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Aftab Ali
Facilitated the migration of thousands of lascars and campaigned to improve their work rights
Place of birth
Date of arrival to Britain
Date of time spent in Britain
July – August 1939
About
Although Aftab Ali never settled in Britain, he was important in organizing lascars there. Furthermore, his work in the late 1940s and early 1950s made it possible for thousands of migrant workers to settle in Britain.
Ali worked as a sailor in the 1920s, gaining valuable first-hand experience of the inadequate working conditions of lascars. This motivated him to work tirelessly for better working rights for South Asian seamen. In 1925 he became involved with the Calcutta-based Indian Seamen’s Union, soon becoming its General Secretary. In order to make South Asian seamen’s campaigns for better conditions more effective, he proposed to unite the various unions under the banner of the All-India Seamen’s Federation. He became its President in 1937.
He visited London in 1939 en route to the International Labour Organization’s conference in Geneva. Ali also participated in the Indian Workers’ Conference, organized by Surat Alley. Apart from London he also visited Dundee. While in London he was embroiled in the power struggle between Surat Alley and Krishna Menon. Suspicious of Alley’s Communist connections, he briefly supported Krishna Menon’s efforts in the East End of London and was considering Menon as the official representative of the All-India Seamen’s Federation. However, Menon quickly lost support among the lascar community and Ali switched his support back to Alley.
The work of Surat Alley and Aftab Ali was instrumental in breaking the deadlock between British ship-owners and striking lascars at the outbreak of war in 1939. Ali became Vice-President of the All-India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) in 1939 and was a member of the Bengal Legislative Assembly from 1937 to 1944. In 1941 he broke away from the AITUC. He was appointed Honorary Lieutenant Commander of the Royal Indian Naval Reserve in 1942.
After the partition of India, he moved to Pakistan and sat as an independent MP in the Legislative Assembly. He proposed that Pakistani seamen should leave their ships in British ports and settle there, adding to the small South Asian community already settled in Britain. In the early 1950s he formed the Overseas Seamen’s Welfare Association to campaign for the granting of British passports to distressed seamen and their families.
Ayub Ali, Nesar Ali, Surat Alley, Maulana Bashana, Dr Basu, Ben Bradley Hamidul Hoque Chowdury, Manfur Khan, Abdul Mannan, Krishna Menon, Suruth Mia, Tahsil Miya, Abdul Majid Qureshi, M. N. Roy, Reginald Sorensen.
Indian Seamen’s Union (Calcutta), International Labour Organization.
Address to Bengal Cabinet (Calcutta: Indian Seamen’s Union, 1937)
Broeze, Frank, The Muscles of Empire: Indian Seamen and the Raj, 1919–1939 (Bucharest: International Commission of Maritime History, 1980)
Tabili, Laura, 'We Ask for British Justice': Workers and Racial Difference in Late Imperial Britain (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994)
Visram, Rozina, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto Press, 2002)
L/PJ/12/630, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras
L/E/9/773, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras
L/E/9/976, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras
Image credit
© Remaking Britain: South Asian Connections and Networks, 1930s – present
