When a Community Comes Together: People Power and the Lessons of Kenmure Street

Reviewing and reflecting on Everybody to Kenmure Street

Gerry Hassan 

Kenmure Street in Pollokshields on Glasgow’s Southside is a long north-south running street of Victorian era tenements who have witnessed many decades of shifting demographic and population movements.

On 13 May 2021 Kenmure Street not only witnessed but created history, an important moment in the city’s many stories and a precious victory – for a community, against racism and xenophobia, and a notable humiliation for the Home Office and its controversial dawn raids. 

This is the context of Everybody to Kenmure Street directed and produced by Felipe Bustos Sierra, Glasgow-based Chilean filmmaker, who previously made Nae Pasaran about the Scottish workers who refused to work on aircraft parts being supplied to the Pinochet dictatorship. The new film is a testimony and document, that celebrates the community togetherness of this day, without ignoring its wider implications. It is an important film, worthy of serious overview, wider dissemination and audiences – with continued relevance five years after the event it portrays. This essay reviews the film while attempting to offer some pointers to those wider lessons and where we are now.

Felipe told me:

With this film, I wanted to connect a few dots. The dots were fragments of footage, echoes of anecdotes witnessed and captured by neighbours and activists to both expose what was happening and urge more people to turn, as well as memories of previous acts of civil disobedience in Scotland.

He expanded on the style, pace and tone of the film:

The scenes with the actors allowed us to slow down time and add a level of intimacy. This combination of urgency and intimacy reminded me of the type of solidarity I’d grown up with, as the son of a Chilean exile, and, I felt, it would create an immersive experience for any audience, tell a story that might stand the test of time and hopefully, bring more people to join future protests. 

It takes a Community

Numerous Kenmure Street voices take us through a timeline of that day in May: a community waking up and reacting to the Home Office dawn road on the first day of Eid attempting to snatch and deport two members of the community. Pollokshields is mobilised, aided by the actions of ‘Van Man’ – a still unknown local activist and neighbour who when roused by the actions and noise created by the Home Office personnel managed to squeeze underneath their van, attach himself to it and to stop it from moving out of the area.

In the film his words are spoken by actress Emma Thompson dramatising his many hours under the van while an off-duty nurse on the scene who offers support is played by Kate Dickie. ‘Van Man’s’ quick thinking and bravery gave people time to get out and surround the Home Office vehicle. It allowed a community of friends and neighbours to be mobilised in that first wave of local activism. Living nearby my own notification that something afoot happened at 10.00am that morning and I arrived at 10.30am, first thinking I would be arriving at a scene which had long since passed only to find the exact opposite.

This was the beginning of a long day and a unique one for Pollokshields and the people who live there, and in adjacent streets. Pollokshields East is home to a whole host of communities and identities who rub along in its narrow streets. It is an immigrant neighbourhood, from Pakistani families to people of Irish descent, Gaelic speaking Scots, Scots, English, Welsh, European migrants and a Jewish community. It has a rich mosaic of young families, artists, creatives and folk engaged in a plethora of community initiatives. Pollokshields, like the nearby Govanhill, is a multi-cultural area and a real, living community of people connected to each other. 

The film takes us through the day; the stand-offs; the trapped Home Office van with the words Immigration Detention emblazoned on it declaring its purpose unambiguously; the actions of the police (many dozens of whom arrived in the narrow streets) answerable to Scottish politicians; the role of political leaders in Scotland; and the silence over the day of the UK Government and then Home Secretary Priti Patel as events unfolded and began to fill Scottish and UK-wide media.

Legal representation was provided for the two men who were held in the Home Office van sitting in the middle of Kenmure Street. This came from Aamer Anwar, a celebrated human rights lawyer who has successfully challenged the Scottish establishment and earned a reputation for opposing injustice. Anwar, asked to attend the scene by an Afghan refugee activist, addressed the crowd passionately and then reached agreement with the authorities to release the two men unconditionally. It was a rare victory against racist, xenophobic and stigmatising policies and for people power and the views of the local community.

