 both in the Anthropology Department and I was chair of the Center for Migration and Diaspora Studies whilst I was at SOAS now, very capably being run by Rubasello, who's organising the session. And I'm delighted to be able to introduce you, Professor Anand the Ramarothi, who's going to be talking today about something I think which is really important in our current moment. When we look around us, especially with what's been happening in the States overnight and we look at the impact of COVID-19 and the absolute hollowing out, if you like, the democratic institutions, plus the visceral ways that COVID is exposing the inequalities which are classed, raced and gendered in our current world. It would seem to be a moment where it's particularly important for us to look to ways that we can create alliances and solidarities, ways that we can come together to actually form an effective opposition and resistance to what's taking close to the current moment. So Professor Ramarothi, what she's going to be doing today is talking mainly about her book Black Star, which is looking at the Asian movements, the youth movements of the 1970s and 80s in Britain. Now, this was a period where racism was really rampant in this country, where state racism was getting particularly acute. Police racism was really making itself felt and it was also a time when the British left, I mean this sounds all too familiar I think to a lot of us, but a time when the British left was absolutely failing to really understand what was taking place and failing to show any sort of solidarity or meaningful sort of help in ways that were at all effective. So it really did end up being communities themselves that had to self-organize at this point in time. And the Asian youth movements are particularly interesting because they were formulated by a confluence of circumstances which consisted of the anti-colonial movements that were taking place, Black Power in the States and also what was happening in the UK. So I'm going to hand over to Professor Ramarothi now, she was going to be talking for about half an hour, 40 minutes, and then we'll open up the session to discussion and questions. So thank you. Right I'm going to share my screen. Can you see that everyone? Yeah? Okay well thank you so much for that introduction Parvati and in thinking about how I was going to start this this talk I was thinking about many of those same things that you've just referred to. And the fact that way we are living in a time of such sharp contradictions and conflicts and the pandemic in a way has brought out both the best and the worst in our society. It's sharpened our understanding of the impact of racism on our own lives and on those of our communities. We've also seen resistance and solidarity through the thousands who supported the cause of Black Lives Matter as well as intense compassion of the mutual aid groups who tried to support those deepest in crisis during the pandemic, well and still in the pandemic. One of the clearest messages that the pandemic has left us with is that racism kills and it kills us in many different ways through the stress on our bodies and minds, through placing us in positions of vulnerability at work on the front line, through the violence of the police, through state practices and policies that deny or marginalize our sufferings and our histories and the violence of the state through its immigration laws that leaves sizable sections of our communities vulnerable living as second-class citizens. The issues that have driven people to protest on the streets this summer are very similar to the issues that mobilized the Asian youth movements to organize 40 years ago. Racist violence, racist murders, the lack of dignity afforded to us in crisis, the denial of our contribution to society and the violence of the immigration laws. So I want today to think about what we can learn from those who organized then and what lessons they can teach us that will help us to work more effectively to create a just and an anti-racist society. I want it. I don't seem to be able to get it to. Oh, okay. So the Asian youth movements that emerged 30 years ago provide us with an example of the power of intermittent organizations and the possibility of fighting injustice and winning. And I think that's the important thing is they set out to win, not just to raise a concern. They were part of a wider anti-racist movement that spoke truth to power, gave people of color a chance to challenge discrimination in their own voice and expressed at its most effective moments the value of broad-based solidarities. The movements that formed in Bradford, Sheffield, Manchester, Coventry, Leicester, Birmingham and London, as well as in towns such as Bolton, Burnley, Luton and Watford fought against racist violence, the racism of the immigration laws, as well as the racism of trade unions and of employers. Adopting an anti-imperialist analysis, they drew attention to racism as an exercise of power that was acutely linked to the development of capital accumulation across the globe. Inspired by the histories of resistance to racism and slavery in the US, as well as anti-colonial struggles in their own communities and those across Africa and Asia in the 60s and 70s, they organized with the recognition of the link between their own struggles and those of people's resisting colonialism and imperialist expansion across the globe. As such, they provide an example of a movement that sought to create solidarities between oppressed groups that were non-sectarian, including individuals of all faiths and none. By the end of the 80s, however, the broad-based unity within which they had operated was fractured with the rise of identity politics and shifting geopolitical imperatives that led to increasing sectarianism. And the Black Lives Matter movement in some ways has made inroads to reclaiming a kind of a wider solidarity framework. So just for a little bit of background, the late 1970s in Britain saw the children of the post-war migrants reach adulthood, brought here by their parents having attended school in Britain. They had dreams and aspirations which were shattered by the discrimination in the various areas of their life. And most importantly, they were viewed as a problem by the state. And that happened really very much from the point when immigration laws with the 1962 Act, seeing them in a sense as being a problem and therefore this migration needing to be controlled. Many of the youth movements were formed in response to street violence. And the two pictures on the screen here relate to the moment when a South Hall youth movement was formed, the one on the right referred to the unrest that took place in South Hall at that point after Gurudeep Singh Chagas' death in 1976, which in a sense was a trigger for the youth to organise. They started to organise because they felt that the police, there was a kind of police in action. Nobody had been arrested, nothing was happening. There was a meeting that took place at the Dominion Centre, which was the centre run and established by the Indian Workers Association in South Hall. And the IWA asked, you know, said that the youth were trying to temper the feelings and said, let's wait for an inquiry. But the young people didn't want to wait anymore. They were determined that something had to happen. They marched to the police station. And two of them were arrested, at which point they had a sit-in outside the police station to demand the release of their their friends and comrades. And it was this was the point when they thought, right, we have to organise ourselves, we have to organise our own defence, if nobody is going to do this for us. There were other youth movements as well, that were, if you like, the organisation was triggered as a result of a murder, such as in 1978, with the death of Aldab Ali. In Bradford, slightly earlier, it was a bit different. So it wasn't so much a racist murder. But it was precipitated by the National Front, organising and marching through the streets of Manningham, where the Asian community lived. But it wasn't just the fascists coming to Manningham. It was also the response of the left that led to young people feeling that they needed to organise themselves. Because when they knew that the fascists were going to march, and they were going to hold a meeting in a school in Manningham, the Trade Council organised a march to the centre of Bradford to protest. But of course, this in a sense left Manningham in a very fragile situation. And the youth halfway through the march, realising this went back to Manningham, and determined to stop the fascists from organising their meeting in their community. And when I did interviews with some of the former members, you know, they described that this was what they described as the first time you could describe a sort of riot, if you like, in Bradford and police cars were overturned, etc., in order to say no. So in a sense, you can see these two forces, which Parvati referred to earlier, as these two kind of situations as triggering the need for young people to mobilise. While many of the members of the youth movements were of college age, they included individuals that were as young as 15 and others that were in their late 20s with experience of political organisation and the workplace. This was particularly the case in Bradford, where members, founding members had been involved in international socialists, IS, in militant, and in another left organisation, the revolutionary communist group. So they didn't have a fixed age restrictions. And they were there to represent not just the concerns of young South Asians, but also their families. So in this sense, they were organisations of use, but not simply for use, taking