activism

J. Handoo

About: 

Mrs J. Handoo, wife of Dr H. K. Handoo, was an active member of the India League. Together with Asha Bhattacharya she ran education classes under the auspices of the India League's East End branch at the Shah Jolal Restaurant. She was a member of the India League's Central Committee and its women's committee. She was instrumental in fundraising for the India League, and organized a scheme of annual subscription from affluent Indians living in Britain.

Connections: 

Mulk Raj Anand, Asha Bhattacharya, Mrs M. F. Boomla, H. K. Handoo, C. L. Katial, Krishna Menon, Syed Mohamedi, Rewal Singh.

Secondary works: 

Visram, Rozina, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto, 2002)

Other names: 

Mrs J. Handoo, Jai Kishore Handoo

Location: 

London

P. N. Haksar

About: 

P.N. Haksar arrived in Britain to study at the London School of Economics. He was called to the Bar from Lincoln's Inn in the early 1940s. In London, he was an active member of Krishna Menon's India League along with other students, which greatly shaped his socialist political outlook. He  befriended Feroze Gandhi and Jawahrlal Nehru's daughter Indira who would later appoint him her principal secretary, a post he held from 1967-73. He was also India's chief negotiator for the talks between India, Pakistan and Bangladesh in 1972-3.

Published works: 

One More Life (Delhi: Oxford University Press India, 1990)

Premonitions (Bombay: Interpress, 1979)

Reflections on our Time (Delhi: Lancers, 1982)

Date of birth: 
04 Sep 1913
Secondary works: 

Visram, Rozina, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto, 2002)

City of birth: 
Gujaranwala
Country of birth: 
India
Current name country of birth: 
Pakistan
Other names: 

Purshottam Narayan Haksar

Date of death: 
25 Nov 1998
Location of death: 
New Delhi
Location: 

London

Tags for Making Britain: 

S. A. Wickremasinghe

About: 

S. A. Wickremasinghe was born in Akurassa, Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, in 1901. He was schooled in Ananda College, Colombo. He first arrived in Britain for his education in 1926. In 1927 he was joint secretary of the Indian Majlis student society and had active links to the Communist Party of Great Britain. In 1929 he graduated with an MBBS from the University of London where he also got his MRCP form the Royal College of Physicians.

By 1931 he had returned to Ceylon and with Philip Goonewardena was involved in social work, helping lower caste communities. Wickremasinghe was a member of Ceylon's State Council from 1931-6, advocating complete independence. He lost his seat in the 1936 election.

He subsequently returned to London with his wife, Doreen Young, to open a doctor's surgery in South London, near Elephant and Castle. During his time in London he became involved in the India League and renewed his links with the Communist Party of Great Britain. Wickremasinghe was a founding member of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party in 1938, which convened regular meetings and protests, often in conjunction with the India League in London. He co-organized with Krishna Menon a conference on 'Socialism in India and Ceylon' in 1938. Wickremasinghe and the Sama Samaja Party were closely associated with Ben Bradley and the Communist Party of Great Britain. He founded the Communist Party of Ceylon in 1943. In 1945 he represented Ceylon at the inaugural World Labour Organisation held in France. He continued to campaign for Ceylon's independence and remained involved with leftist politics in Sri Lanka until his death in 1981.

Date of birth: 
01 Jan 1901
Precise DOB unknown: 
Y
Archive source: 

L/PJ/12/450, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

City of birth: 
Akurassa
Country of birth: 
Ceylon
Current name country of birth: 
Sri Lanka

Location

London, SE17 1DX
United Kingdom
51° 29' 31.1244" N, 0° 5' 29.9508" W
Date of death: 
25 Aug 1981
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

1926-9, 1936-43

Udham Singh

About: 

Udham Singh was a political activist from the Punjab. He was closely linked to communist activists and parties associated with the independence movement. During the early 1920s, after a brief three-month stay in Dover in 1921, he spent some time in the US, working in Detroit for the Ford Motor Company as a tool maker, before relocating to California. While in California, he established contacts with the Ghadar Party, which was dedicated to Indian freedom and independence. It had strong communist tendencies and was founded by South Asians living in America and Canada. He returned to India in 1927.

Back in the Punjab, Udham Singh was arrested for the illegal possession of firearms and sentenced to five years imprisonment. Singh was released from prison in October 1931. He managed to acquire a passport and made his way to London in 1934. In his application for his passport endorsement, he claimed to have been working as a sports outfitter in India, but since his arrival, living in Canterbury, Kent, he was unable to secure employment. There are suggestions that in this period he worked as a pedlar. During 1937, he worked as an extra in crowd scenes for Alexander Korda’s London Studios at Denham. During 1938, he worked as a carpenter at the RAF Station at Great Chessington, Gloucestershire, before becoming unemployed.

Udham Singh was well known in the Indian community at the time and also had contacts with Sikh pedlars living in Coventry, and Southampton. The objective of his stay in London was to find an opportunity to assassinate Michael O’Dwyer, the Governor of the Punjab in 1919, whom Singh held responsible for the Amritsar massacre, which had left a lasting impression on Singh after his brother and sister were killed there. Subsequently he had sworn to avenge the massacre. Singh had had a few opportunities to assassinate O’Dwyer but he was waiting for an occasion when his actions would have the most public impact.

