Abstract
This article tells the hitherto untold story of how different Pakistani organisations mobilised in response to racist violence and harassment in the east London Borough of Tower Hamlets (1968–1970). In telling this story, the authors analyse the problematic nature of official and public understandings of, and responses to, racist violence, and how it distorted the lives of racialised minorities. Drawing on original archival research carried out in 2014, this piece identifies the emergence of two distinct political repertoires from within the Pakistani community: the integrationist approach and the autonomous approach. The integrationist approach involving the Pakistani Welfare Association (PWA) and the National Federation of Pakistani Associations (NFPA) tried to address the problem through existing local state ‘race relations’ apparatuses and mainstream political channels, while at the same time re-establishing consent for the police as the agents of law and order. In contrast, a network of Black Power groups, anti-imperialists and socialists led by the Pakistani Progressive Party (PPP) and the Pakistani Workers’ Union (PWU) challenged both the local political leadership and the authority of the police in Tower Hamlets, while also undermining the stereotype of Asian people as ‘weak’ and ‘passive’. In recovering this lost episode of resistance to ‘Paki-bashing’, unleashed in the aftermath of Enoch Powell’s inflammatory speeches, this essay makes a contribution to the history of autonomous anti-racist collective action undertaken by racialised minorities in Britain.
Highlights
This article tells the hitherto untold story of how different Pakistani organisations mobilised in response to racist violence and harassment in the east London Borough of Tower Hamlets (1968–1970)
Our research shows how this approach reinforced many of the presuppositions underpinning official and public conceptions of racist violence, and implicitly helped to resecure consent for the authority of the police and the traditional values of ‘law and order’
1968 was a time when Powell’s speech provided a lightning rod that sparked an escalation in racist violence, it marked the moment when Black and Asian politics were profoundly transformed by anti-colonial struggles and the Black Power movement in the United States
Summary
This article tells the hitherto untold story of how different Pakistani organisations mobilised in response to racist violence and harassment in the east London Borough of Tower Hamlets (1968–1970). At the same time, racialised minorities have never been merely the ‘passive objects’ of such racism.[1] There is a long history of racialised minorities collectively fighting back against violence and harassment through physical resistance, political mobilisation and cultural action.[2] Recent research has focused on the distinct social movements, based in second-generation youth, against constant racial harassment (including by the police) at a time when the National Front was gaining support during the mid-1970s.3 This archival research explores the antecedents of those campaigns through analysing the mobilisation by Pakistani organisations and their allies against a rising tide of racist violence and harassment in the East End of London between 1968 and 1970. Recent research has demonstrated the detrimental consequences of such racism on peoples’ long-term physical and mental health.
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