The integrationist response to racist violence
Soon after Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, Joseph Hunte,
46 Chairman of the CCoTH, informed the police that the situation regarding racist violence in Tower Hamlets ‘was becoming serious’.
47 In response to the escalation in such violence, the CCoTH established an ‘investigation clinic’ to explore its ‘root cause’ and ‘to give the Pakistani community assurance[s] that efforts are being made to prevent further incidents’.
48 Working alongside local churches, synagogues, mosques, youth and community workers, teachers and personnel firms, the CCoTH set out to ‘work with the police in any matter relating to community problems’ and to be ‘a panel through which guidance could be given to any member of the community to assist them in getting justice for any act of violence against them’.
49 The ‘investigation clinic’ also had a clear educative function, namely to help ‘the Asian community … understand the role of the police by carefully examining incidents they have reported to the police and seeing that such reports are properly dealt with as far as the powers of the police allow’.
50
In other words, the ‘investigation clinic’ was responsible for implementing an assimilatory agenda and securing consent for the police’s ‘way of doing things’. However, the idea that the local ‘Asian community’ had to be educated with regard to the role of the police was a message that was repeatedly reinforced in highly racialising terms. For example, Chief Inspector Ernest Roberts, ‘the police liaison officer for community relations’ in Tower Hamlets, made the following claims:
They still have the village headman idea, and think we are discriminating if we do not immediately find and punish someone after an incident.
51
And:
These people know the police in India or Pakistan, where they are tougher than we are. So if we don’t act in this tough way, they believe it’s some kind of opting out.
52
This discourse was also reinforced by Hunte, who seemed to suggest that there was something in the nature of the Pakistani residents that made them more susceptible to racist attacks:
I get the impression that the West Indians are quite liked. Their language and behaviour patterns are the same. But the Paks [sic] are introspective and more remote. And they are never willing to resist. If the skinheads tried it on West Indians they would give them a rough old tumble.
53
Overall, the integrationist approach to tackling racist violence was underpinned by prejudices that were themselves contributing to the further racialisation of local residents of Pakistani descent. As a result, the integrationists helped to deflect attention away from white racism and towards the need to familiarise racialised minorities about the due process of the law, and the need to ‘fit in’ like other minority groups. This approach was infused with assimilatory, if not colonialist, ‘civilising’ undertones, evidenced in calls for the local Pakistani population to be educated as to the role of the police in the ‘Mother Country’.
The local Labour MP for Stepney, Peter Shore, was responsible in part for the tenor of the integrationist response. The scale of the problem of racist violence was such that Salman Ali – Pakistan’s High Commissioner – was forced to intervene. Immediately after the murder of Tosir Ali on 6 April 1970, Salman Ali visited the East End of London ‘to let the Pakistani community there know that he was very concerned about the attacks on them’.
54 He also informed journalists that discussions had been held with the CRC and that the matter ‘would be put before the Home Office and the authorities concerned’. The High Commissioner also spoke at a local meeting attended by over 100 people, including Shore, the police and Joseph Hunte. Shortly after Salman Ali’s visit, Shore wrote to the Home Secretary, James Callaghan, on 14 April to inform him that between February and April 1970, there had been at least twenty racist attacks in Tower Hamlets.
55 In addition, Salman Ali met with the Home Secretary who attempted to reassure the High Commissioner that ‘special efforts’ were being made to ‘seek out and arrest’ the perpetrators of racist violence.
56 During the same meeting, Callaghan also insisted that ‘the effects of single incidents should not be exaggerated’.
Following a progress report and meetings with representatives of the local Pakistani community, Shore released a press statement claiming that he ‘was confident that the police can handle this problem’ and that he had ‘no doubt of their anxieties and determination to handle it effectively’.
57 Three days after Shore’s press release, the NFPA called a meeting at the Grand Palace Hall. Attended by Shore, the police and representatives from the PWA, the meeting drew up a ‘five-point programme condemning violence and appealing to the police and local authorities to take action’.
58 On the 20 April, the national CRC, Shore and Ian Mikardo (MP for the neighbouring constituency of Poplar) held an ‘exploratory meeting’ at the House of Commons, attended by representatives of the PPP and the UCPA.
59 Despite Shore’s previous public statement of faith in the ability of the police to ‘handle this problem’, the minutes from the meeting noted that ‘There was a feeling that the police have not been fully cooperative in answering calls for help.’
60
Throughout April 1970, regular local meetings were arranged to create a dialogue between the local MPs, the police, the CCoTH, the Inner London Educational Authority, local churches and representatives from the NFPA and the PWA.
