Catalogue Number
NMLH.2025.25.1
Object Name
badge
Title
'Bring Anwars children home! Smash immigration controls!'
Place
Birmingham, Longsight, Manchester, UK, Pakistan
People
Anwar Ditta, Asian Youth Movement (AYS), South Manchester Law Centre, Anwar Ditta Defence Campaign, Home Office
Events
Anwar Ditta Campaign 1976-1981
Description
A round white badge with black text which reads: 'Bring Anwars children home! Smash immigration controls!'
This badge was produced as part of the Anwar Ditta Defence Campaign, supporting a British Pakistani woman, Anwar Ditta in her fight against the Home Office. Ditta was born in Birmingham to British Indian Commonwealth citizens who answered the UK's call to rebuild the country after the Second World War, like the Windrush generation. As a child her family moved to Pakistan, and Ditta and her husband chose to return to the UK to live in 1975. As a British citizen born in the UK, Ditta had a right to migrate, but the 1971 Immigration Act prevented Commonwealth citizens like her three children from migrating without applying for permission, which was hard to secure. The Home Office denied the children permission to join their mother, claiming that they did not believe Ditta was their mother, and even suggested that she was an imposter and not the Anwar Ditta who married her husband in Pakistan. None of her evidence - including medical evidence about her pregnancies, photographs of her wedding, and witness statements from people present at the children's' births was accepted by the Home Office.
A support campaign was established by activists from the Asian Youth Movement (AYS) and South Manchester Law Centre, after Ditta attended an immigration campaign meeting at Longsight Library in Manchester. Ditta's appeal to the Home Office was rejected on 30 July 1980, but the campaign continued, labelling the Home Office's behaviour as racist and discriminatory, which the Home Office barrister admitted: "The whole system of immigration control is based upon discrimination. It is of the essence of the Immigration Act that people will be discriminated against on the ground of race or nationality and it is the function of certain officials to ensure that that discrimination is effective."
The Home Office overturned the refusal following a Granada TV documentary about Ditta in March 1981 where she and the children underwent blood tests which proved she was heir mother - evidence she had offered to the Home Office throughout the case. Anwar Ditta continued to campaign for other families in similar situations following her family's reunification.'
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