Mukhtar Dar

MD: I mean, the Asian youth movement in Sheffield, so we...simultaneously we had the Bradford 12 support group. So here we were supporting the Bradford 12 in this case. But then what happens is in Sheffield, in Darnall, you know, in I think 1981, a restaurant got attacked. You know, racists had gone into the restaurant, had a meal and then refused to pay for the meal, saying that the Pakis there were here as servants and subservient, and should give them free meals. And when the waiters challenged them, they went off and smashed...turned the tables, went outside, got more friends, came back with iron bars and bricks and smashed the restaurant. The manager, I think it was the manager, Ahmed Khan, called the police. The police station was only five to ten minutes’ drive from there. The police took half an hour to arrive. And when they come, lo and behold, it was the racists that were allowed to walk away scot-free, and the restaurant owner and the waiters were all arrested and taken to the police station. So, when this news spread and we found out, we thought, well, actually, we can't be supporting the Bradford 12 if in our own backyard, one of our restaurants gets attacked, we need to now respond. So, you know, we went to visit the restaurant. This...we got the information, and then basically within a day or two the Sheffield Asian Youth Movement came into being. Now, originally it was called the Asian Youth Council, because some of our members were youth workers, so they were quite influential, and they said, 'Oh, we should call ourselves the Asian Youth Council'. But then within a month or two, we then found out that actually behind our back, they were leveraging funding from the council and saying to the council that if you don't give this money, then these youths that we're keeping a lid on will…then there'll be riots in Sheffield. And once we found those records, I said...we then said no way, right. And so they were ostracized. And we changed the name from the Asian Youth Council to the Asian Youth Movement in line with what was happening up and down the country, you know, in line with Southall, the Southall Youth Movement, and also the Bradford Asian Youth Movement. The Bradford Asian Youth Movement, then their members began to come to Sheffield. And they were obviously far more...they were one of the early Asian youth movements, and they began to impart their knowledge, their experience of organizing and say to us...because we began to organize a demonstration to highlight the attack and support the waiters. And the Black Federation was fundamental in those early days in coming and supporting us, and teaching us how to organize and the rest of the stuff. And...you know, and the Asian Youth Movement...Sheffield Asian Youth Movement, as I say, was multi-ethnic in terms of the members. As I said, Gujaratis, Sikhs, Muslims, all religious backgrounds, all, you know, Bangladeshis, Indians, Pakistanis, Kashmiris. And we also had honorary white members, you know? And so, that was our back...and we had, you know...unlike some of the Asian youth movements, which were male...mainly men, and very macho, because life on the streets was harsh and rough and stuff, but we had female members. You know, Alka, who was a student from Leicester studying in Sheffield. And it's really important that those women are not made invisible because it is...you know, given the kind of macho environment and given the kind of racism...sexism in the communities, it was...took a lot more for our women comrades to be involved in the Asian youth movement. Jayshree and stuff like, you know, another Bangladeshi woman member of the Sheffield AYM. And then, you know, when all of this stuff was happening, attacks taking place and all these things, I was getting more and more involved politically. It got to the stage where it was too dangerous for me to be living at home with my parents. So I left home, and...because I didn't want any repercussions on my parents. And we, by that time, were becoming very well known in Sheffield. You know, we were not only fighting racism, you know, we were also challenging community leaders in our communities, and fighting for democratic accountability, so-called community leaders, who the police and the council would always run off to these community leaders, you know, and...who were like mediators. So...you know, so we would intervene and expose the community leaders in meetings. So, we really became embedded within the community, you know? And so I left home. And we had a house in Pitsmoor in Sheffield, and it's owned by one of our members, [inaudible], and that house became known as the Asian Youth Movement house. And it's where we organized, it's where we lived. In the basement, we had weights and training facilities. Upstairs, we changed one of the rooms into an office. We had...you know, we kept leaflets, folders, files, newspaper cuttings, everything. Highly organized. We learned from the Left. And we had a fascist folder where we had the names of all the fascists, where they lived, where they worked, all that stuff. We had a plant on the police liaison panel. The police...you know, by this time, there was a real militancy growing amongst Asian Afro-Caribbean youth. The long hot summers erupted in riots. What they called riots, what we call rebellions. And in response to that, the police were getting tooled up, and they created police liaison committees. And these were ways to infiltrate the communities and find out who the activists were, with the help of community leaders. But we had a plant on the liaison committee which allowed us to get minutes and stuff like that. So, you know, we...so, all of this was co-ordinated from this base, which was the Asian Youth House. And our codeword for that house was 'the bus shelter'. So we would say, 'We'll see you at the bus shelter at 7 o'clock'. That way nobody knew what the bus shelter was, or what else to...and we were in our early 20s.