61 The first meeting was held on Saturday 18 April, shortly after a series of ‘skirmishes’ between young Pakistani men and ‘skinheads’ in Brick Lane. These ‘skirmishes’ included over fifty white youths marching through the market, smashing the windows of Pakistani-owned shops and leaving three Pakistani youths requiring hospital treatment.
62 Two white youths and two Pakistani youths were arrested, yet only the latter were charged (with carrying an offensive weapon). Despite the concerted efforts of Hunte, Shore, and certain Pakistani political leaders to try to tackle the problem of racist violence through political structures and conventional channels, there was still much resistance to recognising the depth of the problem and its potentially devastating consequences. For example, at the first meeting, it was noted that:
Some people felt that the problem was not one of colour so much as hooliganism by bored and socially deprived youngsters … In general it was felt that too much publicity for skinheads would only encourage them and might lead to similar incidents elsewhere.
63
It was also argued that it was ‘essential to improve communication between the Pakistanis and the host community’ and to ‘restore Pakistani confidence in the capability of the law enforcing authorities to protect them’. In essence, such discourse diminished the part played by racism in informing such acts of violence and instead directed attention back towards members of the Pakistani community themselves and the need for them to have greater confidence in existing local structures and their capacity to resolve these tensions.
The discussion of the integrationist attempts to address racist violence shows that some degree of consent to the discourse of law and order and the authority of the police was achieved through a coming together of the political establishment, the CCoTH, the police and selected sections of civil society (e.g., local religious leaders, the NFPA and the PWA). However, some Pakistani political leaders were becoming increasingly frustrated with the integrationist response. Laying claim to a formal membership of 30,000 people, the PWA, the NFPA and the Demonstration Committee of Multiracially Committed Pakistani Associations, organised a national rally in London on 24 May 1970 under the banner ‘STOP SKINHEAD HOOLIGANISM, DEMAND EFFECTIVE MEASURES, SUPPORT MULTIRACIAL DEFENCE’.
64 This rally marked both a departure from what hitherto had been a political repertoire based on meetings, lobbying politicians and letter-writing campaigns, to a growing turn to the ‘politics of the street’. Just a few weeks prior to the march, Lutfur Rahman, Chair of the Stepney PWA, publicly broke with the consensus that it was vital that communication between the local Pakistani population and the so-called ‘host community be improved’:
We want the Home Secretary to issue a statement condemning this sort of thing … The police are just not interested … Repercussions among Pakistanis in Britain would be ‘outside of our control’ if the wave of Paki-bashing was not halted … We are in fear for our children and womenfolk … we love London. We don’t want it turning into a battleground like some American cities.
65
The organising of the rally and Rahman’s claim that repercussions would be ‘outside of our control’ were most likely a recognition of the challenges posed by the emergence of an autonomous anti-racist approach to the problem of racist violence and harassment.
The autonomous response to racist violence
As mentioned earlier, 1968 marked in many ways a turning point in race relations. According to Sivanandan:
Blacks by 1968 were beginning to fight as a class and as a people. Whatever the specifics of resistance in the respective communities and however different the strategies and lines of struggle, the experience of a common racism and a common fight against the state united them at the barricades. The mosaic of unities … resolved itself … into a black unity and a black struggle.
66
Organisations such as the UCPA, the Racial Action Adjustment Society and the Black Panthers became increasingly concerned with challenging fascist violence, police brutality and documenting and fighting the cases of those who had either been framed or beaten up by the police.
67 At the local level, between 1968 and 1970, a number of black radical, anti-imperialist and socialist groups entered the political field in the East End to support the ‘politics of the street’.
68 Following Tosir Ali’s murder, newspaper reports noted that the ‘area’s troubles have attracted the militants. Black Panthers, the [UCPA], the Third World Party and the [PWU] … none of which are based in East London.’
69
Immediately after Tosir Ali’s murder, the PPP and the UCPA distributed leaflets explaining that they had approached Peter Shore MP with sixteen complaints of assaults and robbery on Pakistani people living in the Aldgate East area and that Shore had ‘refused to help us’ as well as noting that the ‘police in the area too have failed[us]’. The leaflet also stated that ‘IF THE LAW CANNOT PROTECT US, THEN WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO DEFEND OURSELVES’.
70 Another PPP-UCPA leaflet distributed around the same time declared:
Self-defence = No other Choice … We therefore have no choice but to organise ourselves to prevent further racist violence. Our policy will be tit for tat. There will be a tooth for a tooth. Criminal assaults will be met by just retaliation. Racists beware!