up wider issues that impacted their communities as a whole. They included descendants from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, as well as members of the South Asian diaspora from Malaysia, Kenya, and elsewhere. From the beginning, the AYMs recognise the importance of challenging both state and street racism. And understanding the root cause of racism is not simply hatred and prejudice, but an exercise of power. And as has already been emphasised, they drew inspiration from the Black Power movement and from other international groups. And they adopted a Black political identity. And you can see this in their literature, such as the magazine Kala Thara, produced by Bradford Asian youth movement, Kala Thara meaning Black Star and Kala Mazdour by Sheffield, which was formed around about 1982 Black Worker. And using things like the insignia of the Black Power fist. They, this kind of, this kind of identity, in a sense, didn't, they never saw as conflicting in any way with South Asian, you know, identity. They wanted to build and to respect their own linguistic and cultural origins, but also to create a much more broader based political solidarity with all those who had suffered as a result of colonialism and slavery. And you can see here as well some of their, some of their slogans that were really significant for them at the time, here to stay here to fight, come what may we are here to stay. So that that sense of having the right to be in Britain was a really important one, the sense of building solidarity, you can see as well through the benefit of two different campaigns working together, the new M8 and the Colin Roach defense campaign at that time as well. I wanted to, in thinking about how they worked and how they organised and what we can learn from them, I thought it was interesting to actually look in detail at the aims and objectives of the AYMs. And at this point, I should say that of course, we have to remember that the AYMs were all different. So every single town and city had different aims and objectives. Some of them were much more sort of formalised. These are from Bradford. And you can see actually here, the influence of organisations like the Indian Workers Association on these aims and objectives. In fact, Bradford before forming as the Asian youth movement, were organised as the Indian Progressive Youth Association for a year before the acceptance that a name like that was not really appropriate for a place like Bradford where there were many people that weren't Indian. They were thinking of it as Indian subcontinent. But it was too confusing, people didn't identify with it. And a year later, they reconstituted as the Asian youth movement. So you can see, you know, to promote the interests of young people from the countries of the Indian subcontinent, opposed discrimination based on race colour, sex, religion, promote equal rights, social and economic opportunities. To educate and show the youth the relationship between discrimination, inequality and the social system existing in Britain. So they were very much concerned about putting racism in that wider context of understanding and critiquing capitalism. And again, with point D, to recognise that the only real force in British society capable of fighting race and the growth of organised racism and fascism is the unity of the workers movement Black and white. So in their aims and objectives, we can see from the start, one is the way in which they were understanding racism. Two is the way in which they thought that the way in which they, if you like, unity, forms of unity could be built who they should be built with. And building links with the trade unions and political parties were was important. Although, although it's not listed here, in fact, in practice, they had a rule that you could not join a political party if you were a member of the Asian youth movement. Because what they didn't want was to any have any organisation, whether it was militant or RCG or whatever coming in and trying to take over the Asian youth movement, they wanted it to be an independent organisation that would then build alliances and have this kind of like broad based structure. So while they wanted to work with the trade unions, we can also see that they were critical of them so that they were recognising that those same organisations weren't free of all racism themselves. And so that it was important to struggle within them as well, to overcome the oppressions within them. And we can also see the wider issues such as supporting national liberation movements and such like educating people about the struggles in the subcontinent. So it was very much framed, not just about looking at racism in Britain, but understanding it within an international context and thinking about the ways forward to struggle against that. So thinking in a sense about the goals of where they were going. I just thought I'd show you some of the leaflets where they, so they were here, we can see they were taking on kind of solidarity with worker struggles or helping to organise strikes. So this one, the solidarity with the miners was a poster produced by the Asian youth movement in Sheffield during the miners' strike. The Cable Brother Strike, that was in Birmingham. And it was both the Asian youth movement, the Indian Workers Association and Birmingham Black Sisters that were involved in organising the workforce there who were predominantly Asian women against an exploitative factory owner who himself was Asian. So they were taking on workers' struggles no matter who, if you like, was the owner of capital. And then on the right was the Air Valley Yarn Strike, which was in Bradford where the workforce was being paid in absolute pittance and they describe it in their leaflets as slave labour and refer to the way in which because migrants are made vulnerable, that employers are exploiting that vulnerability to force them to work for lower wages. And these were some of the leaflets that expressed the kind of international solidarities. Apartheid was a particularly a strong, of course, something that the youth supported. And you can see in that leaflet there, Bradford Asian Youth Movement and Sheffield Asian Youth Movement supported that meeting by providing speakers. They mobilised to protest in terms of Palestine, particularly in 1982 after the massacre of Sabra and Shabila. And it was much strange in youth movement, in fact, that organised a demonstration. I'm not sure who else with, but to raise awareness about that massacre. And then the calendar again shows the way in which they're always trying to make links between what they were doing, their own histories as well. And the kind of the philosophies and the ideas of this kind of broad based identity. So here drawing on the figure of Uddam Singh, who described himself, who who who shot General Dwyer, who had been responsible for the massacre in Jallianwalabagh in Amritsar and at his trial, or I think it was when he signed himself into parliament, called himself Ram Mohamed Singh Azad, Ram representing the Hindus, Mohammed Muslims and Singh Punjabi Azad, meaning freedom. So in a sense, describing himself as Indian, it was all India at that particular point in time. So I'm not making a distinction to people being together against the struggle against British colonialism. And the figure on the I mean, the picture on the right hand side is is a picket from the Bradford 12. And I will come on and talk a little bit about the Bradford 12 in a bit. But the 12 were, in a sense, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians, in fact. So you had these 12 Asian men from these very different backgrounds, or in a sense, struggling together. Um, it's, I think when looking at the Asian youth movements, thinking about the work that they did on the immigration laws and campaigning against immigration laws is particularly significant. They wanted to raise and focus on and expose the racism of the immigration laws. And they also and one of the things that they did and one of the first campaigns that they ran was the unreaded the defense campaign. And this image is in fact from the unreaded the defense campaign. And what they what they tried to do, apart from raising awareness of the racism of the laws, they wanted to, if you like, put a human face to what was happening, the consequences of what was going on, as a result of the kind of draconian measures at the time, and the ways in which families were being divided and judged on on on application. So, unread that there was a woman who'd actually been born in Birmingham, and family, her parents had divorced when she was nine, and she'd been sent to Pakistan. And she got married there actually at quite a young age and had three children. So her schooling had been disruptive because of all this these moves. And she didn't really have any clue about her rights in terms of access to benefits or anything like that. And in around 1970s, late 70s, anyway, she decided to come to the UK with her husband, and to find a house to set up home and then bring the kids. And then upon applying, she was told that they didn't believe that the children were hers. And she went through a series of processes, lost them all, had no eventually no legal avenue, and to to bring her children to this country. And the Asian youth movements with some other groups like the LCG, the Law Center, and others took up her case. And despite her losing her appeal, continued to organize in support of unwork. And you can see the kind of grassroots nature, I love this photograph, because it really gives a sense of the grassroots nature of their campaign, they involved, they really wanted to involve everyone. And one of the other powerful things in terms of how