And I think it's a useful time for us to start because we like this evening to be there as a record. I think it's quite a historical for me personally. I think for a lot of people who are here tonight to be able to be part of this remembrance event. So just bear with me as I'm doing this, but it is also a reminder to everyone to actually speak into the mic so that the sound can be picked up as well. I'm going to go into the other. So I'd like to welcome everyone today to sow us and the South Asian Institute who's hosting this event, which is commemorating the life of Muckin Singh, who was, and we use the word radical, a radical trade unionist, an African nationalist. And for many of us, I personally have part of my family who are from Kenya, but this isn't often a history that is told through our own family history, our community histories. So it was a real pleasure through Amarjit Chandan and Shiraz Durrani, and then a chance meeting with Judith Hare a few months ago in the Netherlands where you see that these histories actually are being remembered. And as Shiraz has mentioned in his book that is being launched tonight here, and of course he's got a number of other books that are there as well, that this is a disappeared history, but it's one that is being recovered. So I think this is what we're trying to do this evening, and I'm looking forward to hearing from the various speakers this evening. I won't be talking too much here, so all I want to do is just to let you know who's speaking tonight. Well, first, Shiraz Durrani, who's a Kenyan activist in exile and who is also a retired senior lecturer from the London Metropolitan University, who's also been very active and runs a publishing house, and of course has edited the book, A Revolutionary Kenyan Trade Union's Mukhensingh. I'll be sort of chairing, and my full name is Navdage Poreval, as I'm often known as, and I'm the Deputy Director here of the South Asia Institute. So our first speaker will be Shiraz Durrani. Our second speaker will be Arvinder Jabal, who is the grandson of Mukhensingh. So we have a number of different perspectives to be actually glean light on Mukhensingh's life. So we've got family members and activists and academics, people who've been involved in the left and the trade union movements, either in this country or in Africa or in India. Our third speaker will be Mary Davis, who's a visiting professor in labour history at Royal Holloway University of London. Our fourth speaker will be Judith Hare, Emeritus Fellow at Somerville College University of Oxford. And then Sukant Chandan will also be joining us, who's an activist and filmmaker. So I'll begin now by inviting Shiraz Durrani to come and to introduce kind of the idea of the book and also to tell us a bit about the history of Mukhensingh's life. Hi. I'm not giving you the full history of Mukhensingh, his life and times and all the rest of it. I think you will need to read lots of books that have been written about him. What I'll do is I'll scheme over some of the things, some of the events of his life and particularly look at how what other people have said about him. This perhaps reflects better what Mukhensingh meant to people who worked with him. So these are just very, very broad dates, you know, what you're talking about. He was born in India in 1913, came to Kenya in 1927 and worked in his father's printing press and actually it's working in the press is what gave him the sort of experience of our life of a worker in Kenya. For various reasons he had to go back to India where he again became very active in the politics of the Indian liberation movement and for that the Indian, the British administration of India, detained him for four and a half years or so. So he's becoming a very dangerous person for the British Empire as well, from the establishment point of view. And they were trying to sort of do funny things to him but he managed to return to Kenya in 1947, continued with his work with the trade union movement with the working forces for which he was again put in prison for 11 years. Now the question then is what was this man up to? Whenever he went he ended up in jail. A simple person who sort of does nothing to the British Empire doesn't end up in jail. And I think in a way we need to go back to 1920s and 30s to see the situation in Kenya but we don't go too much back in there. But just to sort of remember that this was a period when the colonial administration was desperately keeping working class away from other people. They were desperately keeping the races away from each other. And here is this man who broke all those rules. And he was such a great danger that the only way they could silence him was in detention. So let's sort of see what's next. When you look at Markinsing and what he was doing, I think it's good to keep that background in mind that Kenya has always seen a lot of anti-colonialist struggles. Even I'm just starting with the first strike which was in 1900 of railway workers but before that every Kenyan nationality had resisted British colonialism in very many ways and they are brutally suppressed. We don't have sort of a context of going back into those days but I think before 1900 people had been struggling. So there are some examples and I've just taken this from Markinsing's own books which we'll look at a little later. So Markinsing was not only an activist trade unionist and organizer, he was also a historian. And if you want to get the very good working class history of Kenya you will have to start with Markinsing's books. So there was a history of strikes including various general strikes and this in a sense shows the strength of the working class in Kenya and various organizations because strikes and workers activities don't just happen in a vacuum. It requires organizations so there are various organizations happening and I just give an example of 203 and Markinsing himself was active in forming others as well. So in 1931 Markinsing started working in a printing press and as part of his trade union activity he was working with the Indian trade union. I was elected secretary and president. For him the important thing was unity of workers, not divide them up into races and work against each other in many ways. So he influenced the ITU Indian trade union to change the ITU into labor trade union of Kenya and that was important because it was then open to all races. The British colonial administration had sort of very strong divided people so even political organizations had to be done by nationalities, the Kikuyu, the Luu or the Kamba, each of them had to have their own political organization and here is the trade union movement opening its doors to everybody. An important sort of date in terms of the working class is the 1937 strike which was for 62 days. Now even organizing strikes for even a few days is a difficult job but the very fact that the union organized this and kept the workers going and strong for 62 days until they won what they had set out to do an eight hour day and increase in wages. So that was a major strength, major success for the trade union movement. And I think talking too much doesn't always do justice to the event. This is demonstrations in 1937 where the British colonialists would dismiss these workers as rubbish guys who didn't know probably English and all the rest of it but these are the people who are organizing the strike. Interestingly you see the image of a black policeman escorting them. This photo is again from Arkansas' book, stolen from them I guess. Now this strike was an important event because it in a sense brought the trade union movement into the forefront. The story is membership rose to 2500 in Kenya and Uganda. Again the colonial demonstrations that kept Kenya, Uganda and later Tanzania separate, Tanganika. But the union became strong in Uganda as well. And because of the strike and the strength the government had to accept the trade union movement in Kenya was to stay. They could not sort of marginalize it anymore. And the 1937 trade union ordinance made this possible and the union was registered. By 1948 there were 16 trade unions affiliated to the labor trade union of East Africa. Not Kenya anymore, East Africa. With a membership of 10,000 workers. And some of this work of the trade union is interesting because an attempt was made to bypass and to marginalize union. We look at it in a minute, but when you look at the situation of trade unions in Britain today the same tactics in the sense of being used to divide them up to get one group fighting another to bring legal restrictions on them. And this is the same thing in a sense happening in Kenya in those days. This was 1939, he had to go to India. And he didn't go there for a holiday or to sort of, he had a nice food there. Eventually he became active in the political working class struggle. In 1940 he addressed 30,000 Bombay workers who were on strike. And immersed in the freedom struggle and working class, the two aspects. Freedom struggle for liberation of political independence and the working class movement. He immersed in both those and for that he was arrested in 1940. But they didn't bring any charges, they just arrested him. But this when I think like so often happens in prisons in USA and even here he became stronger in prison. He strengthened his links with the communist, socialist and other revolutionary leaders from all over India. And since he consolidated and strengthened him, he gave him other ideas of how other people were struggling. He was released in 1942 but restricted until 1945. So in all he was in detention of restriction for four and a half