MD: So, during the Asian Youth Movement days, when the attack took place on the restaurant, Ahmed Khan, we planned to organize a big demonstration to highlight the attack, and also to ensure justice was done, and Mr Khan and the waiters who were arrested by the police were released, and the charges were dropped. In organizing the demonstration, we tried to mobilize as many people. And one of the communities that was important to us was the Afro-Caribbean community in Sheffield. So, we went to the markets in Sheffield, which is where the Afro-Caribbean youth used to congregate, and we approached them to come and support the demonstration. And they said no, they refused to support. And they said that actually, our community leaders from the South Asian community had let them down in their hour of need, and in fact been the ones that reported them to the police. So, there's a trust deficit, and we had to address this. So one of the things that we did was that we then went into the blues, into the Afro-Caribbean areas, in Sheffield, in Havelock Square, which is where my dad had come to stay when he first came to this country. So, in Havelock Square, there were some blues. You know, the blues are the shebeens. And these are when the Afro-Caribbeans came to this country, and because of racism discrimination, they couldn't go into the mainstream pubs and clubs, so they set up their own shebeens where they played music, and they would have tables where they’d sell drinks and stuff. So, in Sheffield, the second-generation Asians, we went to a number of blues, Spital Hill, Firth Park and in Sharrow Lane area, and we would hang around in these blues. And it’s by being in those areas that we began to get to know members of the Afro-Caribbean community. And it was in those areas that we actually met people, you know? And in the...you know, so this is late at night, this is early hours of the morning, and you've got reggae music playing, it's in the basements, in the cellars. And here you've got all sorts of characters, from ladies of the night, pimps, drug dealers, as well as activists and people like that. And rubbing shoulders and being in those environments and being with people who are on the margins society, we got to know some of the key players. And it was through that, that we began to build trust. And one is the reggae music at the time really resonated and echoed our experiences through its messages of peace, love and unity, but also the social conscious lyrics of people like Bob Marley, Dennis Brown, Peter Tosh, and all the kind of tunes that were coming out. So, reggae music was played an important role. But also, the term Black as a political colour, as opposed to colour of our skin, really resonated. And the Asian youth movements were inspired by the civil rights movement in America, but also the Black Power...the Black Panthers and the Black Power movements. And a lot of the books we were reading at the time were about the civil rights movement, and Malcolm X in particular was a real inspiration to us. And the lessons from the Black Panther Party, the self-help organizations, the communications, all of those things is something that we kind of looked at, embraced and tried to emulate as Asian youth movement. And the term Black was a very important term to us. We saw ourselves as Black. The magazine of the Asian youth movement was called Kala Mazdoor, and Kala means black. The magazine of the Bradford Asian Youth Movement was called Kala Tara, Black Star. And all our articles, we would say Khali Lok, Black people, and Khali communities. So, we are...and even though we were organized as Asians, we saw ourselves as Black. And Black was a political colour. And behind the inner-city Black barricades, we found common cause with our Afro-Caribbean brothers and sisters.

MP: So, you were telling me about the Sheffield Asian Youth Movement. And you were also telling me before, in our first interview, about how when you came to England, you were extremely patriotic, and that was the patriotism that came from living in Pakistan and growing up in Pakistan. And you were astounded to see that there are a Sikh family living in your house. But later you've described in great, great detail about kind of the way in which there was a lack of fragmentation amongst the kind of diversity of like South Asians, you all came together to work together. Could you tell me a little bit about that, how that felt for you, and that kind of change in thinking?