they organized, was that they would have these campaigns, sometimes single issue campaigns through which they would they would be raising wider issues around state racism. But they would keep the they would put the people whose campaign it was about at the center of the campaign. So they nurtured and encouraged unwork to speak about herself, she became a prolific speaker. Here she was she's speaking on Black Probe Beach. I mean, she went up and down the country to mobilize and raise support. And as a result of this kind of work, and there was a lot of hard work in all of this. Granada TV became interested in her case. And they made a program about her, and her new solicitor went with the program maker to Pakistan, they got affidavits, collected material, they did blood tests to prove that the children were hers. And the day after the program was screened, the British government, the home office overturned their previous decision, and her children were allowed to come to Britain. It was a terrible struggle. And I have to say the human toll, I'm still in touch with unwar now has been tremendous on her, her family and her children. You can see this was the moment when her children arrived back in Britain. And I think here you can see the way in which the AYMs were always looking for ways in which they could raise raise awareness of different cases, and push things forward, of course, with the support of the people that they were working with. So here when unwar knew that the press were going to be on her, she brought just when the core and Naseera Begum, who were still struggling through immigration appeals with her, to be photographed with her with their posters behind, to raise their cases at the moment when she knew the cameras would be on her. So it's always these kind of tactics and processes of putting on the pressure. You know, they had an I have to say just an incredible amount of energy, and a lot of creativity. So they were always looking for new ways and new avenues and approaches. So for example, the Baba Bahtora campaign, which incidentally took years, it was a kind of, you know, it started and had kind of gained momentum, fell back a bit and then, you know, moved forward. In the early days of the campaign, in the early 80s, he was a singer who'd been anyway, his immigration was refused despite the fact that all his family were here. And they were trying to find a way to profile his case. And they found that there was a loophole in the law that if you were a member of the Commonwealth, even if you didn't have the right to live in the country, you could actually stand in the election, you know, to stand as an MP. So they stood him in Hansworth. This, of course, created problems with the Labour Party who saw this as a threat to them. Although, of course, it wasn't going to be a threat to them, it was just a gesture. And this is where that, you know, so this is where in a sense, their conflict with parties like the Labour Party kind of really emerged. And really, in the end, they also exposed the fact that it was both Labour and the Tory Party that were involved in the production of this kind of legislation. And they had this slogan, Labour Tory, both the same, both play the racist game. And the same thing happened with Mohammed Idris. When they stood Mohammed Idris, the campaign stood Mohammed Idris in the election as a councillor, the Labour Party withdrew support from the campaign. But they, you know, they had incredible drive and just continued. So apart from this, and we can see from the aims and objectives, very clear idea of what their agendas were and how they were setting about doing it. We can see as well, even when they have these kind of more like a visionary ideas about what they wanted to do. So this was the Black Freedom March, that they wanted to organise it. Black Freedom March didn't actually happen. But Bradford led in trying to mobilise this march that they set up and it was going to go all the way across the country. And they met groups in a variety of different working men's clubs, all kinds of things planned out this whole route. For a variety of reasons, it didn't happen. I think there was a bit of conflict between the anti-racist organisations in the north and the south, so I understand it. But here again, we can see, you know, that they identify very clearly the reasons for why they're marching and they have a very clear agenda. We're here to stay, we're here to fight. Immigration was number one on the agenda. And you can see here, end racist immigration laws, all immigration laws are racist. And then some other issues around stopping detention without trial, no arrest without warrants, release all deportees, stop deportations and racist and sexist laws. Raising issues around unemployment and also Southall, where there had been a lot of conflict with the police. So they were kind of had a utopian vision, but also always tried to pin it down with kind of very clear demands. I'd say that they were, all the organisations were predominantly young men. But the organisations were different in different cities. And this reflection by a woman who was went to university in Manchester, but was from Southall. And Manchester and Bradford worked together quite a lot. So she was familiar with both Bradford and Manchester AYMs and had experienced the way in which the youth movement in Southall had operated. Makes very clear the fact that the culture was quite different in these different spaces. Now, although Manchester and Bradford may have had structures and committees and chairs, and may have been more democratic, and they may have tried to encourage women. That's not to say that that the organisations were dominated by men. And there wasn't kind of machoism. And in fact, on reflection now, you know, many of them, well, they are of course, much older. They recognise that there were many ways in which they operated, which made it quite difficult for women to be involved. Manchester, out of all the organisations, made the most effort to involve women. And they had a women's section, where they tried to mobilise. It was quite small. I think there was only four or five women, but they did have a little source of small kind of women's group. And they tried to sort of support particularly women, like, you know, whether it was Edward Ditta and others who were at the centre of campaigns, women who are often at the centre of like the deportation campaigns and things like that. So, so yeah, I just wanted to make that reflection in terms of sort of the gender balance. I think I might have, I've lost a, I've lost a, I've lost a poster, nevermind. I wanted to come on to 1981. And while there was these organisations that were the energy, the kind of work that they were doing was was phenomenal. In 1981, there was a shift, and in Bradford, in particular, and this was, and then there was a split. And this was part of this was triggered by the issue of whether they should take the organisation should take state funds. So, in late 1980s, they might have been 1980. Yes, it was 1980. The one of the workers for the issue news movement decided to apply for a grant so that they could have a, they had a space that they used to squat in, but you know, they could do things like have a telephone and just, you know, table tennis table table and stuff like that. So they got a grant of about 1000 pounds. And it wasn't very much. And, you know, they used it for the stuff that they said they were going to use it for. But before they ever had any money, what used to happen was that all the members of the youth movement used to put in 25 pence into a pot. And the, the worker, the AYM worker would have his dole money topped up to the average salary of a of a factory worker to work for the AYM. So he was completely answerable to the youth movement. And, you know, would would report back every week about what he'd been doing, etc. Now, once they got the 1000 pounds, it wasn't really worth collecting the 25 pence for everyone. So they didn't. And they had things like, you know, the telephone and stuff like that. But what happened was that the Executive Committee would use the telephone for their own personal reasons, you know, when, you know, they had access to that telephone, but they weren't able to do that for everybody who was a member of the issues movement, or the bill would have been too much. So really, from these like kind of tiny, these sort of differences, he started to feel that actually taking this funding was impacting on the organization, because you're then creating a two tier system of, you know, who's getting the perks and who's not getting the perks and getting an awful lot problems. And also, you'll have to be answerable to your funders. And so a group of them felt that a people's organization should only ever be answerable to the people. So they had a vote anyway, they lost the vote by one or something. It's very, very tight. And the use movement split between the Asian youth movement, and those that left formed the United Black Youth League, which didn't, which had mainly Asian members, but they did have a few African Caribbean members, too. And it was that organization that did, in July of 1981, when fascists were organizing, and for those of you that may not know, there was a lot of racist violence in early 1981. There was a family in Walsham Stowe that were firebombed and died, Khan family. There was a group of teenagers in New Cross African Caribbean teenagers who were at party and the house burnt down. South Soul, a pub was burnt down in the altercation between fascists and anti-racists. So there was an awful lot that was happening and people felt threatened. And when there were rumors that fascists were coming to Bradford, the UBYL made