Avtar Singh Jouhl

Avtar Jouhl Singh was born in Jandiala, in the district of Jalandhar, India on 2 November 1937, a village named after the Prosopis cineraria tree (Jand tree in Punjab).[3] One of five children, his father and mother were illiterate agricultural workers who donated grains to Communist party conferences and would only employ villages at harvest time. Jouhl was the only of his three brothers and sister to be sent to school as their family needed their labour on the farm.[3] Jandiala was a communist village that flew the communist flag red flag and before partition was a multi-faith society that included Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims and members of the Dalit community. At primary school, Jouhl was taught under the shade of trees and sat on Jute mats in all-boy classes. Teachers caned Jouhl on numerous occasions and he was beaten on his hands "quite a few times" for making fun of them.[3]

At high school he rebelled against the authorities who tried to employ the students to harvest locust eggs nearby - Jouhl organised the students to pick the eggs and then sold them himself so the proceeds would go to the children's education but when he handed over the money it was taken by the teachers and he was caned.[3] Jandiala was 5% Muslim before Indian partition but after August 1947 Muslims left the village despite 'Hindus, Sikhs and the village elders' pleading with them to stay. After partition protests were made by villagers over the flying of the India tri-colour flag and a compromise was met whereby the red flag would be flown alongside the new Indian flag.[3]

Jouhl wanted to be a history teacher and in 1953 learnt Punjabi, English, History, Political Science and Economics.[3]

Jouhl's father voted for the Indian Communist Party while his mother voted for Congress. His cousin, Jagdeet Singh or Jagi, was a full-time Communist Party member and was arrested in 1941 and imprisoned for five years after being on the run.[1] The police kept raiding the Jouhl's family house to find him and his parents and other relatives were taken to the police station where they were questioned and beaten.[1] His father died when Jouhl was aged 16 in 1954 making him become head of the household in an early life marked by death. His maternal uncle was killed by a tram, his cousin died in 1970 in a bar in Birmingham and he had a younger nephew who died in a air-crash at Delhi airport which led to Jouhl's elder brother hanging himself in 1977. His other brother died in 1990 when he was aged 55.[3]

He had an arranged marriage to Manjeet (whom he met when he was nine or 10 years old) and they married when he was 16 in 1954. Although it was arranged they were devoted and Jouhl did not remarry when Manjeet died in 1981 calling her a lifelong comrade. They had three children, Prithvi (Paul), (born October 13, 1961), and Jagwant (born October 18, 1962) and Sukwinder (born October 6, 1963). Jouhl has seven grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.[3]

Jouhl was born a Sikh but became an atheist, losing his faith after his father's death because his family visited the Ganges where they were taken advantage by conmen posing as religious people. He has a condition that requires kidney dialysis. He identifies as black and claims that more Asians need to show solidarity to oppressed non-whites from the former British empire.[3]

Jouhl left India for the UK for economic reasons and because he had been admitted to the London School of Economics. He arrived in Heathrow on February 4, 1958, with his wife following on December 23, 1960, and met his brother who took him to Smethwick the next day. His intention was to work for a few months and then go to the LSE but on arrival he realised that fellow Indian migrants lived in cramped conditions and suffered racism in the workplace and in the street and became committed to helping their cause. He worked as a moulder's mate in a factory that made casts for the automotive industry. He first visited a segregated pub on his second night - the Wagon and Horses in Smethwick - which had two smoke rooms, one assembly bar and two public bars; he discovered that non-white drinkers were not allowed in the assembly room. He was told it was because Indians spoke in Punjabi but "this was just an excuse as it was the colour bar operating". Jouhl also claimed that non-white pub goers were given different glasses to their white counterparts.[3]

He visited a barber in Brasshouse Lane in Smethwick who said "he didn't cut Indian hair".[1] Jouhl noticed that moulders were paid a lot more than the Indian workers (he was paid £7.50 while white workers were paid £16) and he and his brown colleagues had to use separate toilets in the factories. Non-white people were, according to Jouhl, were not sold houses by estate agents and it was only possible to go on the council house register if residents had been living in Smethwick for more than 10 years.[1]

