For two nights my social media timelines have been awash with posts about Defiance, Channel 4’s powerful documentary on British Asian resistance to racism shattering illusions of community docility.
As an Asian youth who lived through the struggles depicted the program really resonated with me. I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s in Ealing borough, which includes Punjabi area Southall, to Bengali parents. I also ended up as an MP. As a kid we were sent home early from primary school in Ealing Broadway as it was feared riots down the road in Southall circa 1979 would reach us next. My parents feared Enoch Powellite politics and Margareth Thatcher’s repatriation rhetoric. We ate curry at home and I got called “Paki” at school despite being Bangladeshi.