petrol bombs, which they never used to defend their community should they need to. Anyway, the fascists didn't come. They never used the petrol bombs. But as a result of sharing competence, nobody disposed of them. And they were left somewhere underneath the bridge or something. And they were found by the police. And in the August, a number of people were arrested. It wasn't just 12. In fact, it was 13. The 13th was a young woman who was also a member of the UBYL. She was fasting and initial archimedes and didn't really fit the bill of what the police would want the young men to be to be seen as a sort of a bunch of rowdy criminals, so to speak. So they never charged her, but they did charge the rest of them. And there's a lot that we can learn from the Asian youth movements, I mean, from the Bradford 12 campaign, and from why people supported them. It was, and I think you can see this from the statement that was made on one of the support leaflets, that these yeah, particularly the leading defendants had worked tirelessly over the last five to six years to defend the community in different ways. So it was felt very much that this was an attack by the police on those on organisers, people that, you know, on anti racist organisers and in fact, special branch were involved right from the beginning in the arrests and in the interrogation of the 12. It was a difficult campaign. There's no question. There were lots, lots of issues and problems. But again, it was very grassroots. So it was organised in such a way like so every Wednesday, there would be like, you know, IWA from Birmingham would organise the picket on one Wednesday and somebody, another group from someone else will organise another day, there was a mass picket on a Friday, and then there were small pickets on the rest of the days of the week. So it was very, very well organised. And the initial slogan was around conspiracy. But the 12 decided to file a case of self defence community self defence should never been tried before. But they argued that their community had been put in danger. And that they were organized, they had organised and made the petro bombs to defend their community, should that be needed. And they won. So it was quite a phenomenal campaign, in terms of the number of different groups that were organised across the country, because these young men had been prolific organisers themselves. And we can see here, the a range of the groups that in fact supported them. And I always look at this list, this was on the back of a kind of a celebration leaflet. It's just phenomenal, the kind of level of, of mobilisation and networking that took place during, you know, for this campaign. You know, so you had left organisations, religious organisations, book shops, feminist organisations, trade unions, labour party branches. I mean, you name it, it's just, just incredible, the number of different groups that lent their support. The Bradford 12 was a turning point. And of course, the state also knew that they needed to shift, if you like, and to, to provide if you like, to cool down some of those resentments. And we know that from the 1980s onwards, following the Scarman report that a far more funding was available for community organisations, for particular kind of services. The AYMs in Bradford continued to organise. This was one of the actions that they did. The Organiser Drumming School Action Committee to mobilise against Honeyford, who've made incredible sort of like racist remarks about both Caribbean and Asian cultures and written against the kind of multicultural policies that were merging. They critiqued multicultural policies and argued for an education policy that was focused much more around anti-racism, rather than multiculturalism, arguing that an anti-racist policy would have to be multicultural, multicultural policy wouldn't necessarily be anti-racist. But their work became much more service delivery orientated, rather than, rather than, you know, being advocacy focused. And a former member who's now works in consultancy and business, you know, made this reflection. He said the organisation became quite, quite fixated on opening centres, they opened a youth centre trying to deliver solutions for local issues. In retrospect, you have to decide what kind of organisation you want to be. If you want to be an advocacy organisation, it's less appropriate to look at funding. And if you want to be a delivery organisation, then you apply. By 1984, quite frankly, it became a community project. So you can see the way in which the organisation shifted as it got involved, if you like, within the state structures and whatever. And of course, it's very important that this work is done. But it's a question of the focus of your organisations. A former member of your monitoring project in London felt that the work that they had done, this was a police monitoring project, a bit different to a community centre, that they had actually that the funding had enabled them to do work that would have actually been quite difficult for them, because it gives them so much time. And people really did give their life and soul to the work that they were doing. So there are contradictory opinions about, you know, how you should work, in a sense, and what may be the most effective ways to work. And I wondered how I should finish this. And I thought that one of the things that I'd really like to reflect on is the Black Lives Matter movement now. When we think about the structures of the AYM, particularly in Bradford, you know, they had like their executive committees, and they had their ordinary membership, and they expected you to attend meetings. And, you know, they listed in their aims and objectives, how they were going to work, who they were going to make alliances with. And I was looking at some of the statements from, you know, the Black Lives Matter movement, very utopian statements, and fantastically important statements in terms of the will and the determination, you know, to eradicate racism, work as a collective, advocate for racial equality and justice. It is however, primarily a decentralised movement. And I suppose that there are questions about what this offers, and also the difficulties that this creates for organising against racism. So all the way through, you get these statements as well, determination to eradicate racism. Systemic racism has always caused pain, trauma, untold stress right across the world. There's no critique of capitalism, though, or imperialism. And the focus is on individuals doing their bit, although they want to do it as a collective. But there isn't a map at the moment of how this can happen, and how we can work together. And I, and I wonder, the energy that was there in the summer, what are the ways in which all of us can work towards maintaining that? And the importance of perhaps sometimes having some level of structure and transparency in terms of who is involved, etc. So this is one organisation, Black Lives Matter movement that has quite a good website with all kinds of articles. It's quite active. There is also Twitter, which they separate themselves from. It's not part of them. And in this Twitter organisation, and I suppose because of everything I've said about funding, the Twitter group, I was kind of quite surprised that actually that in the pinned tweet, they talk, the first thing they talk about is a 31,000 that's been donated. But we don't know who they are. And so it makes me wonder how, you know, of course, they say that they're going to give this money to particular organisations. But what is the importance of transparency in terms of building a movement? I suppose I haven't got answers. But these are just things and what vulnerabilities are there for something that is decentralized? What are the ways forward that we can think? And what do the AYMs offer us in terms of thinking about clear demands and ways forward to campaign and organise? And I'm going to stop there. Okay, thank you so much. I want to start with a sincere apology. I had in my introduction, I want to talk a little bit about your work overall. And my head was so full of the US election, I just sort of went into the thing. But fantastic. And I particularly wanted to mention Imperial persuaders, which I really enjoyed when I read it, put straight on my reading list, which is about the conjuncture between colonialism, racism, and the advertising industry in this country. And it's brilliant read, I really recommend it to you. That was great. And I think it's so important that we remember these histories and talk about them when we're creating our own narratives about where we can find commonalities. But I wondered if you'd say a little bit more, and it relates to where you finished actually, but also, you made a passing reference when you were talking about the movement sort of falling prey to identity politics. And of course, at the end, you were talking about funding and the whole cooption into state structures. I wondered if you'd like to expand on that, because I think it's an incredibly important question at the moment. We all feel the, if you like, the legacy of what happened in the 80s and 90s with state funding, and the complete transformation of these organisations. And you know, you're quoting from somebody from the NMP, for example, and I think it's true, they were, all those organisations are really full of hardworking people. But once you accept funding, it starts to put limits on what you can do and makes you have to continually compromise, which means your politics are fundamentally changed. So I wondered if you could say something about the role of class within all of this, because this earlier historical example of political blackness was something that very much