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Kavita Puri's hidden histories: how Gurdip Singh Chaggar's murder in 1976 sparked a youth movement

Kavita Puri's hidden histories: how Gurdip Singh Chaggar's murder in 1976 sparked a youth movement

Kavita Puri explores lesser-known stories from our past. This month she explores the murer of Gurdip Singh Chaggar, whose murder in 1976 sparked a youth movement

Kavita Puri

Published: July 16, 2024 at 2:41 PM

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In the late spring of 1976, an 18-year-old boy was walking at night in the Southall area of London near the Victory pub, just opposite the popular Dominion Theatre. He never made it home. The following day, Suresh Grover came across a pool of blood outside the pub. He asked the police officer standing by what happened and was told someone had died the night before. The policeman added: “It was just an Asian.”

That young man was Gurdip Singh Chaggar. He was stabbed to death. There’s a photo of him in a dark red turban and his school uniform, and he looks so young, his whole life ahead of him. I documented his murder in my BBC Radio 4 series Three Pounds in My Pocket. His death was remembered by every British South Asian I spoke to. It shook the community deeply. Many felt it could have been them, or any of their children, if they had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It’s hard to imagine now, but in those days racism was rife. Words that cannot be openly said today were flung around wantonly. Sometimes these were backed up by violence. The National Front was in its heyday, making its presence felt. A generation of young British South Asians who had been born and grown up in Britain – this country was their home, even if they were not made to feel that way – had had enough.

Suresh was furious at the policeman’s dismissive attitude. He told me he covered the blood with a piece of red cloth and put bricks around it as a sign of respect, so no one would walk over it. He erected a makeshift sign to say someone had died.

Schoolboy Gurdip Singh Chaggar, who was murdered at the age of 18 in Southall. (Photo by Alamy)

As word spread of Chaggar’s murder, Suresh, along with hundreds of others, spontaneously took to Southall’s streets to protest against racism and his killing. Suresh recalls the police trying to stop them. While they marched, the blood of Gurdip Singh Chaggar had still not been cleared up.

An excellent and important new Channel 4 documentary series called Defiance charts – for the first time on British television – the fightback in Southall and around the country that began with Chaggar’s killing.

In the first episode, I saw, for the first time, news footage from the day after Chaggar’s murder. You can see his blood spattered on the ground and all the way up the pavement’s railings. It’s chilling. What’s even more heartbreaking is that in an interview with Chaggar’s brother, he says he and his father had been out looking for him when he didn’t come home. They saw the blood, and his father recited a Sikh prayer for whoever was hurt, not knowing then that it was his youngest son.

Days after the killing, Suresh went on to become one of the founding members of the Southall Youth Movement. They wanted to protect the community against racism, but also they felt many in the police were not on their side. Their slogan was “come what may, we’re here to stay”. Other youth movements sprang up across the country. In the coming years, along with their supporters, which included members of the black community, these movements would see confrontations, even street battles with the National Front and those who backed its far-right ideology. These took place in areas with large ethnic minority communities like Southall, Bradford and Lewisham.

A group of white men attacked Chaggar. A 17-year-old and an 18-year old-pled guilty to his manslaughter and received sentences of four years. The presiding judge said, “I am quite satisfied that none of you were activated by feelings of racial prejudice.” There was widespread unhappiness in the British South Asian community at the lenient sentences and the fact that the killing was not called racist.

Gurdip Singh Chaggar was not the only British South Asian to be killed by racists in the 1970s. His death sparked a movement where a younger generation no longer tolerated the perpetual harassment and questioning of their existence in Britain. Nearly 50 years on, it’s a history still not known widely in Britain.

Today, Southall has a plaque to remember the killing, and it bears his name. He was not “just an Asian”.

This article was first published in the June 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine

Authors

Kavita Puri

Kavita Puri is a journalist, author and broadcaster. A new edition of her book Partition Voices: Untold British Stories, marking the 75th anniversary of partition, is out now, published by Bloomsbury

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