Papers of Avtar Jouhl and the Indian Workers Association

Papers kept by Avtar Jouhl documenting his involvement in political campaigning organisations, primarily the Indian Workers Association (GB), and in the Trade Union movement. Papers of the Indian Workers Association (GB) largely cover the period from the late 1970s until the early 21st century, and comprise papers of the central organisation and of some local branches, including the Birmingham, later Birmingham and Sandwell branch. Papers consist of minutes; agendas; reports; constitutions; circulars; press statements; financial papers; correspondence; campaign and casework material; publications; membership records; press cuttings; photographs; and printed ephemera. The collection also includes papers of the Shaheed Udham Singh Welfare Centre, set up by the Indian Workers Association and includes substantial photocopies of British government files on the Indian political activist Udham Singh who was executed for the killing of Sir Michael O'Dwyer in 1940, generated for a research project run by the Indian Workers Association in the 1990s.

Other material in the collection consists of organisational and campaign papers of other groups connected with the Indian Workers Association through joint campaign work, or with Avtar Jouhl, and include minutes; agendas; circular letters; correspondence; press statements; flyers; and typescript and printed articles. There are also a number of photographs depicting some of the campaigning and trade union related activities that Avtar Jouhl was involved in during the 1980s.

Apart from the papers of the Indian Workers Association, the other main focus of this collection relates to Avtar Jouhl's career in the Trade Union movement and to two main activities; one as shop steward for the Transport and General Workers Union [TGWU] at Dartmouth Auto Castings and other foundries in the Birmid Industries group in the Smethwick area of the West Midlands during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s; the other as lecturer in Trade Union Studies at Hall Green Technical College in Birmingham. Accordingly, the collection contains substantial shop stewards papers including minutes; agendas; correspondence; statements by company management; wage agreements and other associated material; and papers relating to health and safety at work and to industrial disputes. The bulk of the papers relating to Avtar Jouhl's trade union activities, however, focus on his role in Trade Union education, and include Trades Union Congress [TUC] Education Service publications and course materials; conference papers; and minutes and other organisational papers of a number of trade union committees of which he was a member, including the TUC Race Relations Committee and National Association for Teachers in Further and Higher Education [NATFHE] committees, as well as other trade union-linked bodies with which he was involved in an advisory capacity.

Avtar Singh Jouhl was born in on 2 November 1937 in Doaba in the district of Jalandhar in Punjab, India where his parents had a farm. After school, he attended Khalsa college in Jalandhar and studied for a degree in Political Science. He came to Britain in 1957 and intended to study at the London School of Economics. He went to live with his brother in Smethwick, who had come to Britain a few years earlier, sharing a house with other men from his area who worked in foundries in Smethwick, Oldbury and West Bromwich. Although he intended to begin his studies, his brother and father-in-law found him a job at the Shotton Brothers foundry in Oldbury as a moulder's mate.

Avtar Jouhl and some other Indian workers organised a union at Shotton Brothers shortly after he began work there and managed to recruit a large number of employees. He was also involved in the formation of the Indian Workers Association in Birmingham with Jagmohan Joshi in the late 1950s and became secretary of the Birmingham branch of the organisation in 1959. He served as General Secretary of the national organisation from 1961-1964, was national organiser during the later 1960s, editor of 'Lalkar', the Indian Workers Association publication between 1967 and 1968, and served again as General Secretary after Jagmohan Joshi's death in 1979 until the mid 1990s. Throughout this period he took a prominent role in political campaigns and welfare activities organised by the Association and shaped its policy and programme. For a full history of the Indian Workers Association, see the catalogue for MS 2141: Papers of the Indian Workers Association.

Avtar Jouhl decided not to abandon his trade union activities or his post in the Indian Workers Association to attend university, and continued to work at the foundry. He was dismissed from Shotton Brothers in 1961, allegedly for making faulty castings, but his employers were likely to have been nervous about his union activities. He was employed in other foundries in the Smethwick area throughout the 1960s and 1970s except for a period in 1967-1968 when he was editor of 'Lalkar', the newspaper of the Indian Workers Association, and was based in London. He worked at Dartmouth Auto Castings during the 1960s, and was shop steward there for the Transport and General Workers Union [TGWU], which he had joined in 1968. He played an active role in this union, and was selected as a co-opted member for the enquiry team for the regional committee enquiry into the dispute at Imperial Typewriter in Leicester.

Avtar Jouhl became shop steward at Midland Motor Cylinder Company and Birmingham Aluminium Casting, but after returning from a visit to India, he worked again at Dartmouth Auto Castings through the 1970s and 1980s, by then part of Birmid Qualcast, as shop steward, senior shop steward and spokesperson for the company's shop steward committee.

