The Hidden Hand

About this work

The Hidden Hand is the first tableau in Paths You Walk, Billy Dosanjh’s new large-format photographic series commissioned as part of the Heritage Lottery Fund project. Set on Butts Road, Walsall, in 1964 — the year of Britain’s most notorious racially charged election campaign — the image captures a street scene in which multiple communities occupy the same few yards of pavement.

The panorama is a wet street, orange sodium light reflected across the cobbles. Industrial mist hangs in the air. The 1964 general election has inflamed tensions. Peter Griffiths has just won the Smethwick seat on an openly racist campaign.

Against this historical pressure, the image places: South Asian foundry workers walking home after their shift, gold flaking from their donkey jackets like molten wealth; Teddy Boys, loud and menacing; a Jamaican nurse, her white uniform preternaturally bright against the soot-stained brick; new arrivals, wrapped in a shared blanket; a woman in curlers kneeling to donkey-stone her front step; and two silent observers — one Sikh, one Muslim — watching from the kerb, their overcoats appearing heavy as waterlogged history.

Magic realism

Beneath the observers, the pavement is cracked and bubbling with saturated red water — the bleeding earth of Partition. Golden flakes fall from the foundry workers’ jackets as they walk, dissolving into the wet street. The nurse’s white apron glows with a preternatural light. The seeker’s dark suit traps a fine saffron-gold dust that shimmers as he moves.

These details are not symbolic decoration but structural elements of the image — visible only on close study.

Production team

• Art Director: Adam Tomlinson (Dead Man’s Shoes, This is England)
• Producer: Deborah Aston (Small Axe, Boiling Point)
• Student crew: 18 Walsall College students across art department, costume, hair and makeup, and production support

Characters

The image is populated by: Sikh Observer; Muslim Observer; End-of-Shift Workers (×3); Teddy Boys (×3); Milk Bar Inhabitants (×6); Jamaican Nurse and Infant; Woman in Curlers; The Elder with Coal; New Arrivals (×2); The Peerer; The Seeker.

Exhibition

The Hidden Hand is exhibited at The New Art Gallery Walsall (Community Gallery), 6 March – 6 July 2026, and at partner community venues in Caldmore and Walsall Library.

A deep-zoom companion allows visitors to study every surface detail of this image — each character’s costume, each magic-realist element — at print resolution.

This work is part of the Paths You Walk HLF project and is published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). You are free to share and adapt for any purpose, including commercially, provided you credit: Billy Dosanjh / Reimagining Industrial Migratory Stories CIC. For high-resolution or print enquiries: reindmigs@gmail.com