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Day after day, children from the local Asian population in this Lancashire town would assemble prior to going to school. It was the 1970s, a time when the National Front were gaining strength, and these youngsters were the sons and daughters of south Asian workers who had been invited to Britain ten years before to address employment gaps.

One of these children was the young Asad, who had come to the northern town with his family from Pakistan as a small child. “We would all walk together,” he remembers, “because it was dangerous to walk alone. The little ones in the middle, older children on the outside, because we’d be attacked on the way.”

Things were no better at school. Students would make offensive gestures and shout racist insults at them. A few distributed the National Front newspaper publicly in corridors. Minority children day after day, when the lunch bell rang, we would barricade ourselves into a classroom, to avoid being targeted.”

“I initiated conversations to everybody,” Rehman states. Collectively, they resolved to oppose the teachers who had not kept them safe by jointly deciding not to attend. “stating that the reason was the schools aren’t safe for us.” It was Rehman’s initial experience of organising. When he became part of wider antiracism movements emerging across the country, it defined his activist perspective.

“We took steps to safeguard our community which taught me that crucial insight that has stayed with me: collective action is stronger when we are a ‘we’ rather than individually. Groups are necessary to coordinate efforts and a common purpose to hold you together.”

In the past few months, Rehman became chief executive of the green organization the well-known activist organization. Historically, the familiar face of global warming was arctic wildlife on melting ice. Today, addressing global heating and not including inequality and discrimination has become highly inappropriate. And Rehman has been at the forefront of this shift.

“I accepted this position because of the enormous challenge out there,” he shared with journalists on the sidelines an environmental protest outside Downing Street recently. “These issues are linked of climate, social injustice, of capitalist models designed to favor the wealthy. At its core an equity issue.

“And there is only one organisation has consistently focused on fairness – green rights and environmental equality – this particular network.”

Boasting over 250,000 supporters and community teams, Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland (with an independent Scottish branch) is the UK’s biggest environmental campaigning network. In the year to summer 2024, it spent significant funds on activism including judicial reviews against state decisions grassroots efforts changing municipal practices in public spaces.

However, the organization has – albeit undeservedly – earned a reputation as a less radical organisation compared with its peers. Known for fundraising and appeals than road blockades and occupations.

The hiring of an advocate for economic justice with his background could be an effort to change perceptions.

It's not his initial stint he's been involved with the network.

Post-education, Rehman continued campaigning for racial justice, engaged with the Newham Monitoring Project at a time while extremist groups had influence locally.

“There were initiatives, supporting victims, deeply connected locally,” he says. “I gained experience in grassroots activism.”

But not content beyond addressing racism on the streets and institutional bias he, along with many others, aimed to elevate the fight against racism as a fundamental right. Which guided him to the advocacy group, during ten years he collaborated alongside developing world advocates to demand a new approach regarding the interpretation of human rights. “Previously, they weren't active on financial and community issues. their work was limited to political freedoms,” he states.

By the end of the 1990s, his efforts through his role connected him with a range of worldwide activist networks. Then they united as anti-globalization activists against neoliberalism. The knowledge he acquired from these connections influenced his ongoing activism.

“I visited meeting campaigners, and each person was saying the climate crisis, agricultural challenges, creating refugees,” he recalls. “I thought! All our achievements and secured might be lost due to climate change. And this thing occurring, known as global warming – however it wasn't being discussed like that.”

That guided him to begin working with Friends of the Earth during the mid-2000s. Back then, most environmental organisations discussed environmental issues as tomorrow's challenge.

“Friends of the Earth stood out as the sole green group which diverged from typical conservation groups. pioneering of the emerging the climate justice movement,” he says.

His efforts centered to amplify concerns of the developing world into discussions. It did not always gain widespread approval. In a particular instance, he recalls, after a meeting with officials with activist organizations, a minister phoned the leadership requesting he control his “climate Taliban”. He declined to specify who made the call.

“Many believed: ‘Why does he who doesn’t follow [the] same rules?’ Understand, the environment is a nice thing, discussion is possible. [But] I viewed it as combating discrimination, advocating for freedoms … about power structures.”

Equity frameworks were increasingly becoming accepted in climate and environmental campaigning. But the converse was also happening. organizations focused on equality engaging with sustainability concerns.

Consequently the charity the trade union-backed {