The recently completed Island Voices project “Multilingual Memories: Birmingham 1984” was on prominent display at this year’s annual conference of NATECLA, the National Association for Teaching English and Other Community Languages to Adults, held in Birmingham on 27th and 28th June. Project representatives Harmesh Manghra (first on left) and Sardul Dhesi (second from right) are joined in the picture by Paul Sceeny, NATECLA co-chair, and Mary Osmaston, trustee of the association.
With QR codes incorporated in the display poster, as well as on leaflets for each of the 350 conference packs, conference participants were enabled to view any of the 22 recordings in the 13 different languages in the collection on their own devices and at their own convenience.
Over the years, NATECLA has consistently lobbied and argued for due attention to be paid to the other languages used in the UK beside English. As Industrial Language Training (ILT) practitioners in Birmingham back in the 1980s, both Harmesh and Sardul, alongside others, were involved in onsite language training in factories and other workplaces across the city. The Island Voices documentary, in tracing the life stories of ILT workers and how their careers developed and diversified, reinforces the point that multilingualism is an established fact of UK life, and always has been.
With Mary also running a workshop on using other languages in the English language classroom, it was an opportunity not to be missed to profile some of these languages in actual use through these Island Voices recordings. Many thanks to NATECLA for accommodating us!
With a multilingual trip down Memory Lane, Island Voices visits Central England, in a new contribution to the CIALL-supported “Extensions” initiative. This collection comprises a short documentary introduction – available in various community languages now spoken in the UK – plus a range of recorded conversations and interviews about the 1980s Industrial Language Training (ILT) service, each recorded in a particular language, but made accessible for non-speakers or learners of that language through YouTube subtitling and/or a supporting Clilstore transcript.
Scripted Documentary
The documentary uses a scripted narrative to follow three Birmingham ILT workers as they meet together for the first time in 40 years in their old workplace. The film introduces various aspects of the ILT programme, from onsite teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) to training and advice in Equal Opportunities and Anti-Racism, as well as innovative support for Community Languages. Team members also visit other key locations and organisations, such as the office of NATECLA, the National Association for the Teaching of English and other Community Languages to Adults, and recall the BBC “Hindi Urdu Bol Chaal Club” in a Soho Road restaurant. Multiple versions of the film are available in English, Gaelic, Jamaican, Welsh, and nine of the South Asian languages spoken most widely in the UK by census results.*
Here’s the English version:
And here’s the Clilstore English transcript, with the video embedded, incorporating one-click access to online dictionary support for any unfamiliar vocabulary: https://multidict.net/cs/12354
To see the video narrated in another language, click on the landscape poster (or phone-friendly portrait option) to choose your own preferred version of the documentary. Or select from the table below for the equivalent Clilstore unit.
The interviews and conversations are accessible through the same landscape or portrait links, or directly through the bold blue titles below, and they comprise live and unscripted samples of authentic speech. YouTube subtitles are available through the Closed Caption (CC) button, and viewers on a laptop or desktop computer should also be able to get these auto-translated into the language of their choice through the Settings Wheel. Every film (except the first short introduction and the 3-way English discussion) is also accompanied by a Clilstore transcript. Links to rough written English translations are also available via the video description and reproduced below. In some cases where reference is made to related postgraduate study, links are also given to participants’ own papers from the time to give a sense of contemporary research and debate about then dominant issues from a practitioner perspective.
The opening conversational clip quickly introduces the three former members of Birmingham Industrial Language Training Services featured in the documentary, as they speak Punjabi or Hindi to briefly outline their ILT experience and say where it eventually led them. Subtitles in both these languages are available, including for auto-translation if necessary.
Speaking in Urdu at some length, Nazir ul Haq, last leader of the Birmingham ILT team of the mid-1980s before its absorption into the college, offers memories and reflections – judiciously supplemented with quotations from well-known Urdu poets – on the work of the local unit, as well as the national service, during that time. This clip is an amalgamation of a series of short recordings that Nazir made over a number of days, as detailed with links below, in which, alongside critical analysis, he also creates a humane picture of the team’s mission and working ethos, with poignant reminiscences and tributes to those no longer with us.
00:09Introduction 02:04ILT 1980s role 06:16Memory and reminiscence 09:53Personal journey 14:57Equal Opportunities: appreciation of colleagues and contributions 19:35Summary critique of ILT approach to racism awareness and anti-racism
Nazir also mentions his PhD-level postgraduate studies at Birmingham University during the same period, and his continuing association with the university after the closure of ILT. For an example of his work in the area of diaspora formation with specific reference to the Kashmiri community you can read his paper presented some years later at a conference in Budapest: Diaspora Formation and Ethnic National Mobilisation of Kashmiris in Britain: A Reflective Case Study.
