The Inspiring Transition from Anti-Racist Campaigning in Lancashire to Leading Friends of the Earth

Every weekday morning, students from the south Asian community in Burnley would gather before heading to school. This was the 1970s, an era when far-right groups were gaining strength, and these children were the sons and daughters of Asian migrants who had been invited to Britain in the previous decade to work in understaffed industries.

One of these children was Asad Rehman, who had come to the Lancashire town with his family from Pakistan when he was four. “We walked in groups,” he remembers, “since it wasn't safe to walk alone. Younger children in the middle, teenagers around the edge, as there was a threat of violence on the way.”

Things were no better at school. Pupils would perform Nazi salutes and shout racist insults at them. Some exchanged Bulldog without concealment at school. Students of color regularly, when the lunch bell rang, we would barricade ourselves into a classroom, due to the risk of assault.”

“So I started talking to everybody,” he notes. As a group, they chose to challenge the teachers who had failed to protect them by jointly deciding not to attend. “declaring that the reason was the schools didn't provide security for us.” This became Rehman’s first taste of activism. Participating in wider antiracism movements developing across the country, it defined his activist perspective.

“We started to protect our community which taught me that crucial insight which I've carried: collective action is stronger as a united group rather than individually. You need organisations to organise you along with a shared goal to maintain unity.”

Recently, he took on the role of CEO of the environmental charity Friends of the Earth. For decades, the poster child of environmental crisis was the polar bear drifting on an ice floe. Currently, to speak of environmental issues while ignoring social, racial and economic injustice is widely considered almost impossible. He has stood at the forefront of this shift.

“I accepted this position given the scale of the crisis out there,” he shared with the media during a climate justice protest in central London last month. “It’s an interconnected crisis of climate, social injustice, of economic systems designed to favor the wealthy. It’s ultimately about fairness.

“Just one group has consistently focused on justice – environmental justice and environmental equality – that’s Friends of the Earth.”

Having 250,000 supporters and community teams, Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland (Scotland has its own) is the UK’s biggest environmental campaigning network. In the year to summer 2024, it invested more than £10m on campaigns ranging from legal actions against state decisions community initiatives changing municipal practices across urban areas.

But it has – albeit undeservedly – been perceived as not extremely activist compared with its peers. Known for fundraising and appeals instead of confrontational tactics.

The selection of a stalwartly class-conscious campaigner with his background may represent a strategic move to shed that image.

And it is not the beginning he collaborated with the charity.

After graduating, he persisted advocating for equality, engaged with the Newham Monitoring Project at a time when the far right was still a force in east London.

“There were initiatives, supporting victims, based in neighborhoods,” he recalls. “This taught me being a community organiser.”

However, unsatisfied than just responding to racism on the streets and from the state together with peers, aimed to elevate antiracism on a human rights level. That brought him to the human rights organization, where over the next decade he partnered with global south activists to advocate for significant change regarding the interpretation of human rights. “At that time, Amnesty didn’t campaign on inequality matters. they only campaigned on civil and political rights,” he notes.

As the conclusion of the nineties, his activism with Amnesty had brought him into contact to various global equity groups. At that time they came together in opposition to neoliberalism against neoliberalism. The insights he gained from these connections shaped his future work.

“I visited collaborating with activists, all those was saying how bad climate was, how farming was becoming impossible, forcing migrations,” he says. “I thought! Every gain through activism could be undone because of environmental collapse. This challenge that is happening, known as global warming – however it wasn't being discussed like that.”

This led Rehman to his first job at the environmental charity years ago. At the time, many activists were talking about global warming as tomorrow's challenge.

“The organization was the only mainstream environmental organisation that separated away from other green organizations. helping establish of what we now call climate equity activism,” he says.

Rehman worked to amplify concerns from global south nations into discussions. This approach wasn't earn him friends. In a particular instance, he recalls, post-negotiations between UK government representatives and environmental NGOs, a minister called his chief executive insisting he stop his assertive tactics. He declined to specify on which minister it was.

“Many believed: ‘Why does he operate differently?’ Consider, ecology matters, discussion is possible. [But] I viewed it as combating discrimination, defending rights … about power structures.”

Equity frameworks found acceptance within green movements. However, the opposite took place. rights-based campaigns engaging with climate and environmental issues.

This led to the anti-poverty campaign supported by unions {