71
The PPP, which claimed to have 275 members, announced that it would also be setting up karate and judo classes in Whitechapel to enable members of the local Pakistani population to defend themselves. Supported by George Joseph of the UCPA, Abdul Hye told the national media that the PPP ‘is a defensive organisation. We have no intention of fighting or killing anyone, but if it comes to us, we will hit back.’
72 For Hye and his allies, the call for self-defence groups to be formed was a direct response to the failure of the police and the broader political establishment to respond effectively to the entrenched and persistent racist violence in Tower Hamlets:
We have lobbied our MP, Mr. Peter Shore, 15 times about this problem in the East End, culminating in the united demonstration we had to the House of Commons with the UCPA last Monday. We saw Marcus Lipton [Labour MP for Brixton], Peter Shore, and Mr. MacNair Wilson [Conservative MP for New Forest]. The next day [Tosir] Ali was murdered. We have given our documents to Mr. Shore who has promised to take action … We plan to distribute 1,000 leaflets explaining our situation to the British people, and to hold a demonstration. If the authorities still fail to act, we will organise street patrols … We shall have no choice but to organise self-defence.
73
With little faith in the political establishment, Abdul Issaque of the PWU later argued that it would leave attempts to seek reform to the ‘recognised welfare associations [e.g. the NFPA and the PWA] …They write letters and sit in offices. Our aim is the protection of our people.’
74 Amidst the calls for self-defence formations, Ekra Huq, president of the Pakistani Student Federation, said that the patrols would be ‘multiracial’.
75 As the discussion thus far demonstrates, both the integrationist and autonomous anti-racist responses to racist violence lobbied the political establishment, organised public meetings, demonstrations and marches, and collected information that documented the scale of racist violence inflicted upon Pakistani people. However, it was the calls for self-defence that would prove to be the source of tension.
As noted above, PPP and PWU responses to racist violence in Tower Hamlets built upon the multiethnic network of black radicals, anti-racists, anti-imperialists, socialists and some trade unionists forged around the time of Powell’s speech. Immediately after Tosir Ali’s murder, the Chair of the WPPE, Alex Hart wrote to Peter Shore inviting him to a local meeting being organised by the PWU with the support of the BPA and the ‘No.1 Region’ of the Transport and General Workers Union.
76 On Sunday 19 April, up to 1,000 people attended this meeting where they heard organisers pour scorn on the meeting that Shore, the NFPA and the PWA had held the previous day.
77 What is more, newspaper reports noted that the NFPA had been branded ‘Uncle Toms’.
78 The meeting also heard messages of support from Clive Jenkins, the General Secretary of the white-collar union, the Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staff, and Ted Johns, a local Labour councillor in Tower Hamlets. Johns, had in fact, resigned the whip of the local Labour Party claiming that ‘we have got to get on the streets and stop this violence’.
79 At the end of the meeting, thirty to forty men stepped forward and volunteered to take part in self-defence patrols. Sibghat Kadri, Chairman of the PWU’s legal committee, told the meeting:
Peaceful we may be, but cowards we are not … Pakistanis will not take the law into their own hands, but will adopt self-defence … Even if you kill in self-defence, it will not be murder … Enoch Powell is the godfather of what is happening here.
80
Throughout April 1970 around 200 people took part in self-defence patrols.
81
Supported by the Black Panther Movement, the BPA and the INLSF, up to 2,000 people marched from Speakers Corner in Hyde Park to Downing Street on Sunday 3 May 1970.
82 During the march, Edward Davoren of the INLSF told reporters that ‘the Pakistani cause was the same as the Irish cause’ and that he hoped ‘to form Irish-Pakistani defence groups in East London’.
83 Before the rally set off, speeches connected the local struggle against racist violence and harassment to broader international struggles, claiming that: ‘Racialism was a function of capitalism and demanding that Pakistanis see their fight as an aspect of the world struggle of oppressed classes.’
84
Once marchers were on their way to Downing Street, the police re-routed the demonstration so as to avoid clashes with the Monday Club – a far-right anti-immigration organisation affiliated to the Conservative Party but which also drew support from members of the NF. Despite the re-routing, Monday Club supporters attacked the march shouting ‘go home’ and ‘Down with the Reds’.
85 As the march passed the Irish Embassy, demonstrators chanted ‘British Imperialism – Out, People’s War – Yes’, ‘Black Power, People’s Power’, ‘All Unite – Black and White’ and ‘Disembowel Powell’.
86 Once the demonstration reached Downing Street, Abdul Issaque of the PWU submitted a memorandum outlining that ‘every peaceful method to relieve their suffering’ had been pursued and that they had ‘reached the point where they realise that the only answer lies in self-defence for their safety and welfare’.