On 13 March 1940, Singh shot O’Dwyer at a meeting of the East India Association and the Royal Central Asian Society at Caxton Hall. O’Dwyer was killed instantly and Lord Zetland, Lord Lamington and Louis Dane were also hit and wounded by the shots. Singh was immediately arrested and held in Brixton prison. There he staged a thirty-six day hunger strike, which resulted in him being forcibly fed through a tube. The assassination of O’Dwyer was reported widely in the press. In police statements and at court Singh gave his name as Mohamed Singh Azad as a symbol of Hindu-Muslim unity in the fight for Indian freedom. He was tried at the Old Bailey on 4 June 1940. Krishna Menon was part of his defence team. After a trial in which the prosecution presented a simple case and the defence of Singh was often sketchy and chaotic he was sentenced to death by hanging on 5 June and executed on 31 July at Pentonville Prison, where he was also buried. In 1974, his body was repatriated to India and cremated in his home village of Sunam.

Example: 

Statement of Witness, Cannon Row, Station ‘A Division’ 13 March 1940, L/PJ/12/500, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

Date of birth: 
26 Dec 1899
Content: 

This extract from Udham Singh’s witness statement details his motivation to assassinate Michael O’Dwyer at Caxton Hall.

Connections: 

Surat Alley, Krishna Menon, Michael O'Dwyer, Marquess of Zetland.

Ghadar Party

Extract: 

I went back home again, then I thought it was time to go to this afternoon meeting to protest. I take my revolver from home with me to protest.

In the beginning of the meeting I was standing up. I did not take the revolver to kill but just to protest. Well then when the meeting was already finished I took the revolver from my pocket and I shot like I think at the wall. I just shot to make the protest.
 
I have seen people starving in India under British Imperialism. I done it, the pistol went off three or four times. I am not sorry for protesting. It was my duty to do so. Put some more. Just for the sake of my country to protest.

I do not mind what sentence. Ten, twenty or fifty years, or to be hanged. I done my duty. Actually I did not mean to take a person’s life, do you understand. I just mean protesting you know.

Secondary works: 

Grewal, H. S. and Puri, H. K. (eds), Letters of Udham Singh (Amritsar: Guru Nanak University, 1974)

Maighowalia, B. S., Sardar Udham Singh : A Prince Amongst Patriots of India, the avenger of the massacre of Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar, foreword by Krishna Menon (Hoshiarpur : Chhabra Printing Press, 1969)

Singh, H. (ed.), The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism, 2nd ed. (Patiala, 1998)

Singh, Navtej, Challenge to Imperial Hegemony: The life story of a great Indian patriot, Udham Singh (Patiala: Publication Bureau, Punjabi University, 1998)

Singh, Navtej and Jouhl, Avtar Singh (eds), Emergence of the Image: Redact Documents of Udham Singh (New Delhi: National Book Organization, 2002)

Singh, Sikander, Udham Singh alias Ram Mohammed Singh Azad: A great patriot and martyr who challenged the British Imperialism: a saga of the freedom movement and Jallianwala Bagh (Amritsar: B. Chattar Singh Jiwan Singh, 1998)

Archive source: 

L/PJ/12/500, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

L/PJ/12/637, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

L/PJ/7/1715, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

Mss Eur C826 1940 Copy of transcript of proceedings in the trial, on 4 Jun 1940, of Udham Singh for the murder of Sir Michael Francis O'Dwyer (1864-1940), Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab 1913-19, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

MEPO 3/1743 Murder of Sir Michael Francis O'Dwyer by Udham Singh at Caxton Hall, Westminster, on 13 March, 1940, National Archives, Kew, UK

PCOM 9/872, National Archives, Kew, UK

P&J (s) 466/36, National Archives, Kew, UK

Involved in events: 

Assassination of Michael O’Dwyer

City of birth: 
Sunam, Patiala, Punjab
Country of birth: 
India
Other names: 

Sher Singh, Udhan Singh, Ude Singh, Frank Brazil, Mohamed Singh Azad

Locations

Canterbury CT1 2PR
United Kingdom
51° 15' 57.888" N, 1° 4' 43.3056" E
8 Mornington Terrace
London, NW1 7RS
United Kingdom
51° 32' 2.9436" N, 0° 8' 32.9856" W
Date of death: 
31 Jul 1940
Location of death: 
Pentonville Prison, North London
Date of 1st arrival in Britain: 
01 Jan 1934
Precise 1st arrival date unknown: 
Y
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

1934-40

Location: 

London, Canterbury, Gloucestershire, Kent.

Nathalal Jagivan Upadhyaya

About: 

N. J. Upadhyaya, a Brahmin from a poor family, was born in the Indian State of Nawanagar. A British ‘protected person’ rather than a British citizen by virtue of his birthplace, he arrived in England in 1922, having worked as a schoolteacher, on a Gujarati newspaper, then on the Bombay Stock Exchange, where he accumulated the means to come to England. Unlike many of his more privileged fellow migrants, Upadhyaya arrived without knowledge of the English language but quickly tried to master it. On his arrival in England, he stayed with a fellow Communist, Adela Knight, in Abbey Wood, London, and became involved in political activities.

Considering his lack of proficiency in English on arrival, Upadhyaya’s prominence in the Communist Party and in other workers’ organizations was quite remarkable. For the Communist Party he recruited Indians, organized meetings in London, distributed literature and wrote articles. He was also instrumental in founding the Indian Seamen’s Union in 1925, assuming the role of Secretary, with Shapurji Saklatvala as President. In this role, he encouraged Indian seamen to strike against their pay and conditions and to join unions, and helped deserters to secure jobs in hotels and restaurants in London. Upadhyaya also protested against the application of the Coloured Seamen’s Order to Indians and against police stopping Indians in the street and asking to see their Certificates of Registration. In 1928, he founded the Liverpool Indian Association. According to Indian Political Intelligence surveillance reports, Upadhyaya, known among Communist Party members as ‘Paddy’, would disseminate Communist literature among sailors in the docks by posing as a missionary carrying a Bible with leaflets hidden inside.

