Something I have noticed during my independent research about civil rights and black power in Britain is the disproportionate influence of Trinidadian and Tobagonian figures who became faces of Black Britain at the height of its struggle in the 1960s and 1970s. In this essay, I talk about eight activists of Trinidadian and Tobagonian descent who influenced the Black British struggle.
Claudia Jones
Claudia Jones (1915–1964) was the founder of Britain’s first black newspaper, the West Indian Gazette, and the founder of the Caribbean Carnival which would then lay the foundations of Notting Hill Carnival, an annual event in late-August attended by two million people.
A journalist born in Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad and Tobago, Claudia Jones was an established organiser in the United States. She moved to the United States when she was eight years old with her family and grew up in Harlem, New York. She got involved in politics and activism after she graduated from high school and joined the Young Communist League USA at 18 years old back in 1936. Later, she would become a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as well as a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).
Not only she was involved in the Communist movement, she laid the foundations of black feminism through her most prominent essay: “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman” [1]
Because of her activism, she was arrested and jail multiple times. The last sentence she served was eight months for “un-American activities” before being deported to the UK after British colonial governor Hubert Rance denied her entry to Trinidad, her place of birth.
This did not stop her from continuing her activism as she faced racial discrimination living in Britain in the late 1950s. She believed that “people without a voice were lambs to the slaughter” [2], so she made her mission for black people to be heard. As a result, she founded the West Indian Gazette, Britain’s very first black newspaper. Because of racial issues also widened to Afrikans and Asians, the newspaper changed to “West Indian Gazette and Afro-Asian Caribbean News”. Founded in Brixton, South London, in 1958, Jones worked on the original development of the newspaper with Amy Ashwood Garvey, Marcus Garvey’s estranged wife.
The newspaper quickly gained a circulation of 15,000 [3] and Jones worked as an advocate for Caribbean community which had a population of around 100,000. On the summer of 1958, the White Defence League led by Oswald Mosley and other racist gangs began attacking West Indian communities, especially in Notting Hill, West London, and Nottingham, East Midlands, which eventually led to race riots in the respective areas[4][5].
Claudia Jones believed that “a people’s art is the genesis of their freedom”, so she launched the indoor “Caribbean Carnival” as a way to uplift the community by celebrating its culture and heritage. Taking place in St. Pancras Town Hall, in King’s Cross on January 30th, 1959, it was broadcasted by the BBC [6]. It became an annual celebration taking place in different town halls for the next six years.
Jones was also a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), although not much is said about her involvement in the party. However, when a white female member of the CPGB told Jones that she must be busy going all over the country and lecturing for the Communist Party, Jones replied that as far as the Communist Party were concern, she might as well be dead[7].
The CPGB seemed to have both an attraction and an unattraction to West Indian workers. In his book Shattering Illusions, Trevor Carter says: “Racism within the Communist Party both at the theoretical level and in practical and personal terms, added its weight to the growing disillusionment and frustration of many of the black comrades in the fifties and sixties.”[8]. However, Carter also says that “the Communist Party, for all its imperfections [was] the only British political party in complete opposition to quotas and controls for Commonwealth immigration”[9].
Many black leftists in London saw Claudia Jones as a leader and depended on her for her knowledge and previous activities in the USA. Outside the party, she became the leader of a Caribbean communist community. She was only a member of the CPGB in the international Communist movement sense but a lot of her organising and allyship with other activist groups was directly in black and working-class communities across England.
Jones paid a visit to the Soviet Union in 1962 and then to China in 1964 before her death. She had already made contact with CLR James, a Pan-Afrikanist and Trotskyist. There is no evidence that they ever collaborated but they did distantly support each other’s political positions.
Jones first went to visit the Soviet Union. Her trip was sponsored by a Soviet women’s group. She was impressed by the achievements of women in the country, its history and the strength of the Soviet Union. She reported back being satisfied, having able to see the structures of management and talking to the people who were participating in its transformation.
She was even more excited to visit China. She met Chairman Mao and interviewed some of the leading women in the Chinese revolution. Note this was two years before the Cultural Revolution began. In that meeting, she spoke with Soong Ching-Ling, who was Vice Chairman of the People’s Republic of China and was impressed that Soong was aware of Jones’ imprisonment in the US and her work with the West Indian Gazette and other related Caribbean organisations.
In a letter to her friend Abhimanyu Manchanda dated September 7th, 1964, Jones wrote:
“I had just returned from a few days ago from the great industrial northeast in Shenyang and Anchan — one of the heavy industrial bases of the People’s republic. It’s an exciting experience to visit and meet, learn and observe the numerous innovations in China’s heavy industry, metal and machine tool plants and to visit my second People’s Commune. How much clearer I understood the rather complex (no sense of political emphasis) inter-relations of agriculture and industry. But we (peace delegates to Tokyo 10th world conference) had benefited from a splendid lecture earlier by a brilliant economics professor who also is vice chairman for the promotion of foreign trade. After seeing some light and heavy industry and then another People’s Communes the questions thoroughly explored and answered, asked by me and other present — came to life as one saw under hot sun, the acres of green fields, rice, tall sorghum, corn and other harvests to comes. Best of all was interviewing the families — at random.”[10]
Jones died on Christmas Eve of 1964 at her home in London suffering from a heart attack at just aged 49. She was buried in Highgate Cemetery, left to the tomb of Karl Marx. Her legacy is celebrated by thousands in Britain today.
