On 9 September in Birmingham, two white people attacked and raped a Sikh woman in broad daylight. ‘You don’t belong in this country, get out’ were the words she heard during the assault. The Birmingham branch of Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! stand in solidarity against this blatantly racist, gendered attack. The attack has prompted a local anti-racist response, but a fight had to be waged against reactionary elements for this to take form.
On 13 September a hastily announced public meeting sought to frame the attack as a ‘Sikh-community only’ issue. At this meeting, which was addressed by various groups including Guru Nanak Gurdwara Smethwick, Sikh Youth UK, and a West Midlands Police officer, racist ‘Pakistani/Muslim grooming gang’ rhetoric was free-flowing and unchallenged from the outset, while the topic of anti-racism was shirked or discredited as unviable. FRFI, the Indian Workers’ Association GB (IWA GB) and members of the public intervened at this event.
Our supporters directly drew attention to this hypocrisy: spreading factually incorrect information about another minority community was doing the work of the racists, not to mention self-defeating. The IWA (GB) also drew attention to the fact that anti-racism had to form the crux of any ensuing campaign. FRFI comrades faced aggression and an attempt at intimidation after the meeting from the supporters of those we called out.
However, the sheer number of the 100 or so in the room who dissented helped to force the issue into local anti-racist solidarity. The majority of these contributions came from women, in contrast to the scheduled speakers, who were all men. One member of a local masjid made a contribution of support, but claimed that he had been told it was a ‘closed meeting’ when he had earlier enquired about attending. He faced some racist abuse from a minority of the congregation, which was quickly shouted down by many other attendees. A day later on 14 September, a march was held by the Gurdwara and affiliated groups. A local migrant rights activist who had called for a Unity Vigil at the 13 September meeting was reportedly turned away from this march.
On 16 September a ‘Unity Vigil‘ was held in Birmingham by local migrant rights campaigners, anti-racist groups and women’s rights groups. This women-led show of unity saw a long line of women and non-binary people speak, at the park near to where the incident had occurred, with groups like the Birmingham Black Sisters expressing the importance of understanding state racism as being at the root of street attacks. These attacks include the recent air-rifle attack on a nine-year old girl in Bristol as well as taxi drivers who suffered broken ribs from an attack in Wolverhampton. Supporters of Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! spoke at this event drawing attention to the state’s role in racist migration policy, the police’s institutional violence against women, the attacks on trans people by the courts, the purpose of racialising sexual abuse in covering up for state violence, and the need to organise. Sikh Youth UK posted on their Instagram account urging the Sikh community to boycott the Unity Vigil, whilst unsigned WhatsApp messages were circulated claiming this was the victim’s family’s wishes. Despite this, many Sikh individuals and representatives attended, as well as a cross-section of Birmingham’s various global majority groups, demonstrating the desire for revolutionary anti-racist politics within Birmingham, something we have also noted within the Palestine solidarity movement.
FRFI supporters also spoke at a subsequent event on 20 September hosted by IWA (GB) on ‘collective action together’, an event which again saw predominantly women panels and speakers from local groups, such as the Birmingham Black Sisters and Black Lives Matter. Our supporters explained that racist attacks have been inspired by celebrities and politicians who are directly on the leash of the British state, and that we should not be scared or hurried into abandoning our revolutionary principles for this or that electoral party, that there can be no shortcuts towards building our working class base. We made the point that our anti-racist history, of the Black People’s Alliances, the early Asian Youth Movements, the Pakistani Progressive Party and various other Black Power groups, show us that the opposite is true, that the movements which had an immediate effect on the streets were those that aligned away from the imperialist large unions, the British state and parliamentarianism, towards a truly anti-imperialist understanding of racism. We analysed how the state had actively worked to isolate the radical elements in these groups, whilst funding ‘community leaders’ who quell any thirst for anti-racist, radical avenues.
The partition of British India in 1947 and the 1947 UN partition of Palestine which preceded the Nakba in 1948 have key differences. But what is common is the primary role of British imperialism in the bloodshed of millions. In the case of India, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs were pitted against each other to dull the possibility of a mass workers movement taking state power, as well as creating a then-loyal Pakistan which would disrupt progressive and Soviet influence in the region on behalf of the imperialist powers. Women were the main targets of violence across state lines.
This legacy lingers and morphs in the modern day because of rampant violent Hindutva and casteist ideology promoted by India’s ruling class, which also filters into a ‘peripheral’ bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeois separatist movements among the Punjabi diaspora. The very real violent legacy of the Green Revolution, state violence against Sikhs in India and Britain, and the modern desertification and impoverishment of Punjab, caused by western and Indian agribusiness monopolies and facilitated by an enthusiastic Indian bourgeoisie, must find voice in a revolutionary movement. This voice has to include the diaspora who face racism in Britain, and this voice must be linked to the repression faced by their kin back home, many of who become economic migrants to Britain taking up the worst paid jobs in construction and ‘off-the-books’ labour. In places like Birmingham, they are often exploited by a well-off Indian petit bourgeoisie.
We need only look to the Bangladeshi liberation war of the 1970s, the Kisaan-Majdoor (farmer-labourer) movement at the start of the 2020s, the ongoing Maoist/Naxalite insurrection in the red corridor of India, or the strong anti-racist trend of South Asians in Britain, for examples of the fightback against imperialism.
Any rhetoric which serves to sever the ties of solidarity between Muslim and Sikh workers must be challenged. This report makes comrades aware of attempts to police diaspora communities from within, which often stay hidden.
Our supporters finished our section at the 20 September IWA (GB) event with a reading from an Adivasi women’s revolutionary poem to make the point that women’s liberation is not a paternalistic affair co-opted by men, but a joint struggle against capitalism and imperialism. We must continue to fight against violence towards women wherever it is found, furthering an anti-racism that is robust and fiery, uncompromising in its ferocity and clear-eyed in its righteous indignation.