Upadhyaya was subjected to police interrogation and generally considered to be a suspicious and potentially threatening figure. His name was on the list of Indians to whom passport facilities should not be granted without previous reference to the India Office, and in 1927, questions were raised in parliament about the possibility of deporting him under the 1920 Aliens Order; as a British protected person, he was technically an ‘alien’ rather than a ‘British subject’ so could legally be deported. The government decided against it ultimately, on the grounds that it would be politically insensitive.

Highly conscious of the wealth and class divisions among Indians in Britain, Upadhyaya encouraged poor Indians to beg money from rich Indians. Despite his working relationship with eminent Communist figures such as Clemens Palme Dutt and Saklatvala, it would seem that Upadhyaya himself remained constrained by his class background, failing to gain admission to circles of more privileged Indians in London. He is reported to have remarked on his suspicious treatment by frequenters of the Gower Street India Club and Indian Students’ Hostel. Little is known of Upadhyaya’s personal life. Surveillance reports describe him as frequenting ‘Soho cafes’ and also suggest that he was an alcoholic. By 1933, reports claim he was no longer involved in Communist politics and even that he was a Government agent! By 1936, he was employed as a paper salesman.

Example: 

L/PJ/12/234, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras, p. 14

Date of birth: 
01 Aug 1895
Content: 

This Indian Political Intelligence file comprises documentation and correspondence relating to N. J. Upadhyaya. The documentation in the file relates in particular to a debate among officials about whether or not Upadhyaya should face deportation.

Connections: 

S. A. Dange, G. S. Dara, M. G. Desai, Clemens Palme Dutt, George Hardy, Mohamed Ally Khan (member of Communist Party), Mrs Adela Knight (Communist who supported him on his arrival in Britain and asked Saklatvala to help him further, active in Workers’ International Relief), S. N. Mitra (worked for Communist Party), Harry Pollitt, M. N. Roy, Shapurji Saklatvala, Pulin Behari Seal, Mohamed Ali Sepassi, C. B. Vakil.

Central Association of Indian Students Abroad, Communist Party of Great Britain (Colonial Section), Communist Party of India, India Club, Indian Study Circle, National Minority Movement, Seamen's Minority Movement.

Contributions to periodicals: 

Various Communist publications.

Extract: 

As the Secretary of the Indian Section of the Workers’ Welfare League of India, and as an authoritative representative of a section of British workers, I beg to submit to you that the work undertaken by Mr Upadhyaya’s committee is as much in the interest of the British seafarers as in that of the Indians themselves.

We now have not the least doubt that the main purpose of British Imperialism outside Great Britain, Australia and Canada, is to exploit underpaid and illiterate oriental labour and by force of the economic comparisons so created, to undermine and shatter the standard of life and the Trade Union rates of the British workers themselves.

I therefore appeal to you all, in the name of the British working class, to do the utmost both in the House and outside, to prevent the authorities from acting under pressure of selfish imperialists and capitalists and to protect further, Mr Upadhyaya’s great and benevolent work.

Secondary works: 

Visram, Rozina, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto, 2002)

Relevance: 

This is an extract from a letter to ‘Members of Parliament’ from Shapurji Saklatvala, dated 2 June 1927. The letter was sent as a document of support to a letter from Upadhyaya himself – which is addressed to Lt. Commander Sir Frederick Hall, MP, and is a defence of his activities in response to the parliamentary questions raised by Hall in the House of Commons. That Upadhyaya became the subject of parliamentary questions, and that Saklatvala took it upon himself to support his fellow Communist, suggest the prominence to which Upadhyaya, from a very modest background and having arrived in Britain with no knowledge of the English language, had risen in political circles, thereby implying his skills and energy in mobilizing for minority workers’ rights in Britain. The extract is also interesting for its alignment of the political interests of the Indian and British working classes, suggesting the existence and importance of an international socialist struggle against the dual but related structures of imperialism and capitalism.

Archive source: 

L/PJ/12/233, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

L/PJ/12/234, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

City of birth: 
Atkot, Nawanagar State
Country of birth: 
India
Other names: 

Paddy

Locations

Bostall Lane
London, SE2 0SY
United Kingdom
51° 29' 10.3956" N, 0° 6' 50.1264" E
Brixton Road
London, SW9 0AA
United Kingdom
51° 28' 29.478" N, 0° 6' 45.4284" W
Kennington Oval
London, SE11 5RP
United Kingdom
51° 28' 58.98" N, 0° 6' 57.0888" W
Date of 1st arrival in Britain: 
22 Oct 1922
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

1922-1936 (at least)

Clemens Palme Dutt

About: 

Clemens Palme Dutt was the elder brother of Rajani Palme Dutt. Both were active in the Communist Party of Great Britain. Clemens worked as a journalist, translator and editor, in particular of the works of Marx and Engels. The brothers’ Communist ideals were influenced from an early age by their father Dr Upendra Krishna Dutt’s activities as a doctor in a working-class part of Cambridge. While at university, Clemens and Rajani were involved with the Socialist Club where both came to the attention of the British authorities and remained under constant surveillance. Both brothers were founding members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).