Kwame Ture
Rather than going through a short biography of Kwame Ture (1941–1998), I’m going to talk about his influence in British Black Power. Despite not organising in the UK, he did visit the UK. He was invited to speak at an international conference in the Camden Roundhouse in London called the “Dialectics of Liberation Congress”, organised between July 15th and 30th [11]. He was there as part of a world tour where he promoted his new book “Black Power: The Politics of Liberation”, also co-authored by Charles V. Hamilton [12].
In the 1960s, especially in the early 1960s, there was a weak black power movement. From 1961 to 1964, the black population increased from 300,000 to 1 million people [13]. As their population grew, racism grew too, increasing hostility towards black people. Racism became part of society. Politicians like Peter Griffiths, a Conservative, even used racist rhetoric to win elections. In 1964, he won a parliamentary seat in Smethwick, Birmingham, a place that Malcolm X visited. He used the slogan, “If you want a n****r neighbour, vote Labour.”[14]. Racism became legally institutionalised through legislation like the Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1962 which controlled the immigration of all commonwealth passport holders with the obvious installation of limiting the migration of black people in Britain. Racism became “institutionalised, legitimised and nationalised” in 1960s Britain [15].
At the time, the civil rights movement was stronger but hope was lost. One prominent group was calledd Campaign Against Racial Discrimination (CARD). CARD disbanded in 1967 because black members disagreed with the fact white liberal members continued to work within the “machinery of the state to secure racial equality”[16] even though this method had been proven ineffective. Black people did not trust the state at all and it was Kwame Ture’s visit and speech that influenced the future of the movement.
At the event, Ture talked about his vision for self-determination and internationalist solidarity too. For him, black power was an internationalist struggle. It wasn’t just about racial equality in the US, it was also about standing in solidarity with the black people of the third world. He explained that Black Power meant that “black people see themselves as part of a new force, sometimes called the Third World; that we see our struggle as closely related to liberation struggles around the world”[17]. He saw Black Britons as an important part of a global militant majority and emphasised on anti-imperialism which appealed to many Black Britons who fought for independence in Afrika and the Caribbean before migrating to Britain. Ture pushed for socialism as he told the audience that “capitalism and racism go hand in hand”[18].
This speech marked a watershed to the Black Power movement that barely existed yet. Just before Ture’s visit, Nigerian poet, Obi Egbuna, founded the Universal Colored People’s Association (UCPA) and founded the British Black Panther Movement (BPPM) in 1968. Writing in 1971, he described Ture’s visit as being “like manna from heaven” and that “it was not until Stokely Carmichael’s visit in the summer of 1967…that Black Power got a foothold in Britain”[19].
Within a week of the speech, the UCPA expelled all of its white members and adopted the ideology of Black Power. Ture was also banned from entering Britain and within a month, Michael X (not to be confused with Malcolm X), who became the face of black power in Britain was arrested for inciting “racial hatred”. Michael X is another Trinidadian, a VERY controversial figure, that I talk about in the end.
I don’t know what would have happened if Kwame Ture did not make this important visit. Would we have had a black power movement? Would it have been as strong, had it not been for Kwame Ture? But one thing for sure, in my opinion, I’m very glad there was one.
Altheia Jones-LeCointe
Born in Trinidad, Altheia Jones-LeCointe (born 1945) is a physician and research scientist who was the leader of the British Black Panther Movement (BPPM) in the 1960s and 1970s. At the time she was a student at University College London (UCL). She replaced Obi Egbuna’s position as leader after he was jailed for inciting a riot. She came to national attention as one of the nine protestors known as the Mangrove Nine who were put on trial after they were arrested and tried for inciting a riot. These nine protesters were involved in protest against the various police raids of The Mangrove, a Caribbean restaurant in Notting Hill. The trial lasted for 55 days and were all acquitted of the most serious charges. This also became the first trial where the judge admitted that Metropolitan Police’s behaviour was motivated by racial hatred [20].
The Mangrove was very successful, even before the Mangrove Nine incident and the various police raids. The restaurant opened in 1968. It was decorated with traditional Afrikan art and photos of musicians. The restaurant even attracted famous black people from the States such as Nina Simone, Bob Marley, Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye. Not only the Mangrove served West Indian food, it was also a meeting place. The fact that it also became a meeting place was the reason why it was raided so often.
In 1965, when Jones-LeCointe was 20, she left Trinidad to study chemistry at University College London. She was not particularly keen to come to Britain. However, she said “the UK was the head of the house as far as our colonial history was concerned. So everybody who wanted to have a good-quality higher education would value coming to the UK because [it] was the mother country.”[21].
Just like another black person, she faced discrimination. Jones-LeCointe felt like she needed to “find a space with other people — to figure out what the hell this whole thing is all about”[22]. As a result she involved herself in the political activities at the West Indian centre, and during her PhD, the university’s socialist society and students’ union.
There was a campaign against the university’s racist segregationist housing policy that “had two lists: one for landladies who would take black students and one for [those] who wouldn’t take black students”[23].
The British Black Panther Movement (BBPM) was formed on April 1968 was formed. At the time, there was only four men in it: Obi Egbuna, Eddie LeCointe (Jones’ eventual husband), Sam Sagay and Peter Martin. Its origins come from the Speaker’s Corner where black revolutionaries would meet each other to discuss.