years in India. He came out of restriction, he worked as a sub-editor of Jange Azadi, the weekly organ of CPI, the Communist Party of India, until he left for Kenya in 1947. And I think an important thing we sort of need to be aware of is the communication aspect of trade union work and political work. An important point about him working in the press in Kenya was that he could organize leaflets. There were no sort of Facebook and Twitter and all those kind of facilities in those days. So how do you go around talking to workers? An important tool was leaflets. We'll see some examples later. And workers, whether working on the trains or taxi workers, would take these leaflets into all the working class areas. They set up bicycles which would go into the residential areas and working class areas, ring the bells and announce things about forthcoming meetings and workers' struggles. So the communication aspect is without that you cannot organize, you cannot bring forward your vision. In Kenya again he started with one of the things he was talking to the South Asian communities, which again was divided by class, by perspectives like it is today. And he set task for the South Asian people to unite and work with Africans for democratic advance, establish democratic government with eco-fringes that will suffer for everybody. So in those days it was kind of the white communities had the most power, the Asians, the second and the Africans, almost nothing. And he fought against that attitude. And he organized within Asian communities also, South Asian, the Pakistani, the Indian, what is Pakistani later on. He sought to bring them all together. And he advised on setting up common high schools, learning Israeli, the language and learning culture and working with the Africans. So it was a kind of a very liberal student message at that time. In 1947-1950 he organized the Kenya Youth Conference, he was elected the Vice President, took part in East African Indians like Congress, he organized East African Trade Union Congress. The President was Fred Kuba. So he was already sort of working with the African working class. Not I said it was working with the African Liberation working class. And in 1950 he was the first person to call for complete independence for East Africa at a mass meeting of Kenya African Union and East African Indian National Congress. Now this was, I think, even the sort of African people, African organizations, the fight against independence, nobody had met that call. And he was the first person to do that. And that, in a sense, is an important date, 1950. I guess it's a quote from Akan Senghan. Again he shows his class consciousness about the awareness of the classes. This was the time when they were trying to make Nairobi a city and they had done some royal guide from London who was going to come and hand over some documents to say, Nairobi you are a city now. And what Akan Senghan says is there are two Nairobi's, that of the rich and that of the poor. The status of the letter has not changed. Celebration for the status of city will be justified on the day when this country's government becomes truly democratic with the workers fully sharing the tasks of government. And I think this is again another important point that he wasn't just talking about democracy in a broad sense of a parliament which is so-called elected members and so on. He's talking about workers sharing the tasks of government which hasn't happened in this country even now. And this was making that statement in those days. I think the revolutionary message is part of Kenya's need to go back to today. Again for all the things he was up to, he was arrested, made a speech where he said workers and the people of East Africa should further strengthen their unity, become more resolute, speed up the movement for freedom of all workers and people of East Africa. That was too powerful a message. The organization was too strong for the colonial government. And on 15th May, Maken Singh and Fred Kubai were arrested. And by that time the working class was getting quite strong and organized. And there was a 10-day strike immediately after they were arrested and the demands was release of arrested leaders and complete independence of East Africa. Now this became a call for the workers and obviously increasing wages is part of the trade union work. I think I have in there my talk a bit more about his detention and so on. He was restricted in 1950 and the reasons were for his trade union activities as General Secretary of the East Africa Trade Union Congress, expression of political views in the course of national struggle for freedom and being a communist. That is sort of what the political invasion charged him with. So the recession order came in 51, 1950, was restricted for 11 years. And that is even more than what Kinyata went through. And put together his four and a half years in India, it makes you wonder what was the significance of this person. One individual, very peaceful guy, so his picture is very nice, quiet fellow and yet he was restricted for 15 years or so. Again in the restriction he was, pressure was brought on him to leave Kenya, go somewhere else, even to India to get rid of him. Or to change his attitude, then he would be allowed to sort of go free. And even in that restriction time it was cutting off from his family, from his political work. He refused to do any of those things, he refused to compromise. By the after-end, the Mauma movement became active after 1948. And it wrote about changes. And that's in a sense, one of the reasons for Markin's release in 1961 when it was clear that colonialism had come to an end. In the period from 1960 to 63 it was used by the British colonial government and the British government itself to bring about changes and bring in laws and all the rest of it so that colonialism can live so that imperialism can enter in a way. So it was a kind of changing of phase, phase really. Markin's in 1961 in the museum of political and trade union activities resumed membership of the printed and printed trade union, trade union, trade workers union. It was elected to the legislative committee, elected chair of legislative committee of Kenya Fetish of Labor and so on. 1962 we joined Kano, Kenya African National Union and he spent a lot of his time in writing the history of Kenya and he died on May 18, 1973. Very briefly what was Markin's saying up to what did he want? He didn't want any money or wealth for himself. No, he didn't want any post for himself. He was a very humble, gentle person I think. But his vision was that again decolonialism, anti-impedalism, political independence with workers' rights and racial, economic and political equality. Very, very simple basic things. I think we would sort of, we would benefit in Britain also to work with some of those things. And the way he went about it was strong organization, trade unions as a political organization. That was important and necessary. And we'll look at this in a minute but linking economic and political struggles. What the changes in law that you brought about before independence in Kenya was to say these are the workers, these are the trade unions. Your job is to fight for wages or hours of work and health and self-care. Don't get involved in politics. Live politics to organizations like Kano which we can control and bribe and do things. And what Maken Singh always understood was there is no such thing as workers' rights without their political rights as well. So he worked very closely with the political organizations. And in a sense that has happened in Britain also today. I don't think the working class has any political power. It's just that recently there are some sort of positive signs happening but it's a very, very recent development that the lessons maybe written as British rolling classes learned from the colonial empire was to keep workers away from politics. If you combine the two then you have to start detaining them and bringing in the army and so on. Maken Singh's way. So he linked trade unions with liberal movement. He talked about class and race unity. Communications, we mentioned a bit that it was important to have that strategy around how you're going to talk to people, how you politicize workers and others so that otherwise you get the situation like in Britain today where the mass media are owned by a few characters who are not interested in working class at all. Again mass action strikes demonstration and politicization. Those are important tools to bring the working class struggles to the forefront. Activism and sacrifice. I think there's one lesson that we learned from him is that he sacrificed a lot of things for his political and economic beliefs. There's some examples of some of the Labor Union of East Africa handles 1935 printed by Carl Saphres and well I won't read this long thing but the important thing is that language issue. If you want to talk to people, talk to them in their language. Don't talk to them in English when they don't know any English. So with this Punjabi, Gujarati, whatever. The other languages are important. Some of the leaflets are in various languages. This is an example of what Maken Singh is, his awareness and what he was talking about. Our worker comrades, the very languages I think alien to the empire, as it were. Come forward, march ahead. If you do not march ahead today, then remember that you will be crushed on the heels of capitalist tomorrow. Workers should have a united stand to stand up strongly and so on. And then some information about what's happened to one of those strikes at Carson Leather so that it brought