🔗 Share this article

Every weekday morning, youngsters from the south Asian community in Burnley would gather before heading to school. This was the seventies, a period when extremist organizations were actively organizing, and these children were the offspring of south Asian workers who had been invited to Britain a decade earlier to address employment gaps.

Among them was Asad Rehman, who had moved to the Lancashire town with his family from Pakistan when he was four. “We traveled as one,” he recalls, “as there were risks to walk alone. Smaller kids in the middle, teenagers forming a perimeter, as there was a threat of violence on the way.”

Conditions were just as difficult at school. Pupils would perform Nazi salutes and hurl racial epithets at them. Some exchanged Bulldog without concealment at school. Minority children “every day, at break times, we would barricade ourselves into a classroom, due to the risk of assault.”

“I initiated conversations to everybody,” says Rehman. Together, they chose to challenge the teachers who had ignored their safety by collectively refusing to attend. “stating it was due to the schools were unsafe for us.” It was Rehman’s initial experience of activism. When he became part of national equality efforts that were formed across the country, it defined his activist perspective.

“We started to protect our community helping me understand that crucial insight that has stayed with me: collective action is stronger when we are a ‘we’ rather than individually. Groups are necessary to bring people together along with a shared goal that binds you.”

In the past few months, Rehman became head of the environmental charity the well-known activist organization. Historically, the familiar face of climate breakdown was arctic wildlife on melting ice. Today, addressing global heating while ignoring social, racial and economic injustice has become highly inappropriate. He has stood at the forefront of this shift.

“I accepted this position due to the scale of the crisis out there,” he shared with journalists during a Make Them Pay protest in central London weeks ago. “It’s an interconnected crisis of climate, social injustice, of capitalist models which are biased elite interests. At its core a crisis of justice.

“And there is only one organisation prioritizing justice – environmental justice and environmental equality – namely this charity.”

Boasting over a quarter-million members plus hundreds of local branches, The organization (Scotland has its own) is the UK’s biggest environmental campaigning network. Recently, it allocated over ten million pounds on advocacy from courtroom challenges against state decisions to local campaigns changing municipal practices across urban areas.

Yet it – albeit undeservedly – been perceived as a less radical organisation compared with its peers. Known for fundraising and appeals instead of confrontational tactics.

The hiring of someone focused on inequality such as him could be a strategic move to shed that image.

This isn't his initial stint he's been involved with the organization.

Following university, Rehman continued advocating for equality, collaborating with the Newham Monitoring Project at a time as nationalist movements had influence in the capital.

“It was running campaigns, and it was doing casework, and it was rooted in the community,” he recalls. “And I learned being a community organiser.”

However, unsatisfied with simply reactively countering everyday prejudice and government policies collaborating with activists, aimed to elevate the fight against racism on a human rights level. This led him to the human rights organization, where over the next decade he partnered with international campaigners to demand significant change regarding the interpretation of human rights. “Previously, they weren't active on financial and community issues. they concentrated solely on on civil and political rights,” he notes.

As the conclusion of that decade, Rehman’s work at the organization introduced him with multiple worldwide activist networks. During that period they had coalesced in opposition to neoliberalism against neoliberalism. The knowledge he acquired through this experience influenced the rest of his career.

“I traveled and working with these people, and everybody you spoke to mentioned the severity of environmental issues, unsustainable practices, how it was displacing people,” he recalls. “I thought! Every gain and won is going to be unravelled due to climate change. And this thing occurring, known as global warming – but nobody’s talking about it with urgency.”

That guided him to his first job with Friends of the Earth years ago. Back then, most environmental organisations discussed climate change as a distant threat.

“Friends of the Earth was the only mainstream green group which diverged away from other green organizations. and was one of the founders creating climate equity activism,” he declares.

Rehman worked to bring the voices of the developing world during negotiations. It did not always gain widespread approval. Once, he remembers, following discussions between UK government representatives with activist organizations, a minister phoned the leadership insisting he stop his strong advocacy. He declined to specify who made the call.

“People just felt: ‘Who is this person who doesn’t follow [the] same rules?’ Consider, green issues are important, we can all agree and talk. [But] For me it represented a fight against racism, advocating for freedoms … a deeply political fight.”

Fairness perspectives gained traction in climate and environmental campaigning. However, the opposite took place. organizations focused on equality increasingly tackling climate and environmental issues.

And so it was the anti-poverty campaign labor-aligned {