BBPM grew from there and Peter Martin would organise the demonstrations. But in July 1968, Egbuna was arrested for inciting violence against police officers after he published a pamphlet called “What to Do If Cops Lay Their Hands on a Black Man at the Speaker’s Corner” [24]. The pamphlet was actually advocating for collective self-defence in response to police harassment.
Egbuna was found guilty in 1970 and while he was in prison, Jones took his position.
A book that was studied thoroughly by the BBPM was “The Black Jacobins” by Trinidadian CLR James. Jones said: “The Black Jacobins stands as the Bible for inspiring us. Anybody who is interested in how one changes a desperate situation, total defeat, total subjugation, [needs] to read the Black Jacobins and see what the people of Haiti did, and why today they continue to pay the price for their determination and their success against all the major European powers at the time.” [25]
According to a Black Panther Party archive, the British Black Panther Movement were made up of “first- and second-generation immigrants from Britain’s former Caribbean, West African, and South Asian colonies. During these six years, roughly three hundred people joined the BBPM, while several thousand participated in its protest events. There were slightly more men than women, and they ranged in age from late teens to mid-thirties, with most in their early to mid-twenties. Their employment and educational backgrounds ranged from unskilled labor to professional, counting among them bus drivers, postal workers, construction workers, engineering laborers, teachers, a doctoral student, and a seminarian. Many members’ parents worked as manual laborers. Membership was small; no more than fifty Panthers were active at any one time in the Brixton branch and roughly twenty in the Finsbury Park branch in North London. Although the BBPM membership was predominantly Afro-Caribbean, the Panthers recruited several South Asian members.”[26]
Under Jones-LeCointe, the BBPM became a highly effective community organisation. Members would go door-to-door twice a week to “distribute information and exchange experiences with the working people of the black community”[27]. Two members, Beverley Bryan and Johnson, who were teachers, established Saturday schools for black youth.
Called “Supplementary Schools”, these schools helped to redress the misdiagnosis of black youth, particularly from the Caribbean, as “educationally subnormal”, and to teach them black history, which was absent from the curriculum.
In 1970, the BBPM established a Youth League that would meet weekly. The Youth League raised funds by selling newspapers and designing and selling Black Panther T-shirts. The BBPM demonstrated in London and travelled to other cities to support comrades. They also visited 60 black people in prisons and hospitals. They also “held a total of seventy-seven cultural, women’s and youth events and called for eighteen mass public protests. In practical terms, the Panthers raised funds; held demonstrations and meetings; offered legal aid, health advice, and prison and housing support; and circulated informational materials”[27].
The BBPM produced a newspaper called “Freedom News” [28]. They aimed to record and disseminate as much information as possible about Black people in Britain, offering a corrective for the absence of Black people’s stories in British news and politics. The paper informed Black people in Britain about their history and anti-racist and anti-imperialist struggles. They also wrote plays about Black culture and held dances at Oval House and the Metro Youth Club, a community centre for Brixton teenagers.
In 1973, the organisation ended shortly after being divided in many different factions. This was caused by a number of factors. Firstly, as the movement grew, it became increasingly difficult to fund and strained members’ family relationships. Secondly, infighting between ideological tendencies had grown. For example, in 1972, a Trotskyist alignment took hold. Some members from the North and West London branches believed the BPPM took more of a Marxist-Leninist approach, and this meant that they weren’t focussed on the working-class, and so they left to form the Black Liberation Front (BLF). Thirdly, some members believed that the BPPM ignored women’s issues. Despite the org being led by a woman, there were reports of male chauvinism within the party. Many female members left to form Black/South Asian women’s organisations.
Additionally, in March 15th, 1972, a firebomb destroyed Unity Centre, a library of Black history, politics and literature. No arrests were made but the BPPM believed that members of the fascist group National Front were responsible for the incident[29].
Since the BBPM ended, Altheia Jones went to spend her time training as a physician, specifically in haematology, and a research scientist. She practices as a haematologist in both Britain and Trinidad. Today she is 78 years old.
Frank Crichlow
Frank Crichlow (1932–2010) was a community activist known as “the godfather of black radicalism”[30] from the Port of Spain. He was the founder of the Mangrove Community Association, initially set up as a support and welfare centre for newly arrived immigrants.
Because of the racism that black people were facing, the association morphed into a community restaurant and became a symbol for civil rights and black power. The restaurant, called The Mangrove, was founded in 1968 and was also used as a gathering place for black and white radicals. The place also attracted famous people such as Jimi Hendrix, Muhammad Ali, Bob Marley, Sammy Davies Jnr., Nina Simone, Vanessa Redgrave and CLR James.
In the first of the Mangrove’s opening, the police raided the restaurant six times and found nothing illegal. This was in the space of three months where the police assaulted black people, smashing up the restaurant and its offices.
In 1970, he was part of the protest against racist police brutality leading to his arrest, as well as other eight other people including Altheia Jones-LeCointe and Darcus Howe, who I talk about later. Like Jones-LeCointe and Howe, he was also part of the Mangrove Nine.
Crichlow was especially known for his anti-drug stance. Despite this, he was arrested and charged for drug offences in 1979 before being cleared all of the charges.