in unity and people's awareness. I think I'll leave this here. Again, a quote from him that Kenya's trade union movement has always been a part of a national struggle for resistance to research, language and trade union and politics, images of the book. The middle one is the autobiography which has now been published in the central one. Again, in Gujarati, Maken Singh is a short biographer. Again, Fred Kubao talks about linking political struggles. We won't go into that. The centrality of trade union is one of the major epicenters of democracy. The problem was colonialism in capitalism, which people had to fight for. Build that kagya. Only Maken Singh had the spirit of fire I needed. Again, very often in history he decides the way it has been interpreted. It divides the trade union struggles from more and more. I think there's a very strong link. If you look at some of the history, looking at some. So it wasn't that trade union was going in one direction. The strength of Mamo came from the trade union activists. They provided the radical leadership which provided the committee to authenticate what it came from the trade union movement. This is again an interesting parallel with South Africa From 1991 to 1996 the battle for ANC's soul was eventually lost to corporate power. We were entered by the neoliberal economy. We sold our people down the river. It wasn't in South Africa currently. We have in Kenya and in the other places as well. These are the two important history books of Maken Singh. Maken Singh's archives in Nairobi has a lot of stuff. There's references and some footnotes. So Aarvinder Jabal is Maken Singh's grandson and will be giving us further insight into the life of Maken Singh. Thank you Tej firstly for organizing this event and Shiraz congratulations for finally getting your book done. That's why we're here. Just a brief introduction about myself. I'm Hinnpal Maken Singh's eldest son so I happen to be his oldest grandson oldest grandchild as well. I was born in Kenya grew up there and took all levels and A levels and everything over there. I did my levels in 1981. Came to study in the UK and then I've been living here permanently since 1988 so that's 27 odd years or something like that. I'll be of course much more briefer than Shiraz. Mine is more of a family aspect and things like that. Shiraz gave the history and all that. A few interesting things while I was growing up in Kenya who were there especially in the primary education. Now we learned about the outside world but they never really talked to us about the history of Kenya by that I mean the the native people of Kenya you know you're talking about Kikuyu's and Lua's and Masai and all that. Interestingly the President of the United States happens to be of Lua origin but I don't think they'll make them sort of teach anything about Lua's in Kenya they're just a historical thing really. So we learned nothing about the culture of the African people in school there. I don't think things have changed although I haven't been there for a long time. Then he got things like the independence of Kenya which happened in 1963 but they never taught us about things that led up to independence of Kenya or even the sort of East African countries like Tanzania and Uganda and who the people were involved and who sort of participated in the nationalist struggles and all that. Now if they had done that then people would know more about Makansing and other people. He got Pinto, Tom Boyer and so on and so forth. So this young generation in Kenya I know nothing about those people of the 50s and 60s who fought for independence it's just there. All they teach about in school over there is geography of the outside world you know South America Australia, history of Europe and what not. The last thing they teach about is history of Kenya itself it's just something they're not interested in. Maybe it's modernization, I think today they've been interested in internet and stuff like that you know. So let me start 1973 1973 is when my grandfather died I was 10 or 11 in 1973. I remember him quite well. If you want to read this book I've written a few things about about that. Now for the next 30 odd years nothing much happened. On the odd occasion you would have a phone call from local education of the local education authorities ringing the family to ask for his date of birth. The only thing of interest was he was one of the founders of the trade union movement and occasionally I think there would be something minimal about that in primary school education somebody called Makan Singh who was one of the founders of the trade union movement and probably the only question they'll ask when was he born and that's about it. So fast forward to around about 2006 so we're going some 33 years since Makan Singh's death. There's a lady in Kenya called Zarina Patel she's of Indian origin herself is I think a granddaughter of somebody called Jewanji Jewanji here. So anybody who's been to Kenya might know Jewanji Gardens. It's right in front of Nairobi University I think it still exists for the present day. She happens to be his granddaughter. She's also a writer and sort of activist. She decided to write a book about Makan Singh around about 2005 2006 and that book is called Unquiet It's quite a comprehensive book about Makan Singh. After that a few years later somebody by the name of Atamjit Singh, he happens to be a Punjabi playwright he happened to be in Kenya and met some people and asked and inquired if there were any well known Punjabi people in Kenya who did something for the country and somebody mentioned this book written by Zarina Patel So Atamjit decided to write a play in Punjabi finally called Mungu Comrade So anybody who's sort of born in Kenya would know Mungu means God I think at some stage during the period when there's a discussion on the naming of that play so there's some objection on the name on Mungu but anyway the play was known as Mungu Comrade Atamjit he's he's given a lot of what do you call readings on his play one took place in 2008 in London and I'm not even my I hosted the one in London, I think the only one in this congregation was Mr. Amarjit Chandan sitting in front of me I think he's the only one who was there last year in 2014 there was a fairly major reading of his play in Nairobi and with the greatest respect to Atamjit you would normally expect a play to develop sort of a reading to develop into an actual full-blown play but that's not actually happened in the case of Makhan Singh and I've got my own reason which I'm going to give shortly with due respect to Atamjit now I think the reason people go see plays or movies or anything is partly entertainment you know you can only spend Sunday doing something else like watching football you know why would somebody go see a play about a historical character unless you got really interested in him I think the character of the individual comes in in other words was he a colorful character or not now the other Sikhs from Punjab who have achieved a lot in their own fields I'll give one example Milka Singh he's a fairly well known athlete so many of you heard of him but he's quite a colorful character and recently there's a film Bollywood film about Milka Singh called Bug Milka or something like that some of these people are here have seen see you know you got other characters like Bishan Bedi he's a well known cricketer quite a colorful character so that's the reason people want to go and see a play or a movie they want to be entertained now you could not find a less colorful character than Milka Singh now I'm saying there is a grandson anybody who knew him personally would probably agree with that I think over here the only people who knew him personally or met him personally I'll just recognize a gentleman there of course knew my grandfather very well nice to see you after several years I think he interviewed my grandfather when he's released from detention and all that he's a well known sort of TV person in private he was rather aloof and he sort of somebody who kept to himself he never discussed his own past that's the last thing he would do in fact he would discuss very little to be honest he just wouldn't have any interest in saying what happened in his life today people are obviously discussing him so now so we come back to Shiraz's book today 2015 I think it's a culmination of all these things so if you look if you look sort of historically for more than 30 years from 73 to about 2006 nothing much happened then from around 2006 to now 10 year period there's been a lot of interest about writing in Shiraz's book today I I think history and historical characters can be cyclical in the sense that people lose interest then after a certain period people gain interest now it's possible it's possible it could be another 30 years of nothing much happening and then 10 more years of new Zarina's new Atamjith's new Shiraz Duranis into the picture I must mention a gentleman sitting here who's contributed hugely to all these books and plays we were sort of mentioning even contributed a lot to Shiraz Duranis book and must mention him in this so I'm now coming to the end it's something quite interesting about him I think he married young people married here he was about 20 years old 20 years old when he got married his wife Satwanta was 16 because she told me that so obviously that's true so one of the things when he got married he was asked to to recite something you know like by the bride sisters or cousins or something and he said something very interesting which I first read in Zarina's book sort of mentioned here in this book it