IWA Background

The Indian Workers' Association - Birmingham

The formation of the Indian Workers’ Association in Coventry from 1938 onwards was the outcome of a number of activities involving immigrant workers that spans not only Europe but also the Americas. The Ghadar party was formed in 1913, made up of Indian migrants to California. Ghadar means rebel and this party was formed to oppose British colonialism in India and fight for migrant rights on the West Coast of the USA and Canada. According to IWA members a letter from a Ghadarite was send to England from India in the early 1930s to encourage the formation of a similar organisation (Gill 2011). Workers’ associations arose as pre-party organisations throughout Europe in the late nineteenth century, often as fronts for fledgling Communist parties to represent workers outside of the trade union movement. Trade unions would often not represent the broad requirements of labour (as they developed from skilled workers organisations) and so workers associations were alternatives.

Thus it was appropriate in the context of imperial Britain, where the Communist party in India was banned, due to fear of the spread of revolution following the Russian Revolution, that a group would form under the mantle of an association. It was in Coventry in 1938 that the first IWA was set up. In a recent analysis of intelligence reports of the pre-war period, Ahmed (2012: 75) notes that the IWA attracted interest due to its connection with workers:

“The [IWA] is essentially a working-class movement which makes no serious attempt to attract the Indian intelligentsia or the English sympathiser.”

The main focus of this pre-war IWA was to support Indian’s resident in the UK and to fight against British colonial rule. The early IWA went into decline in the post-war period, largely due to the euphoria of independence and the sojourner nature of the committee members, many of whom went back to India (Visram, 2002). Though there was no direct contact in terms of personnel, the leaders of the new IWA that began to form in the late 1950s were certainly aware of the political legacy and history of organising in the UK. The new IWA was led by Jagmohan Joshi, a charismatic speaker and a poet of some repute, up to his untimely death in 1979. As Gill correctly notes: “The IWAs continued the tradition ofrevolutionary poetry and folk songs in the diasporic, post-colonial setting. Now itwould be used to resist racism, exploitation by British factory owners and helpmaintain a sense of self in an alien environment” (Gill, 2011: 35).

Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s in Britain’s industrial centres, IWA’s were set up, so branches were to be found in Birmingham, Southall, Leeds, Huddersfield, Bradford, Glasgow, Wolverhampton, Leicester, Gravesend, Nottingham and Derby. Since their inception various attempts were made to create a single national unified Indian Workers Association, but due to various political factions forming, two main centres of activity emerged in Southall, London and Birmingham. Two organisations, The Indian Workers Association Great Britain (IWA GB) and the Indian Workers Association, Southall (IWA) became the main focus for organising the defence of workers rights and in particular supporting anti-deportation campaigns and the anti-racist movement. In 1965, it was the president of the IWA GB, Avtar Jouhl who invited Malcolm X to Smethwick in Birmingham to see how racism was an issue in the UK and to link to the civil rights movement in America. Malcolm X was visiting Britain at the time to highlight the situation of African-Americansand so was called to comment and show solidarity with Asian and African-Caribbean workers in Britain, who were also facing racism.

In the 1970s IWA branches across the country participated in general industrial action as well as fighting for the particular issues that were facing migrant workers. Discrimination in employment, housing and street racism were all issues facing migrant workers in the 1970s.

This time represented the peak of party membership as well as activity. In terms of political mobilisation the emergence of Asian Youth Movements across the country took up the mantle of organising against racism, whilst the IWAs became more embedded in mainstream British politics, through engagement with organisations such as the Commission for Racial Equality as well as the Trade Union Congress(Ramamurthy, 2013).

During the 1980s the IWAs took on a greater welfare role amongst the multicultural communities that formed inner city England. The Shaheed Udham Singh Welfare Centre in Birmingham, the Indian WorkersAssociation centre in Southall, the Shaheed Bhagat Singh centre in Leicester and IWA Day Centre and Community Organisation in Bradford are the material legacies of the organisation. Each of these groups maintains the concern with immigrant welfare and campaigning for workers rights, offering advice surgeries and general support. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, like many other left wing organisations, the IWAs went into a period of decline as a political and mobilising force. Narrowing down to community organisations, they nonetheless continue to play a significant social role in the communities where there centres are based, with a shift in focus to offering welfare rights and immigration advice. Former members of the IWA became embedded in mainstream local politics, such as the Ealing MP; Piara Khabra.

Along with the changes in political ideologies, the organisations did not manage to reproduce themselves through the generations. One aspect of this was the change in class composition of the British Indian community, as it became increasingly middle class and moved from the areas where the IWA’s centre was based. Internally, the IWA leadership from the outset remained overwhelmingly male and over the years aged. This myopia over gender issues was reflected throughout the organisations history and the progressive outlooks that were offered by the IWAs, was seriously marred by this lack of interest in feminist politics and ultimately undermined their efforts at even making any shifts within the communities that they came from. Generation and gender ultimately marked the organisations decline.

The lasting legacy of the Indian Workers Association in Birmingham is the Shaheed Udham Singh Welfare Trust, which owns its own premises in the Handsworth area of Birmingham and offers Welfare advice and activities as well as organising public meetings, film showings and maintains links with left wing organisations in India and the subcontinent.

 Bibliography

 Ahmed, R. (2012). Networks of Resistance. In R.Ahmed, and S.Mukherjee, South Asian Resistances in Britain, 1858-1947,London: Continuum:., pp.70-91.

Gill, T. (2011). The Indian Workers’ Association Coventry: Political and Social Action, 1938-1990. (unpub.) Phd Thesis, Warwick: University of Warwick.

Gill, T. (2013). The Indian Workers’ Association Coventry 1938–1990: political and social action. South Asian History and Culture, 4(4), pp. 554-573.

Ramamurthy, A. (2013) Black Star: Britain’s Asian Youth Movement, London: Pluto Press

Visram, R. (2002). Asians in Britain: 400 years of history. London: Pluto Press.