To make matters worse, gentrification increased in the area in the 1980s, as the amount of “yuppies” moved into the area. A yuppie is meant to be a derogatory term for a middle-class person with a well-paid job. The police fight against so-called drug trafficking intensified. As the Carnival expanded, with almost 2 million people attending, the increased police pressure on Crichlow and the Mangrove was overwhelming for him[31].
In 1988, the police raided the Mangrove using sledgehammers to break into the restaurant and searched for drugs. Crichlow was charged with the possession of heroin and cocaine in which he said that the police planted. He spent five weeks in custody before being granted bail, on conditions that banned him from going near his business for over a year.
The evidence was demolished by a legal team consisting of the solicitor Gareth Peirce from the firm of Birnberg & Co., Michael Mansfield QC and Courtney Griffiths QC which led to the jury dismissing the charges against Crichlow. Eventually In 1992, Crichlow sued the Metropolitan police for false imprisonment, battery and malicious protection and he was awarded £50,000. But because he was prevented from going near his business for a very long time, the restaurant was never recovered and eventually closed down within the same year [32].
He continued his activism after the closure of the Mangrove until his death. He said: “As I see it I stood up for my rights and a lot of people identified with that.” [33]
George Padmore
Born Malcolm Ivan Meredith Nurse in the Arouca District, Trinidad, to an emerging black middle-class family, Padmore (1902-1959) was an activist who lived in the USA, USSR, France Britain and Ghana.
In 1924, when he was 22 years old, he married to Julia Semper. Later that year, he left Trinidad for further education in the United States. He studied at Fisk University but then moved to New York University and then Howard University in 1927. In the same year, he joined the Communist Party and was an active organiser on the American Negro Labor Congress, which campaigned to advance the rights of Afrikan-Amerikans. This is when he adopted the name George Padmore.
Two years later, he travelled to Moscow. He helped organised the first International Conference of Negro Workers, which occurred in 1930. He briefly went to Vienna, Austria and then, in 1931, settled in Hamburg, Germany, for a while where he edited the Negro Worker. In the same year, he published The Life and Struggles of Negro Toilers.
On commenting on the book, The Review of Afrikan Political Economy (ROAPE) says:
“In Padmore’s analysis, the ‘Negro toilers’ were the most oppressed people in the world. His use of the word ‘toiler’, encompassing both workers and peasants, expanded on the Leninist idea that the peasantry could be a revolutionary class, and, in a way, prefigured the Maoism that animated Third-Worldist movements during the second half of the twentieth century. In Padmore’s vision, the European proletariat and the colonial peoples would work together to overthrow capitalist-imperialism. By arguing for the revolutionary potential of African peoples, Padmore reconceptualised the revolutionary subject. Lenin’s analysis of imperialism focused primarily on its implications for revolution in Europe — the ‘super-profits’ extracted from the colonies were used to bribe a ‘labour aristocracy’ and thereby retard the European socialist movement. Padmore elaborated on this theory in order to examine the formation and prospects of the African working class and peasantry. Padmore was acutely aware of the racism that plagued much of the European labour movement, but his Marxist analysis meant that he understood the building of international socialist solidarity to be central to both African and European proletarian liberation. Borrowing a quotation from Marx, he urged that ‘labour in the white skin cannot free itself while labour in the black is enslaved.’” [34]
In 1932, he visited London and in 1934, he asked W.E.B. DuBois for help with organising unity among people of Afrikan descent. In 1935, re-located to London after a falling out with the Communist International [35].
The reason for his falling out was that he accused Comintern soften its stance against anti-colonialism as the Soviet Union sought anti-German alliances with Britain and France. He did not denounce Marxism. He continued to be a Marxist for the rest of his life but believed that Comintern’s changed moderate stance to anti-colonialism was a betrayed of Marxism. An alliance with Britain and France against the rise of Nazi Germany was necessary. But what was not necessary was the Comintern’s accusations against Padmore of “nationalism” because of his criticisms against Comintern’s soft stance towards anti-colonialism for allied reasons.
In London, he organised with Pan-Afrikanist intellectuals including his childhood friend C.L.R. James. In 1936, he published “How Britain Rules Africa” followed a year later by “Africa and World Peace”.
Padmore and other intellectuals helped found the International African Service Bureau in 1937. The predecessor of this organisation was the International African Friends of Ethiopia founded in 1935, after Italy invaded Ethiopia, by Amy Ashwood Garvey and C.L.R. James raising awareness and campaigning for Ethiopian sovereignty. At a rally meeting in Trafalgar Square, on August 25th, 1935, Ashwood Garvey said: “No race has been so noble in forgiving, but now the hour has struck for our complete emancipation. We will not tolerate the invasion of Abyssinia.”[36]
Padmore was an influential figure within the bureau before it merged into the Pan-Afrikan Federation in 1944.
The International African Service Bureau (IASB) was founded by George Padmore, C.L.R. James, Amy Ashwood Garvey, T. Ras Makonnen, Jomo Kenyatta and I.T.A. Wallace-Johnson.
Although Padmore was never a member, he did work with the Independent Labour Party, which was seceded by the Labour Party years later.
The IASB was the most radical black organisation in Britain as the other black organisations were moderate. These included League of Coloured Peoples and West African Students’ Union, although IASB would collaborated with them from time-to-time. Not every member of IASB was a Marxist but every member was broadly a socialist or had socialist sympathies.