Speaking Punjabi, Sardul Dhesi, retired Deputy Principal of South and City College Birmingham, gives a summary account of his 48-year Further Education career in the city, including his time with Birmingham ILT in the late 1970s and early 1980s. His time with ILT was a seminal period for him, including a one-year secondment to get a Master’s degree in Race and Education, from which he never looked back. Also important to him were his trade union links, with particular regard to equality initiatives. Over his long subsequent career, he occupied increasingly senior positions in what has become the biggest college in the West Midlands.
Speaking Hindi, Harmesh Manghra, retired Inspector of Education, recounts the various stages of his career in some detail, including his time with Birmingham ILT in the early 1980s. He starts with the multilingual education he received in India before arriving in the UK, when job opportunities were initially limited despite his qualifications. But his time with ILT provided a springboard into a varied and stimulating career across various educational sectors. Even in retirement he remains committed to easing newcomers’ passage through educational opportunities.
Speaking Gaelic, Gordon Wells, researcher with the CIALL project, outlines his career path, including his time with Birmingham ILT in the 1980s and what he learned from that experience for use in later years, including with Island Voices. It was the rising interest in “Mother Tongue” maintenance that inspired him to start learning Gaelic, and his experience working on the BBC’s “Hindi Urdu Bol Chaal” series that developed his interest in recording speech in particular. This was reinforced by the ILT emphasis on close community connection with the day-to-day concerns of working people.
Gordon’s research topic for his 1987 dissertation for the MSc in Applied Linguistics at Edinburgh University, while on secondment from ILT, was on Concepts of “Mother Tongue” and “Native Speaker” in Relation to the Teaching of Languages to Adults. This paper, later cited in Professor Alan Davies’ 1991 book “The Native Speaker in Applied Linguistics”, anticipated by some years a now longstanding debate on the question of “native” vis-à-vis “non-native” English speaking teachers.
Suman Watts came into ILT from a broadcasting background on local radio. She briefly explains in Hindi that she put these skills to good use in helping prepare audio-visual teaching materials. In her later career she helped not only English learners, but also learners of community languages like Hindi and Urdu, within the context of the issues and principles that informed the ILT ethos.
Speaking Bangla, Muhammad Idrish, who worked at the neighbouring Asian Resource Centre in the 1980s, offers succinct memories of friends and colleagues in the Birmingham Industrial Language Training team (as well as the Dudley team), and their contribution to the anti-racism movement in the community, including the NALGO-supported nationwide Muhammad Idrish Defence Campaign.
In this longer conversational extract Harmesh and Sardul, speaking Punjabi, recall shifts in focus of the ILT service at national and regional levels from language teaching, through cultural and racism awareness training, to structural analysis of social problems. Their career development paths took them on to West Midlands-wide initiatives with an emphasis on greater community engagement by colleges, opening local centres and providing appropriate facilities. Statistics now show far greater proportions of Black and Asian staff and students engaged in Further Education.
This is an extended three-way conversation in English between Sardul, Harmesh, and Gordon about the ILT legacy, with a particular focus on language support in relation to both ESOL and Community Languages:
00:06First reminiscences and appreciations The three recall how ILT launched them into their professional careers under the guidance of Clarice Brierley, then leader of a dynamic team. 04:12Bilingualism, ESOL, and Community Languages Harmesh and Sardul were among the first bilingual ESOL teachers whose skills in other languages were recognised and increasingly valued, when Mother Tongue maintenance was also beginning to be raised as an issue, and NATESLA changed its name to NATECLA and established a national base in the college. 10:05Materials development The local authority’s supportive approach to staff development was instrumental in enabling team members to develop new skills and ideas, including Gordon’s role in the innovative BBC Hindi Urdu Bol Chaal project. 13:12Community context The ILT approach to ESOL and Community Languages was strong on addressing language learning in the grounded reality of the learners’ own situation, so community linkage was essential. The team members discuss how this guiding principle can be equally applied in other language contexts, for example with Gaelic in Scotland or many endangered languages in India. 16:05Confidence issues Team members share stories from personal or family experience of assimilative social pressures to suppress mother tongue use – whether Punjabi or Gaelic – and a Punjabi summer school initiative in the college is noted. 19:28Final reflections Lastly, each member reinforces the learning and confidence-building benefits of their early involvement in ILT, whether in relation to language skills and use, subsequent career paths, or social justice concerns, noting also how some issues first tackled 40 years ago, for example around workplace learning, remain prevalent today.
Linguistic Diversity
In conclusion, we may note that the year 1984 is now further back in the past than it was then still in the future when the dying George Orwell was putting the final touches to his doom-laden “Nineteen Eighty-Four” novel in a writer’s hideaway on the Hebridean Isle of Jura. Central to the workings of the totalitarian society he was predicting was “Newspeak” – a reduced and distorted officially approved form of language with a simplified grammar and reduced vocabulary, intended to promote social conformism and inhibit critical thinking.