Through educational training received at TGWU summer schools, Avtar Jouhl was able to take up a post as lecturer in Trade Union studies at Hall Green Technical College [later South Birmingham College] in 1987, where he taught until the mid 1990s. He continued to be a member of the TGWU but also joined the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education [NATFHE], as a condition of his employment. He was elected as a member of the National Executive Committee, worked on the Equal Opportunities Committee of the union in the 1990s and was also a member of the Trades Union Congress [TUC] Race Relations Committee, campaigning for greater representation of black people in further education and for equality of opportunity for all. He ran training courses and workshops, and spoke at conferences relating to trade union education, health and safety issues, and the need to tackle racism and discrimination both in the trade union movement and in wider society. He studied for a Certificate in Education at Matthew Boulton College/University of Warwick during the early 1990s, and was a visiting research fellow at the Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations at the University of Warwick in 1993. He retired from his lecturing post in the late 1990s but continues to take an active interest in the trade union movement.

Throughout Avtar Jouhl's working life, and beyond he has had a keen commitment to social justice, and has taken a leading role in political and social campaigns, particularly through the Indian Workers Association from the late 1950s onwards, but he has also worked with other anti-racist and progressive organisations, including the Campaign Against Racist Laws [CARL], Campaign Against Racism and Fascism [CARF], and the Anti-Nazi League, as committee member and officer. The Indian Workers Association allied with many of these groups for joint campaigns during the period when Avtar Jouhl was General Secretary from 1979.

Avtar Jouhl was interviewed by Charles Parker in the 1970s for what became the Banner Theatre show 'The Great Divide' which looked at experiences of racism faced by Asian workers in the Midlands. He also recorded an extensive interview for the Birmingham Black Oral History Project in 1990, in which he discussed his life and career. A transcript of this interview is held in the collection, and contains further biographical information, MS 2142/A/3/5.

These papers have been arranged to reflect Avtar Jouhl's activities as a political activist and member of the Indian Workers Association (GB) and as a trade unionist.

A Papers relating to Indian Workers Association activities and other campaigns

A/1 Records of the Indian Workers Association
A/1/1 Minutes and related papers
A/1/2 Financial records
A/1/3 Policy and administrative papers
A/1/4 Correspondence and campaign files
A/1/5 Publications
A/1/6 Branch records
A/1/7 General files

A/2 General campaign and correspondence files
A/3/ Political and personal writings
A/4 Photographs and recordings

B Records of the Shaheed Udham Singh Welfare Centre

B/1 Administrative papers
B/2 Case work papers
B/3 Shaheed Udham Singh research project papers

C Papers relating to Trade Union activities

C/1 Industrial relations and disputes
C/2 Trade Union Education
C/3 Other Trade Union activities
C/4 Trade Union and other publications

D Papers of other political and campaigning organisations

D/1 Anti Nazi League
D/2 Association of Indian Communists
D/3 Association of Communists
D/4 Campaign Against Racism and Fascism
D/5 Campaign Against Racist Laws
D/6 Barrow Cadbury Fund Limited
D/7 Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)
D/8 Desh Bhagat Yadgar Committee
D/9 Indian Peoples Association of North America
D/10 Immigration Aid Unit
D/11 Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants
D/12 National Campaign Against the Police Bill
D/13 Sandwell Community Law Centre
D/14 Socialist Labour Party
D/15 Papers of other political and campaigning organisations
D/16 Publications

This system of arrangement is loosely based on the scheme of arrangement and classification of organisational records developed by the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick.

Original order has been preserved where possible, and some of the file names are those given by the creators. For other material in the collection, papers have had to be sorted and an arrangement imposed. As a result, overlaps occur extensively within the collection, where related material appears in different sections of the catalogue. Cross references indicate obvious instances.

Some files, and some items within files, have been closed under the terms of the Data Protection Act 1998 because they contain personal information about individuals. 'Closed' files are indicated as such in the catalogue.

The original government files on Udham Singh, from which the photocopies in this collection were taken, MEPO3/1743; HO144/21444; PCOM9/872, are held at The National Archives in Kew. The India Office: Public and Judicial Department file on Udham Singh 1936-1940 is held at the British Library, London

MS 2141 Papers of the Indian Workers Association, held at Birmingham City Archives; MS 2118 Papers deposited by Ian Grosvenor, contains the transcript of an interview with Avtar Jouhl|GB 0144 PA2600: Papers of Mr Virk relating to his work as a printed in Coventry, and his involvement with various organisations including the Indian Workers Association, held at Coventry Archives.

DeWitt John Jr, 'Indian Workers Associations in Britain', published for the Institute of Race Relations, London, 1969; |Sasha Josephides, 'Towards a History of the Indian Workers' Association' CRER Research Paper in Ethnic Relations, no. 18, 1991;|John King, 'Three Asian Associations in Britain', Monographs in Ethnic Relations no. 8 ESRC, CRER, January 1994