Record revealed
Roy Sawh: From Where I Stand
Roy Sawh was an anti-racist and civil rights activist perhaps best known for his impassioned speeches at Speakers’ Corner. We hold a copy of his 1967 pamphlet, which outlined his critique of racism and British imperialism – and attracted attention from the police.
Important information
This article features a document that uses outdated language to describe Black and Asian people.
Images
Image 1 of 5
The cover and foreword to Roy Sawh's pamphlet From Where I Stand, which includes a photograph of the author. The pamphlet is eight pages long.
Partial transcript
Every week I stand in Hyde Park to make a reasoned, impassioned speech against racial prejudice.
And every week I allow myself to get side tracked by issues brought up by questioners, I don't mind this. But some of my listeners do and ask me later for explanations.
Here, in capsule form, are the main points of the speech I should make but never do.
Roy Sawh
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Excerpt from Roy Sawh's From Where I Stand, page one.
Partial transcript
Hello, comrades and friends, ladies and gentlemen, and all hecklers and racists; good afternoon. It gives me great pleasure to be one of those people, who constantly [disappointed?] in the fact that I am British, am yet often referred to as a foreigner. It is a pity that there should be any need for me to stand up in Hyde Park, the only open-air lunatic asylum in the world, to put our case (the coloured people's) to the British public, but where else can one find a place like this, other than in Britain!
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Excerpt from Roy Sawh's From Where I Stand, page three.
Partial transcript
Why do they come here? They come to Britain because they face poverty and semi-starvation at home. The islands of the West Indies, together with Guyana and British Honduras are lands of untapped riches which could provide a paradise for the 5,000,000 people. As well as sugar there is much timber and mineral resources, including bauxite, gold, diamonds, iron, manganese, silicates and oils. It is the British capitalists who own and control most of these resources, and it is the same people who are the opponents of the coloured people, whom they are still exploiting. In the near future we, the colonials, shall rise and break the shackles of colonialisation, burning it forever.
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Excerpt from Roy Sawh's From Where I Stand, page five.
Partial transcript
“Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose, only your shackles.” The British working class tradition of solidarity among workers of the world is very strong.
The Chartist leader, Ernest Jones, exposed the oppression of India by the Government and the East India Company, and wrote of the British Empire; “On its colonies the sun never sets, but the blood never dries”, and protested against the violence of imperialism in India. In 1865, Governor Eyre of Jamaica brutally put down a rising of plantation workers and the leaders of London’s trade unions petitioned Parliament in protest. When Police violence met a great demonstration for Parliamentary reform called by the London Trades Council in the following year, the workers’ newspaper, Beehive, drew a parallel between the methods of the ruling class in England and in the West Indies. The moral was that the working class here must recognise its common interests with the subject peoples of the colonies.
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Excerpt from Roy Sawh's From Where I Stand, page six.
Partial transcript
On the south side of the Thames, some splendid work has been done in Brixton, where there is the heaviest concentration of West Indians. The conflict here has been far less than in many less affected areas. This is because the Trades Council, the Labour Party, the Communist Party and many other organisation, as well as the Borough Council, have worked together for inter-racial friendship through conference, meetings, leaflets, social gatherings and in other ways. In Willesden, the Borough Council employs a Welfare Officer and sponsors an international friendship council on which many local organisations are represented, including the Conservative, Labour and Communist Parties, the Trades Council, the British Legion and the Teachers Association. In the Midlands, particularly in Birmingham, many trade union organisations have taken steps to combat the racial prejudice which is being formed by certain Tory M.P.s and by the Fascists.
Why this record matters
- Date
- 1967
- Catalogue reference
- CRIM 1/4777
Roy Sawh (1934–2023) was an experienced speaker at Speakers' Corner, in London's Hyde Park, a traditional site for public speeches and debates since the mid-18th century. In his 1967 pamphlet, From Where I Stand, Sawh sought to make, 'the main points of the speech I should make but never do', as a result of getting sidetracked by questions from those listening.
Born on a sugar estate in Uitvlugt, Guyana, in 1934, Sawh was descended from Indian indentured labourers. His father was a sugar estate worker who was brought to the British colony at the end of the 19th century, and his mother was second-generation Guyanese. Sawh arrived in Britain in 1958 with the intention to ‘soon return to Guyana a rich man'.
In 'From Where I Stand,' Sawh engages with a number of pertinent issues including racism and the colour bar (a social system in which people of colour were denied the same rights as white people): 'many English people have never met coloured people before, but have preconceived ideas about them...' and migration: 'why do they come here? They come here because they face poverty and semi-starvation at home'. Sawh also discusses these issues within the context of colonialism, focusing on his native Guyana: 'we live in some of the oldest British colonies, but three centuries of imperialist rule have always brought poverty. The islands are exploited for their abundant raw materials – like oil and bauxite – but no industry has been built in return…'
The pamphlet expresses a Marxist view of 'race,' with Sawh advocating for working class solidarity in several places. Under the subtitle 'All workers unite' he argues: 'the working class here must recognise its common interests with the subject people of the colonies.' He makes the case that 'The common enemy is the capitalist class … delighted if the wrath of workers against lousy working and housing conditions is turned on each other…'
As the opening suggests, Sawh was acutely aware that there were many in the Speakers’ Corner audience with less than noble intentions towards him. Packed among the attendees were Special Branch officers of the Metropolitan Police, who had Sawh and other members of his organisation, The Universal Coloured People’s Association, under close surveillance.
The officers’ notes of Sawh’s speeches (which make up much of the rest of The National Archives’ file) allege Sawh had used racist and incendiary language. They provide a stark contrast to much of the content of the pamphlet.
The police notes would be used to prosecute Sawh for 'incitement to racial hatred,' under the 1965 Race Relations Act. As a result, the notes, as well as the pamphlet, are held at The National Archives within the Central Criminal Court's records. Sawh was found guilty and jailed for eight months.
Three years later saw the trial of nine Black protestors, known as the Mangrove 9, who had also been under Special Branch surveillance. All nine defendants were acquitted of the most serious charges, and the case led to the first judicial acknowledgement of racial hatred within the Metropolitan Police.
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