The tables were turned—now the police were kettled by the people
On 13 May 2021, thousands of people were drawn into an eight-hour stand-off with the police on Kenmure Street, in the Pollokshields area of Glasgow.
The fight was over the detention of two Sikh men by Immigration Enforcement. An initial gathering of neighbours grew to thousands, with one man lying under the van to stop it from leaving.
Drawing on footage and interviews with protesters, Everybody to Kenmure Street shows what became one of the most spontaneous acts of civil resistance in recent memory.
How important is Kenmure Street given its happy ending and what message do you hope the film sends?
Not every protest will achieve tangible results in the moment, but being on the right side of history is important. And this was a moral protest.
People start thinking if it’s illegal to stop a dawn raid, to protect our neighbours, then there’s something wrong with the system. They start thinking we’re going to have to change the system. We’re going to have to deal with issues of legality.
This was what happened when a bunch of people, mostly strangers, decided today is the day they will be the change.
I think it’s really lovely that something so radical happened through reading groups, exchanges in WhatsApp groups and social media.
A neighbour who ran out to the street in his pyjamas, community activists, the local imam, the schoolkid on his way to class. They all stood against the Home Office because they knew it was the right thing to do.
What we don’t really get to go into is all the work that was done leading up to it. Or the work that organisations have done to fight racism and deportations for years.
I hope people get a sense from the interviews that Kenmure Street didn’t happen out of nowhere. That it was the latest iteration of events that have happened through history on the back of people passing on their knowledge and turning against the law.
Pollokshields, because of its history and the negativity and bigotry it has received in the past, understands that racism won’t achieve anything and only isolates people further.
And so it feels hyper-local and maybe it feels like that’s not going to do things at a universal level. But that’s how anything that’s created with change on a universal level started, just a little spark.
The film, and the protest, is grounded in Glasgow’s heritage through archive footage of rent strikes and shipyard occupations. How important was it to situate Kenmure Street in that context?
From a storytelling perspective, Glasgow just felt like a treasure trove of connection through its history.
Glasgow has mixed legacies, from its early opposition to apartheid to its proud history of trade unionism.
But it was also important to show that the wealth of the city was built on the labour of enslaved people. The foundations of its industrial revolution were built on the backs of racial slavery and workers’ exploitation, yet it’s also a city that takes pride in its acceptance of diversity.
It helps you understand why people turned up against all odds, but also very much why this outcome wasn’t inevitable.
Glasgow is a paradox.
What was fantastic about making this film was the feeling of contrast. People have been resisting for years, which is a big part of
Glasgow’s history, but there’s a real cynicism among so many long‑term activists who were pushed aside when they won and stopped the deportation.
That’s the thing I felt while making Nae Pasaran—a film about Scottish Rolls Royce workers who refused to repair engines for the Chilean airforce to protest Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in the 1970s. They were totally open to receiving bad news.
Many people think that’s just how life goes and are hardwired to fight back even if they think they will lose.
So I love that people who have been involved with activism their whole life were rewarded that day on Kenmure Street.
The film premiered at Sundance in the United States. How was it received in the age of Ice and Maga?
When we premiered the film in the US, people going to see it were bracing for an onslaught of negativity. As they watched, you could see them thinking, “Oh this could turn out well,” and “Is this possible?”
That speaks to the sad state of affairs that we live in.
Screening it in Minneapolis, it felt like the film was alive. It’s a story from the past, but it feels like a tool for right now.
I don’t think nostalgia is useful right now. What I do think is that it’s important to understand that we are connected, past, present and future.
People right now are feeling the same as you and people through generations have felt as you do. And they find ways to sustain themselves. I think that’s the key.
We need to get over the feeling that this is just me feeling this way. There’s more of us than them. When we lose track of that, they know that this is the way to beat us—divide and conquer.
Protesters defied the police orders and sat in the road
‘Even if we are born here, we are told we are not British’
Tabassum, Community activist from Pollokshields
I’m a Pakistani Scottish Muslim woman, who has lived in Pollokshields my whole life and grown up through troubles. Racism was especially bad in the 1980s and 1990s.
That’s why no one thought the people in that van would be white. That in itself feels not only very personal, but it feels like an attack on all of us who have experienced racism.
Irrespective of the fact we were born in this country, we’ve been told time and time again we’re not British enough.
And everything that’s happened since Kenmure Street has further solidified that message—don’t get too comfortable in this country.
Those men aren’t that different from me. We’re all Punjabi, we have the same culture—the only difference is that they were born in India, I was born here.
I think for a lot of us, what we were feeling was that this could be us. It could be our loved ones. Is this the world that we want to live in, where people are getting dragged out of their homes?
Initially, I felt trepidation, but it went away quickly because I knew there were hundreds of people watching and coming to join us.
And it was scary. Pollokshields is a largely South Asian community, we know the police have been violent. We know they don’t take too kindly to being stopped in their due process.
But as the crowd grew, it gave me so much reassurance, seeing those familiar faces, our friends. That gave confidence to the younger generation too. A lot of them have been racially profiled, which is intimidating.
These boys, they have cars and they’re always being stopped. The police assume if you’re a young man in a fancy car that you’re up to no good.
But what I saw with those boys that day on Kenmure Street was that they felt seen.
That must have been incredible for them, to feel that they were able to voice those things, to stand up to the police.
I know they wouldn’t have been able to do that had there just been one or two of us.
But that day, the boys had their cameras in the polices officers’ faces and there were people who were being more vocal saying, “You’ve been doing this to us in our community, intimidating us, making us feel small.
“Look around, look at all these people, do something now. Try something now.”
And a lot of those boys would not have ever been to a protest or anything because the consequences for them are very different than for their white counterparts.
The level of protection that day, I get it because I felt it too. They felt like all of these folk get it and we’re in this fight together.
Each one of us, we all felt that this is where our real power was— when the crowd had reached its thousands.
We’ve always been told, one or two sticks are easily broken, but if it’s a bunch of sticks, it’s going to be impossible.
We just need to keep reminding ourselves who we are as a people. Irrespective of the messages that we’re hearing and seeing from the media and politicians, this place is all of our home and we’ve got to protect us all.
Things are changing fast and hard. I’m guilty of feeling sometimes like things are getting really stacked against us, guilty of thinking how are we supposed to defeat this?
That’s why this film is so timely. It gives that sense that we can actually win if we use our collective power.
The actions that have happened since then, they all point to the same thing—that we’re going to do it again. We’re going to have to take on the Home Office.
It doesn’t matter how many times it takes for us to come out, we’re not going to allow this to happen. Not in our neighbourhoods, not to our