This project is a new contribution from those we might now literally call “Old Speakers”(!), which looks back at the linguistic reality of the actual 1984 of urban England through the eyes of ILT staff and associates who were there at the time, with the benefit of their now 40 years of hindsight. If Orwell could have come back to visit us in the 1984 of real history he might well have been first shocked, then perhaps relieved on reflection, to find ample evidence of significantly increased linguistic diversity compared to the England he knew, at least at grassroots community level. It’s a confounding contrast, rooted in lived community reality, to the uniform and restrictive Newspeak monolingualism against which he had imaginatively warned.
We are deeply indebted to all the contributors who have made this collection possible. In addition to those appearing onscreen, we must also note particularly the crucial assistance of Professor Udaya Narayana Singh, a longterm partner in Mediating Multilingualism, in co-ordinating through Adhibhash the South Asian language translation and transcription work with his team of collaborators. In a previous “Talking Points with Norman Maclean” contribution he references the concept of “jugaaR” to illustrate a South Asian propensity for inclusive linguistic accommodation. And in a more recent lecture for Bhasha Mela he similarly contrasts the Orwellian vision of 1984 with the historical facts of interlingual coexistence in South Asia, thus providing an alternative optimistic vision and rationale for maintaining cultural diversity. With that in mind, we also thank and salute Audrey West, another of our Talking Points collaborators and Extensions pioneers, for her continuing determined local promotion of the Jamaican language. We are also delighted that Magaidh Smith consented to take part in true vernacular Gaelic style, and we welcome the fresh Welsh voice of long-settled Grimsay resident, Rhodri Evans. In the face of encroaching Anglophone monoculture, every similar contribution underlines the value of ongoing linguistic diversity.
Transcription, Translation and Narration Team:
Bangla documentary
Suchita Singh
English documentary
Suman Watts
Gaelic documentary
Maggie Smith
Gujarati documentary
Natwarlal Modha
Hindi documentary
Udaya Narayana Singh
Malayalam documentary
V. Geethakumary
Nepali documentary
Dhaka Ram Kafley
Jamaican documentary
Audrey West
Punjabi documentary
Kamalmeet
Tamil documentary
B. Vijayakumar
Telugu documentary
Matthew, P.S.
Urdu documentary
Qudsi Rizvi
Welsh documentary
Rhodri Evans
Bangla conversational transcription
Muhammad Idrish
Gaelic conversational transcription
Gordon Wells
Punjabi and Hindi conversational transcriptions
Gaurav Sharma
Urdu conversational transcription
Hamza Younas
National overview of ILT:
Tom Jupp, who set up ILT, together with Celia Roberts and Evelyn Davies provide a detailed account of the national scheme in Language and Discrimination, first published in 1993 and available as an e-book since 2014. This link also provides useful abstracts for individual chapters.
*September 2025 update
Two new versions of the documentary have been added to the collection in Farsi and Haitian Creole, with accompanying transcripts and background information.
We’ll continue our review of previous Gaelic recordings into the winter months, given the popularity of our autumn social media season. But we’re going to start the New Year with something a little bit different – and warmer – while sticking with the Gaelic unifying theme. We’ll kick off with some earlier films made “in the style of” or “about” Island Voices, before returning to more classics from the original series.
Island Voices in fact owes its inception to the stimulus provided by the EU’s Leonardo funded POOLS project of 2005-2007. It was through that successful partnership that the Guthan nan Eilean idea came into being – and won the 2007 European Language Label. POOLS turned out to be just the first of many follow-up projects that built on the original theme, with Island Voices linked to many of them.
POOLS-2 (2009-2011) was an early example, again with a video production element included, which enabled us to link with other European islands like Cyprus and Malta. In these demo clips from a 2010 video workshop in Nicosia, the fundamental learning point is made that serviceable video-making need not be the exclusive preserve of industry professionals. And in language teaching terms, it can be a highly productive process, with multilingual knock-on benefits potentially within reach in return for the initial creative input.
These videos were put together as a demo for language teachers interested in the use of ICT in language teaching. Participants spent a morning taking pictures. The following day, after pooling their resources, they each edited together their own short film, using this demo as an exemplar.
They were recently “rediscovered”, and the Gaelic version has now been additionally equipped with the learning assisting enhancements that have since become available – including the now standard Clilstore transcript (Unit 11794), plus optional YouTube subtitles (that can further be auto-translated through the Settings Wheel).
A bheil Portagailis agad, neo am bu toil leat beagan ionnsachadh?!
Tionndadh Gàidhlig:
English version:
We’ll place direct YouTube links to more Gaelic films on a similar outward-looking and multilingual theme on Facebook and Twitter in days to come…
