Draft:Ansar Ahmed Ullah

Ansar Ahmed Ullah, is a researcher and community activist who has a long association with East London’s Bengali community. Ansar has been living and working among the community he will be researching since the early 1980s.

His research study will be based on a combination of archival research and oral history interviews. It will analyse material from disparate archival collections at the Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, the Bishopsgate Institute Library, the London Metropolitan Archives, the Swadhinata Trust, the Altab Ali Foundation, in private collections and in on-line collections (e.g. national newspapers to understand media reporting of events). Materials to be consulted will include photographs (e.g. taken by David Hoffman and Paul Trevor), leaflets, pamphlets and posters, reports (e.g. of Federation of Bangladeshi Youth Organisations, Bethnal Green and Stepney Trades Council, Commission for Racial Equality) letters and correspondence, film (e.g. Hindocha 2002), plays (Begum and Khan) and local Bengali newspapers. Recently deposited archives e.g. papers of local Christian activist Rev Ken Leech (at the Bishopsgate Institute) and community activist and academic John Eversley (at Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives) will be explored for the first time. The Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives and Swadhinata Trust already hold a small number of transcriptions of interviews carried out with activists in the past. While these will be drawn on in this study, a major new source of evidence and testimony will be generated by carrying out approximately 20 oral history interviews with those involved in the events of 1978 or subsequent political activity. Given that most of the existing transcripts are of interviews with male activists, a particular effort will be made to reach female activist participants. Participants will be recruited via the candidate’s own social networks and the wider group of contacts that this will give access to. It is known that some of the key figures have returned to live in Bangladesh; where possible, they will be interviewed using Skype or similar.