southall. When a young man named Suresh Grover, then twenty-two years old, saw the pavement pooling with blood, he asked the policeman who stood by the scene what had happened. In response, the policeman dismissively said: “it was just an Asian.”

Commenting on Chaggar’s death, John Kingsley Reid, former chairman of the National Front (NF) party, said: “One down, a million to go.” Notorious for demonstrating its racist propaganda, the National Front, which received the support of conservative local authorities, organised flag marches to provoke the Sikhs in Southall. At the time, it was widely believed the NF did all the dirty spadework for them.

The National Front Party announced a meeting at the town hall on 23 April 1979. Over ten thousand residents raised a petition to cancel the meeting. However, it was ignored—a disrespect to Chaggar’s memory.

The next day, the National Front meeting was scheduled for 7:30. Police officers began policing the area at 11:30 AM, and the protest started with a small group at 1 PM. The police had already arrested two or three people in the first hour. The police report claimed that the protesters were “militant,” and the police used more force to contain the protestors in the next hour. The crowd grew angrier and began reacting to the police.

Violence had broken out; police were chasing protesters with truncheons, and as per police reports, the protesters were throwing missiles, hand-made bombs, bottles, and bricks. However, the police force was criticised for using strong-arm tactics and violent force against the protest that was initially peaceful.

The force deployed to counter the protest that day comprised 2,876 police officers. The Special Patrol Group (SPG), a specialised force of Metropolitan Police notorious for violent intervention, had joined to suppress the protest.

In all this chaos, a special needs teacher from New Zealand, Clementine Blair Peach, who was trying to get away from the violent protest, became a victim of police violence. He took several blows from the police club and suffered severe head injuries to which he later succumbed. The local people guarded Peach’s body until the chaos subsided, and he was carried to the Dominion Centre, half a mile from where he was attacked.

The murder of Peach elevated a local issue to a national story and met with a public outcry.

“The Southall protests started a bigger political debate that demanded equality for Britain’s immigrant minorities. It ensued a process of reflection over the entire nation that would bring about reforms through the Race Relations Act.

[Contributed by MC]

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Frontier
Vol 57, No. 8, Aug 25 - 31, 2024