In the 1920s, both brothers were writing for Labour Monthly and for a time Clemens took over from his brother as editor. In the 1920s, he became actively involved with the Indian independence movement. Working as a journalist in London, he wrote in particular on India and the Indian independence struggle. In July 1923, he visited Berlin from Moscow, where he became closely associated with M. N. Roy, who was heading the Indian section of Comintern. He returned to London later that year under instructions from Comintern to assist Shapurji Saklatvala. In 1925, the CPGB established its own colonial bureau, which Clemens Palme Dutt headed. The bureau attempted to form connections in India, Palestine, China, Egypt and Ireland. He became the link between the CPGB colonial bureau the Comintern’s Indian section and Indian Communists in Europe and India. In 1927, together with N. J. Upadhyaya and Ajoy Banerji, he founded the Indian Seamen's Union in London. By then he was also on the London Council of the Workers' Welfare League of India, working in close cooperation with Saklatvala. During this period Palme Dutt visited Liverpool several times to help with the organization of Indian seamen by local Communists active in the port.

In March 1928, Clemens Palme Dutt was asked by Reginald Bridgeman to join the Executive Committee of the British Section of the League Against Imperialism. In 1928, Palme Dutt returned to Moscow as a member of a sub-committee of the Executive Committee of the Comintern to advise on the Indian situation. In the 1930s, he worked on the editorial staff of the Daily Worker, the organ of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and acted as the Chairman of the Indian Section of the Communist Party of Great Britain. He also represented the Indian Seamen’s Union on the Executive of the League Against Imperialism. Palme Dutt worked as part of the Meerut Prisoners’ Defence Committee. In August 1930, he replaced Percy Glading as head of the Colonial Department of the CPGB. In 1930, together with Saklatvala, he helped to found the Workers' Section of the London Branch of the Indian National Congress. In June 1931, he was part of a sub-committee of the Colonial Bureau of the CPGB to organize Indian students in Britain.

In late 1931 he moved to Berlin and later to Moscow where he met Violet Lansbury (daughter of George Lansbury, leader of the Labour Party in the early 1930s) whom he married in 1936 and with whom he had a daughter. During the Spanish Civil War, Palme Dutt worked together with Krishna Menon and the India League to collect donations for an ambulance for Spanish Republicans. By early 1939 Palme Dutt, his wife and daughter had returned to Britain permanently. He continued to work for the CPGB, addressing meetings and writing articles.

Published works: 

Biology: An Introductory Course for Casses and Study Circles (London: Labour Research Department, 1925)

Labour and the Empire (London: Communist Party of Great Britain, 1929)

As editor and translator:

Engels, Friedrich, Herr Eugen Duehring’s Revolution in Science-Anti-Duehring, trans. by Emile Burns and ed. by C. P. Dutt (London: Martin Lawrence, 1934)

Engels, Friedrich, Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy...With an appendix of other material of Marx and Engels relating to dialectical materialism, ed. by C. P. Dutt (London: Martin Lawrence, 1934)Engels, Friedrich, The Housing Question, ed. by C. P. Dutt (London: Martin Lawrence, 1935)

Marx, Karl, The Poverty of Philosophy, with an introduction by Frederick Engels, ed. by C. P. Dutt and V. Chattopadhyaya (London: Martin Lawrence, 1936)

Frolov, Yury Petrovitch, Pavlov and his School. The Theory of Conditioned Reflexes, trans. by C. P. Dutt (London: Kegan Paul & Co., 1937)

Critique of the Gotha Programme...With Appendices by Marx, Engels and Lenin, ed. by C. P. Dutt (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1938)

Engels, Friedrich, Dialectics of Nature, trans. by C. P. Dutt (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1940)

Marx, Karl, Selected Works of Karl Marx, ed. by C. P. Dutt (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1942)

The Soviet Worker Looks at the War: Selections from the Moscow Fortnightly War and the Working Class, ed. by C. P. Dutt (London: Labour Monthly, 1944)

Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, Weissbuch der Kommunistischen Partei Deutschlands ueber die muendliche Verhandlung im Verbotsprozess...in Karlsruhe ('The Karlsruhe Trial for banning the Communist Party of Germany'), trans. by C. P. Dutt (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1956)

Date of birth: 
15 Apr 1893
Connections: 

Robert Page Arnot, Olive Budden, Ajoy Banerji, Reginald Bridgeman, Rose Cohen, Claud Cockburn, Shripat Amrit Dange, Upendra Krishna Dutt (father), Rajani Palme Dutt (brother), Pazl Elahi, Percy Glading, Don Phillip Rupasangha Gunawardena, W. M. Holmes, Douglas Hyde, George Lansbury, Harold Laski, V. K. Krishna Menon, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sylvia Pankhurst, Picasso, M. P. Rathbones, M. N. Roy, Bill Rust, Shapurji Saklatvala, Pulin Behari Seal, Mohamed Ali Sepassi (Khushi Mohammed), Philip Spratt, Robert Stuart, John Strachey, N. J. Upadhyaya.

Communist Club, Battersea; Communist Party of Great Britain; Indian Bureau; Indian Seamen’s Union; Meerut Prisoners Defence Committee; National Union of Journalists; Workers' Welfare League for India.