encompassed class because of the sort of political worldview that people had, especially from the anti-colonial movement, for example. When we see this particular configuration of an idea of blackness, it tends to be far more splintered. And I maybe wondered if you thought maybe class, the important role that that plays in these umbrella terms has actually somehow been lost within this sort of signification. So maybe you'd like to expand a little bit on that. Yes, I mean, I would agree with you. I think it has, I think both class and an anti-imperialist perspective, in a sense, that is crucial for, I don't even know what to say, apart from, I agree, I don't, I haven't got any answers or solutions. The organisations in the late 70s and early 80s were formed from people that were very much part of working class communities. As the funding came in, their position within their own communities changed. A lot of the youth movements, the leading members all became professionals in lots of different ways. And that's not necessarily a wrong thing, you know, and actually the skills, many of their skills that they learned were in the youth movements, organisational skills and such like. So their class positions, you know, very much changed. I think in the, I'm not really sure how to answer this question because it's a difficult one. I mean, we know that this is what exists, how we can work in a different direction at the moment. I don't know. Let's turn it off, just a little question. Right, does anyone else? I suppose one of the things that we also have to recognise is that at the time that they were working, although they were having conflicts with the trade unions and the left, the left were a much more significant force in this country. Until 1989, there was a belief that you could have, there was a strong kind of idea that you could have a socialist system. And really, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was, there became much more doubt about the possibilities of that. I mean, many of us still continue to believe that this was, this was a possibility, but we were often, if you like, you know, kind of derided for holding on to what was seen as a, you know, a retro 70s approach is, you know, how people would speak about it. And that led to, I think, to a great deal of disillusionment. So the shift within black politics in a sense, I think, is also part of the, yeah, the collapse in a sense of strong trade unions and a left movement. Yeah, so the sort of disillusion of class as an organising force in a wider sense. And I think also because of the ways been used quite recently in this country, for example, about notions of a white working class, which are somehow, you know, seen as these victims, basically because migrant workers have come and taken their jobs. And there's, you know, all the division and confusion that creates is also added to that mix, if you like. The class working class is not seen as a multiracial, you know, sort of a being. Sorry, I'm getting a bit lost about, Kim, are you going to... So I was just going to jump in now, actually. So we have had one, we have had one question which came through the group chat. And just to say to everybody else, if you do want to raise a question, do feel free to put it in the group chat. But equally, we're happy to hear from you through audio as well. So you can raise your hand and that does send a marker to me that you'd like to ask a question. And then we can get you unmuted and then have you ask a question in audio if you want to. Equally, if you feel happier putting it in the chat, please do feel free to do so. So I think we've already had one question came in and said they wanted to ask where the material you used for your research are held, are they held in a particular archive or did you use people's personal actually, before I wrote the book, I never intended to write a book. I actually, because I started life out as in museums and after 9-11 and the restructuring of identities and we were all seen in our faith kind of communities, which I didn't really have a strong kind of sense of belonging to and most of the people that I knew that had been involved in anti-racist politics, that's not how they frame themselves. I just thought I want to collect the materials, find out what's around and collect the materials from the Asian youth movements. I mean, it was really as much that I got a Heritage Lottery Fund grant to set up a digital archive. I thought, well, I can't set up a real physical archive, where am I going to put it? I don't know why I thought like that. I mean, I was actually employed by a university, but I clearly didn't feel supported by the university. So I decided to set up a digital archive and I called it tendana.org. Tendana actually means Glowworm in Northern Punjabi, which is sort of patoir in patoirie, which is where my husband is from and he was involved in the language movement, which is how we ended up calling it tendana. So the archive is still there. Sometimes it kind of collapses because it's just maintained in a sense by volunteers now. And the actual, I then collected most of the stuff from Bradford and from Sheffield, where people had actually kept it. There was much less material available from Birmingham, nothing from South Wales. And there was bits from Manchester that were scanned and kept in the digital archive. I then ended up with these boxes of stuff and then people said they didn't want them back. So all the physical kind of material is now in the Amid Iqbal Ula Centre in Manchester. It's part of the Manchester archives. It's also linked to the University of Manchester. So it's a race relations archive and I've put them there. And that archive also has material which I didn't scan because I decided that things like minutes of meetings with people's names and people that are still alive and well today should not really be circulating on the internet. And so there is more material, in fact, in the Amid Iqbal Ula Centre archive than is on Tundana, but there's still an awful lot of material on the Tundana website posters and leaflets and things like that. Public materials are there. It's interesting when I produced it and I think this is one of the things about sort of solidarities is that I was very careful to only collect, you know, to try to maintain what was Asian youth movement. So stuff that Asian youth movement was involved with. Or, you know, and when I was writing the book, I didn't want to appropriate the work of other organisations. But it was interesting when I produced the archive and then had this small exhibition. People that were involved in things like the Viraj Mendes campaign in Manchester and other things said, well, what about Viraj Mendes? And I said, oh, well, the AYMs weren't involved in that. So I didn't think I should put that in here. You know, that that's a whole other kind of history, but people felt such sort of identification with it. That, you know, the boundaries of how they viewed the history was quite different, which is interesting. But yeah, it's all there. You should be able to go and find it. Paru, are you able to see the hands or do you want me to help with that? Sorry, I thought Kim was going to be doing it. Do you want me to do it or I'm not sure. Fine. I mean, I can see them. So I can see that. I mean, definitely there is Clara who has a hand raised. I have a question later, but I will keep it for later if I don't want to take too much space. And Kim also has a question. So maybe we should give the floor to Clara and then Kim. Clara, if you want to unmute yourself. Yes. Hi, everyone. So I just had a question with regards to like also what we talked about in the end, in terms of funding and kind of the development of like certain movements into more like established organizations and stuff, because I did an internship this summer in something that had started out as an art project and then became like an NGO, like a very radical art project to counter like the anti-refugee rhetoric in Denmark and then ended up being like collaborating with the municipalities actually to be able to put some of these people that were using this project in or like giving them jobs. And just I thought I just wanted to hear kind of I felt that there was some kind of tension like how to reconcile sort of having like a very radical agenda in which you're able to criticize the system. But then at the same time also being kind of malleable to the wishes of the people who like the project or the movement is about, yeah, I don't know if this makes any sense. Yes, I think, you know, that there are lots of arts projects and, you know, NGO projects that do some some good work, you know, so it's not to just derive any work that is funded. It's more about having an awareness of the limits and the importance, if you like, of having independent organizations. So if you're so it's about the organization understanding the parameters of what it's doing. And of course, if you're an arts organization and you're providing work for migrants and you're uplifting them, these are important, these are important services to provide. There's no question about that. The tension is about should about when you want to do political advocacy, then you are limiting what you can do when you are funded by those that you are critiquing inevitably. Does that make sense? Yes, I feel like it definitely makes sense. But I was just wondering whether you'd seen any examples of like keeping this type of rat, because I feel like also other organizations, I also did another internship with another organization that had started out as like a leftist kind of project in Palestine against like occupation and stuff. And then it started working more and more within the UN system of