Britain’s far-right violence comes to us direct from the 1970s. But so does the solution | Taj Ali

There it was: a pool of blood spreading across the pavement. A section of the high street had been cordoned off and a uniformed police officer gestured for bystanders to move along. It was the long hot summer of 1976, and a racist murder had stunned Southall in west London.

Grover was soon to learn that 18-year-old Gurdip Singh Chaggar, an engineering student, had been stabbed to death by racist thugs the night before. The late 1970s was the era of “Paki-bashing”: homes, shops and places of worship were attacked, while south Asians – young and old – were murdered on the streets. That day, Grover acted instinctively, taking some paint and daubing the pavement near the blood with the words: “This racist murder will be avenged.

We’ll get you racist scum.” This is the story of working-class youth who refused to turn the other cheek. From Southall to Sheffield and from Brick Lane to Bradford, the Asian youth movements were set up to physically defend communities from racist attacks. It was because of their heroic efforts that many of us in diverse towns and cities have grown up in safer environments.

But more than 50 years on, that racist violence has returned with shocking ferocity, a deterioration traceable to the summer of 2024, which marked some of the worst racist rioting in living memory. In Hartlepool, a young south Asian man was walking down a street when he was punched in the face. Onlookers cheered, laughed and yelled racial slurs.

In Middlesbrough, a group of white men stopped motorists and questioned them about their ethnicity, asking whether they were “white” before letting them through. In Rotherham and Tamworth, racist mobs tried to burn down hotels housing refugees. A seemingly relentless rise.

Every five days, a mosque in Britain is attacked. The rhetoric of the far right has been mainstreamed. After years spent researching and writing a book on the rich and proud tradition of political activism in the south Asian community, it seems clear to me that we cannot fight racism in silos.