BURSTThe group’s campaigning single Free Satpal Ram, about a south Asian man jailed for murder after an alleged racist attack, led me to become an activist – with their lead singer as my mentor
It wasn’t New Labour, my politics A-level or the Tipp-Exed Woody Guthrie slogan “this machine kills fascists” on my friend Simon’s bag that set me on the path to activism. It was a CD single I found in a west London record shop, which I only picked up because it was by a bunch of brown guys.
It was the summer of 1998, and I was 17 years old and browsing records in the Harrow Virgin Megastore, when I came across Free Satpal Ram by jungle-punk-rap band Asian Dub Foundation – a buzzing, brilliant, ramshackle protest song about a south Asian man who had been sent to jail after defending himself in an alleged racist attack in 1986. While at an Indian restaurant, Satpal Ram was stabbed with a broken bottle, and retaliated by stabbing his attacker with a penknife; the man later died. Ram was convicted of murder the following year.
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