Malcolm X in “the most racist town in Britain”

24th Oct 2024

Did you know that on 12 February 1965, one of the most famous people on the planet visited a residential street in Smethwick? Malcolm X – revolutionary, Muslim minister, African American community leader and civil rights activist – was invited by local anti-racist campaigners to Marshall Street, where locals had proposed a scheme for homes to only be let to white people. His visit came against a backdrop of prejudice and discrimination in the town that gained it the nickname “the most racist town in Britain”.

This Black History Month blog, by BCLM researcher Simon Briercliffe, looks at Malcolm X’s visit from the perspectives of some of those involved, and here at Black Country Living Museum we will be marking the sixtieth anniversary with a special study day on Saturday 8 February 2025 – see below for more details. 

Please note: this blog post includes outdated, offensive terms that have been used in a derogatory way. We quote this language here as it is integral to the history discussed. 

Peter Griffiths MP

“I utterly deplore the visit of Mr Malcolm X to Smethwick yesterday. A visit of this kind can do nothing but harm, at a time when we are trying to establish better relations between the races of the town… The ordinary decent people of Smethwick don’t want you in the town.“
– Peter Griffiths, quoted in the Express & Star, 13 Feb 1965 

Peter Griffiths, Smethwick’s new MP, was furious about Malcolm X’s visit. Yet despite his claims, no-one did more to stoke racism in Smethwick than Peter Griffiths. 

Griffiths (1928-2013) was elected in the General Election of November 1964, beating Shadow Foreign Secretary Patrick Gordon Walker and turning Smethwick Conservative while the rest of the country voted for Labour. Some local Conservatives (such as Councillor for Marshall Street, Don Finney) had colluded with the local newspaper, the Smethwick Telephone, from the late 1950s to whip up anti-immigrant feeling by making outlandish claims about people of South Asian and Caribbean heritage living in the town.  

Griffiths caused an uproar in the general election campaign by using explicitly racist and anti-immigration slogans and endorsing policies including segregation in schools and housing. In October 1964, a poster began appearing in Smethwick: “If you want a n***** for a neighbour, vote Liberal or Labour.” Griffiths condoned the sentiment, saying “I would say that is how people see the situation in Smethwick.” Griffiths was condemned nationally and Harold Wilson, the new Prime Minister, told him he should “serve his term here as a parliamentary leper.” Instead, Peter Griffiths used his new platform to launch an even more audacious policy in Marshall Street. 

Alice Groves

Alongside Griffiths and Finney, the unlikely figurehead of the Marshall Street plan was a resident, 39-year-old Alice Groves – a mother of two and a cook at Holly Lodge School. In November 1964, the Birmingham Post reported that “twelve angry housewives” were petitioning the council to buy up houses in Marshall Street as they became vacant, and to let them only to white residents. She claimed (wrongly) that half the street’s houses were now occupied by “coloured” residents and that Marshall Street was becoming a “Smethwick Harlem” – a ghetto where no white families would want to live anymore. 

“There are three things that should be done,” she continued: “Stop overcrowding, stop any further immigration, and ensure that no more than one family lives in one house… if any more coloured people move in, we’ll be swamped.” Other residents supported her: Jennifer Griffiths told reporters “something must be done to stop more coloured people coming in. Their habits and the noise they make are indescribable.” Mrs R. Shrewsbury said that “this used to be a very respectable street… but it is not anymore.”  

Blaming immigrants for social problems was common in the Black Country and elsewhere in the 1960s. Letters to the Telephone complained – with no evidence – of overcrowding, infectious diseases, burdening the NHS, cooking smells, even dancing with white women. In fact, people from South Asia and the Caribbean faced relentless discrimination in Smethwick. They were often rejected by landlords, barred from pubs and clubs, and denied service in shops. The Marshall Street scheme was part of a much larger “colour bar” in Smethwick.  

The Lyn Family

Those residents of Marshall Street who were the subject of these complaints were shocked and saddened by the racism they experienced in Smethwick. In 1961, Smethwick’s population was 68,390, of whom 4,355 had been born outside Britain. Most were from Ireland or Eastern Europe, with around 1,500 from South Asia and 780 from the Caribbean, mostly working in Smethwick’s large foundries. About 26 of the 91 homes in Marshall Street were occupied by people of South Asian or Caribbean heritage. Their experience was not of traditional Black Country friendliness, but of suspicion or outright hostility towards them. 

Lenna Lyn lived at 40 Marshall Street with her husband, daughter and brothers-in-law. She praised the friendliness of some neighbours but said that Smethwick people generally “just don’t seem to be friendly by nature. I used to live in Oldbury and I was always good friends with the people there; but here, no.” Lester Lyn said “We have had no trouble here. I get on well with my neighbours, who are nice to me, but what they say behind me I do not know. Smethwick has got a bad reputation and this new move by the council will make it worse.” George Lyn “did not like ‘the way the people here class all immigrants as one race and refuse to treat us as individuals.”  