Contributions to periodicals: 

Daily Worker

Labour Monthly

Secondary works: 

'Announcement of Death', The Times (14 April 1975), p. 24

Owen, Nicholas, The British Left and India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)

Visram, Rozina, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto, 2002)
 

Archive source: 

L/PJ/12/28, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

L/PJ/12/29, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

KV2/2504, National Archives, Kew

KV2/2505, National Archives, Kew

 

Involved in events: 

Meerut Conspiracy Trials

City of birth: 
Cambridge
Country of birth: 
England

Location

Cambridge, CB1 2PY
United Kingdom
52° 11' 46.9428" N, 0° 11' 55.4748" E
Date of death: 
01 Apr 1975
Location of death: 
Goring on Thames
Location: 

Cambridge, London.

Aftab Ali

About: 

Although Aftab Ali never settled in Britain he was important in organizing lascars there. Furthermore his work in the late 1940s and early 1950s made it possible for thousands of migrant workers to settle in Britain.

Ali worked as a sailor in the 1920s gaining valuable first-hand experiences of the inadequate working conditions of lascars. This motivated him to work tirelessly for better working rights for South Asian seamen. In 1925 he became involved with the Calcutta-based Indian Seamen’s Union, soon becoming its General Secretary. In order to make South Asian seamen’s campaigns for better conditions more effective, he proposed to unite the various unions under the banner of the All-India Seamen’s Federation. He became its President in 1937.

He visited London in 1939 en route to the International Labour Organization’s conference in Geneva. Ali also participated in the Indian Workers’ Conference, organized by Surat Alley. Apart from London he also visited Dundee. While in London he was embroiled in the power struggle between Surat Alley and Krishna Menon. Suspicious of Alley’s Communist connections, he briefly supported Krishna Menon’s efforts in the East End of London and was considering Menon as the official representation of the All-India Seamen’s Federation. However, Menon quickly lost support among the lascar community and Ali switched his support back to Alley.

The work of Surat Alley and Aftab Ali was instrumental in breaking the deadlock between British ship-owners and striking lascars at the outbreak of war in 1939. Ali became Vice-President of the All-India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) in 1939 and was a member of the Bengal Legislative Assembly from 1937 to 1944. In 1941 he broke away from the AITUC. He was appointed Honorary Lieutenant Commander of the Royal Indian Naval Reserve in 1942.

After the partition of India, he moved to Pakistan and sat as an independent MP in the Legislative Assembly. He proposed that Pakistani seamen should leave their ships in British ports and settle there, adding to the small South Asian community already settled in Britain. In the early 1950s, he formed the Overseas Seamen’s Welfare Association to campaign for the granting of British passports to distressed seamen and their families.

Published works: 

Address to Bengal Cabinet (Calcutta: Indian Seamen’s Union, 1937)

Date of birth: 
01 Jan 1907
Connections: 

Ayub Ali, Nesar Ali, Surat Alley, Maulana Bashana, Dr Basu, Ben Bradley Hamidul Hoque Chowdury, Manfur Khan, Abdul Manan, Ayub Ali Master, Krishna Menon, Suruth Mia, Tahsil Miya, Abdul Mannan, Abdul Majid Qureshi, M. N. Roy, Reginald Sorensen.

Indian Seamen’s Union (Calcutta), International Labour Organization.

Precise DOB unknown: 
Y
Secondary works: 

Broeze, Frank, The Muscles of Empire: Indian Seamen and the Raj, 1919-1939 (Bucharest: International Commsion of Maritime History, 1980)

Tabili, Laura, 'We Ask for British Justice': Workers and Racial DIfference in Late Imperial Britain (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994)

Visram, Rozina, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto, 2002)
 

Archive source: 

L/PJ/12/630, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

L/E/9/773, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

L/E/9/976, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

Involved in events: 
City of birth: 
Katalkhair, Sylhet
Country of birth: 
India
Current name country of birth: 
Bangladesh
Precise date of death unknown: 
Y
Date of 1st arrival in Britain: 
01 Jul 1939
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

July - August 1939

Location: 

London; Dundee.

Surat Alley

About: 

Surat Alley was a trade unionist and political activist who campaigned tirelessly for the rights of Indians – and particularly Indian seamen – in Britain in the 1930s and 1940s. India Office surveillance files record the details of his passport, thus shedding light on his date and place of birth, but beyond this, little is known of his early life in India. Indeed, even his affiliations are disputed, with some describing him as a Bengali and former seamen and others doubting that he was a Muslim. It is likely that he arrived in Britain some time in the early or mid 1930s, and it is known that he married a white woman called Sarah (Sally) Reder, with whom he lived first in London’s East End and later in Glasgow.

While Alley was involved in an extraordinary range of activities and organizations, his struggle for equality for Indian seamen was perhaps his greatest political contribution when in Britain. He held a number of posts in different organizations all of which aimed for the betterment of the pay and employment conditions of lascars. He was Secretary of the Colonial Seamen’s Association, formed in 1935 by black, South Asian and Chinese seamen in reaction to the British Shipping (Assistance) Act. He was also the London representative of Aftab Ali’s All-India Seamen’s Federation. In this latter role, he gave much assistance to lascars striking against their unequal treatment at the beginning of the Second World War. He organized meetings and rallies, distributed leaflets, and listened to the seamen’s grievances. When Aftab Ali called off the strikes, having reached an agreement with the authorities, Alley cooperated with this decision but continued to campaign for the release of lascars from prison and their subsequent re-employment, lobbying the Home Secretary and calling on the TUC for support. Alley gained a reputation among government officials as an agitator and trouble-maker, in spite of their partial reliance on him to negotiate with lascars.

