The truth was never as good as we like to think; the history of black people in this country from Windrush until at least the 1970s is one of being treated as second-class citizens.
- Robin Bunce
Britain’s Black Power movement - and its battle against institutional racism - is in danger of being “written out of history”, according to a new book about its principal figurehead, Darcus Howe.
The claim is one of the opening contentions in Darcus Howe: A political biography, in which the authors argue that the major flashpoints of black political activism - such as the trial of the Mangrove Nine, and the Black People’s March of 1981 - are being overlooked in favour of a more palatable version of British history.
Writing in their introduction, Robin Bunce and Paul Field argue that “there has been a resurgence of outright denial, linked to a romantic, dumbed-down ‘whiggish’ view of history that suggests that racism was always someone else’s problem.”
They add that Britain is consistently portrayed by politicians as being “on the side of the angels” in race relations, and point to the 2007 celebrations of the abolition of the slave trade as an example of how Britain prefers to propagate a myth of itself as “the utopia of civilized fair play”.
Their book, which is published by Bloomsbury, claims to correct and balance some of that denial by using Darcus Howe’s biography as the framework for the first, detailed history of Black Power in Britain. It traces the story from Howe’s Trinidadian origins, through his political activism in the 1970s and 80s, his subsequent broadcasting career, and up to his controversial refusal to condemn the London Riots of 2011.
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Image: Darcus Howe, far right, leading the demonstration on the Black People’s Day of Action, March 2, 1981. He is accompanied on the truck by two of his sons, Darcus Jr. and Rap.
Credit: Private collection of Darcus Howe
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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