Mary Powell of number 9 told reporters: “The people here are trying to treat us like dogs. I don’t care whether the white people stay in this street or not. They don’t have to go if they don’t want to – we are not driving them away.” Jamaicans Jonathan and Delphema Brown agreed: “I do not want to see all the English move out of Marshall Street because of us. Cannot we all live together as friends?” Jhalman Singh at number 74 said “we are very contented. I have an Indian neighbour on one side and an Englishman on the other. I get on well with both. We want to stay here and live happily but what the council plans to do cannot help us to live happily.” Many white residents agreed. Samuel Simkins told the Daily Mirror: “an Indian family moved in next door two or three months ago. They’re extremely nice. We get on well. If we all try to be good neighbours, there need be no trouble… we sent them a Christmas card, and they sent us one.” 

Perhaps the most poignant comment came from Charles Downer, when Birmingham Post reporters asked about his experience in December 1964. “I wished one of my English neighbours a Merry Christmas and she just pretended not to have heard me… How can you ask anyone to come and share Christmas with you if they won’t even speak to you when they see you?” 

Avtar Singh Jouhl

Some Smethwick residents took up the baton of anti-racist organising in response to this widespread racism. At the forefront was Avtar Singh Jouhl: Punjabi foundryman and chairman of the Indian Workers Association (IWA). 

Jouhl was born in Jandiala in the Punjab in 1937. He came to England in 1958 intending to study but ended up working as a moulder’s mate at Shotton Bros. foundry in Oldbury, before moving to Smethwick’s Midland Motor Cylinder. He shared a home at 54 Oxford Road with other Punjabi men who looked after each other and saved money to send back home to India. Jouhl later recalled his experiences of racism in Smethwick, including colour bars in pubs, segregated workplace toilets, and discriminatory pay: Shotton Bros. paid him £7.10s per week, compared to his white colleagues on £16 for the same work. Coming from a politically radical tradition, he joined the IWA and rose to become general secretary.  

Jouhl and IWA colleagues such as Jagmohan Joshi wrote regularly to the Smethwick Telephone to counter its racist talking points. In one letter to Griffiths he argued that “your Party’s Councillors are stirring up the racial discrimination and colour bar.” They also wrote to Marshall Street residents, urging them “not to allow social problems to be used as the vehicle for fanning the flames of racial prejudice.” Through the IWA, Jouhl contacted other anti-racist campaigners such as fellow Communist Claudia Jones in London, the founder of the Notting Hill Carnival. Through Jones, Jouhl invited Malcolm X to Smethwick in February 1965, hoping to provide, in his own words, a “shot in the arm for the anti-racism struggle in Britain.”  

Malcolm X

It’s impossible to overstate how infamous Malcolm X was in the 1960s. Born Malcolm Little, he had converted in jail to the radical, black-nationalist Nation of Islam, exchanging his “white slavemaster name” for an X. He quickly became a national figure in the USA, advocating for African Americans to achieve equality “by any means necessary” – which many took to advocate violence.  

Malcolm X was in London in February 1965 because he’d been barred entry into France. This spare time enabled him to meet groups such as the Council of African Organisations in London instead, and gave him time to visit Smethwick and accept an engagement speaking to the University of Birmingham Student Union the same day.  

“I was in Birmingham, Alabama, the other day,” he told reporters, referring to the hotseat of civil rights struggle in America’s South. “This will give me a chance to see if Birmingham, England, is any different.” He was met at Marshall Street by IWA leaders including Jouhl, but preferred to walk the street alone, facing jeers and bewilderment from residents. He stopped to look at “coloured people need not apply” signs and spoke briefly with residents and journalists, telling them that “I have heard that the blacks in Smethwick are being treated as the Jews were under Hitler. I would not wait for the Fascist element in Smethwick to erect gas ovens.” 

After the visit, Jouhl escorted Malcolm X to the Blue Gates pub, where he knew a colour bar was in place. Accordingly, both were denied a drink in the Smoking Room so Malcolm had a soft drink in the bar and chatted for around fifteen minutes, leaving activists with the exhortation to “keep up the fight. The only way to defeat the colour bar and racism is to fight it back.” Malcolm later returned to Marshall Street with a BBC crew to film more footage.  

Malcolm X brought a unique perspective to Smethwick’s problems. He advocated active resistance to racism wherever it was found, and it was clear to him that the Marshall Street scheme was fundamentally racist. Peter Griffiths branded him a troublemaker and extremist, but in fact, Malcolm X was a complex and sophisticated thinker who played a central part in the struggle for racial equality in the twentieth century, and who is now celebrated with a blue plaque in Smethwick when a plaque for Peter Griffiths would be unthinkable.  

Malcolm X’s visit was overshadowed by his assassination nine days later in New York. Alice Groves’ “angry housewives” made a widely publicised visit to Housing Minister Richard Crossman who rejected their request; the same year, the Labour government passed the first Race Relations Act which prohibited racial discrimination in public places. Jouhl and many others continued campaigning against the colour bar in Smethwick in all its forms.

Today, the town is a successful multicultural environment long after most of its foundries have closed. Malcolm X’s little-known visit was a moment of major significance in twentieth-century British history, but it also brings to light decades of hard work by anti-racism campaigners, which continues to the present. 

Find out more

Black Country Living Museum is hosting a study day to mark the sixtieth anniversary of Malcolm X’s visit to Smethwick. Join a range of expert speakers on Saturday 8 February to better understand the context of Smethwick in the 1960s, and the legacy of this unique event.

Further reading

With thanks to Matt Vernalls for his archival research into the IWA.