In the early 1940s, Alley wrote pamphlets and issued memos on the appalling conditions of Indian seamen’s hostels in Britain, their lack of compensation and pay when injured during the war, and the insufficiency of their wages. In 1941 he sent his memo titled 'Indian Seamen in the Merchant Navy' to the Shipping Federation, the Indian High Commissioner, the Ministry of Shipping and the Ministry of Labour and National Service, urging their intervention. But the authorities repeatedly stonewalled him, claiming intervention could only come from India. In September 1943, when the All-India Seamen’s Federation was starting to disintegrate, Alley launched the All-India Seamen’s Centre, which was soon merged with Aftab Ali’s India-based India Seamen’s Union. The inaugural meeting, held at British Council House, Liverpool, was attended by ninety seamen and other South Asians, as well as spokesmen from the National Union of Seamen, the International Transport Workers’ Federation, and several other organizations. By 1944 the AISC had branches in London, Glasgow and Liverpool. Alley worked hard for the organization, disseminating information in Urdu and Bengali as well as English, and urging seamen to join in order to better protect their rights and interests. His years of activism did see some small successes, although these were generally credited by the authorities to the ship-owners rather than to Alley himself.

Surat Alley’s political interests extended beyond the concerns of lascars. He was Honorary Secretary of the Hindustani Social Club, an organization committed to the social welfare of working-class Indians in Britain as well as to raising their consciousness of the struggle for Indian independence. In this capacity, he helped to organize a charity performance by Ram Gopal and his troupe at the Vaudeville Theatre in December 1939. Alley was also general secretary of the Oriental Film Artistes’ Union. He was involved with Swaraj House, and in 1943 he helped to set up the Federation of Indian Associations in Great Britain which brought together the middle-class members of Swaraj House with the working-class members of the Indian Workers’ Association. Surveillance reports suggest he was an associate of the revolutionary Udham Singh. Shortly after Singh’s arrest in 1940, Alley’s lodgings were searched. Not just confining himself to Indian organizations, Alley was also an active member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, helping them to gain access to the Indian working classes, and worked as an ARP warden in the Second World War.

Example: 

Note Misc. No. 17/I.P.I, L/PJ/12/384, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras, pp. 113-14

Date of birth: 
18 May 1905
Content: 

This is a surveillance file on the Communist Party of Great Britain. The extract is taken from an IPI report on ‘Indian Communist Activities in London’, dated 29 July 1940.

Connections: 

Aftab Ali, Ayub Ali, Mulk Raj Anand, Jyoti Basu, Tarapada Basu, Amiya Nath Bose, Ben Bradley, Reginald Bridgeman, Michael Carritt, B. B. Ray Chaudhuri, D. N. Dutt, May Dutt, Ram Gopal, Abdul Hamid, Kundal Lal Jalie, M. A. Jalil, Chris Jones (led Colonial Seamen’s Association), Balram Kaura, Abdulla Khan, Akbar Ali Khan, N. Datta Majumdar, V. K. Krishna Menon, Narayana Menon, Tahsil Miah, S. P. Mitra, R. S. Nimbkar, Shah Abdul Majid Qureshi, Sarah Reder (wife), V. S. Sastrya, Pulin Behari Seal, Said Amir Shah, John Kartar Singh, Iqbal Singh, Udham Singh, Sasadhar Sinha, D. J. Vaidya, C. B. Vakil.

All-India Seamen’s Centre, Bengal Indian Restaurant, Communist Party of Great Britain, International Transport Workers’ Federation, London Majlis, National Union of Seamen, Trades Union Council.

Extract: 

Surat Ali in recent months has continued his activities on behalf of Indian seamen and his Oriental Film Artistes’ Union, but is very seriously hampered in both respects by war conditions. Over the UDHAM SINGH case he has established many contacts with the Sikh community in England. He now attends on CARRITT for instructions and pay and appears to have been promoted to more difficult country in his Party activities; for instance, he was sent by CARRITT to speak at the opening of the ‘INDIA EXHIBITION’ when this moved from Cambridge to Oxford (incidentally it was very poorly attended there). He addressed the FEDIND in April, spoke at an Empire Day meeting, and one or two other major Party fixtures. Latterly he has been advised to do no open Party work lest he be arrested, and to burn his papers and remove his Communist books to safe addresses. He has been specially zealous in endeavouring to work up Poplar Communist activities to the same level already reached by Stepney, and by way of encouragement was recently made Propaganda Secretary for Poplar. He is also a regular attendant at meetings of the Colonial Committee of the CPGB.

Secondary works: 

Visram, Rozina, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto, 2002)

Relevance: 

This passage emphasizes the range of political activities and organizations that Surat Alley was involved with in Britain. From actors, to students, to the Sikh supporters of the revolutionary Udham Singh, Alley interacted with a wide range of Indians, advising them of their rights and aiding them in their various campaigns for justice. The passage is also suggestive of the way that a figure like Alley bridged Indian and British organizations, working on behalf of the Communist Party of Great Britain in their struggle for equality – and probably encouraging Indians to join the Party – but also establishing and developing Indian groups to cater for their particular needs. This further implies a productive interaction and exchange between Britons and South Asians within the political sphere.

