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Day after day, students from the south Asian community in Burnley would assemble before making their way to school. This was the seventies, an era when far-right groups were mobilising, and these children were the offspring of Asian migrants who had moved to Britain in the previous decade to address employment gaps.

One of these children was the young Asad, who had come to the Lancashire town with his family from Pakistan at the age of four. “We traveled as one,” he explains, “because it was dangerous to walk alone. Smaller kids at the center, older children forming a perimeter, since we faced assaults on the way.”

Conditions were just as difficult at school. Students would perform Nazi salutes and shout racist insults at them. They shared Bulldog openly in the halls. The black and brown pupils day after day, as soon as the dinner bell would go, we secured ourselves into a classroom, to avoid being targeted.”

“I began discussing to everybody,” Rehman states. As a group, they decided to defy the teachers who had failed to protect them by jointly deciding not to attend. “stating this is because the schools didn't provide security for us.” This became Rehman’s early introduction of organising. Participating in wider antiracism movements developing across the country, it shaped his political outlook.

“We began defending our community and I started to realise that lasting principle which I've carried: our strength multiplies as a united group than when we’re individual. It takes organizations to organise you and a common purpose to maintain unity.”

This summer, Rehman was appointed chief executive of the environmental charity the well-known activist organization. Over many years, the symbolic image of global warming was the polar bear drifting on an ice floe. Now, addressing the climate crisis while ignoring systemic unfairness is now highly inappropriate. Rehman positioned himself as a leader of this transformation.

“I took this job given the severity of the situation out there,” he told the media during a climate justice protest outside Downing Street recently. “We face multiple connected challenges of climate, [of] inequality, of economic systems which are biased the wealthy. Essentially a crisis of justice.

“Just one group has consistently focused on fairness – green rights and environmental equality – that’s Friends of the Earth.”

Boasting over numerous backers plus hundreds of local branches, Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland (Scotland has its own) represents Britain's largest environmental campaigning network. Recently, it allocated more than £10m on activism from courtroom challenges on official regulations to local campaigns changing municipal practices across urban areas.

Yet it – albeit undeservedly – gained a profile as relatively moderate in the activist community. More bake sales and petitions than road blockades and occupations.

The selection of someone focused on inequality such as him could be the organisation’s attempt to change perceptions.

And it is not his initial stint he's been involved with the charity.

Post-education, Rehman continued advocating for equality, collaborating with the Newham Monitoring Project during a period when the far right remained active locally.

“We organized protests, supporting victims, and it was rooted in the community,” he says. “This taught me grassroots activism.”

But not content than just responding to racism on the streets and institutional bias together with peers, aimed to elevate antiracism on a human rights level. That brought him to the advocacy group, during ten years he collaborated alongside international campaigners to push for significant change in the understanding of human rights. “At that time, they weren't active on economic and social rights. they concentrated solely on on civil and political rights,” he states.

Towards the close of that decade, his activism with Amnesty introduced him with a range of international social justice organisations. At that time they came together into the counter-globalisation movement against neoliberalism. The insights he gained from these connections shaped the rest of his career.

“I was going and working with these people, and everybody you spoke to mentioned how bad climate was, unsustainable practices, how it was displacing people,” he explains. “I thought! Everything we have fought for through activism might be lost by this thing. And this thing we're facing, known as global warming – however nobody’s talking about it with urgency.”

This led Rehman to begin working within the organization years ago. At the time, most environmental organisations framed global warming as tomorrow's challenge.

“This network stood out as the sole activist body that then officially broke with what I’d call typical conservation groups. and was one of the founders creating environmental justice campaigning,” he declares.

Rehman worked to amplify concerns of affected communities to the table. This approach wasn't earn him friends. Once, he shares, following discussions between UK government representatives and environmental NGOs, an official phoned the leadership insisting he stop his assertive tactics. He would not be drawn who made the call.

“Many believed: ‘What gives him authority operate differently?’ Consider, the environment is a nice thing, discussion is possible. [But] For me it represented combating discrimination, advocating for freedoms … fundamentally political.”

Justice narratives were increasingly becoming accepted in climate and environmental campaigning. But the converse took place. organizations focused on equality engaging with climate and environmental issues.

This led to that War On Want labor-aligned {