Defiance Fighting the Far Right: Who was Gurdip Singh Chaggar?

Defiance: Fighting The Far Right kicks off on Monday evening (April 8) on Channel 4 as the new documentary series aims to shed light on the British Asian movements that fought back against the far right in the 1970s and 80s. In three powerful episodes, this ground-breaking series draws together the iconic events in a struggle that helped define modern Britain.

It captures the Battle for Brick Lane after the murder of Altab Ali, the Southall protests and the killing of Blair Peach by the police; the overlooked story of the killing of an entire British Asian family in Walthamstow.

The series opens on the killing of 18-year-old Gurdip Singh Chaggar on the streets of West London. The shocking murder left Asians across the UK outraged as they took to the streets to protest.

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What happened to Singh Chagger?

During the summer of 1976, people quietly shuffled past a police cordon outside the Victory pub on Southall's busy high street.

Behind the tape was a pool of blood that had come from Gurdeep Singh Chaggar, an 18-year-old Sikh teenager who had been stabbed to death during a racist attack in the centre of the South Asian community in West London.

Gurdip was an 18-year-old turban-wearing Sikh male who was targeted in an unprovoked attack by a gang of white youths. The engineering student was out with friends when he was attacked by the group on the night of June 4.

The teenager's brutal death sent shockwaves across the town, which has slowly become home to the largest community of South Asians in London. The heightened emotions in 1976 led to a weekend of protests which saw hundreds of Asians voicing their anger against the killing.

However, "One down, one million to go", were the chilling words of a Far-Right leader John Kingsley Read,

The protests were predominantly peaceful and led to the creation of the Southall Youth Movement (SYM) - the biggest youth-led movement of anti-racism in Southall.

Two white teenagers, Jody Hill, 17, and Robert Hackman, 18, were found guilty of killing Gurdip in May 1977, however, they only received four years in prison after admitting manslaughter.

In the judge's closing statement, he said that it was not a racially motivated attack, which triggered waves of anger. It essentially denied racism as an issue.

His death stunned Southall. The idea of white youths coming to their area to kill a Sikh boy seemed unthinkable, but in reality, it was part of a sustained campaign of racial violence that spread across the entire country.

Defiance lifts the lid on the events that led to the Southall protests, the killing of Blair Peach, the Battle for Brick Lane, and on how ‘self-defence is no offence’ became a rallying call in Bradford

Defiance Fighting the Far Right airs tonight on Channel 4 at 9pm.

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