human rights and this kind of stuff. So I just feel like I encountered this type of like going from like a really radical movement and then to kind of as soon as you become more established and kind of having to give away some of that radicality, I guess you could say. So I was just really interested in like whether you had seen any examples where this hadn't happened or had any ideas of like I know it's very broad like solve the you know, whole world kind of question, but or like had any ideas of how maybe this you could prevent this from happening or, yeah, I don't know. I too, I can't think of how you can prevent it from happening unless you're organizing and, you know, self funding in a sense. I think every situation is obviously different. And in the case of Palestine, the in a sense, because of the because of the occupation, they have no choice but to take some funds for cultural projects and other things. But yes, this is and of course now what's happened is that the cultural organizations and in Palestine are being straightjacketed by the European Union by being asked to sign a declaration that they're somehow going to police all the all the all the the work all of their workers for not being members of whatever organizations are not even having been arrested by the by the Israeli state. And we know that 40 percent of men have been in prison because of the you know, because of the occupation. So this is one of the problems is that when you rely on those kind of funds, then you do get constantly, if you like, you get that your radicalism in a sense gets constantly eroded. I think that's just in a way that isn't that why the states or the UN and these NGOs in a sense is set up is to is to channel the kind of work, the kind of cultural work and other things that happen. Yeah, can I just interject here, because there is a question from someone who actually Miriam Orah, who is going to be one of our speakers in the next few weeks, who is in a cafe so she can't intervene because there is a lot of noise, but she asked me to read the question or. So Miriam is asking and it's really related to to this discussion you're having in some ways. The question is for all and it's whether we can understand the decline of collective approaches whereby the radical politics of Asian youth movement has transformative implications that transcend beyond their community to other racialized oppressed groups in similar ways. The radical black power groups or Palestinian solidarity groups have vice versa, etc. Is also because these teams have moved from the grassroots spheres onto the professional academia sphere, which is much less about making connections and more about scholarship dynamics manifested by publishing and career promotion. Ideally, the two trajectories are not in opposition, but often there is no overlap. So I mean, it's a comment and the question and obviously, I guess, Paro might have lots to say on the topic, too. And lots of one observation is that the long term consequences of some of this co-option, if you look back to another example from the 70s and 80s and what was happening at the end there, it wasn't just being sort of having to make compromise, but it was we see this shift between seeing the anti-racist movement as a collective which was had sort of an analysis of capitalism, imperialism, etc., etc., something that was radical and talked about structures and systemic racism to one that became through anti-racism being turned into a profession, if you like, if you know, so the opportunities opened up in local councils, government, anti-racist funding policies, which then ended up about trying to change individual behaviour. So it became about training programmes, for example, yeah. And we can see the consequences of that to the current day. You know, the arguments going on at the moment about Covid and what's being, you know, revealed about the impact on people of colour in this country and these ridiculous arguments about whether it's structural or it's, you know, it's something entirely different than trying desperately to prove some time for some reason that it's connected to genes. You know, this is an old argument that won't actually go away or die. So I think we see these some of these. That's really why I wanted to ask the question about identity and where the so-called identity politics actually fits in to the wider sort of like building of a radical movement where it comes back, if you like, because I'm also very reluctant to just dismiss this notion of identity politics is somehow not important in the current moment. Of course it is, but it's looking at how that articulates with class and class interest really, but I think might be significant to our discussion in some ways. Sorry, that's a bit confused, but I wanted to sort of draw what the consequences are of having these co-options and how they become more than state policy. They become sort of normalised everyday understandings of race and how you actually combat that, that I think becomes particularly problematic. We're seeing this discussion played out everywhere at the moment. Yes, and I suppose it's just all the stuff around unconscious bias has become this whole new thing. So it's all again about the individual and about individual work. And I think that's one of the things that you know, I was thinking about in terms of this issue about having a sort of a decentralised organisation. I mean, there's a value in decentralisation as it can't be co-opted in quite the same way. But then at the same time, when you don't have, when there's a less clear agenda, then that in a sense it becomes very diffused and less directed in a sense. I think having very clear aims and objectives, having a clear organisational structure enables you to mobilise and to bring other people in who know what you're organising about in sense. So yeah, I don't know. I actually think that leads quite nicely on to the question that I was going to ask about. It's kind of going back to when you were mentioning about the Black Lives Matter UK website, which had a lot of information on there and very detailed. And then also the Black Lives Matter Twitter account, which they also separated themselves from. And I guess also looking at in terms of Black Lives Matter UK versus, I guess, Black Lives Matter movement in the US or even globally. And more so, I think that this idea you talked about, about having kind of clear goals and kind of a clear kind of idea of what they're trying to reach and how and ways in which some ways social media is great for getting ideas and movements out there to kind of a wider audience. But there's also a lost in translation that happens. And I think we've seen that, particularly if you look at things like Instagram, whereby there was a lot of reposting of kind of a black, a blank page or a black screen and then reposting of hashtags like Black Lives Matter and there was about, you know, you shouldn't post this with this. And then I think there's been a number of kind of pages on Instagram, I think, which have kind of come throughout discussions of areas like Black Lives Matter and other areas of kind of racial injustice, but then also kind of moving on to more towards the kind of US politics front and also slightly more into the satire front in terms of what they are now calling these Karen's in the US. And I think that because of all of these various different platforms because you can set up an account and start posting and send it out to people, I think there's definitely a loss in terms of what the movements are trying to achieve clear goals and really ways to energize and bring people together in action. And I guess COVID is probably an additional issue on that in that so many people are engaging online at the moment rather than in person. And so kind of in a way there's there's less chance to go to somewhere and say exactly what can I do and how can I do it? But what would you say to that? I mean, how can we turn that? How can we take some of these lessons through if it's quite a different entity in terms of what we're trying to address, I guess. Gosh, there's a lot in there. I mean, one thing that you know, in terms of the whole thing about the online versus the the the offline and the kind of the circulation, if you like, of hashtags, etc. I mean, one thing that there's no question about the power of social media just to disseminate. And we've also seen the way in which, in a sense, it has pushed forward, you know, political, you know, agendas. But there's also, and I suppose this has been one of the concern with things like the Coronavirus Act of the importance of people being allowed to occupy spaces and be in spaces. And yes, so those I suppose that these are contradictions, in a sense, which have existed. And there have been increasingly, I think towards the end of the lockdown, people did start to, certainly in Manchester, where I am, started to organise on the ground, have pickets with regards to health, health workers, deaths and and conditions and stuff like that. And also in relation to police tasering of black citizens and such like. And I think, in a sense, the two have to go together when you just leave it in this kind of a ethereal world. It's too easy for it to dissipate. It's a bit like the whole sort of decentralised thing, isn't it? It's about having something where you can actually pin something down, in a sense, ideas out there. But pin it down. Yeah. Somebody's asking a question about. There's a question about gender. Yes, about, OK, so Southall black sisters and Birmingham black sisters did not see themselves as. They saw them. They were not used organisations, although say a lot of them were quite young, you know, women. So whether they should have been