Indian Workers' Association
[2] Their activity includes anti-racism campaigning, industrial action, social work within immigrant communities, and film shows.
The IWA (GB) continues to support struggles among workers in the Asian community in the UK and revolutionary change in India.
The journal Lalkar, which used to be linked to the IWA, is now independent (it is edited by Harpal Brar of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist–Leninist)).
[3] It was formalised on the 24th December 1939 at 46 Welgarth Avenue Coventry, by men such as VP Hansrani[4] and its first President was Chanan Kooner.
[3] Shaheed Udham Singh, a member of the famous Ghadar Party also facilitated the founding of the Indian Workers Association by his activities in London.
Jagmohan Joshi, a leader of the IWA from the early 1960s until his death in 1979 is widely considered to have been a central figure in black political action in the 1960s and 1970s.
Sivanandan refers to him as "the man who had initiated so many of the black working class and community movements of the early years and clarified for us all the lines of roll/class struggle".
These organisations were opposed to both colonial rule and the domination of the Indian economy by quasi-feudal landlords known as zamindars which owned cash crop plantations (primary producing tea and jute, coal mines, and textile factories throughout India.
The Ghadar Movement was heavily socialist and communist in nature, and a British branch was founded in the early 20th century.
[9] The League was established in 1928 by Krishna Menon[10][11] and has been described as "the principal organisation promoting Indian nationalism in pre-war Britain".
The Association aimed to improve conditions for immigrant workers, working alongside the mainstream British labour movement.
DeWitt Johan wrote in his book, "wherever there are Punjabi immigrants in Britain, there is an Indian Workers' Association with an impressive membership".
Two members of the politburo of the CPI (M) came to Britain to take part in a number of meetings of the Association of Indian Communist and the IWA (GB).
The position of Joshi's supporters regarding racism was that the black working class, through their struggles against imperialism in Africa and economic exploitation in the West, had become more politically aware.
Singh's opposition argued that black workers did not have any special role to play and the initiative for the struggle had to come from the white working class.
The black power dimension is a fairly controversial one and the IWA had to tread carefully in defining what it meant in order not to lose Indian members.
At the international level, they have always supported oppressed people and opposed child labour; and have continued campaigning against the death sentence in India and worldwide, in addition to speaking out against the violation of human rights.