was something along these lines he said those who lead the path of righteousness are the ones remembered in this world now that is the reason we are here today that is why 40 years down the road people have something to say about him because he did something right that's very interesting finally he left behind a huge amount of paperwork he's handwritten some 20,000 or something these are currently in Nairobi University they've all been archived in pdf but not in any specific order at the moment I was discussing with Amaji Tandon just today despite that I don't think unless Mr.Chamalal there corrects me I don't think there exist any tapes about him either of his speaking or any sort of anything on video anything but it's something somebody might have to sort of look into probably the voice of Kenya archives but so you know you and I was telling Amaji look there's always something left behind you can't history doesn't record everything there's always something left behind so it's possible he may have left 20,000 papers but there's not a single sound recording of him or anything you could see on screen so I end there and congratulate Shiraz for his work thank you Shiraz first of all my apology for coming late at my age people do get late I have some memories to share with you because two things when Makan Singh was released I was at your place you know in Park Road President Kunyatta at that time he was Prime Minister and Achengon Aiko also came and Oginga Odinga they all came to his residence to receive him I was there to cover that event and we were very very pleased to see him and then Makan Singh and I shared the same desk where he used to translate news from English to Hindustani and however as I have told Amadjit there's no recording because Makan Singh never read news he only translated them my memories he spoke very little he was very reserved person and once I remarked I asked him in Punjabi I said you know I said you should be at least the Prime Minister to President Kunyatta because you have done so much he kept quiet and that silence in fact said lot volumes because Makan Singh as I could understand he never compromised his principles otherwise he could have been something big and everything changed you know in Kenya Kunyatta was not the same person when he was imprisoned when he came out and there may be many reasons if you please allow me to say he was spoiled by imperialists and he was given all the comforts and that's how it happened but I have lot of respect for Makan Singh I wish he could have been on there he could have read the news I could have been the first person to get his voice and talking about archives in Kenya in the voice of Kenya you know didn't leave anything as far as Asian service was concerned because I especially went to Kenya to find out if there are any recordings left and I went to the library and I was given access because I knew each and every record over there and I was shocked to find none of the tapes were there and I asked them what happened to so many tapes you know they were in archives they said you know they ran short of the tapes and they cleaned them and they used them again so it's a and we were not Asians today I'm one of them we were not very careful to look after our things and Makan Singh happened to be one of them I wish there were so many things and I'm pleased to know that library you know Narobi library has something and Amarjit should do something to put them in order ladies and gentlemen I'm so pleased to come and share my little memories with you thank you very much so next we have Mary Davis who's going to be would you like to speak from where you're sitting or the mic should I hope you all can you hear me I hope you all excuse me not standing up only I've broken my back and fractured my pelvis but apart from that I'm fine you know look how I struggle for the cause Makan Singh obviously struggled for 15 years in prison for trade unionism so actually I'm alright anyway I'm taking a slightly different view not a negative view at all I think there's many people here who know more about Makan Singh than I do so I am going to say how I got to know about him and basically it was through my research on the TUC and on Labour Party colonial policy which led me to Makan Singh and I think that's the context that I want to look at him in because I've also looked of course at my five files I have gone through them with a fine tooth comb and Makan Singh is very prominent I can tell you well you know that don't you I won't go through all that but also I've got to be I'm going to have to make an admission the fact that I share Makan Singh's politics led me to him and a fact that his politics are insufficiently mentioned except by the colonial authorities who hated him because he was a communist and they regarded communists as the most dangerous people in the world and so by the way did the TUC and so did the Labour Party which I'll explain in a moment so let me just say something about the TUC and the Labour Party in the early years and the TUC in the early years in the 1920s the TUC Trade Union Congress they had a colonial policy and it was motivated by two fears one was national liberation struggles they did not want the colonial world to become free of the British Empire they were utter imperialists who had come through and secondly they were scared of a new force that had arisen in Soviet Russia the common turn now the common turn the communist international was a new force for them and they had to get their heads around it the common turn had established a communist university in the toilets of the east now what did that mean they didn't actually mean people who lived well they did mean people who lived in the east it was people like John McConeata McConson if you think of all the people who led liberation struggles they were invited to Moscow and trained and the TUC really and of course my five and my six hated these people they regarded them as real problems now the Labour Party took up this line in 1924 the Labour Party established its own imperial advisory committee and the TUC in 1937 established a colonial advisory committee and what this body did quite amazing actually was to recruit what they called Labour advisors and sent them to the colonies to assist in the development of trade unions on the British model now that was the key thing it had to be on the British model because if it wasn't Labour would be very dangerous organizations and they would forment trouble and what would they be yeah so from 1940 to 51 Labour was they weren't in power for all that time but they were part of the coalition government and from 45 to 51 it was the first majority Labour government and Labour established well in 1940 actually the Colonial Development and Welfare Act sounds wonderful but it wasn't it was very very opportunist and what they did it's well there was a number of things really first of all in that there was this Colonial Development and Welfare Act was passed because it was motivated by fear that grievances grievances among Colonial peoples would be exploited by communists and therefore whilst not motivated by anti-imperialist sentiment Labour policy recognized that reform was necessary and one of the key features of the reform program was to permit an inverted commerce the development of non-militant trade unions Makansing did not fit into this category at all so the it was clear that oh well there's other examples of this by the way I should say to you see or the government I should say developed trade union education for the colonies for Colonial peoples and the question was where should trade union education be carried out should it be carried out in the colonies or should Colonial peoples be brought to this country possibly to Ruskin and educated there this took a long time to resolve they decided in the end that it was better to train Colonial trade unionists in their own country not bring them to Britain because what might happen is that they might experience well you can probably they might experience racism and if they experienced racism which they inevitably would have done would put them off Britain forever and that wouldn't very very good so it didn't completely resolve the issue because if they were going to be educated in their own countries what kind of education was it going to be so there was a heavily doctored trade union syllabus that was taught in the colonies and in particular anybody who knows about British trade trade union history will know that the early period especially the period 1780 to 1850 was very radical I mean I've taught this for many years myself so they cut that out completely they didn't want to give these Colonial trade unionists any inkling that British trade unions had been very radical I mean after if you think about charters and if you think about early trade unionism which was very radical so stop all that which they do now in 1949 the TUC disaffiliated from the World Federation of Trade Unions which was largely had the whole world including the Soviet Union including the Eastern European countries so basically that was a very significant move for the British trade union movement to do that and they joined instead the International Federation of Free Trade Unions which was dominated by the Americans and that showed the direction of the British TUC what happened was legalising trade unions in the colonies was important next step and this was introduced to ensure that basically authorised trade unions were formed especially in Asia and Africa because the TUC was fearful of the alternative and this is by the way the TUC all these unions which