The IASB forged links with various colonial labour movements as a series of violently repressed revolts were carried out in the late 1930s across the Caribbean.
Writing to the British Trade Union Congress, the IASB said: “At the present moment Africans and West Indians are struggling for their democratic rights. What are you going to do about it?” And in 1938 in their pamphlet “Manifesto Against War”, they ended the manifesto support anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist solidarity by writing: “White brothers, do not be misled. Our freedom is a step towards your freedom. In the common effort for the independence of the colonial peoples and the emancipation of the European workers, the black and white workers will rid humanity of the scourge of Imperialism and open a new future for humanity.”
The second world war severely disrupted Pan-Afrikan network but as the war finished, the IASB reconstructed itself as the Pan-African Federation. The organisation played a leading role in the Fifth Pan-Afrikan Congress held in Manchester. As well as George Padmore, who was one of the organisers, the Congress included figures such as Amy Ashwood Garvey, Jomo Kenyatta, W.E.B. Du Bois, T. Ras Makonnen and John McNair, who was the secretary of the Independent Labour Party, was there to address the Congress.
This Congress was important because it demanded “autonomy and independence” for Afrika. Not only this, but it was the first Congress to challenge capitalism. “We condemn the monopoly in capital and the rule of private wealth and industry for private profit alone. We welcome economic democracy as the only real democracy.” [37] This was part of the Congress’ “Challenge to the Colonial Powers”.
The Congress’“Declaration to the Colonial Workers, Farmers and Intellectuals” made it clear that it would be the Afrikan masses would lead their own liberation: “The Fifth Pan-African Congress therefore calls on the workers and farmers of the Colonies to organise effectively. Colonial workers must be in the front of the battle against Imperialism. Your weapons — the Strike and the Boycott — are invincible.” The declaration ended with an acknowledgement of the way in which colonial peoples formed a global proletariat in a global capitalist system: “Colonial and Subject Peoples of the World — Unite!” [38]
Amy Ashwood Garvey talked about the forms of exploitation faced by black women in Jamaica. In the Congress, she said:
“Very much has been written and spoken of the Negro, but for some reason very little has been said about the black woman. She has been shunted into the social background to be a child-bearer. This has been principally her lot.
In the island of Jamaica, we have two classes of women: the rich and the poor. The rich can be divided into two grades: the idle and the section which goes into the civil service, the stores, business, etc., and become teachers. Among the poor people we have the domestic class and the labouring class of women. The women in the civil service, who belong to the intellectual section, take no active part whatever in the political development of the country. The very class from which we should derive inspiration remains indifferent. It is among the women teachers that we find a progressive movement. There are ten thousand black women in the schools of Jamaica.
A large group of women are employed in the postal services, and they are doing good work, joining the trade union movement and quietly supporting the cause of development of the country.
The labouring class of women who work in the fields take goods to the market, and so on, receive much less pay for the same work than the men do. I feel that the Negro men of Jamaica are largely responsible for this, as they do little to help the women to get improved wages. Because of the low standard of living, our people find it necessary to emigrate to various places, and our women have gone along with our men to Cuba, Panama and America.” [39]
Giving one of the Congress’ opening speeches, John McNair of the Independent Labour Party said:
“We believe, with Lenin, that no nation is free which oppresses any other nation. We must remember that human liberty is absolutely indivisible.” [40] McNair sided with the colonial peoples and supported proletarian internationalism.
In 1946, Krisha Menon, who would become the first Prime Minister of India led a protest in Britain against the use of colonial troops in Indo-China and Burma. Padmore and other Pan-Afrikanists such as Jomo Kenyatta and W.E.B. Du Bois would join the protest.
In 1957, George Padmore published another book “Pan-Africanism or Communism?”
When Ghana became independent, he moved to the country and became Nkrumah’s personal advisor in Afrikan affairs. However, Padmore’s health declined, and on a medical visit to London on September 1959, he died at University College Hospital.
George Padmore’s ashes were buried at Christiansborg Castle in Ghana after a crematorium funeral service in London. The ceremony was broadcasted in the US by NBC.
C.L.R. James
Cyril Lionel Robert James aka C.L.R. James (1901–1989) was a Pan-Afrikanist and Trotskyist activist and writer. Born in Tunapuna, Trinidad, he attended school in Port of Spain. In the 1920s, he worked as a teacher of English and History in Queen’s Royal College, a secondary school that he graduated from. One of his students was Eric Williams, who would then become the first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago. During his time as a teacher, he also wrote some fiction and was part of an anti-colonialist circle called the “Beacon Group”. This consisted a group of writers who wrote for a magazine called The Beacon. James published a series of short stories in the magazine. In October 1927, his short story “La Divina Pastora” was published in the US magazine, Saturday Review of Literature and was widely reprinted. It was the first modern West Indian fiction to gain international recognition [41].
In 1932, C.L.R. James moved to Lancashire, England. He was invited by his friend and cricketer, Learie Constantine. His first job in the country was a cricket correspondent for the Manchester Guardian. He became involved in political struggles and a big advocate for Caribbean independence. In the same year, he wrote The Case for West Indian Self-Government [42].
In 1934, C.L.R. James wrote a three-part play about Toussaint L’Ouverture, which was performed in the West End. Paul Robeson played the role of the Haitian Revolutionary. The play was called “Toussaint L’Ouverture – The story of the only successful slave revolt in history”. [43]
In 1935, James and Ajit Mookerjee, a Trotskyist Law student at London School of Economics, formed the Marxist Group and later the Revolutionary Socialist League.