included as being part of the youth movement or not. I just I don't know. They saw themselves separately. Birmingham black sisters used to be called the Birmingham Asian youth movement, the the young men's, you know, young men's movement. So they. I think that they they wanted their their separate space. They weren't just organising as youth. And of course, there were other organisations as well, like Avaz. That and Oad in London. So there was I think a plethora of different women's groups at that time, many of whom did work with the AYMs, but also felt that they needed their own identity. And they did sometimes work on campaigns together. So not just like the cable brothers, the the yeah, the cable strike. There also there was a case of a woman in Birmingham. I forget her name, but she was charged with murdering her husband. And it was a case of it was a case of abuse and she'd lashed out and he died and they they campaigned, but it was led very much by by Birmingham Black sisters. Yeah, so they they didn't. I mean, the Asian youth movement didn't tackle head on questions of of domestic violence, because they were focusing very much on on racism. Sorry, that that question was asked by me. Yeah. Really enjoyed the talk, by the way, I think. Thank you very much indeed. But as you are going through that period from sort of 1981 onwards, I found myself reliving that time because I was just undergraduate student at Birmingham. OK, at the time. So I, you know, the Baba Bhattora campaign, Mohammed Idrish and all of those, you know, we found ourselves going along to pickets and protests and so on. And I knew people from the Birmingham Black sisters as well as Southall Black sisters who were founding members of these organizations. And and as you say, there was a lot of there was quite a bit of working together with the Asian youth movement. So the Bradford 12, for instance, you know, we would find ourselves actually kind of, you know, with those in their case was actually underway at the time in 1981. But I guess my question was a conceptual one, whether you yourself saw these young Asian women and, you know, being the vanguard in setting up these organizations and whether you saw them as being part of the Asian youth movement, although they were not the banner of the Asian youth movement, if you like, on the street in that way. I think if I had my time again, then I would have written the book, including them as being part of the youth movements. I didn't because I was thinking I'll just go with the organizations that call themselves a youth movement, because where do you draw the boundary and the line? And so it was as it was kind of as simple as that. And I didn't I had this real sort of sense that I didn't want to appropriate other bits of history. But as you say, there was so much interconnection and actually they were mainly young women that were were organizing. And although they weren't just organizing on issues relating to young women, well, the AYMs weren't just organizing on issues relating to young men. You know, they were organizing on issues that were very relevant to their community at large. So I think really probably an integrated history would be a fuller one. And so, yes, and so I hope somebody goes and does that at some point or at least a bit of it to to give a better sense of that, you know, a better sense of that flavour. Because, yes. It would have taken, you know, a lot more. And I didn't go into the South like South or Black sisters. I didn't go into many of the London organisations because they published their own stuff. So in a sense, I was really trying to cover work and cover areas and histories that, you know, where people had not really documented what they did. So new and also, I suppose I just decided I wasn't going to look at organisations that at least started out as being funded. So the monitoring projects were ones I didn't really kind of go into, although they absorbed some of the young people that were involved in the AYMs. So it's a complicated thing. And I think it really depends on how you read the, you know, read the history. But you're absolutely right that it's very much interconnected. And perhaps, I mean, I did talk a bit about some of the conflicts in the book, but perhaps some of those conflicts would would come out more strongly if there was a kind of an integrated integrated play. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, as you say, they're very well organised. And sometimes there were conflicts there in terms of the organisation, particularly when people were coming from Bradford to Birmingham or London. And it was kind of, well, why are you telling us how to do things? We're quite well organised. Thank you very much. We don't need you to interfere. And yet the new monitoring project, for instance, you know, some of the people who came out to be came from the north of England. And they did instrumental in in setting that up and keeping it going, even to this day, I think. Yeah. Yeah. But I think Newham's close now. But yes. Yeah. No, no, it's very true. And one of the things that was there were a couple of women. I did interviews, so not Shenaz Ali, who was involved with the United Black Youth League. And there was a woman that had been involved with the Asian Youth Movement in Bradford had been a member. But she, for personal reasons, decided she didn't want to be, you know, interviewed. And then and there were there was one woman in Manchester who I managed to interview. It was much harder finding women that had been involved with the AYMs to just to speak with. And also, you know, at the end of the day, even, you know, like I spoke to someone in Manchester, who I know very well and. But they didn't have leading roles, you know. And of course they were. There are all sorts of reasons for that. The two or two key members in Manchester. They were doing postgraduate qualifications. They'd come from organising in the subcontinent. They had this whole kind of history. So people coming from very different backgrounds and experiences. But yeah, I think fundamentally they're probably, yes, it's probably better to look at it as a as an integrated history. Yeah. When I look when I look back now, I would say, yeah. I think you've done a great job. So thank you very much. I think in capturing that history, which is so important. I wanted to ask a question to Anandi too. And this actually is it's a twofold question. The first part is around precisely about this point that your work is historical. It is. An account of a particular historical time. And so the first part of my question is around the, you know, what's has why and what has changed. Why there is a backlash against the notion of political blackness today. And I would really love to hear your views about that. What has happened to that notion and that practice of internationalism that made it become contested notion. So that's today. That's that's first part of the question. And obviously I would really like to know a lot, a lot more about the contemporary context in terms of where does the youth Asian community stand in this moment, in terms of the Black Lives Matter movement or or the political blackness identity or solidarity, international solidarity, et cetera. I know it's a big question, but it's I'm really keen to hear your view on this. Also, because the first speaker in this seminar series was Kehinde Andrews. And we had a little bit of a conversation around around that too with him. So. That's one part of the question. Second part of the question is around what I perceive to be perhaps a shift in or a difference. For example, I've done a little bit of work on the Palestinian youth movement, which is a diasporic movement, which operates across different sites, particularly active in certain countries in the United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area and in in France. And what what really distinguishes them or the emergence of what in in this work that I wrote about, I called we called with my co-authors. The emergence of a sort of. An intersectional space of appearance is precisely the importance of appearing to one another of these youth who partake in very different and diverse and transnational public spheres, where they actually go there and participate and they are continuously present either at Standing Rock or in Ferguson or in the Creek Refugee Camps. Or so there is this sense that being visible to one another brings about a novel dimension of solidarity and connection and consciousness. Whereas here, what I could feel from the talk is that there is this there is this international solidarity that is spoken about, but in a much more national context. So, you know, you've spoken about Bradford, Birmingham, London. So there is this sense of the national context that is very, very much part of my understanding of the Asian youth movement back then. So, yeah, my question is maybe two questions instead of a twofold question. I'd love to hear your. OK, I'm going to start with the last thing about young people in youth movements going to different spaces to make those connections internationally. I think the thing we have to remember is that the possibilities of of travelling and the costs and stuff like that were very different in the 1980s. You know, relatively speaking, flights, all of those kind of things were were much more. And so they so they weren't able to do that, although they did make lots of contact with solidarity movements, whether it was a Tam, Tamils in Sri Lanka or it was you know, a mentioned South Africa. They had organisers from, you know, the Indian sub continent speaking. But yes, they were much more focused on their local local areas. They one of the interesting things is that when they