Archive source: 

L/E/9/976, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

L/PJ/12/384, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

L/PJ/12/630, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

L/PJ/12/646, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

MT 9/3150, National Archives, Kew

MT 9/3657, National Archives, Kew

Involved in events: 

British Shipping (Assistance) Act, 1935 (campaigned against)

Indian Workers’ Conference, United Ladies Tailors’ Union Hall, Whitechapel, July 1939 (organizer)

India League conference, Central Hall, Glasgow, September 1941 (gave speech on conditions of lascars)

Joint Maritime Commission of the International Labour Organization, London, June 1942 (presented Indian seamen’s case)

International Seafarers’ Conference, London, 13-14 December 1943

Empire Day meeting organized by CPGB, Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London, 24 May 1940 (gave speech)

City of birth: 
Cuttack, Orissa
Country of birth: 
India
Other names: 

Surat Ali

Location

179 High Street Poplar
London, E14 0BH
United Kingdom
42° 57' 59.922" N, 81° 14' 15.0468" W
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

1935-46?

V. S. Sastrya

About: 

Sastrya arrived in Britain in Spring 1936 to train as a journalist. In December 1936 he approached the India League to offer his support for as long as he remained in the UK. According to India Office Records, Sastrya had found it difficult to find work as a journalist in the English Press. He worked for a while for the Orient Press Service and supplemented his income by working in the Indian Stores department. He later moved to the Midlands to take up work with Albert Herberts Ltd. in Coventry. He studied economics in evening classes and completed his course in July 1940. In 1941, he was working as a shop steward for Daimler and later as an Inspector in the Gauge Control Department of the BSA Works in Birmingham.

Sastrya was a committed socialist and was a driving force in organizing Indian workers in the Midlands. He was actively involved with the Indian Workers Association and became its secretary in October 1941. He drafted a constitution for the IWA and was instrumental in helping the IWA expand by setting up a central committee functioning from Birmingham with branches in Coventry, Bradford, Newcastle, Sheffield, Manchester and other towns and cities with large Indian communities in the UK. He also helped to set up a newsletter which was published in both English and Urdu. In order to pursue his work for the IWA more effectively he resigned from his BSA job on grounds of ill-health.

Sastrya was committed to protecting the interests of Indian workers in the UK, working with great enthusiasm and making full use of his organizational skills. He was a driving force for the expansion of the organization. He campaigned for Indian independence and was of the opinion that Indians had to publicize the cause of Indian independence not only to an Indian audience in Britain but amongst all people living in the UK. Sastrya’s work was instrumental in politicizing the Indian community living and working in the Midlands at the time.

He was employed by the Socialist Appeal, a Trotskyist journal, and was also a member of the Independent Labour Party. In 1944 he went on a tour to speak at a series of ‘Quit India’ demonstrations held in Birmingham, Coventry, Bradford, Leeds, Manchester and Newcastle. Sastrya also worked closely with Surat Alley as part of the Federation of Indian Associations in Great Britain. He lost his position as secretary of the organization when Akbar Ali Khan became its president in 1945 and pursued a policy of disengaging the IWA from the Federation of Indian Associations in Great Britain.

Date of birth: 
14 Sep 1912
Connections: 

Surat Alley, Thakur Singh Basra, Fenner Brockway, Charan Singh Chima,  Akbar Ali Khan, Krishna Menon, Kartar Singh Nagra, Mohammed Hussain Noor, Karam Singh Overseer, Sayyif Manzu Hussain Shah, Sardar Shah, Natha Singh.

Secondary works: 

Visram, Rozina, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto, 2002)

Archive source: 

L/PJ/12/645, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

L/PJ/12/646, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

Other names: 

Vellala Srikantaya Sastrya, V. S. Sastry

Locations

30 Beaufort Road Edgbaston
Birmingham, B16 8HZ
United Kingdom
52° 29' 39.7248" N, 1° 48' 49.2156" W
Oriental Press Service
92 Fleet Street EC4A 2AT
London
United Kingdom
51° 30' 50.9292" N, 0° 6' 19.7784" W
Date of 1st arrival in Britain: 
01 Apr 1936
Precise 1st arrival date unknown: 
Y
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

Spring 1936 - unknown

Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan

About: 

Noor Inayat Khan was the daughter of the Sufi preacher Hazrat Inayat Khan and Ora Ray Baker, an American of British origin (her father was half-English and half-Irish, her mother Scottish).

In 1914, Noor and her family moved from Paris to London, where they would remain until 1920. The family moved back to France in 1920, setting up home in Suresnes. In 1932 she enrolled at the Sorbonne, University of Paris, for a degree in child psychology. After leaving university, she began writing children’s stories. She published Jataka Tales, an English translation of stories and fables on the Buddha in 1939, and also wrote for the children’s pages of the Sunday edition of the newspaper Le Figaro. After the outbreak of the Second World War she trained as a nurse with the Red Cross in France.

With the imminent Fall of France in the summer of 1940, she fled to England with her brother Vilayat and her mother and she decided to join the war effort. Having previously trained with the Red Cross in France, she briefly worked at the Fulmer Chase maternity home for Officers’ Wives near Slough, before joining the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) under the name ‘Nora Inayat Khan’ in November 1940. Together with 40 other women she was chosen to train in wireless operation.  She trained as a wireless telegraphist at RAF Balloon Command, Edinburgh in December 1940, before being posted with RAF Bomber Command at Abingdon in June 1941. She was called for an interview by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) on 19 November 1942. Her language skills in French and English and her outstanding aptitude as a radio operator were of particular interest to the SOE. Despite controversies about her suitability for the job, she was recruited by Selwyn Jepson, who was responsible for recruitment for the SOE French Section, after just one interview. Her motivation was a great sense of justice and freedom and wanting to contribute to the liberation of France. During her time in London, Noor also had become increasingly aware of the Indian independence movement. Her brother Vilayat Khan was of the opinion that if Noor had survived the war the next cause she would have committed herself to would probably have been Indian independence.

