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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Environment
Damien Gayle

Asad Rehman’s journey from antiracism campaigner in Burnley to head of Friends of the Earth

Asad Rehman, then head of War on Want, speaking at  an event in 2019 supporting the right to protest
Asad Rehman, then head of War on Want, speaking at an event in 2019 supporting the right to protest. Photograph: Peter Marshall/Alamy

Each weekday morning, every child in the south Asian community in Burnley would gather before making the journey to school. It was the 1970s, the National Front were mobilising, and they were the children of south Asian workers invited to Britain a decade earlier to fill labour shortages.

Among them was Asad Rehman, who had moved to the Lancashire town with his family from Pakistan at the age of four. “We would all walk together, because it was dangerous to walk alone,” he remembers. “Younger children in the middle, older children around the edge, because we’d be attacked on the way.”

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