The actor’s new documentary tells the shocking story of pitched street battles against fascists and a furious fight against police violence. He talks about how a community rose up against racist killings
On a busy high street in Southall in June 1976, people quietly shuffled past a police cordon outside the Victory pub. Behind the tape was a pool of blood that had come from Gurdeep Singh Chaggar, an 18-year-old Sikh teenager who had been stabbed to death during a racist attack in the centre of the south Asian community in west London.
His death stunned Southall. The idea of white youths coming to their area to kill a Sikh boy seemed unthinkable, but in reality it was part of a sustained campaign of racial violence that spread across the entire country. In his classic book Staying Power, about the history of the Black and south Asian presence in Britain, Peter Fryer estimated that, between 1976 and 1981, 31 people had been murdered by racists in Southall, Brick Lane, Swindon, Manchester and Leeds.
