Biography
Helal Abbas was a central figure in the Bengali Housing Action Group and the Spitalfields squatters' movement of the 1970s, organising hundreds of Bengali families to occupy derelict properties and forcing Tower Hamlets Council to rehouse them. He organised community self-defence patrols against National Front violence on Brick Lane. He subsequently became Labour's first elected Bangladeshi council leader in Tower Hamlets , a historic milestone , and later served as a political mentor to Lutfur Rahman. His career bridged the grassroots resistance of the 1970s and the electoral politics of the decades that followed.