Rare glimpse of Bangladeshis fighting racism in Brick Lane 1978

A rare video from 1978 of Bangladeshis protesting against racism at Brick Lane in UK was recently shared on Facebook. The video was shared by Facebook user Nurul Amin on February 13. [arve url="https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fnurul.amin.737%2Fvideos%2F10208707314025091%2F&show_text=0&width=400"/] The 7:34min video is a documentary which explains the crisis Bangladeshi immigrants were facing in Brick Lane area at the time. A vigilante white supremacist organisation carried out a vicious preplanned attack on the Asian workers when they came out of a factory. While talking about the attack, few Bangladeshi men said the whole attack was organised. The attack left the Bangladeshis traumatised and they felt very unsafe even on their way to work. As mentioned in the video, the Brick Lane police were also ignoring the continuous racist attacks on Bangladeshis. A policeman in the video said:  “The police have had to do a great deal to meet the needs of the Bangladeshis to adapt the service we are giving. When they come to this country they have many problems. “And not only that they do have problems but they set problems for the police which we have to meet,” he adds. Police in Brick Lane came under tremendous criticism due to the attacks and the police called the criticism unjustified. An Asian shopkeeper also reported being attacked by skinheads who threw heavy rocks while swearing and shouting at him. The situation was getting worse and the police were not doing much about it. Finally the Bangladeshi community decided to defend themselves, in the era of worldwide upheaval of national struggles. In July 1978, the Eastern-Asian community announced a one-day work strike to emphasise the gravity of their situation. Nearly 3,000 people started a march from Brick Lane. Soon the number rose to 6,000-8,000. A white youth tried to instigate the protestors into a fight by swearing at them and the police still did not take any action. Instead, the police detained two Bangladeshi men and a white anti-racist man who was supporting the protestors. The protestors then gathered in front of the Brick Lane police station demanding release of their comrades. After two hours of waiting the police finally released the detained protesters. It was a brave move to conduct a protest of such a large scale being a minority community in England back then.