The Revolutionary Communist Group has always emphasised the link between fighting racism in Britain and fighting imperialism internationally. In 1984, when one of our own members, Viraj Mendis, was threatened with deportation to Sri Lanka, we set up the Viraj Mendis Defence Campaign (VMDC). Over the next four and a half years, the campaign brought together communists, anarchists, Christians, liberals and others, and was supported by thousands of individuals, hundreds of organisations and, eventually, the majority of the parliamentary Labour Party. In 1986 the campaign organised a march from Manchester, where Viraj was based, to the Home Office in London, drawing in support from all the cities in between as it went. Later the same year, having lost his legal appeals against deportation, Viraj went into sanctuary in the Church of the Ascension in Hulme, Manchester. Over the next two years the church became a focus for anti-racist and anti-deportation campaigning and VMDC hosted major conferences and demonstrations.
Unity between different anti-deportation campaigns was crucial and, as Viraj points out in the film, every one of the people who can be seen carrying the lead banner in the 1985 Manchester march against racism and deportations subsequently won their immigration cases – except one. On 18 January 1989 the police raided the Church of the Ascension and arrested Viraj; within days he had been deported to Sri Lanka. Subsequently he was able to return to Europe and now lives in Bremen in Germany.
