Avtar Singh Jouhl (1937–2022) was one of Britain’s most important yet often overlooked anti-racist campaigners, a trade unionist and communist whose life traced the connections between empire, class, and the struggles of Black and Asian workers in post-war Britain.
Born in Jandiala, Punjab, into a poor farming family, Jouhl was the only one of his siblings to receive an education. The red flag of communism flying in his village shaped his early politics. By his teens, he was organizing protests against school fees and injustices—an agitator from the start. After his father’s death, he supported his family before migrating to Smethwick, England, in 1958, intending to study at the London School of Economics. Instead, he found himself working in the foundries of the Black Country, where Indian and Caribbean workers were forced into the hardest, lowest-paid jobs.
In Smethwick, racism was institutional and visceral. Black and South Asian workers were barred from housing, pubs, and public spaces under the notorious “colour bar.” Outraged by the injustice, Jouhl joined forces with fellow activist Jagmohan Joshi to found the Birmingham branch of the Indian Workers’ Association (IWA). Together, they organized workers to confront exploitation, link race to class, and build solidarity across all oppressed groups. Jouhl often said, “I’m Punjabi. I’m Indian. I’m Black. That’s my identity.”
Through the IWA, he helped break the colour bar in pubs and factories, organizing campaigns that forced landlords and employers to end segregation. His activism drew the attention of international figures—including the visit of Malcolm X to Smethwick in February 1965, arranged by Jouhl and Claudia Jones. Malcolm X witnessed Britain’s apartheid first-hand, visiting Marshall Street and the Blue Gates pub, where he was refused service. “This is worse than Harlem,” he told Jouhl. Nine days later, Malcolm X was assassinated in New York.
Jouhl’s struggle continued. As IWA General Secretary and later national organizer, he campaigned against racist immigration laws and the 1964 Conservative campaign in Smethwick, infamous for its slogan, “If you want a n***** for a neighbour, vote Labour.” He refused offers to sit on state committees, arguing that “any racist law has got to be opposed, violated, and broken.”
For more than three decades, Jouhl worked in foundries by day and organized by night. Later, as a lecturer at Birmingham’s Trade Union Studies Centre, he mentored new generations of activists. His lifelong commitment to anti-racism, class struggle, and solidarity earned him an OBE in 2000—a rare state recognition for a man who had spent his life challenging that very state.
Avtar Singh Jouhl died in 2022, aged 84. His life embodied the unbroken thread of anti-racist, working-class struggle in Britain—linking colonial India to industrial Smethwick, the IWA to Black Power, and one man’s courage to the collective fight for justice.
Avtar Jouhl on identity and solidarity:
“I’m Punjabi. I’m Indian. I’m Black. That’s my identity.”
(Recorded in oral history interviews for the Birmingham Museums Trust, 1990s.)
