When Malcolm X Went to Smethwick
When Malcolm X Went to Smethwick
Adrian Goldberg reports on a pub revolution in a West Midlands town
When civil rights activist Malcolm X visited the town of Smethwick, four miles west of Birmingham in 1965, he described the racism he witnessed there as “worse than Harlem”.
This was no small claim. X – also known as el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz – arrived fresh from the United States where racial tensions were reaching boiling point.
For much of the previous decade, segregation had been challenged in areas such as public transportation, education and employment – and was often met with violent resistance. Hollywood has quite rightly celebrated victories against the forces of racism in the US through movies such as Selma and The Help, but British viewers shouldn’t allow themselves any complacency about the state of our nation at the time.
Conservative MP Peter Griffiths had won the Smethwick parliamentary seat in 1964 by campaigning with the slogan “If you want a n***** for your neighbour, vote Labour.” Smethwick Borough Council – also Tory-run – had started buying up houses with the intention of letting the properties exclusively to white families.
Marshall Street, which Malcolm X visited, was on the front line of this racially charged conflict. Newly arrived migrants from the Caribbean and South Asia, who’d been encouraged to settle in the ‘Mother Country’, met with pushback from established communities.
The most telling incident came when X was taken into a pub called the Blue Gates by Avtar Singh Jouhl, a foundry worker and trade union organiser who had moved to the UK from India. When the pair tried to order a pint of beer, the landlord refused to serve them in accordance with an unofficial, but entirely legal ‘colour bar’.
This sad episode is recalled in a new book by pub historian David Jesudason, who explains that it was a common experience. In an interview with the Byline Times podcast, he said, “Smethwick had a large Punjabi influx after the Second World War. People came to work in the foundries and during their lunch breaks, they would go to the pub. But often pubs wouldn't serve them, or they would have to sit in certain rooms to drink their pints.”
According to Jesudason, the roots of the racism encountered by his parents and grandparents lay in British colonialism. “A lot of a people want to know why this took place,” he said.
“The answer lies in Empire. The ‘colour bar’ existed in India, so that if you were an Indian – if you were brown – you wouldn’t be allowed into bars. It really was an import from that. One of the interesting things is that if [immigrants] were allowed into pubs that had a racist white landlord, they would have to have different glasses to their white counterparts. They were treated as subhuman.”
The UK’s first Race Relations Act, introduced in late 1965, outlawed discrimination in places of entertainment, but it continued in other areas such as housing and employment. Pubs were covered by the legislation, but private members clubs were excluded. This meant that two miles from Smethwick, the Handsworth Horticultural Institute, based in one of the most diverse areas of the UK, was allowed to effectively ban non-white drinkers from its bar until the early 1990s.
Still, the 1965 Act was a start, and Avtar Singh Jouhl used the legislation to start chipping away at the systemic racism he encountered. Jesudason says, “he would go into these pubs with a white person – usually a student. The white person would get served beer, but when the landlord or bartender noticed the beer was for an Asian man, they would both get barred. He knew that would happen, and then gave evidence to the magistrates, so that when they came up for renewal, pubs would lose their licenses.”
When racist landlords were forced to sell up, thirsty Indians who’d been made to feel unwelcome saw an opportunity. They bought up these usually rundown licensed premises and created their own thriving pub culture. Thus was born the phenomenon known as the ‘Desi Pub’ – places where migrants felt comfortable but which were welcoming to all.
Jesudason explains that “Desi means ‘home’, bringing a bit of Indian-ness and keeping our culture while everything changes around us. “But this idea of home also manifests itself by the Desi landlord welcoming you and treating you like you're a family member.”
The most obvious expression of the ‘Indian-ness’ is the food. Spicy curries and biriyanis are usually on the menu, but the signature dish of any decent Desi is the Mixed Grill, where mounds of tandoori-cooked chicken and lamb are served on a sizzling platter and designed for sharing.
Jesudason admits that acceptance of the new South Asian landlords by traditional white customers was sometimes slow. “There was an element of, ‘do I really want my pub run by an Indian?’ People would sit there, grumbling in the corner. And then suddenly, they’d see a sizzling platter of meat come through and enjoy the theatre of it. Then they'd have a few drinks. They'd talk to the landlord, and suddenly they are thinking ‘hang on a minute, I was sat on my own in this pub before, it was dying. This is all right.’”
These family-friendly pubs are now popping up all over the country, contributing to social cohesion and often helping revive the economy of inner city areas. Nowhere is this more true than in the post-industrial West Midlands which is the heartland of the Desi pub phenomenon.
Malcolm X was tragically assassinated nine days after his visit to Marshall Street, but if he were alive to visit today, he would enjoy a much warmer reception in Smethwick than he did in 1965 – especially at the place where he and Avtar Singh Jouhl were turned away.
The Blue Gates is now a thriving Desi pub.
Listen here to David Jesudason talking to Adrian Goldberg about Desi Pubs on the Byline Times podcast.