those that left the youth movements and they wanted to work in independent organisations, some of them set up things like the Pakistani Workers Association. So they become became more kind of focused on working and making connections with the politics of the sub continent and bringing those links to Pakistani workers here and stuff like that. So I think it was from that point of view of being in different spaces. I think it was a different time, although some of them did. I mean, so for example, Anwar Ditta, for example, did go over to some women's conference somewhere or the other. I can't remember where it was. And so it wasn't that they didn't travel at all, but it was a much rarer occurrence, so to speak. Then the you were asking about political blackness, weren't you? Yeah. Yes, well, I think I mean, political blackness, in a sense, was first critiqued by people like Madhud. And in a sense, their critique of it was more around the this again relates to sort of the state and the way in which funding is organized, because he was talking about how this was detrimental to sort of resource allocation, wasn't about a political identity. But that, in a sense, already put a wedge in it from that point, you know, it's very. Reactionary kind of position, really, put a wedge in this kind of collective sort of identity and spirit that existed. And of course, it's very important to to to recognize different forms of oppression, so whether it's a kind of. You know, you know, anti blackness amongst South Asians or whatever. But, you know, when we look at our own communities, there are so many different oppressions. So within one of the things actually I didn't talk about in the book and I haven't talked about much. And it's something that definitely needs to be investigated is the role of caste. The the organization, well, nearly all of them were quite dominated by certainly South or Jap caste, you know, where would Dalits within all of this and what are the conflicts both for Dalits in the Asian youth movement, as well as in organizations like the IWA, you know, there. So in any in any organization, in any affiliation, there are always going to be conflicts. That does not mean that we cannot envisage and call for a wider identity around which we mobilize on a political level. So from that point of view, I still find it hard to understand why political blackness is critiqued, you know, so heavily. And but, you know, it's impossible to use a term. I'd like to continue to call myself black. I did for I did for many years beyond when it was actually, you know, what was kind of like a common parlance, but it ceases to really have meaning today. Because it's it's in a sense been so critiqued and we have to, in a sense, go very much for the vision of of the moment and to find another terminology. But I'd love someone to give me another phrase that I can use which actually gives that sense of a collective strength. You know, I know some people use this term black brown, but I absolutely can't stand it. You know, blackness was never about talking about the shade of our skin. It was a political concept. You know, you know, I mean, in the talk, I use the term people of colour because I couldn't think of what else to say. But I don't particularly like that one either. Thank you, Anandya and Baru. Just coming in as an anecdote, actually, two things, because I mean, for many years I've called myself black as well, politically black. But I remember a lecture not so long ago because, as you know, Rubar, I did a course on First World Britain on race and I was talking about this history. My other students actually asked me if I still considered myself black. And with great sadness, I had to say, no, I can't say that I'm black in that way anymore. But the anecdote I was going to tell you about was when I first came to Soas as a student, which was in the late 80s. And these conversations were raging at that time about who was black and there's quite a lot of anti-Asian feeling in some circles. And we had an Africa society at Soas, which was very active. But it ended up being about these endless conversations about who was black and who was entitled to go to the meetings. And what ensued was that ultimately Asians were only allowed to go every other week. And we were particularly put out because we had to go along with white people. So we were upset about that. And there was an Egyptian girl who was in the organisation who was deemed not to be black in the end. And she was banned also from going on the weeks when only black members went. And this is what it became reduced to rather than talking about the politics, we spent a lot of time talking about who we were, who we are and what black meant. And this is very damaging, you know, when we get to these very restrictive categories about what blackness encompasses when it's supposed to be an opening up and ends up being a closing down. So just thought I'd share that with you. It was a very poignant moment at Soas. I think this is really interesting and important. And we would need, of course, more time to to dig more into this very complex issue. But I'm very glad that we managed to touch upon the question of political blackness and its back, you know, the backlashes are against it today. And anecdotically, since Paru has mentioned her experience, I remember when coming to this country for the first time, I mean, I'm Palestinian, but I grew up in Italy. Where the issues of blackness and being brown, I mean, the foreigners in Italy for a long time were the southern southerners. Everyone else was just like a weird, exotic, not quite identifiable person for a long time until Italy became an immigration country. But when I came to this country to do my PhD, I remember that the first of my kind of moment of activism was was thanks to a social worker who was mixed race. And and she looked at me and said, you are black. Why don't you come with me? To my women's group, my black women's group. And that was really revealing to me of obviously the political culture in Britain and political blackness. And this was in the nineties. And now nobody would would use this notion anymore to to to find a group that is diverse in terms of sort of encompassing black and brown and all kinds of different shades and positions which is interesting. So I wanted to really get to that, but we'll have the whole seminar series or a lot of these seminars here is to talk about this more. So yeah, I think there is also a question that. Oh, my goodness, I've just realized it's 1846 and I was supposed to be in another meeting. I'm going to have to go. I'm so sorry. I just realized. Yeah, no, thank you so much. But thank you so much. Fantastic. And yeah, hopefully we'll be in touch again. Sorry. Sorry to interrupt, but I better go. All right, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Paru, for chairing and thank you, Kim, for organizing and thank you, everyone, for attending. And yeah, hopefully, well, Kim, if you want to announce the next seminar. We'll be sending round an email to everybody registered for this session with the next session for you, which is taking place on the 18th. Correct. Let's guess that wrong. So yeah, so we'll be sending that round to you and it will be on our Facebook page and also will be on the Center for Migration and Diaspora page as well. So we'll we'll get it circulated to everybody. We're just setting up that event at the moment for you. I'm going to tweak a little bit with the Zoom invites just to make sure that there aren't any problems, I think, in accessing the Zoom this time. But if we will also take in any additional questions, I mean, if you did want to send any additional questions you had from today's session through to my email address, which I will put in the chat box. But I know a lot of you also will have had from the invites because we are this seminar series is running with obviously some key themes and there's kind of a lot of connections between the various different sessions that we're running. And so it could mean that a lot of the some of the questions that you have from today's session would also be applicable to the following sessions that we run. And we're running the sessions more or less every two weeks or so. We've kind of squeezed a few in in the last few weeks, kind of back to back, but they are more or less happening every two weeks. So definitely I'll get them all sent round to everybody. Can I just clarify? No, they are happening every week, except for next week, because it's reading week. OK. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you, everybody. And Ruba, special thanks to you and Kim. And thank you everyone for joining. It just goes to show how much our conversations and our discussions can go on and you lose kind of track of time and everything. And this is such a big subject to kind of think about. And there's just so many different kind of avenues that you can kind of go off in terms of looking at this. And I do think definitely that if you can come to as many of the sessions as possible, I think you will see these kind of intersections and connections throughout the throughout the events. And I'm just even thinking back to that first event that we held with Kinder and kind of some of the key things that came up in that, even in terms of he kind of talked about. Where he sees himself and his how he sees himself in terms of his origins and in terms of where he sees himself and I think it's kind of something that runs through the session as well. So thank you everyone for joining. I hope you found the session very interesting. We will send round the recording to everybody and if you have any questions that you would like me to kind of send out to anybody, please do let me know.