87 Issaque, a ‘self-confessed Marxist’, also claimed that:
I do not believe it is only skinheads who are causing this violence. There are fascists behind it all, and they are organised … These are Powellites, National Front supporters and National Socialists. These are different groups but their aims are the same – to keep Britain white … we have no faith in the Metropolitan Police. Many of them are racialist and they are allowing atrocities to go on. Callaghan refuses to meet us face-to-face and discuss this.
88
Though there were, as shown above, areas in which both the integrationist and autonomous approaches used the same tactics, they both followed long-established patterns of seeking recourse through official channels, petitions and letter writing to local and national state officials. They organised public meetings, demonstrations and marches, and collected information on racist attacks (because of the failure of the police to act) in order to lobby the Home Secretary and local MPs. But they held very different views on the police and the state. By the spring of 1970, the PWU and the PPP had shifted away from trying to engage the state, coming to see its institutional apparatuses, such as the CCoTH and the police, as ineffectual in the battle against racist violence and harassment. Alongside their allies, they openly countered the integrationist approach, contending that the racist state could not be reformed.
Whereas the integrationists sought to defend varying aspects of the state, the alliance of Black Power and anti-imperialist anti-racists sought to tackle both the dominant values and apparatuses of law and order and challenge the established forms of Pakistani leadership in local civil society. In contrast to the integrationist approach, the PPP and the PWU articulated a more sophisticated understanding of the nature and scale of wider societal racism. In so doing, they demonstrated how ‘Powellism’, the 1968 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, fascist political agitation and everyday racist violence and harassment were interconnected by a shared desire to keep Britain white. However, the call to form self-defence squads was seen by both liberal and conservatives as inflammatory and was widely condemned by those who had coalesced around the so-called ‘moderate’, ‘peaceful’ integrationist approach.
For Peter Shore, the PPP and the PWU were simply ‘making the situation worse’, while the NFPA claimed that Abdul Hye of the PWU was ‘irresponsible and dangerous’.
89 Joe Hunte, Chair of the CCoTH, argued that ‘We don’t need vigilantes … we don’t need stirrers’,
90 and, like many others, he also sought to position those arguing for self-defence tactics as ‘outsiders’:
Pakistani tough-liners are coming in from outside Tower Hamlets … They come from North London … We don’t want trouble … I can’t find a single vigilante-type in my whole area … It’ll be over my dead body. Self-defence is one thing. But these people talk about more than that … If you get a group of Pakistanis who want to oppose a so-called group of attackers, you’re going to get gang warfare.
91
As well as stating his opposition to ‘vigilante groups patrolling the streets’ on religious grounds, Mukhta Ahmad Mir, former president of the PWA, opposed the socialist politics of the PPP and the PWU:
there are dangers when those with political ambitions start organising people … I am speaking on behalf of Moslem Pakistanis, and our religion is a powerful weapon against communism.
92
Similarly Raja Mahmudabad, President of the League of Overseas Pakistani Organisations called for a ‘multiracial approach’, warning that:
In such a situation where racial prejudices are allowed to pervert the vision and fanaticism and false militancy [are] allowed to run riot … such a course [i.e. self-defence patrols] is also alien to the spirit and practice of Islam … [The Pakistani community] should never invite or provoke attacks by an ostentatious display of force.
93
In addition to facilitating the debate between the integrationist and autonomous approaches, sections of the national print media were also critical of those mobilising around a black political identity. For example, an editorial in the
Daily Mail posited that ‘Black Power will only breed white resentment … The role for all of us, black and white, is to work together.’
94
In summary, the rebuttal of self-defence tactics was a feature of how law and order came to be understood and experienced through race. For some integrationists, both self-defence measures and the philosophy of socialism that underpinned it were deemed incompatible with a Pakistani identification. At the same time, they, along with parts of the right-wing press, denied the multiethnic basis of the autonomous approach while making their own pleas for multiracial unity. By framing Black Power, the PPP and the PWU as extremist outsiders, these attempts to condemn self-defence tactics also sought to reassert the authority of the NFPA, the PWA, the local MP, the police and the CCoTH. Moreover, the view that self-defence tactics would only risk further violent disorder shifted the focus away from police ambivalence and the failure of the state to halt rising levels of racist violence and harassment. To some extent, the integrationists considered ‘vigilantism’ to be the more immediate and pressing social problem as they attempted to delegitmise self-defence as a political act by arguing that it breached the dominant values of law and order and the authority of the police. In this sense, the term ‘vigilantism’ was used to translate a political issue into a criminal one, thereby making it easier to uphold the liberal order while at the same time imposing legal sanctions (e.g., arresting the victims of racist violence and harassment when acting in self-defence). In short, self-defence was delegitimised as mindless violence.