were so called legalised there was compulsory registration of them the reason being they wanted to root out trouble makers and in particular in Kenya Makan Singh was a very good example he was the public enemy number one of the TUC and that's why in 1950 Makan Singh and Fred Kubai of the East African Trade Union Federation were arrested and this led to trade union advisors running rampant by 1954 and 15 colonies now let me give you a flavour of what these of what they did this is a classic but Kenya died to what is a trade union said the following but it's very serious actually it's not a joke trade unions are formed so the strikes can be avoided trade unions try to make sure that workers and employers understand one another the value of a worker to his employer depends on the kind of work he does good hard work is of more value than bad lazy work I mean this was seriously produced I mean there are worse examples in Malaya for example the trade union guide again to set up tame trade unions free of communist influence but the Malayan Federation had already set up and it did have communist influence and the the Labour advisor in Malaya, a man called Brazier said that it was the government the directive issued to Brazier instructed him to keep government constantly informed of all developments within the trade union movement to bring immediately to the notice of the government any activities which are considered prejudicial to the development of sound trade union unionism to inform the government of any behaviour on behalf of members or officials of trade unions which may be priced to suspicion that their activities may be prejudicial to the government or the welfare of the country so I'm not going to go on and I could quote from so many of these awful things I'm quite quite in from a chapter I've written in a book which is called the British Labour movement and imperialism and it's available anyway the point I'm making of course is that the government, the Labour party and the TUC all saw trade unions as key to the development of their neoclonal strategy and that meant that people like Mack and Sim were enemies enemies of the state enemies of their own trade union as far as they were concerned they were not serious trade unions the what I wanted to do was to if they couldn't destroy anti-imperialism then we had to ensure that it was tame anti-imperialism i.e. neocolonialism and that it was safe then for the British government even if it lost its empire to ensure that all its produce and its economy could still be dominated within the colonies there was no real colonial independence at all as I'm sure you know and Mack and Sim knew that so I wanted just to present that context really because I think it's important so that we I'm sure you understand that but I've read Shiraz's book I've read that there are people here I know in this room who know an awful lot more about Mack and Sim than I do but so that's my offering we have Judith here who's going to be speaking you're welcome to talk from there thank you I have I come into this from a very different position I didn't know Mack and Sim and in a sense my big question is why I didn't know Mack and Sim I came into the Kenya story as a PhD student in the in 1962 when the British was just about to release to back out and so I was there for the British to the New Kenyan state and the years after that when the really important battle in the New Kenya took place between the left and the right I'm an economist I did a PhD on Kenyan African agriculture and went on to be involved in the economics department originally the institute for development studies and then the economics department in the University of Nairobi and was there until 1975 when I finally left so I lived through the period from 1962 to 1975 in Kenya as part of a group of people who were working very actively behind the scenes to support the left politicians the left movement that was fighting very actively and very successfully in the period of the very early 1960s and then gradually got decimated and eventually completely defeated by the end of the 1960s in the beginning of the 1970s one of the people that I worked most closely with was Pio Gamapinto but there were also the Fred Kubais and Bilda Kaguya and a number of other people who were forming this group that was trying to restrain trying to fight trying to oppose what was going on on the other side of the nationalist movement it was a period I'm just wanting to pick up a little bit on this thing about communism the communists the communists label the sort of bogeyism of which people managed to label communism and the way in which people treated communists in those days was quite incredible I had been active in the Labour Party when I was a student in the late 1950s in Britain and I had been very much part of I had been taken in by this whole thing that communism was beyond the pale I mean you could be radical, you could be left but you certainly couldn't be a communist there would be a death going into Kenya it was even worse because you couldn't have any communist literature you had to take anything that was written in with a paper cover because if people discovered it in your baggage then it would be confiscated and you would be in trouble so there was no question for us that it was not something we could do which was to identify ourselves as communists or be-commonists and the people in the group that I was working with on the political front were not not using the label communist not saying that they were communists but saying they were socialist and saying they were asking for justice for the people who fought for freedom and focusing a lot on land the other thing about the period when I was there was that I was working in the university my husband was a civil servant and it was we were leading double lives it was not possible to be both a member of a university faculty and a civil servant and be known to be associated with this struggle on the left so we were meeting all these people on the political issues writing briefs discussing strategy trying to push the political agenda as undercover in an undercover way so we had our respectful positions as civil servants university lecturers and then we had our underground existence trying to support this freedom world this left right struggle now what's very interesting to me coming into this discussion about Markensing is that Markensing was for me a nebulous figure in the background who I knew of as a legacy of somebody who had been extremely important in the 1930s and 40s who had made a huge contribution and had framed a lot of what was going on at that period and then somehow disappeared from the scene I actually thought that he was in exile I didn't realize that he was in Nairobi at that time certainly wasn't part of any of the groups that we were part of that I would have thought given his history I would have expected him to have been so he'd sort of dropped out in a political sense he was absent now what I think of when I look at having read Serena Patela's book which I think is an extremely valuable resource but it's more like an archive for me than an analysis and it's a very good, very detailed account of the papers that Markensing had but it's quite tough going quite difficult to read and then reading this book which I think is a very refreshing and really successful book that Shiraz has just edited and many of you have contributed to what it brings home to me which has been something I've been worrying about for some time which is that in the historiography of Kenya and the writings on Kenya amongst academics as well as in the popular imagination in the school syllabus is in the media in Kenya there is so little space for anyone who is non-African so the Asians in the Kenya story are so marginalised are so pushed onto the edges are not taken seriously are not given anything like their due recognition their due weight and Markensing in a way is the most serious example of all I think because it's so clear that Markensing in the 1930s his role in the trade unions but in the 1940s his role in the independence movement was so critical I mean it was not that he was a minor player it was not that he was a bit player he was a major figure and he was a major figure working on an equal footing with the other major figures that have given so much recognition these days and I thought of as being the big heroes of the Kenya national struggle and the big heroes of the Kenya independence movement so one of the things I think that we need to recognise and hopefully one day we'll get rectified is the fact that it's not only Markensing but there are a number of other Kenyan Asians like Pio Ganapinto like Pranav Chef even like Atru Kapila a number of other people who were quite significant figures in the independent story of Kenya at that time about whom we know very little we hear very little and whose stories have not been told but also whose role in the wider picture has not been given sufficient weight so I think it's very difficult to understand what happened in the late 1940s early 50s in the emergence of the Maoma movement and the Maoma struggle without giving sufficient recognition to people like Markensing I mean it doesn't really it's very difficult to make sense of how that all happened I mean that's alone the role of Kenyatta who was not a significant mover in that but I think that the fact we aren't able so far to get serious historians of Kenya to look at the role of the non-Africans in this story is a very serious problem having said that I want to say I think what's terrific about this book is that it's it