| Avtar Jouhl OBE |
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 Avtar was born in a village in Punjab, North West India to a middle-class family. Life in his family was comfortable but not so for everyone in the village. Avtar was a scholarly student who left school and went on to get a degree in Political Science in 1957. While at University he became involved in political issues and campaigned for more reasonable and accessible student fees. He came to the UK in 1957 to join a course at the London School of Economics in London for further study. Prior to starting the course he went to work to earn some money for his course. He quickly found that black workers were discriminated against, in terms of less pay than their white peers, being treated poorly and experiencing difficulty in joining the union. The hierarchy in factories were entirely racial and the black workers were mainly labourers who got less pay than others. In some cases white labourers were paid twice as much as black colleagues. To get a promotion black workers had to bribe supervisors. Along with other colleagues he felt he could not ignore this and challenged it. His work made such an impact that he was persuaded not to go to London and stay in Birmingham where his brother was and continue the struggle. In 1958 he was instrumental in setting up the Birmingham branch of the Indian Workers Association, as a result of his experiences and that of others in a local foundry in Smethwick and elsewhere. There were several branches of the Association across England as an increasing number of Indian workers migrated to the UK at that time. Avtar became the General Secretary of the IWA in 1961 and helped to align the organisation to the wider Trade Union movement. His work contributed to the development of the Race Relations Act 1976 The organisation also began to challenge the colour bar present in Birmingham at that time, where black people were not allowed access including barber shops and pubs, and even in factories there were separate toilets. Avtar helped to organise a number of strikes and protests, including a pub crawl with students from Birmingham University in the early 60s which led to him being arrested for refusing to leave a public house. This did not deter him. Later on in his 30 years of being a trade union convenor, Avtar was involved in training shop stewards at a local college of Further education and this led to him becoming a member of the National Association of Teachers in Further Education. He went on to join the executive board and campaigned for greater representation of black people at senior levels within Further Education, as well as campaigning for all equality issues. He was awarded the OBE for services to the community In the Queens birthdays honours list 2002. |
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