Campaign Against Racist Laws

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Campaign Against Racist Laws (CARL), National demonstration London, 1979.

According to a blog by People's History Museum Programme Officer Zofia Kufeldt:

The Campaign Against the Immigration Laws (CAIL) was formed in 1978 by a group who felt the anti-racist movement focused too much on anti-fascism and not enough on tackling state racism. The campaign actively opposed the immigration laws of the time, in particular the Immigration Act 1971, which they believed was the worst example of state racism.
As well as their actions protesting deportations and detentions, CAIL produced newsletters that featured articles on changes in the law, individual immigration cases and anti-deportation campaigns. We have a number of their newsletters at the museum through which we have learnt about the formation of the campaign, its purpose and actions. The group carefully chose the title Campaign Against the Immigration Laws rather than Campaign Against All Immigration Laws as they wanted to create a unity between those who believed all immigration laws would be racist and those who saw some possibility for reform, but believed some immigration laws were needed. Evidence of this debate in name change was found during conservation work undertaken to allow the banner to go on display for the first time in 2020.
PHM’s Conservator Kloe Rumsey found that two different materials were used to create the lettering on the banner. ‘THE’ is spelled out using paper and glue rather than PVC plastic, which is evidence of the changing name of the campaign. If you look closely, you can see a shadow of the letters ‘ALL’ previously included on the banner.
Around 1981 Campaign Against Racist Laws was formed by the Indian Workers Association. As soon as CAIL realised their aims were the same the group wound up and offered to produce the newsletter for Campaign Against Racist Laws, which they accepted.[1]

Alfie Hancox writes[2]:

The Black radical rejoinder to the ANL achieved organisational expression in the coalition Black People Against State Harassment (BASH), formed a week after the second carnival by several Black political groups including the Indian Workers Association. BASH overlapped with other networks such as the Campaign Against Racist Laws, and was directed pointedly against state racism – particularly the 1971 ‘whites-only’ Immigration Act, and associated deportations. In June 1979, a month after an anti-racist protest in Southall at which SWP member Blair Peach was killed by a policeman, bash organised a large demonstration of some 4,000 mostly Asian protestors against the Tories’ impending British Nationality Act, during which key organiser Joshi suffered a fatal heart attack.[3] At another mobilisation in November, Labour mp and regular anl spokesperson Tony Benn was reportedly booed for attempting todefend his party’s record on immigration.[4]
A particular strength of bash (and its successor, Black People Against State Brutality) was its involvement of Black women’s groups that drew attention to the gendered nature of state racism, notably the ‘virginity testing’ of migrant Asian women at Heathrow airport.[5] In a Spare Rib article in July 1979, Perminder Dhillon of Southall Black Sisters suggested that immigrant women ‘know what police protection means – being beaten with their truncheons, while a few streets away a black sister is sexually assaulted by white youths.’ Dhillon further reported how during the June demonstration, in a well-worn pattern, ‘the (mostly white) Socialist Workers Party showed complete insensitivity both to racism and sexism by insisting on carrying their own placards, against the request of the women organisers [who were protesting the Heathrow scandal], that mentioned neither black people nor women but just advertised the SWP’.[6]

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See also

Notes

  1. ↑ https://phm.org.uk/blogposts/a-rediscovered-campaign-with-resonance-today/
  2. ↑ Alfie Hancox, The Anti-Nazi League, ‘Another White Organisation’? British Black Radicals against Racial Fascism, Historical Materialism 31.3 (20 23) 276–303, 2023
  3. ↑ 69 Ramamurthy 2013, pp. 101–2.
  4. ↑ 70 Clough 2014, p. 166.
  5. ↑ 71 Ramamurthy 2013, p. 93.
  6. ↑ 72 Dhillon 1979, pp. 32–3.
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