Pragna Patel discusses Southall Black Sisters

When I was at college, what I felt most was a complete sense of isolation, because apart from my friend Gurpreet, she and I were the only black people in the whole of the college. So there was nobody with whom you could develop a sense of identity, if you like. And I was beginning to feel then I was missing out on something, because I had got myself involved with other black women when I was in Southall, Southall Black Sisters had just started, and I had seen some young Asian women handing out these journals that they had written, and it was just their various campaigns and, and it was all about racism and it was all about women’s issues and things. They worked with, alongside a lot of Asian men who were very into the anti-racist work, and they were the first left, progressive, Asian people that I’d come across, and I was wowed by it all. Because I didn’t know there was another way of being, and there they were. And so that was an exciting, exciting thing for me to discover, feeling that perhaps this was where I would feel at home, wanting to develop something myself and my work with them. So it was very radical. And so with these group of people developing a kind of socialist, black, anti-racist perspective. And then Southall Black Sisters was a group of Afro-Caribbean and Asian women, but by the time I left and came to Southall, which was, when? ’81, ’82, the group was in decline. Because a lot of them were young women who either were going on to college or finishing college themselves, or were going on to careers of some kind or another, academic careers, or doing other things. And so when I returned, the group was fizzling out, basically. But I had kind of felt that this is where I really felt I belonged, I kind of felt that this is, I felt most comfortable with that kind of identity. So basically I just said, right, never mind, I’ll just start it again. So I got new women involved, got involved, and just started the whole thing again. And I’ve been involved ever since.