Black Star: Britain's Asian Youth Movements - Softcover

Ramamurthy, Anandi

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0745333486 ISBN 13: 9780745333489

Publisher: Pluto Press, 2013

Synopsis

Black Star documents the vibrant Asian Youth Movements in 1970s and 80s Britain who struggled against the racism of the street and the state. Anandi Ramamurthy shows how they drew inspiration from Black Power movements as well as anti-imperialist and workers' struggles across the globe. Drawing on her intimate knowledge and extensive research, Ramamurthy shows how the struggle to make Britain 'home' led to a broad-based identity where 'black' was a political colour inspiring unity amongst all those struggling against racism. Ramamurthy documents how by the late 1980s this broad based black identity disintegrated as Islamophobia became a new form of racism. In the process the legacy of the Asian Youth Movements has been largely hidden. Black Star retrieves this history and demonstrates its importance for political struggles today.

About this title

Review:

The impasse of twenty-first century war-on-terror paranoid keep-calm-and-carry-on proto-fascist anxiety is skewered by the sharp posters, the enthusiasm, the dedication, the long vigils, and the styles and phrasings of all those left-wing uncles and radical aunts who hoarded boxes of leaflets and pamphlets in back rooms and in attics so they could one day be retrieved as testimony to a difficult settlement in multi-racial Britain. That this book retrieves this history as a living, and urgent, heritage - with the principle of 'self defense as no offense' still prominent - is an absolutely necessary triumph. (Professor John Hutnyk, Goldsmiths College, University of London)

This fascinating account, told from the point of view of the Asian Youth Movements of the 1970s and 80s, reclaims an important chapter in the history of the struggle of working-class Black communities against racism in Britain. The politics of that period, the strategies of struggle and the responses of the British state are still enormously relevant today. (Amrit Wilson, author of Dreams Questions Struggles)

'We can only hope that young people and their parents, of whatever ethnicity, demand this book is included in the school and college curriculum. It shows that, even before the ‘war on terror’ and Islamophobia, South Asian communities needed to engage in a defensive war on a neo-fascist and state terror that was relentlessly visited upon them.' (Gus John, Red Pepper)

'Black Star is an important book in reminding us that the Asian community has played an important role in the history of the Left in Britain and the principles of solidarity and self determination are key to creating organisations that will undermine the sense of hopelessness that is endemic in society today.' (Lipstick Socialist)

About the Author:

Anandi Ramamurthy is a Senior Lecturer in Film and Media at the University of Central Lancashire.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0745333486
• ISBN 13: 9780745333489
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240