In 1936, his only novel, Minty Allen, which was written in Trinidad, was published. The following year, his book World Revolution, which was a history of the so-called rise and fall of the Communist International, was published. In 1938, his well-known Pan-Afrikanist work, The Black Jacobins, which documents the history of colonisation of the Caribbean, especially in Haiti, and the Haitian revolution.
C.L.R. James went to the United States after he was invited by the Socialist Worker’s Party (SWP) to support the cause of black workers. He would live in the USA for the next 15 years. In 1939, he travelled to Mexico and met Leon Trotsky, where he also met Frida Kahlo, whom Trotsky was having an affair with.
In 1953, he was forced to leave the United States having overstayed his VISA. He went back to England before relocating to Trinidad. In 1962, he returned to England where he spent his remaining years. He died in Brixton, London in August 31st, 1989 [44].
Darcus Howe
Leighton Rhett Radford “Darcus” Howe (1943-2017) was a Black Power activist and later a broadcaster for British TV channel, Channel 4.
Howe joined the British Black Panther Movement (BPPM) and was one of the Mangrove Nine.
Born in Moruga, Trinidad and Tobago, he also attended the Queen’s Royal College in the Port of Spain. He was also the nephew of C.L.R. James. At the age of 18, he came to Southampton, England by boat. He initially studied law but after two years, he left to study journalism.
In 1969 he returned to Trinidad where James inspired him to combine writing with political activism. During his time, he became the assistant editor of Vanguard, a weekly newspaper of the Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union. His time in Trinidad was only brief and he soon returned to Britain in August 1970.
It’s important to note that during the 55-day trial of the Mangrove Nine, Howe and Lecointe-Jones led the defence themselves. Howe demanded an all-black jury, justifying this using the Magna Carta, in which the judge rejected. He also subjected the prosecution to forensic scrutiny.
In 1973, he established the Race Today Collective. Him and other members of the collective put out a magazine journal, Race Today. Leila Hassan was the deputy editor. Howe’s wife, Linton Kwasi Johnson, was also a member as well as Farrukh Dhondy, a writer and became the commissioning editor of Channel 4 from 1984.
Howe was the primary organiser of the Black People’s Day of Action, the biggest black-led protest in Britain, attended by over 20,000 mostly black people. This protest was in response to the New Cross Fire incident that killed 13 black young people from a suspected racist attack, orchestrated by the National Front. The idea of a day of action came from Howe. He applied the methods of organisation from US Black Power radical, Jamil al-Amin aka H. Rap Brown [45]
Howe broadcasted his first TV series in Channel 4 called The Bandung File (1985-1989). It was commissioned by Farrukh Dhondy with Tariq Ali as co-editor. The Bandung File was a series of programmes that “offered the concept of a multicultural, multi-ethnic style of journalism capable of engaging the culture and politics of the Third World.
The series' first three programmes, though varying in formats, presented the forceful, head-on style, often in the glare of controversy, of investigative journalism that the series became associated with. 'A License to Kill' (tx. 12/9/1985) reported on the racial murders of young Arabs by whites in France; 'Too Many Questions' (tx. 19/9/1985) looked for the first time at the British Immigration service at Heathrow and Dover, and showed how those seeking entry into the UK were treated by immigration officers; 'Till Death Us Do Part - Labour and the Black Vote' (tx. 26/9/1985) alleged that some of Labour deputy Roy Hattersley’s Asian supporters in his Birmingham constituency had signed up fake members in an effort to secure his position as parliamentary candidate.” [46]
Other issues he reported was on pirate radio, the economic policies of Julius Nyerere and the overthrow of US-backed Haitian dictator “Baby Doc” Duvalier.
From 1992-1996, Howe broadcasted a series called “The Devil’s Advocate”, where he subjected people to public scrutiny. Howe’s producer colleague, Narinder Minhas said that Howe “brought the intelligent discussions about race to primetime”.
In his documentaries “White Tribe” and “Slave Nation”, he examined the rise of a new English nationalism and rising resentment against Polish immigrants.
In April 2007, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Subsequently he worked with the NHS and Channel 4 to encourage black men to get themselves checked up. Black men from the Caribbean, the USA and the West coast of Afrika are three times more likely to suffer from it than white men.
He also wrote for The Voice after the 2011 riots that followed the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan by the police. He did not condemn the rioters [47]
On April 1st, 2017, he died of prostate cancer. His influence in the Black British struggle was not only in Black Power movement but also brought as a mainstream issue. His documentaries were successful and would have changed the mindset of many.
John La Rose
John La Rose (1927–2006) was a black power activist, poet and founder of New Beacon Books in 1966, a black bookshop that still runs in Finsbury Park, North London. New Beacon Books is the first Caribbean book publishing company and sells books ranging from Caribbean, Afrikan, New Afrikan (Afrikan-Amerikan), Black British, South Asian and Afro-Latino. He was also the chairman of the George Padmore Institute, which is located just above the bookshop.
Born in Arima, Trinidad, he won a scholarship to St. Mary’s College, a university in Port of Spain, at the age of nine years old, where he would later teach in. He also briefly taught in Venezuela.