brings out so many really important things about Markensing but there was the thing about the fact that he insisted on calling himself a communist and insisted on asserting that he was a communist right through the period when it became increasingly dangerous to do so increasingly unpopular to do so and that he clearly wasn't compromising on that as on a number of other things and of course the other thing that's been mentioned that was so important about Markensing was his completely non-racial attitude the fact he managed to be so affected by the racism and the the fact that the Asian community itself was so in such a difficult position because it was treated by the divide and rule policy gave so many Asians a somewhat better position than Africans because they were Asian so it must have been very difficult for him to stick to that line in the 1930s and the 1940s of being absolutely clear that Asians and Africans were treated as equals and were on an equal footing in the trading and movement and that there was no other way that it could be that was extremely unusual at that period in the Kenya setting where the divide and rule policy was so successful and so much of the Asian community was taken in by it and was overtly not very friendly to the African cause the things that the big question then that I would like to raise is what's the complete puzzle to me from the bits and pieces that I've been reading from this book and from Zorina Patel's account and the other few little things that I know. I don't think we have any answer to the question of why when Muckinsing came out of detention in 1961 or was it 1960 he just disappeared in the political sense on the political scene it doesn't seem to me to be enough to say that he didn't want to push himself forward he was a very modest person he was not the kind of person to push his own cause because in the 1930s and 40s when he was so successful he had been working against horrendous odds and he was a very effective operator a very effective activist, agent knew how to engage politically in an effective way so it's a big question why he was unable to do this or didn't do this when he was released in the early 60s I think however that what was very clear and what you just told us has been very interesting on all that is that the trade union movement by the early 60s was a completely different Kevin Fish from what it had been in the 1940s we'd had that period when the Marma detentions on the political scene also just what was happening in the forests and in the rural areas but Nairobi had been completely political and they were out of the trade union movement out of the urban worker's scene and the trade unions were also being cleansed very effectively changed in the sort of image that you are giving us but I think of it as being America as much as British because there was the National Federation and so on which were very strongly part of what happened to the trade unions in the 1950s so when Martin Singh comes out of detention in the early 60s it's not at all easy to imagine him slotting back into an effective position in the trade unions it's also true that a lot of the active political debate of that time was focused on the land and the rural questions and the land grabbing that was going on and the whole question of whether the people who were or were not being executed in the independent settlement there's something else very curious to me in the book which comes out in the book which there are a couple of statements in there about the fact that he came back to Kenya in 1947 recently happily because India by then got its independence he came out of detention in the early 60s speaking very strongly in favour of people getting behind Joe Mokimieta because he saw that as being the independent struggle for which he would be working in Kenya and he's obviously the person who got to work and I wonder if one of the things that was happening also that he was not able to see quickly enough the way in which that post-independent division developed between the people who were trying to hold on to the fruits of independence by stepping into choosing the British in one hand and the people who thought that this was an early institution did such a lot I'm just giving a very personal impression but I think this way is very... So our next speaker is Sukhant Chandan who is a filmmaker and social activist as well as the son of Amarji Chandan and the grandson of Gopal Singh who was a close comrade of Lucky Singh Thank you First of all I'd like to thank Shiraz Durrani obviously for publishing this book and your accomplishment and in relation to you and I hope you don't mind I'd like to dedicate this modest contribution to Jhamid Durrani because I know if Jhamid was with us today he would be in the room with us and he'd be celebrating your fantastic work so thank you to Jhamid as well because I remember back in university with Jhamid he, which is Shiraz's son he took the name DJ Deden because he used to DJ the records as you know and he used to celebrate the revolutionary history of East Africa and obviously it was through the drip drip education from his father, IEU that he learnt those things and similarly it's through being the son of my father that I have learnt about Gopal Singh Chandan as well who was comrade with Lucky Singh so it's funny how these different Gopal Singh Chandan is the bottom left if I'm not mistaken of the picture and so Jhamid had been given the task as it were, as I've been given whether our father's like it or not to continue that legacy for all that it's worth, the good and the bad of trying to continue that legacy in the heart of whiteness where we are today in London and it's it's a formidable task perhaps a foolish task to try and continue that struggle in the current circumstances we have so I wanted to just very briefly outline four points in relation to what I've learnt from my father and from you Sharaz about Makhan Singh first point is about unity unity between South Asians between the people of the Indian subcontinent, undivided India second is unity again between the people of what was used to be called the third world or now is called the global south but particularly focusing on unity between African and Asian people and thirdly I wanted to talk about the continuation of imperialism and colonialism and neocolonialism because guess what it hasn't gone away it's very much still here and creating havoc and destruction and problems ongoingly I wanted to talk about the importance of protecting these histories our stories of revolutionary struggle and liberation struggle and inculcating, popularizing, propagandizing and protecting all of that for newer generations first of all on the issue of unity now the British colonial system hasn't changed its spots it continues with a divide and rule strategy today which is devastatingly successful actually that divide and rule strategy is more successful today than it was in the time of Makan Singh and Gopal Singh multiculturalism although it's perhaps rightly partially celebrated as a great thing is none other than the continuation of the typical British colonial approach to the quote-unquote colonial people celebrate a little bit of Samosa and steel plans you know kind of principalize their caste religious, ethnic, linguistic, nationalist divisions celebrate that and say that's unity and you've all arrived Makan Singh and Gopal Singh and the revolutionaries in Nairobi of their time did not agree with that and they stuck their necks out so I put it to the younger generations of my generation and younger if these revolutionaries could do it then with all that was railed against them why can't we do the same today we're not going to face jail we're not going to face worse for advocating unity amongst the people of undivided India so why don't we take inspiration and model for them if I'm not mistaken Makan Singh went on a hunger strike to oppose the sectarianism within Muslim and Sikh organizations in Nairobi and Kenya he went on a hunger strike to oppose the sectional the sectionizing of electoral politics in Kenya he says no we must fight against that and also you can in the trade union work I'll come to the African Asian unity in a second but you can see that Makan Singh was brilliant in advocating and achieving the unity between Gujaratis between Punjabis between people in the north of India then what became Pakistan even when Pakistan was formed he advocated unity with the people of Pakistan in Kenya against British colonialism how beautiful and inspiring is that and what a lesson for us Punjabis and Gujaratis and Bengalis and people of Pakistan the Balochis in these Bhattans, Punjabis etc learn from and to inform our challenges today he also it was interesting to hear that a play which will be turned into an actual play or a film even may not be interesting and exciting I'm not trying to compare the two men they're different in their own regards and they have different degrees of achievements and what they were doing but if films can be made about Shahid Bhagat Singh who lived a very short life I think probably a dozen films or something have been made at least five, six, seven films have been made about Shahid Bhagat Singh with some of us called Asim the greatest martyr of our anti-colonial cause someone like Muckin Singh I understand he was a very modest and humble man but someone who did all that he did perhaps it's just my politics that informs you this but it's incredibly exciting and fascinating and it would be wonderful to see that play being performed and films about this hidden aspect of the liberation struggle also