A. Sivanandan was born in Sri Lanka where his father worked for the post-office. After being educated at Catholic schools and the University of Ceylon, he became a teacher and later a banker. But when race riots between the Sinhalese and Tamils broke out in 1958, he (a Tamil married to a Sinhalese) left his island for Britain. In Britain, he walked into the Notting Hill riots. From then on, he devoted himself to working for racial justice.
He is best known for changing the Institute of Race Relations (set up as an academic elitist think-tank in 1958 by politicians and civil servants) so that it began, in the 1970s, to serve the people who experienced racism. The Institute, which is independent of government and political parties, has been able to criticise state policies and present alternative ways of looking at racism and resolving its problems. It has, for example, exposed the extent of police racism, of black deaths in custody, of racial violence and of black exclusions from school. It has also created a series of materials on the history of racism for young people and retrieved the (unknown) history of what black people themselves have done here since the second world war to fight for racial justice.
Sivanandan, who is a qualified librarian and a creative writer is famous for his political writings which have developed from his work in community campaigns against racism over four decades. Many of his ideas and sayings (which can be found in two of his books, A Different Hunger and Communities of Resistance) have now become part of the way that race issues are looked at in Britain. He explained that Black Power, which began in the US but soon spread to black communities in Britain and worldwide, was not an attempt at black separatism but rather the reflection of the historic powerlessness of black people. In 1903, WEB Du Bois had said that the problem of the 20th century was the problem of the colour line. Sivanandan explained that, at the end of the century, the colour line was the power line was the poverty line.
As an Asian who was influenced by Black Power, he was able to draw out what linked the experience of all those who had suffered racism and imperialism. This led him to define Black as the colour of one's politics and not the colour of one's skin. When, in the 1960s, racists were saying that black people had come to Britain to steal its wealth, Sivanandan said: 'We are here because you were there'. In that phrase, he explained that the presence of black people in Britain had to be linked to the effects of colonialism on Third World countries. He went on to expose the way that Britain encouraged migration to Britain when it needed cheap labour after the Second World War but began to impose racist immigration controls and try to 'induce repatriation' when the economic need declined.
In the 1970s, Sivanandan advocated the need for black self-organisation under the slogan, 'Here to stay, here to fight' and explained the need for black people to defend themselves when the forces of law and order failed them. Being part of Europe, for black people, did not mean greater freedom either, said Sivanandan, for 'Black people wear their passports on their faces'. In other words, they were still the targets for racism, despite all the rhetoric about the rights and freedoms of EU citizens.
Find out more about the people who made a difference on the HomeBeats: Struggles for Racial Justice CDROM.