MD: Yes. From being a nationalist, very patriotic, slightly bigoted, I, you know, came full circle, and began to understand that actually, you know, we had no choice but to come together as South Asians, irrespective our ethnic identity or our religious identities, we had a common problem that we were facing, and that was one of racism. But also, it led me to read, understand, put the historical jigsaw together, and understand actually that the...how partition came about. And so, you know, so, from being patriotic to understanding partition, the role the British played, the East India Company, and also that aside from the likes of Nehru, Gandhi and Jinnah, there were other forces at play that fought against the British. And the more revolutionary forces that we aligned ourselves to as South Asians was a member of the Asian youth movement, people like Bhagat Singh, Udham Singh and the Ghadar Party and many others, Jhansi Ki Rani and people like that. So, we had to uncover, find that history ourselves, and understand, and that led me to then understand, you know, Pakistan, security state, and why Pakistan presents a particular perspective. Later on, I went to Kashmir in India. So, the whole partition, the whole ethnic...the identity of being Pakistani, South Asian, these are things that are constantly in flux. And I've done a lot of work around those. Politically, but also as an artist, you know, around, you know, all of those. There are a multitude of identities that we have, and all of these are social constructs, and they're constantly evolving and in flux. So, you know, from being a Muslim to being Pakistani, Paturi, Punjabi, South Asian, Black, Brummie, all of these are identities. And depending on the context, you know, one comes to the fore, or goes to the back, so...

MD: The...I think why I'm doing this interview is that I think, you know, we...our generation stood on the shoulders of giants. You know, and as I say, Aijaz Kaleem was somebody that inspired me was a mentor. I think that, as I said before, the Pakistani community, young people in the Pakistan, the Muslim community, you know, need to understand that they are only the current phase of a long struggle. And one of the failures of the PWA is that, you know, we were too precious about our archive. You know, and it's not in the museums. The Indian Workers' Association archive is in the Birmingham Library, it's in the museum. Our archive is in people's homes. Some of those people are no longer around, they're dying, they're dead. It will just get dumped in skips. And it's really important that our lived experiences, the visions that we had, the most inspired moments that we had, the people that inspired us, our politics, that is preserved, it's documented, it's transcribed and it's archived so that young people can understand that this is their history, it's part of their history. And hopefully it's something that they can learn from. Because, you know, at the moment, you know, I go on demonstrations in support of Palestine. You know, I was just set up...I'm involved in the Kings Heath weekender in support of Palestine. Again, all the venues are free, all the art is free. And I believe in building independent...as I said before, independent political but also cultural movements. So, you know, young people are shouting slogans on these demonstrations which are religious slogans, Allahu Akbar and stuff. And we would never shout those slogans, because the Palestinian struggle is not a religious struggle. There are Christian Palestinians. And whilst there is...I appreciate and understand the vast majority of Palestinians are Muslims, and there is an Islamophobic element to the persecution that they’re experiencing with the likes of mosques and stuff, but nevertheless, it is not a religious struggle, it's a national liberation struggle, as was Kashmir, which I talked about earlier. And for all of these reasons, I think that why I'm doing this interview is to talk about the fact that our generation and what we tried to do is to bring people together through a secular perspective, which may not be applicable in times of Islamophobia, but it's an important part of our history. And political Blackness is an important part of Black history, both British history. And, you know, our stories are anti-establishment, and the establishment will never tell our stories. You know, and we were...for too long, we were really wary of museums because our experience of the colonial period is that the British would always document, administer. And some of that’s come back to bite them as my son doc...you know, found out about his ancestors, indentured labourers. But there was a fear of institutions, you know, of museums and of libraries, you know, because that's where, when we were hunted down, when we were...you know, when they separated our skin from our bones, and they put our bones in museums and mummies and all that stuff, right, not as human beings, these institutions were places of loot and plunder, and, you know, uncivilized places. And, you know...and we were...we didn't want to be associated with them. But it's important that our history is told and it’s preserved, and it's accessible, and particularly the Pakistani Workers' Association, the Asian Youth Movement. Because a lot of people are not aware of this history. You know, and Asians are doing very well now, you know, and they're incorporating with...our Prime Minister is Indian, you know, and, you know, Maggie Thatcher was a woman, but that didn't, you know, mean that women became liberated. And so ethnics are now in the Houses of Parliament and in Downing Street, but we are still...as we learned then, that our struggle is based on class politics. So that's why I want to do this interview and have it preserved, so that our stories, our hidden stories, our contributions, our achievements, you know, are told and preserved for generations to come.

• Bradford 12

• Black People’s Alliance
• Southall Youth Movement

Entry credit

Laura Owen