Muckin Singh also with my paternal grandfather also helped to funnel in the underground Gader Party revolutionaries to Moscow that's very exciting to me an incredible thing that they achieved as well and then I come now to the the unity aspect of African and Asian people because just like the divisions which the British colonialists so amongst us people of South Asia today they are sowing divisions between African and Asian people all the time and I can't tell you I can't count on both hands innumerable times that I've been told you have no right to speak about Africa by some not all you have no right to speak about this or that and this essentialization of divisions amongst oppressed peoples whether speakers before have referenced it we must fight against the divide and rule we must recognize and expose and defeat the hierarchy that's imposed upon us by the ruling circles of the continuing British colonialists and imperialists today while recognize that we must fight for unity because look at Muckin Singh achieved it was Muckin Singh who contributed greatly to radicalizing the cause of general not only Kenyan national liberation but East African liberation as well because wasn't it Muckin Singh who developed the Kenyan labor union into the East African labor union you know that's a wonderful thing of regional unity that a someone from Punjab had helped to achieve in Kenya that's surely something for all people of the African continent all people across the world to celebrate what a wonderful beautiful thing that is now I was reading Franz Fanon's wonderful book towards the African revolution recently and in that book he says something quite interesting I think that book was written in the late fifties Franz Fanon and he said China he was referencing China and India obviously and also Diambian Fu and he said somewhat little exaggerately but it's understandable in the context of the time he said Asia has freed itself from colonialism now Africa must do the same and the African revolution were particularly inspired particularly those who were under the jack boot of the French colonialists by Diambian Fu because it was the defeat of the French colonialists in Vietnam and then he says and that inspired the Algerians and the Senegalese and the other people under the French jack boot in Africa but he was Muckin Singh who personified that growing strategy of liberation struggle that once India became free in 1947 this great man went back to Kenya and to fight for Kenyan liberation what an amazing man what an amazing example to us all that achieved I've contributed and achieved at least formal independence in India I must go back now to Kenya and to work with the revolutionaries there to develop that and the man raised for the first time the slogan independence now which has been referenced before I think by Shiraz as well and then again it's with great pride that I remember the Mao Mao, the Land and Freedom Liberation Party also known as and that my own paternal grandfather took one of the very very few pictures of Di'l-Khamafi who has seen like Che Guevara and like Fanon and Malcolm X many people know about Di'l-Khamafi they know him, they know the face they know the badge, they know the flag but they don't know actually who the Mao Mao and Di'l-Khamafi and his comrades were but here was Punjabis working with these Kenyan Kikuyu revolutionary figures the people who just inspired fear and terror in the hearts of the British colonialists and that's another wonderful thing and just in relation to the British colonialists I was reading through the secret now public documents of the British state in relation to Muck and Singh so in one document they say they say it can however be argued that in the circumstances of Kenya today it is unlikely that a non-African however fanatical would emerge as a leader capable of stirring up the masses they had real hopes and they internalized their divide and rule, projection and strategy in another document then secret of the British then they say that although this is about a strike that Muck and Singh helped to lead although no serious incidents or injuries occurred the strike which was remarkable for its intimidation showed that Muck and Singh's influence and organizing ability were considerable so here you have the British strategy wanting to weaken our forces so division to assume how can a Punjabi stir up the African masses in Nairobi in Kenya but in another document they admit this guy had considerable influence and success and when they talk about intimidation of a strike you know that means the strike and the strikers were actually successful we've heard it all before time and time again as we heard in the great minor strike in 1984 1985 in this country thirdly about imperialism and as I hope I've articulated imperialism hasn't gone away you know it's still very much here with us and it's sowing havoc all around the world particularly as we've seen still in the African continent it was only a few years ago that the British and the French led the way for the destruction of a vanguard country of Africa which was Libya and it was in Libya by the way that I met in 2011 when NATO was bombing in Tripoli that I met a leader of the All African People's Revolutionary Party who took his namesake from Deeth and Kimathi and I interviewed him unfortunately the comrade has now passed away and that brings me also to the last part about protecting our legacy but just a little bit more about imperialism because the president of the United States he's got just a few months months left in office part of his heritage is of Kenya as well he's to quote a revolutionary also a son of Africa but perhaps because of the gilded cage he's in perhaps that gilded cage informed his inaction of visiting his own family in East Africa in Kenya in his recent visit just a few weeks and months ago today actually his paternal grandfather was also tortured by the British and worked with the Mao as well in Kenya but he did lecture the Kenyans and the Ethiopians about whatever kind of neocolonial things that he did so imperialism is still I mean today with Eritrea in East Africa Eritrea is the threat of a good example to quote the imperialists as well and there's British and American sanctions against Eritrea today as well and the other speakers have touched upon it but the complexities of the struggle in the neocolonial period in the post independence period is complex there will be some differences here amongst us but I think things like what's happened to Libya is an indication that the problem has not gone away and the challenges remain and fourthly and finally too about protecting our legacy today I'm a few years short of being 40 years old and the more I suppose indirectly I'll reflect on what my father has done and what Shiraz has done and others I find myself in the direct company of people in their 70s and 80s because like the comrade I met in Tripoli in Libya it's a race against time for people of my age and younger to capture these stories because it just so happened coincidentally I had my MacBook with me in Tripoli we were sitting in the hotel lobby and I said to the now deceased comrade let's have an interview and that interview now on YouTube and now it's a permanent record of his story about the role of the pan-African revolutionaries from North America and their relationship to Libya and the African continent so the challenge is this for our generation most importantly to take the example of Muckinsing and his comrade to fight against autism to fight against communalism today also I should mention as well just in the fight against carcinoma communalism frankly the pathetic situation politically of our community today but look at Muckinsing they campaigned against a caste centric organization of good wires in Kenya and in Nairobi and look at the sorry state of our good wires in the way they're organized today isn't that a good example yes there's intimidation against those who want to push back against that but we're not going to face 15 years imprisonment like our literal forefathers and foremothers did so our challenge is this to unite our communities to unite within our community to unite our communities with the African communities and all people who are oppressed by the system of colonialism and then also very importantly to try and literally recruit new cadres new people who can work and protect and popularize the legacy of great revolutionaries like Muckinsing and others and that's why I salute you Shiraz Durrani and the book and all the people who have made Muckinsing alive today his legacy alive that can inform us and inspire us in the continuing challenges we face today thank you thank you Sugand very passionate thanks to the presentations here and I think starting from the first speaker to the last you can see the legacy is very much alive this isn't even just about a disappeared history trying to recover it it's a legacy and future generations are still going to be trying to continually discover and recover this history so we have a few minutes now left for some questions and some discussions and we'll be passing around the mic Rafael if you can do that please wait until the mic reaches you so we've got one question thank you very much all the speakers were very fascinating and there was so much to learn and take in and I want to say something that connects all the speakers to some extent what everybody said so reflecting on in this point about education I was educated in Kenya as well and it's true that the history we were taught was completely distorted about we were never taught about the African people's