What is the Ark?

The Ark is part of the NMP Anti-Racist Trust's Communities of Resistance initiative, whose eventual aim is to set up an education and resource centre in Newham in east London.

Until all the objectives of the initiative can be reached, we have created the Ark with two aims:

• to collect and preserve the history and experience of black community resistance to racism in east London.
  
  
• to develop a specialist reference library on issues relating to race, crime and policing

The impetus behind this project came firstly with the death of Hardev Singh Dhesi, a key figure in opposing racist violence and discrimination in employment and housing throughout the 1970s and a founder member of the Newham Monitoring Project (NMP). The NMP Anti-Racist Trust recognised that the experiences of people like Mr. Dhesi needed to be recorded for future generations and that the wealth of resources kept by individuals like him, including news cuttings, pamphlets, leaflets, campaign banners and photographs, could be lost forever.

Meanwhile, the idea for a specialist reference library emerged from Newham Monitoring Project's prominent involvement in the Stephen Lawrence Family Campaign during the Lawrence Inquiry and the many policy initiatives that have followed. NMP regularly receives requests from journalists, students, lawyers and researchers for information on a range of subjects linking racism, crime and policing. Because of its long history, it is often also asked to provide a historical context to current debates and over the years it has accumulated a considerable volume of contemporary information that enquirers find extremely useful, although at present this process can be very time-consuming.

The NMP Anti-Racist Trust has therefore taken on this role and the Ark includes an accessible library service, enabling Newham Monitoring Project to concentrate on its core activity of casework support to victims of racial harassment.

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Why is the Ark important?
It must seem hard for local young people and those visiting Newham and its surrounding boroughs today to imagine a time when east London's vibrant black communities were small and isolated.

When Asian, Caribbean and other minority communities were struggling to settle from the 1960s to the 1980s, black people faced hostility and violence in areas like Green Street in Newham or Brick Lane in Tower Hamlets, now famous for their rich diversity. Most of east London's mosques, gurdhwaras and temples did not exist and people gathering to worship in their homes faced constant complaints and often physical attacks. There were few black voluntary sector organisations, whilst places where black communities met were subject to both official and unofficial harassment.

Following the racist murder of Akhtar Ali Baig iIn 1980, who was killed for a £5 bet, Newham Monitoring Project was set up by local people who had been involved in resisting day-to-day racism. It aimed to campaign for an end to the treatment of black people as second-class citizens, primarily when dealing with the police and local council departments. The many activities initiated by NMP and other campaigners in east London over the last 23 years have continued the tradition of resistance to racism begun in the 1970s and have significantly contributed to the transformation of east London for members of black communities.

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