Avtar Singh Jouhl

Avtar Singh Jouhl (2 November 1937 – 8 October 2022) was a British anti-racism campaigner, national president of the Indian Workers' Association (IWA), foundry worker and trade union lecturer.

Avtar Jouhl Singh was born in November 1937 in Jandiala, a village named for a jand tree, within India's Jalandhar district.

Jandiala villagers flew the communist red flag and before partition the village was a flourishing multi-faith society that included Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims, and members of the Dalit community.

Jouhl came from an agricultural family who donated grains to conferences to support the communist movement.

Jouhl had three elder brothers and a sister who all worked on the farm but was the only one to be sent to school, due to the high cost of attending.

At primary school, Jouhl learned to read and write as part of an all-boy class of 40 students, who would sit outside on jute mats while learning Urdu.

In high school, Jouhl agitated against school fee increases.

Teachers hit Jouhl with a cane after he rebelled against the authorities who would force students to be taken out of school and exploit them by having them harvest locust eggs nearby for profit.

Jouhl organised the students to pick the eggs and sell them themselves so that the proceeds would go to the children's education.

When they handed over the money raised at the school assembly, it was taken by the teachers and the students were caned.

His father also slapped Jouhl for his activities.

Jouhl's cousin was jailed in 1941 for involvement in India's pre-independence movement.

Prior to his incarceration and while he was eluding capture, the police kept raiding the Jouhl family house in order to find his cousin.

Jouhl has stated that his early childhood remembrances involve his parents and other relatives being taken to the police station where they would be questioned and beaten.

Following the partition of India in 1947, life in Jandiala had changed and its Muslim residents began to leave among increasing fears of safety, despite the village elders trying to assure them.

After protests were made by villagers over the replacement of the red communist flag by the independent India tri-colour flag, a compromise was met whereby the red flag would be flown alongside the new Indian flag.

Jouhl saw living in Britain and attending the London School of Economics as the way to achieve his dream of being a history lecturer.

His father died in 1954, when Jouhl was 16.

That same year, he underwent an arranged marriage to Manjeet (whom he was engaged to when he was nine or 10 years old).

He arrived in Heathrow on 4 February 1958, with his wife following three years later.

Jouhl met his elder brother at the London house he was staying at for his first night and he was taken to Smethwick the next day.

His intention was to study but this decision changed after his arrival in Smethwick.

Jouhl and his fellow Indian migrants lived in cramped conditions with sometimes 15–24 tenants living in the same house.

He observed how the migrants suffered racism in the workplace and in the street and became committed to helping their cause.

He started work as a moulder's mate at the Shotton Bros factory.

It was upon his first visit to a segregated pub, the Wagon and Horses in Smethwick where he discovered that non-white drinkers were not permitted in the assembly room despite the Wagon and Horses being a very large expansive drinking hole with two smoke rooms, one assembly bar and two public bars.

When pressed, the flimsy excuse offered by the pub's landlord was that it was on account of Indians speaking in Punjabi which the white clientele would complain about as they didn't like feeling like they were being talked about.

Jouhl also claimed that non-white pub goers were given different glasses, ones with handles, to their white counterparts so that they could be clearly distinguished, and avoided.

The colour bar was seen to apply in other settings too.

His work campaigning to end the racial segregation in drinking establishments in Smethwick, West Midlands drew the attention of Malcolm X who visited the town, on 12 February 1965, and was taken to a segregated pub, the Blue Gates, with Jouhl and Indian activists to witness where non-white customers were forced to drink in separate rooms.

Jouhl worked at the Smethwick foundries as a moulder's mate before becoming a shop steward.

He was furious to learn he and other South Asian workers were paid less than half their white counterparts for the same dangerous, hot work.

He acted as a welfare worker and saw the need for collective action to end the colour bar and to end the use of separate toilets for white and non-white workers in these factories.

They loved one another and Jouhl did not remarry after Manjeet died in 1981 at age 40.

Jouhl identified as Punjabi, Indian, and black and claimed that more Asians need to view themselves in these terms and realise the global anti-racism struggle is their fight too.

Jouhl died on 8 October 2022, at the age of 84.

Jouhl left India for the UK for the economic opportunities he believed it represented and because he had been admitted to the London School of Economics so would be able to achieve his desired future as a history lecturer.

Jouhl played a role in the 1984–85 miners strike by sending six coaches of IWA members to the picket line.

He also fought for Indian-born workers to be granted British passports so they would not be deported.

A lifelong agitator and communist, Jouhl spent almost thirty years working with the IWA in foundries, campaigning against racism and campaigning for the working class.