Glasgow and the ‘legacy’ of Empire

We are taken mid-story through the history of Glasgow, Empire and slavery including the origins of the name of Kenmure Street. Like many streets in the city it has its origins in Empire. Kenmure Street’s name comes from Kenmure House in Bishopbriggs, just outside Glasgow, built in 1806 for Charles Stirling, a partner in the West Indies mercantile firm Stirling, Gordon and Co. using profits from his slave-run plantations.

This particularly powerful section of the film contains testimony from an array of experts and scholars in Glasgow, slavery and Empire. These include Stephen Mullen from Glasgow University who has undertaken pioneering research on slavery’s role in underpinning the wealth of Glasgow’s elites historically, along with Zandra Yeaman of the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery and writer and educator Saskia McCracken.

All three make powerful observations. Zandra told me about the city, its history and the film:

Glasgow is a city of paradox. Everybody to Kenmure Street captures a defining moment when our modern identity that actively resists racism becomes visible in real time. The community wasn’t just reacting to a single incident, they were expressing a shared humanity grounded in community solidarity. The film works as a counter-narrative, a city once shaped by Empire and racial exploitation now generating grassroots resistance from within. That tension is the point. Glasgow can stand for justice today, but while anti-racism demands moments of defiance it also requires confronting the racial injustice embedded in both its history and its present.

Glasgow’s pivotal role in Empire and slavery is underlined – and its continued relevance. This is brought home by the brutal fact that the UK government paid £20 million compensation to slave owners for the loss of their property – slaves – between 1835-43 which represented a staggering 40% of the UK state’s annual national budget and was only fully paid off in 2015.

State Power, Self-Organisation and Mythologies 

The film raises profound questions some local and city-wide, some universal. It addresses issues of power and asks who has power over such controversial subjects, who should have power, and who has power in communities such as Pollokshields? It questions what, in such a context, is the reality of ‘community policing’ when the Home Office suddenly sweeps into an area; what is the role of community leadership, of alliances across the generations and between people from different backgrounds and cultures, and how can a community self-organise and mobilise at short notice?

These are big questions. The film rightly draws from the rich well of mythologies and evocative stories about radical Glasgow. Its opening scenes are a short history of Glasgow and the turbulent changes it has seen: the rise and fall of industry, rebuilding and then clearing of the city through various waves of regeneration, changing patterns of work and life, and the different phases and types of radical protest from rent strikes to community resistance, trade union action, and of course, Upper Clyde Shipbuilders (UCS) work-in in 1971-72.

Local resident and writer Henry Bell told me that the myths and stories of Glasgow can be used to underpin radical action:

One key factor [in the day] was myths. The myths of the Glasgow Girls, of the UCS workers, of Red Clydeside, of the Rent Strike, of the Merrylee housing scandal, of the Polaris eskimos. These are all Glasgow myths about taking and space and holding each other. I hope that Kenmure Street adds to those myths and helps make the next victory real too. 

An explicit connection is made between Kenmure Street and UCS and the charismatic leadership of Jimmy Reid whose oratory and politics were pivotal to its success. This is made real by Jimmy’s oldest daughter, Eileen Reid, being present on the day living as she does at the south end of Kenmure Street yards from the Home Office van. She was a witness to the events of the day and filmed much of it from her flat, footage of which is used in the film.

This is a potent strand well-told. Another radical example not fully explored is the community organisation which sprang up against the poll tax in Scotland in 1989-90. This is an antecedent to Kenmure Street, of self-organisation and mobilisation emerging in a political vacuum in communities abandoned by traditional top-down party politics.

This self-organisation and culture of ad hoc, creative resistance draws from a rich, anti-state, localised tradition of Scottish radicalism beyond Labour, SNP and mainstream parties. This was not only seen in the poll tax non-payment campaign and ultimate victory, but the grass roots DIY activism which flourished in the independence referendum, and nearby to Kenmure Street the inspiring campaign to keep open and refurbish Govanhill Baths. This saw police on mounted horses charging protestors in 2001, cited in the film, leading to a twenty-year campaign which has taken over and run the baths as a community-owned resource in another victory for local activists. 

Historian and organiser Katherine Mackinnon observed telling me:

Kenmure Street didn’t come out of nowhere, it sits within a lineage of struggles over contested space in the city of Glasgow. I think it was a really astute and important choice by the filmmakers to put in that focus on Glasgow history, because it demonstrates how the events of May 2021 could only happen because of longstanding traditions of organising and direct action in the city.