La Rose’s political activism began in Trinidad. He became an executive member of the Youth Council in Trinidad and produced their radio programme “Voice of Youth”. In the mid-1950s, he co-authored with the calypsonian Ramond Quevedo (Atilla the Hun), a pioneering study of calypso called Kaiso: A Review. In 1983, it was republished as “Atilla’s Kaiso”.
In the 1940s, he helped found the Workers Freedom Movement and edited its journal which was called Freedom. He was also an executive member of the Federated Workers Trade Union, which later merged into the National Union of Government and Federated Workers in 1967. He also became the General Secretary of the West Indian Independence Party, which unfortunately did not gain a seat when it contested for the 1956 elections. He was also involved in the Oilfield Workers Trade Union and later became the union’s official European representative from 1962 onwards.
John La Rose arrived in Britain in 1961. In 1966, he founded New Beacon Books. In the same year, him along with Jamaican-Panamanian writer and broadcaster Andrew Salkey, and Barbadian poet and historian Kamau Brathwaite co-founded the Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM). The aim was to celebrate Caribbean “nationhood”[48] and attempting to forge a new Caribbean aesthetic in the arts.
CAM was a platform for Caribbean artists, poets, writers, dramatists, actors and musicians.
Describing CAM, the George Padmore Institute says:
“There was no group ideology or manifesto defined in advance, and any attempts to convert CAM into a Black Power movement were strongly resisted.”
At first, discussions and meetings were held in public. It wasn’t until March 10th, 1967, that CAM was launched into the public domain. This took place a week after Kamau Brathwaite publicly read a work of his called “Rights of Passage” that was presented by New Beacon publications and the London Traverse Theatre Company, held at the Jeanetta Cochrane Theatre, London, March 3rd, 1967.
CAM’s public sessions were held monthly from March 1967 onwards. There were three annual conferences held. The first two were held in the University of Kent.
“Established writers and artists such as C.L.R. James, Wilson Harris, Ronald Moody and Aubrey Williams, along with the co-founders of the movement, were active in CAM from the beginning. They were joined by writers and critics such as Orlando Patterson, Louis James, Kenneth Ramchand, Gordon Rohlehr and Ivan Van Sertima. Younger members included James Berry, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Christopher Laird and Errol Lloyd.
The most active period for CAM was 1966–1972, although its impact can be traced through to the early 1990s with the publication of Savacou: A Journal of the Caribbean Artists Movement. Many CAM members also went on to participate in the International Book Fairs of Radical Black and Third World Books (1982–1995).” [49]
John La Rose founded in the George Padmore Supplementary School for West Indian children in 1969 and was one of the founders of the Caribbean Education in Community Workers Association. The Association went on to publish Bernard Coard’s groundbreaking book, “How The West Indian Child Is Made Educationally Sub-Normal”. This book was a watershed to the beginning of racial debates coming to the mainstream. Bernard Coard would then become the deputy president of Grenada in the Grenadian revolution led by the New Jewel Movement.
In 1975, La Rose, and other concerned parents founded the Black Parents Movement (BPM) after a black schoolboy, Cliff McDaniel, was assaulted by the police outside of his school in Hornsey, North London. During the 1970s and the 1980s, it existed to defend the interests of the Afrikan and Caribbean working-class and organise the defense of black youth who were overtargeted by the police. Formed in April 20th, 1975, the BPM worked on a range of issues like education, policing, housing and unemployment. The BPM continued to campaign against the racist ESN school system until it was abolished in 1980. BPM continued to organise afterwards [50].
John La Rose was the chairman of the New Cross Massacre Action Committee (NCMAC), that worked in getting justice for the thirteen black people killed in the New Cross house fire. He was one of the people instrumental in mobilising the Black People’s Day of Action, previously mentioned above. He gave a lot of support to the victims’ families.
In 1982, La Rose co-founded Africa Solidarity, in support of those struggling against dictatorial and neo-colonial governments in Afrika. In the same year, he became the chairman of the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners in Kenya, whose founders included Kenyan novelist and critic, Ngugi wa Thiong’o.
John La Rose was joint director with Jessica Huntley of the International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books, which ran from 1982 up until 1995. This fair was jointly organised with Bogle L’Ouverture Books and Race Today Publications, though after the withdrawal of Bogle L’Ouverture, La Rose became the fair’s sole director.
In the call to the first book fair, John wrote: “This first international book fair of radical black and Third World books is intended to mark the new and expanding phase in the growth of the radical ideas and concepts and their expression in literature, politics, music, art and social life.”
In 2003, a documentary film called “Dream to Change the World — A Tribute to John La Rose”, directed by Horace Ové, edited by Pete Stern [51].
On February 28th, 2006, he died and is survived by his children, Michael and Keith, from his first wife Irma, and Wole from his partner Sarah White. Irma died in 2019 and Sarah, who was co-founder of New Beacon Books, died in 2022.
Michael X
TW// Murder
Michael X (1933–1975) is a controversial figure who started out as a civil rights activist and a self-styled black power revolutionary. The word “revolutionary” to describe Michael X is in dispute but first, let’s give a rundown on who he was.
Born as Michael de Freitas in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago to a Barbadian mother and absent Portuguese father, he migrated to the United Kingdom in 1957.
In the beginning, he worked as a rent collector for the notorious Polish-born slum-landlord Perec “Peter” Rachman. De Freitas did not like the role, he said, but it paid for his lifestyle. In order to look for a way out, he became involved in political groups in Notting Hill.
