The Indian Youth Association (IYA)

“Youth have played an important part in the national liberation movements of the world. In Britain, the main contradiction is between the Capitalists and the Working Class but the coloured people face an extra dominant problem of racialism along with the other problems of the working class. For this struggle the coloured youth need to maintain and preserve their identity along with radical political consciousness. To this end they will have their own organization.”

IWA, 1977, 1.3.51

The desire to start an Indian Youth Association supported by and linked to the IWA became more apparent in the early 1970s. This is in the context of a generational shift with children of Indian origin born and brought up in Britain. Despite growing up in Britain this generation were being confronted with significant marginalisation and discrimination in education, employment, housing and police harassment. This was in the context of closures of factories and expanding deindustrialisation, leading to rising unemployment. Rising and violent fascist and racist discourse and activity and unjust policing of such actions emphasised the active exclusion of Black youth in Britain. These concerns are reflected in a draft programme for the Indian Youth Association developed in 1977 by Gurnam Sangera, the then National General Secretary of the IWA(GB), with an Indian Youth Association being established later that year.