When the US civil rights activist Malcolm X witnessed the racism endured by British Asians during a visit to Smethwick in the West Midlands in 1965, nine days before his assassination, he said: “This is worse than America. This is worse than Harlem.”
The short time he spent in Marshall Street, where a group of white residents were attempting to prevent black and Asian families from buying houses, and at a racially segregated pub, where he was refused service, drew international attention to the West Midlands town that the year before had elected the Conservative MP Peter Griffiths after he used the slogan: “If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Liberal or Labour.”
The anti-racism campaign that attracted Malcolm X to Smethwick was spearheaded by Avtar Singh Jouhl, who has died aged 84.
It was Jouhl who showed the US civil rights leader the smokers’ room of the Blue Gates pub, leading to both being refused service, and who proclaimed the visit a “shot in the arm for the anti-racism struggle in Britain”.
The town’s colour bar meant that Asian workers in the foundries, who were generally from the Punjab region of India, had to suffer the humiliation not only of separate drinking areas, but of separate toilets in the foundries where many of them worked, of being barred from jobs open only to their white colleagues, and of being refused service in barbers.
Jouhl, as general secretary (1961-64; 1979-2015) and national organiser (1964-79) of the Indian Workers’ Association (IWA), challenged trade union members, factory owners and publicans to end this racism.
When it came to breaking the colour bar in the town’s pubs, the IWA’s tactics were similar to those used by the Freedom Riders in the US in the previous decade. White university students were enlisted to order drinks, then hand them to British Indians, such as Jouhl. The landlord would invariably eject them, while the students challenged the eviction. The IWA then used evidence of these actions to successfully oppose the publican’s licence when it came up for renewal.
This targeted campaign led to discrimination in pubs being outlawed in the Race Relations Act (1965) and paved the way for Britons of Indian heritage to become publicans themselves and set up what are commonly now known as “desi pubs”. Today, even the Blue Gates has a British-Indian landlord.
Born in Jandiala, a village in Punjab, India, to Lakha Singh Johal and Banti Kaur, illiterate farmers, Jouhl – who later altered his surname to avoid his family being targeted for his activism in India – was the only child out of four sons and one daughter who was sent to school. He was a radical from an early age, agitating against fees at Khalsa high school and objecting to enforced child labour.
In 1953 he went to Lyallpur Khalsa college in Jalandhar and the following year, when Jouhl was 16, his father died. The same year, Jouhl married Manjit Kaur.
Four years later he was sent to Britain to pursue his education, intending to go to the London School of Economics to study history. First, though, he went to Smethwick, where his brother Gashi was living. He moved into a small two-up, two-down house with him and up to 15 others of Indian origin, who were all drawn to the foundries that filled the town with smog; Jouhl said that hanging clothes to dry on washing lines would often leave them black.
Among his first experiences was a pub visit with his brother and friends. “I opened the door and there were all white men. I asked why and they said, ‘Gaffer [the landlord] doesn’t let us drink in that room.’ It was the colour bar operating, and it was in every public bar in Smethwick and Handsworth.”
Jouhl started foundry work at Shotton Brothers as a moulder’s mate, labouring along with other Asian and black workers. According to Jouhl: “The moulders were all white and their wages were double labourers’ wages while they were doing much lighter work. One day I happened to read the payslip of the moulder – his salary was about £17 and my wages were about £7.50.”
He joined the Communist party soon after arriving in the UK, then discovered the IWA, a workers’ collective that campaigned against racism, through a leaflet in a food parcel delivered to the house.
After seeing the plight of his fellow British Indians, he decided not to leave for his course that autumn, but to stay at the foundries. Manjeet joined him in 1960.
Following a stint at Gotham Foundry, Jouhl joined the Midland Motor Cylinder Company’s Birmid works. His first battle there, for which he organised strikes, was with the unions themselves, insisting on the deletion of a clause stating that only someone with a “sufficient command of English” could be shop steward.
At the same site, Jouhl successfully took on the separate toilets for white and non-white workers with direct action – encouraging members to use the “white only” facilities.
Jouhl took a year out in 1967 to work for the IWA newspaper in London, then returned to the Midlands to work at various Birmid foundries. While at Dartmouth Auto Casings during the 70s and 80s he ensured the IWA was at the forefront of anti-racist campaigns, and helped to organise the sending of six coaches to the picket lines during the miners’ strike.
After 30 years, Jouhl retired from the foundry industry and moved to Solihull. In the mid-90s he became a lecturer at Birmingham Trade Union Studies Centre. In 2000 he was made OBE.
Manjit died in 1981. Jouhl is survived by two sons, Paul and Jagwant, a daughter, Mindi, and seven grandchildren, Jaspal, Amanprit, Sundeep, Inderjit, Sabrina, Sasha and Pavundeep.
• Avtar Singh Jouhl, anti-racist campaigner, trade unionist and lecturer, born 2 November 1937; died 8 October 2022
