Established in response to racist violence against their community and as an alternative to older community leaders, the Southall Youth Movement (SYM) was an organisation founded by young South Asians in Southall, west London. Since its foundation in 1976, SYM has been committed to protecting young people in the community through self-defence and direct action.
The SDS did not infiltrate the SYM, though it may have been reported on by HN41 , who was present at the 1979 Battle of Southall, and whose written reports have not been disclosed by the Undercover Policing Inquiry.
Core participant Suresh Grover was one of the group’s founding members.
The primary focus of SYM by Special Branch appears to be the group’s involvement in the 1979 Battle of Southall, where they were perceived to have been leading a vanguard against the police. Although the SDS failed to infiltrate the SYM, the 1981 MI5 draft report titled ‘Subversive Aspects of Racialist Activity’ referenced purported collaboration of the SYM with the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP) during the Battle of Southall.
History
The catalyst for the founding of the SYM was the murder of the eighteen-year-old Gurdip Singh Chaggar by white youths on 4 June 1976. Immediately before the murder, Chaggar had been racially abused by two white teenage girls in the street, which developed into an argument. Their boyfriends later confronted Chaggar and began pushing and shoving him in the street. Frightened of being beaten up, Chaggar ran but was chased and then stabbed in the stomach, falling opposite the Dominion Cinema in the centre of Southall.
As Chaggar was murdered outside the Dominion Cinema in Southall, which was run by the Indian Workers’ Association (Southall) (IWA(S)), the killing was seen as a direct attack on the Asian community.
This was met with spontaneous outbreaks of criminal damage, with cans and stones thrown at cars by Asian youths. That night, the police responded by calling in reinforcements and started systematically stopping and searching Asians. This strengthened the feeling that the police were less concerned with arresting Chaggar’s murderers than policing the Southall Asian community.
The IWA called a meeting at the Dominion Cinema to formulate a response, demand an inquiry and plan a march through Southall. The outcome proved wholly unsatisfactory to the younger attendees.
‘This Racist Murder Will Be Avenged’
Leaving the meeting and hearing that several other youths had been arrested, the younger members began a spontaneous demonstration from the Dominion Cinema to the Southall Police Station. 400 mostly Asian young people staged a mass sit-down protest outside the station, demanding their comrades’ unconditional release, and threatening to burn down the station if the police did not acquiesce.
They were released only after the IWA(S) leaders had secured a promise from the police that the youths would not be charged. However, after their release, the youths were later charged with criminal damage. The Southall Youth Movement was founded soon after. It would be self-organised and would organise self-defence units as a means of protecting the community from the racists and the police.
According to one of the founding members of the SYM, they often used covert means to obtain intelligence on the racists in and around Southall. For this purpose, the SYM recruited a white colleague into the National Front so that the community would know where and when the group was meeting, enabling intervention.
When confronting the racists, to keep racism off the street, SYM would arrive in force at meetings of the National Front at local pubs. Alongside these actions, the SYM was also involved in local education projects, intervening in the community where successive Conservative and Labour-controlled Ealing Borough Councils had left the area deprived of funding and resources.
In 1977, the SYM squatted a building on 12 Featherstone Road and converted it for their own use as a youth centre. In collaboration with other youth centres, it also provided sports, recreation, and welfare facilities, as well as advice on housing and employment issues. The SYM later set up an Indian youth club on Tudor Road.
The SYM had a discernible presence in the Battle of Southall in April 1979, in which Blair Peach was killed. This was a ‘police riot’, which began after the Conservative Ealing Borough Council allowed a National Front meeting to go ahead at Southall Town Hall, despite having no official electoral representation in the area. While other organisations treated this event like a demonstration or a protest, the SYM considered their involvement to be one of community defence against the racists and against the massive police presence that enabled the racists.
Following the Battle of Southall, the SYM was involved in raising legal fees for their members arrested, and built connections with the SWP through their Friends of Blair Peach Committee, which campaigned for justice following Peach’s death.
Sources
Anandi Ramamurthy. Black Star: Britain’s Asian Youth Movements.
Campaign Against Racism and Fascism. Southall: The Birth of a Black Community.
Balraj Purewal. Southall Youth Movement 1976-1984.