Jouhl joined the Indian Workers Association after finding a card in a box of rationed food supplied by an Asian grocer. The IWA held meetings once or twice in Wolverhampton and Jouhl began recruiting members; alongside Jagmohan Joshi they organised the Birmingham IWA[1] taking up welfare and political issues affecting Indians living in Britain, including fighting all forms of discrimination.[3]

In 1961, he was dismissed by Shotten Bros and found himself even more committed to the anti-racist and collective labour movement.[3]

Avtar Jouhl and the IWA organised pub crawls with student organisations from Birmingham and Aston universities - a mixture of white students and Asian workers visited the pubs. The students would order the drinks and four or five Asians would go in later and be refused after being given some excuse like the room was "reserved". Using that evidence, Jouhl and the IWA opposed the publican’s license when it came up for renewal, because under the licensing law the licensee cannot refuse to serve people in such a blanket way. A couple of landlords’ licenses were refused and Jouhl says "that got huge publicity in 1963 because up until then racial discrimination was not unlawful so everyone and anyone was free to discriminate".[4] The publicans argued that this was not a colour bar but a poverty bar but there's evidence that Asian teachers and doctors were barred from these rooms.[5] The issue was nationwide with pubs all over the UK barring non-whites, and in Lewisham the mayor was not served when he visited with a friend of colour.[6]

Avtar campaigned for the Labour party and for trade unions to support a law against this type of racial discrimination. Jouhl says that Joshi's wife, Shirley Joshi, was depicted as a "whore" in the press for marrying an Indian who campaigned against discrimination. The protests had a big impact on the commerce of the Mitchells and Butlers Brewery who ran most of the pubs in Smethwick but they argued that the colour bar did not exist but told landlords to tell protestors the rooms were being used "for a conference".[3]

Jouhl and the IWA organised a "break" of the colour bar in the workplace by getting some "big lads" to push aside the manager of the segregated toilets hoping that he would be dismissed for his actions so that the cause would gain more publicity.[3]

The Blue Gates hotel in Smethwick which Malcolm X visited in 1965, photographed in 2021 by David Jesudason

The BBC claims that Malcolm X visited Smethwick on February 12, 1965 after being invited to the town by Jouhl[7] but it was in fact Claudia Jones who told the US civil rights campaigner about the segregation in the town. Jouhl and Jagmohan Joshi met Malcolm X in Marshall Street[8] where Asians were being barred from buying houses and he told Avtar that the racism was "worse than Harlem" after seeing posters[9] that said "Coloured people need not apply". Jouhl believed that one of the white residents would harm Malcolm X and offered the services of the IWA to walk him down the street but he refused.[3]

Malcolm X spoke to the press and said he wanted to visit one pub so Jouhl and Joshi took him to the Blue Gates. Jouhl accompanied him to the smoke room. Jouhl says: “I ordered a drink and the barmaid already knew me and she said that, ‘My [landlord] doesn’t allow Black people to drink here. You can have a drink in the bar.’ “Malcolm X said there was no point, and we walked into the bar where several IWA members were. He had a soft drink and chatted with different people about the colour bar. He was there for 15 minutes, and he said, ‘Keep up the fight. The only way to defeat the colour bar and racism is to fight it back.’”[3]

Malcolm X tribute in Marshall Street as photographed by David Jesudason

The visit gained nationwide press and highlighted the issue of the colour bar and racism in the UK. The publicity and the work of Avtar Jouhl and the IWA, led to the Race Relations Act 1965, the first piece of legislation to outlaw discrimination on the "grounds of colour, race, or ethnic or national origins" in public places in Great Britain. Although segregation could continue in private clubs, such as the Smethwick Labour Club, it was now officially ended in pubs.[3]

Jouhl called Malcolm X's visit “the shot in the arm for the anti-racism struggle in Britain.”[3]

His visit and meeting with Jouhl was commemorated by a stain glass window which depicts the two anti-racism campaigners.[10] A plaque in Marshall Street has been erected celebrating the visit.[3]

Although the colour bar officially ended Jouhl and other non-white British citizens were subject to a lot of abuse in pubs with one visit in the 1990s where he was called a paki and a mini-cab driver.[3] The colour bar and this type of racism led to Indians (mainly Sikhs) setting up their own pubs where they could play Indian music and serve Indian food.[11] Smethwick today is a majority Asian town that contains a large concentration of Desi pubs.[3]