Henry Bell reflects on this tradition in Pollokshields and Glasgow:

Kenmure Street was the result of so many factors. The hard graft of decades of community organising and migrant solidarity. The brutal lessons of racism on the Southside and how to fight it. The victories of UCS, Kinning Park and Govanhill Baths. The history of lock-ins at Faslane and Brand Street. The mutual aid groups from COVID.

The Kenmure Street protest was supported by many on the day, but was also condemned by a host of right-wingers. Tory MSP Murdo Fraser denounced the actions of protestors as that of ‘a mob’ whilst at the same time as a Rangers fan publicly refused to condemn the actions of a sizeable section of Rangers fans wantonly destroying part of Glasgow city centre to mark their winning of the Scottish Premiership title.

The Relevance of Kenmure Street Today

The events at Kenmure Street took place five years ago. Their impact is even more important today in a world where reactionaries and self-declared populists openly embrace repugnant, racist policies, and as Reform politicians invoke a base ethno-nationalism rooted in a politics of colour and division drawing from the Powellite poison of mass deportations of British citizens on race and ethnicity.

Aamer Anwar makes this explicit telling me:

We no longer have the luxury of waiting: asylum seekers, refugees, the poor are not only demonised but ‘negated’ as human beings. Since 2021 pessimism has been the prevailing mood, but Kenmure Street showed what is possible when we come together.

The Kenmure Street triumph is a clarion call not just for Pollokshields, Glasgow and Scotland, but internationally. It is an example of people power, organisation and mobilisation reaching out beyond the narrow cadre of activists and politicos of many protests. This was a community acting as a community, with friends and neighbours looking out for each other and standing against the brutal face of the British state. It drew together creative activism with DIY signs and banners being made on the day; and produced a plethora of songs and art to commemorate the day and victory – including a painting of the street protest by local artist Craig Smillie.

Katherine Mackinnon notes the lessons of moments such as Kenmure Street:

Kenmure Street is also important as a reminder to everyone involved in ongoing struggles against fascism, the rise of the far right, in solidarity with the people of Palestine. Although sometimes things feel pointless or doomed to failure, in fact we do not and cannot know the impact of our actions, or the cumulative effects that all these individual efforts to build connections and solidarity might one day have.

She continues drawing on Glasgow’s long-term campaign against the South African consulate in the city:

I think a lot about this comment of lifelong activist Isabella Porte talking about how she didn’t regret all the days standing on the anti-apartheid picket outside the South African consulate in the rain, because “if people ask you, did it dae ony good, I said everything you do makes a difference.” And Kenmure Street is the perfect example of that. It reminds us that the things we do can make a difference.

The Kenmure Street film arrives when the Trump administration is using violence and the power of the US state and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to engage in mass detentions lifting people from the street and places of work as well as battering their way into people’s homes. This indiscriminate and deliberate state-sanctioned violence saw the killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in January 2026: people who were witnesses and non-violent protestors as in Kenmure Street.

Alongside this Kenmure Street throws a light on the meaning and importance of the Scottish dimension and self-government. The attempted Home Office dawn raid happened a mere week after the Scottish Parliament elections in which the SNP had just won an emphatic electoral victory under Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership, who was then the sitting MSP for Glasgow Southside which includes Pollokshields.

Ultimately Everybody to Kenmure Street is a breath of fresh air as a film. It is about a protest which not only won but drew protestors from every walk of life and different backgrounds. No one there on the day expected that it would conclude with an unambiguous defeat for the Home Office and British state, and that makes the emotion and drama of the film even more sweet.

It illustrates people acting on their own initiative against the raw nature of state power and showing how it can be opposed, resisted and defeated. This is a film which is moving, inspirational and full of lessons for all of us now and for the future. We can successfully oppose racists; stand for a joyful, non-violent anti-racism, and defeat the long arm of the Home Office and their reactionary advocates and apologists. 

Film Screenings:

At the Edinburgh Filmhouse Everybody to Kenmure Street

At the Odeon: Everybody to Kenmure St. | Showtimes & Tickets

At the Cameo: Everybody to Kenmure St. | Showtimes and Tickets

Or stream online: Everybody to Kenmure Street – stream online