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Tariq Ali
Political activist, journalist, historian, filmmaker and public intellectual known for his anti-racist campaigning in the 1960s and 1970s
Place of birth
Date of arrival to Britain
Date of time spent in Britain
1963–present
About
Tariq Ali was born and grew up in Lahore, the son of journalist Mazhar Ali Khan and Tahira Mazhar Ali Khan. An activist in her own right, Tahira was the daughter of Sikandar Hyat Khan, Prime Minister of Punjab between 1937 and 1942. In his late teenage years, Ali was already politically active. Ali arrived in Britain in 1963 to study philosophy, politics and economics at Exeter College, Oxford University. While at Oxford, he joined the Oxford Humanist Group. In 1965 his peers elected him President of the Oxford Union.
During the 1960s Ali was a leading voice of the New Left and has long been associated with The New Left Review as a writer and editorially. He also rose to prominence as an anti-colonial and anti-imperial campaigner. His stance against the war in Vietnam and debates with political figures such as Henry Kissinger further raised his profile as a public intellectual and he was part of the large-scale demonstrations against the war in London in 1968.
From 1968 to 1970 he edited Black Dwarf newspaper before founding Red Mole, which in turn was replaced in 1973 by Red Weekly, both organs of the International Marxist Group, of which he had become a member in 1968. As part of the IMG, he also joined the International Executive Committee of the Fourth International. He stood for the IMG in the 1974 general election in Sheffield Attercliff. In 1981 he quit the IMG for the Labour Party and supported Tony Benn’s campaign for deputy leader. In 2003 Ali was part of the national committee of the Stop the War Coalition, a pressure group to stop the invasion of Iraq.
Throughout his career, Ali has written novels, screenplays and non-fiction. He lives in north London.
The Coming British Revolution (London: Jonathan Cape, 1972)
1968 and After: Inside the Revolution (London: Blond & Briggs, 1978)
Can Pakistan Survive? The Death of a State (Harmondsworth: Pelican Books, 1983)
Who's Afraid of Margaret Thatcher: Tariq Ali in Conversation with Ken Livingstone (London: Verso, 1984)
The Stalinist Legacy: Its Impact on Twentieth-Century World Politics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984)
The Nehrus and the Gandhis: An Indian Dynasty (London: Picador, 1985)
Street Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties (London: Collins, 1987)
(with Howard Brenton) Iranian Nights (London: Nick Hern, 1989) [play]
(with Howard Brenton) Moscow Gold (London: Nick Hern, 1990) [play]
Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree (London: Chatto & Windus, 1992) [novel]
Necklaces (London: Bill Bourne, 1992) [play]
(with Sue Watkins) 1968: Marching in the Streets (London: Bloomsbury, 1998)
Fear of Mirrors (London: Arcadia, 1998) [fiction]
The Book of Saladin (London: Verso, 1998)
(with Howard Brenton) Ugly Rumours (London: Nick Hern, 1998) [play]
Masters of the Universe? NATO's Balkan Crusade (London: Verso, 2000)
The Stone Woman (London: Verso, 2000) [fiction]
The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity (London: Verso 2002)
Bush in Babylon: The Recolonisation of Iraq (London: Verso, 2003)
A Sultan in Palermo (London, Verso, 2005) [fiction]
Conversations with Edward Said (London: Seagull, 2006)
Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope (London: Verso, 2006)
Rough Music: Blair Bombs Baghdad London Terror (London, Verso, 2006)
The Leopard and the Fox: A Pakistani Tragedy (London: Seagull, 2007) [play]
The Assassination: Who Killed Indira G? (London: Seagull, 2008) [play]
A Banker for All Seasons: Bank of Crooks and Cheats Incorporated (London: Seagull, 2008) [play]
The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad (London: Verso, 2011)
(with Hilal Bhatt, Angana P. Chatterji, Pankaj Mishra and Arundhati Roy) Kashmir: The Case for Freedom (London: Verso, 2011)
The Extreme Centre: A Warning (London: Verso, 2015)
Uprising in Pakistan: How to Bring Down a Dictatorship (London: Verso, 2018)
Winston Churchill: His Times, His Crimes (London: Verso, 2022)
You Can't Please All: Memoirs, 1980–2024 (London: Verso, 2024)
Image credit
© Remaking Britain: South Asian Connections and Networks, 1930s – present