Noor Inayat Khan joined SOE, F section on 8 February 1943 and was seconded to FANY (Women’s Transport Service First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) as a cover story for family and friends. There she trained in the use of firearms. On 16/17 June, after 4 months of training, she was flown to France under the code name ‘Madeleine’ and her cover name Jeanne-Marie Renier, one of the first female wireless operators to be infiltrated into France. However the team she was attached headed by ‘Prosper’ had  been betrayed, and by 24 June, only a week after her arrival, mass arrests had already begun. Nevertheless, she joined the ‘Prosper’ team, narrowly escaping from the Gestapo on a number of occasions. Within ten days of her arrival, the network was in complete disarray and Noor was lying low, moving between a number of safe houses. She re-emerged when matters had calmed down to inform London of the destruction of the Prosper circuit. Despite the dangers, she stayed and was the SOE’s last wireless operator in Paris. She continued transmitting messages to London under considerable personal risk to her own safety for arms and arms drops to be collected. By that time the Gestapo were already on her trail. She was arrested on 13 October 1943, a day before she was due to return to England, after someone, probably the sister of her first contact in Paris, had tipped off the Gestapo for 100,000 Francs. Despite hours of torture, Noor Inayat Khan did not reveal any information. However, because she had meticulously filed all her messages between her and London in cipher and clear, having interpreted too literally an order from SOE headquarters, the Gestapo could take over her station, and her arrest remained undetected by SOE.

Being deemed a difficult and uncooperative prisoner and after two unsuccessful attemps to escape, she was transferred to the Gestapo prison in Pforzheim, Germany, where she spent a lot of time in solitary confinement and in chains. On 11 September 1944 she was transported to Dachau concentration camp where she was executed on 13 September 1944. She was posthumously awarded the Croix de Guerre with Gold Star by the French Republic and in 1949 the George Cross by the British Government.

Published works: 

Twenty Jataka Tales Retold (London: G. G. Harrap & Co., 1939)

Children's Stories in the French newspaper Le Figaro (Aug. 1939), also broadcast on Radio Paris

Date of birth: 
02 Jan 1914
Connections: 

Jean Overton Fuller, Selwyn Jepson, Jean Marais (WAAF metereologist of Indian origin).

Secondary works: 

Basu, Shrabani, Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan (Stroud: The History Press, 2008)

Binney, Marcus, The Women who lived for Danger: The Women Agents of SOE in the Second World War (London: Coronet, 2002)

Buckmaster, Maurice, They Fought Alone (London: Popular Book Club, 1958)

Cookridge, E.H., Inside SOE (London: Heinemann, 1966)

Cunningham, Cyril, Beaulieu: The Finishing School for Secret Agents (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2005)

Escot, Beryl E., The WAAF: A History of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force in the Second World War (Princes Risborough: Shire, 2003)

Escot, Beryl E.,  Mission Improbable: A Salute to Air Women of the SOE in Wartime France (Wellingborough: Stephens, 1991)

Foot, M. R. D., SOE in France: an Account of the work of the British Special Operations Executive in France, 1940-1944 (London: Frank Cass, 2004)

Frayn Turner, John, VCs of the Second World War (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2004)

Hayes-Fisher, John, Timewatch: The Princess Spy (BBC/The Open University,  2006) (documentary film for BBC2): [http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/timewatch/gallery_spy.shtml]

Helm, Sarah, A Life in Secrets: The Story of Vera Atkins and the Lost Agents of SOE (London: Little Brown, 2005)

Howarth, Patrick, Undercover: The Men and Women of the Special Operations Executive (London: Phoenix, 2000)

Lahiri, Shompa, ‘Clandestine Mobilities and Shifting Embodiments: Noor-un-nisa Inayat Khan and the Special Operatives Executive, 1940–44’, Gender and History 19.2 (2007), pp. 305–23

Lukes, Sue, The Real Charlotte Grays (Darlow Smithson Productions, 2004) (documentary film first broadcast on Channel 4, February 2004)

Mackenzie, William, The Secret History of SOE: The Special Operations Executive, 1940-1945 (London: St Ermins, 2002)

Marks, Leo, Between Silk and Cyanide: a codemaker's story, 1941-1945 (London: Harper Collins, 2000)

Overton Fuller, Jean,  The German Penetration of SOE, revised edition (Maidstone: Mann, 1996)

Overton Fuller, Jean, Madeleine: The Story of Noor Inayat Khan (London: Gollancz, 1952)

Overton Fuller, Jean,  Born for Sacrifice: the Sory of Noor Inayat Khan, revised edition (London: Pan Books, 1957)

West, Nigel, Secret War: The Story of SOE, Britain's Wartie Sabotage Organisation (London: Hodder & Staughton, 1992)

Archive source: 

HS9/836/5, National Archives, Kew, UK

Sound Archive, Imperial War Museum, London

Involved in events: 

SOE operations in Paris, Second World War, 1943

City of birth: 
Moscow
Country of birth: 
Russia
Other names: 

Noor Inayat Khan, Madeleine, Jeanne-Marie Renier

Location

RAF AbingdonOX13 6HW
United Kingdom
51° 39' 36.2808" N, 1° 19' 57.846" W
Date of death: 
13 Sep 1944
Location of death: 
Dachau Concentration Camp, Germany
Date of 1st arrival in Britain: 
01 Aug 1914
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

August 1914 - Spring 1920, June 1940 - June 1943

Location: 

Abingdon, Edinburgh, London, Oxford.

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