struggle etc but recently there have been changes because I was involved in organizing an exhibition by Mamau and I asked a friend of mine to bring me the textbooks from Kenya so there is a textbook of the evolving world and this is form 3 it says a history of government course and fascinating about this in a sense but there is a section about the trade union movement and Muckinsink gets three mentions in it he's entirely cursory he doesn't talk about his detention he talks about his part in the labor trade union of Kenya etc in 1935 he doesn't talk about the fact that he was a dissent in 1950 onwards he talks about African other African leaders who was in fact exiled in Kenya but doesn't talk at all so there is a kind of and Muckinsink's photo doesn't appear so I'm going to turn to Mary's point about very important contribution Mary made about the kind of management of trade unions as a British state policy I think it happened in Kenya what happened in Kenya is that after Muckinsink was detained and that revolutionary trade union was destroyed the emergency was declared in 1952 in the ordinance of registration of trade unions at that time a union called Kenya Federation of Trade Unions was registered in the end that grew to become the Kenya Federation of Labor and Tom Mubaya became the general secretary he traveled to the UK he went to Ruskin by the way he traveled to the United States and that particular one affiliated international confidential free trade union movements was at that point that the trade union was domesticated we were in the Cold War as well it's a part of the Cold War politics coming I'll turn to Judith's point just a brief comment on what you said the strategy still happens today is that when you have political leaders you either assassinate them or isolate them and Muckinsink was isolated for 11 years completely and he emerges in independent Kenya and by that time you know this Kenya Federation of Labor was established the bureaucracy was there they excluded him completely this happens all the time isolation, exclusion, you know by the moment it's a deliberate strategy and nothing has been put down I'm not sure I was quite well so I really want to congratulate him for what he's done and he's got some very interesting other books that you want to read but what Sukun says because one thing that you know this example says to us he said how we have to recover history how we have to archive history and how history is eroded there's a range of history as well and I was talking about you saying there is a cycle sometimes history just varies completely utterly and totally it's never recovered because there are not people out there recovering either academia they think that very often the way it's maintained is not through merely force it's maintained to consent the academia, the educational system the media, the television our libraries are all instruments in erasing history we simply don't hear about it I just want to stop there thank you very much you were talking about the local history not being taught in school but I studied, I finished Tanzania and when I was doing my old levels we were taught about East African history so it is being mentioned and all these names are coming up and that's how I know about Makan Singh because we were taught in school so you're at the point about unity I really don't know how you're going to achieve it I think you have to start at university level here at the university get everybody together let them change their attitude because what's being taught at home is quite different for each person so I think you have to start changing their minds so that we learn to unite because it's very, very difficult on Andrew's report I was a teacher in Tanzania for five or six years and also worked mid-seventies quite a bit in Nairobi one of the questions here is what would have liked to have heard something from Kenyans were the High Commissioner, Kenya High Commissioner told about this meeting and asked whether they would like to attend and give their thoughts about this very important man actually at the beginning of this event we had the room booked at six so we could set up the system and it was packed and Shiraz and I were both sitting here thinking, wow, we didn't expect that much of a turnout and actually there's another event taking place in the Brunei Gallery on Democracy in Africa let's just say a very different kind of social mix and it actually is very revealing at the times so there are students there attending that and we're over here we publicize events as far as we can but actually it would be the next step and I think one event can achieve one thing by bringing Muckinsing on to this platform actually the next step is actually using these platforms to build bridges across communities because actually so much damage has been done to that kind of unity even in a place like Saoas which has been branded as one of these hotbeds for want of a better word, radicalization the biggest threat is actually the student body coming together and not being in Islamic society or Indian society it's actually reversing that trend and I think a lot of that work can be done in universities but a lot of that work needs to be done out there in communities as well so there's politicization that has to take place it's curriculum, it's addressing the dominant discourse that's out there the ways in which Kenya is known even by those of us who are next generation who consider ourselves having some East African kind of heritage we won't understand this history unless we attend something like this this is a long process this is a great project for any students who are out there would like to be part of this recovery and building this I think that's really important and reaching out and I think that's an important point with people who are descendants of Kenya or Kenyan activists or working on the ground so yeah Shane really I'd just like to make a concrete proposal that I'm sure between us and perhaps other students in the room that we can organize another book launch event about this and we invite our African heritage Pan-African comrades to speak as well between us we know quite a lot of people but I know people like George Shirey who's a decolonial, he's a Barbuan scholar in London I know a brother Omar Wale from the Pan-African society and there's many other people also East African who can come and speak and then hopefully with activists from SOAS itself you're absolutely right if we had a meeting about some petty microaggression quote-unquote that we suffered today we'd probably have the whole lecture theater stuffed full but when it's talking about the macroaggressions of colonialism and liberation for some reason people switch off but yeah that's the challenge we have to reverse or if you want yet another statue of some other figure in the Indian Nationalist movement who was being now revealed which most of us knew had very racist attitudes towards Africans in South Africa Gandhi, there are now two statues and we need those revelations now tell us we've got a figure like Muckinsing who allows us to think outside of nationalism he was an internationalist before they even the notion of internationalism really existed in that way you know he was operating on that level and I think these are things that we need to be thinking and talking about rather than just following that so the proposal accepted let's think of ways in which we can do that and we can find ways of communicating about continuing on the conversation I'm widening it out as well just a casual comment to all of you I'm from the United States originally my parents emigrated from India to the US directly there so I just want to say how refreshing an event like this was for someone like me to really get recognition and understanding of the heroes of our diaspora you know the stories can be different but in the end they are all rooted in the same struggle and it is I coming from academia in the United States the South Asia programs are far different than this and much more flowery to say the least so thank you all for just having this hosting this for whatever it is I'm glad to be here and learn about heroes like this and just one thing I forgot to mention that was an apology from Makinsing's daughter who was going to be here but for personal circumstances couldn't be here Indojeet Gill so at the next event hopefully we can have her there and from in Chaz's book here you can read it was very interesting I've read it through and then gone back to bits learning about what it was like to be the child of someone in exile you know and getting that kind of glimpse and having a father who is an activist you don't get to see very often and then kind of living through the legacy through other people's stories so maybe next time we can I think with one last point then I have a very simple proposal when you google Makinsing you get Wikipedia when you open the page up information is rubbish so somebody here texturizes book take the page and edit that page so every time somebody googles Makinsing you get white information thank you simple proposal thank you all for coming and I'd like to thank all of our speakers for very enlightening and each of you had something unique each of you had a different insight but incredibly valuable across the spectrum of being family members political activists people who are working in Kenya reflecting on the Labour Party here do we join or don't we Mary? That's the question you know knowing that history of the TUC and the Labour Party and diaspora so I've really enjoyed hosting this and it's been a real pleasure so thank you all