Michael first came to public attention when Malcolm X visited London in 1965. Michael had a chance to meet him and showed him around London’s black areas and communities. He assumed the moniker “Michael X” due to a misunderstanding by a white British journalist. When the journalist approached Malcolm X, he introduced Michael as his “brother”. Not understanding the vernacular, the journalist took it literally and assumed that X was their surname [52]. From that day of reporting, the name “Michael X” stuck. Michael X also converted to Islam and changed his name to Michael Abdul Malik.
Michael X established the Racial Adjustment Action Society (RAAS), an anti-racist black power organisation. The organisation peaked with a membership of 45,000 [53].
But his influence was short-lived. In 1967, after giving a speech in Reading, South East England, he was arrested and charged with hate speech under the 1965 Race Relations Act and was jailed for a year. During his time in jail, he published an autobiography but the book’s sales were appalling. The membership of RAAS sharply declined overnight after a white benefactor pulled out of funding the organisation. In 1968, when he was released, he join several black power organisations.
Michael X claimed to be the most powerful black man in Europe [54]. But black power radicals were wary of his revolutionary credentials. Darcus Howe, who met Michael after his trial, said: “Michael X was quite simply a hustler, who was hustling off of Malcolm’s name. He was a crook! He didn’t set up anything you could commit to — he didn’t organise anything political.”[55] Black radicals knew that he worked for Rachman who would charge extortionate rents against black families.
By 1969, Althea Jones-Lecointe became a leading figure in the Black Power movement and rejected Michael X as an “unprincipled hustler” [56].
In 1971, he abandoned the black power ideology and move back to Trinidad and Tobago and established a commune in Christina Gardens. He gained fame after he started inviting celebrities like John Lennon to it. John Lennon, like other white celebrities, had publicly support Michael X. He created a “Black Liberation Army” over there. On January 2nd, 1972, Gale Benson, a British model and daughter of former Conservative MP Leonard Plugge, who was dating Malcolm X’s cousin, Hakim Jamal, was murdered and buried on the commune. Subsequently, Hakim Jamal was told that Benson had just run away. Jamal came back to the USA. Sadly, he was murdered in a gang-related incident, a year later. Joe Skerritt, a member of Michael X’s organisation was also murdered for refusing to obey orders, and was buried in the commune. After receiving an eviction notice on February 16th, 1972, from the Mootoo family, X plotted to kill them. But the plot failed because the organisation’s members disagreed on how to carry out the plan. Meanwhile, the government of Guyana invited Michael X and his family to settle there and he quickly abandoned the commune.
Three days later, the commune was mysteriously burned down, and weeks later, the bodies of Benson and Skerritt were discovered. On February 28th, 1972, he fled to Brazil but was captured and extradited back to Trinidad. On May 16th, 1975, after a three-year trial, Michael X was convicted of murder and hanged in the Royal Jail in Central Port-of-Spain [57].
During his trial, an organisation called the “Save Malik Committee” was formed, whose members included Angela Davis, Dick Gregory, Kate Millet amongst others. V.S. Naipul, whose long-term editor Diana Athill previously dated Hakim Jamal, described Michael X as a narcissist, who was divorced from reality. In his work, “Michael X and the Black Power Killings in Trinidad: Peace and Power”, Naipul describes Michael X as a “carnival figure” and says:
““He was an entertainer, a playactor; but he wasn’t the only one. He failed to understand that section of the middle class that knows it is secure, has no views, only reflexes and scattered irritations, and sometimes indulges in play: the people who keep up with revolution as with the theatre, the revolutionaries who visit centres of revolution, but with return air-tickets, the people for whom Malik’s kind of Black Power was an exotic but safe brothel.” [58]
He believes that the motive of the murders were part of a fufillment of a sinister fantasy.
My opinion on this is that I wholeheartedly believe that Michael X was a murderer, who would anything possible to exploit his fame. He was a cult-leader and not a serious radical. He still have some influence through his establishment of RAAS and how quickly the organisation grew. But his criminality and reactionary anti-black actions (despite being half black) of the past working as a rent collector of Rachman, might have been the reason for his lack of revolutionary consciousness and also the subsequent murders.
Conclusion
I don’t want to end this on a disturbing note though. The rest of the people listed here were huge, positive influences of the Black British struggle and I haven’t named all the Trinidadians and Tobagonians in this list but it is very clear that big figures of this nationality inspired many people to mobilise, gain consciousness and struggle against white supremacy, which took a violent turn from the 1950s against Afrikan, Caribbean and South Asian communities in Britain.
[1] claudiajones.pdf (libcom.org)
[2] Claudia Jones’s transnational radicalism (newstatesman.com)
[3] Barberis, McHugh, Tyldesley, “Encyclopedia of British and Irish Political Organisations” p.372
[4] The British Newspaper Archive Blog Notting Hill Race Riots | The British Newspaper Archive Blog
[5] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-45207246
[6] The street party that revolutionised Britain — BBC Culture
[7] Davies, “Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones” p.224
[8] Carter, “Shattering Illusions” p.59
[9] Carter, “Shattering Illusions” pp.60–61
[10] Claudia Jones, Letter to Abhimanyu Manchanda, 1964, eds. Diane Langford and Claudia Manchanda, ‘Abhimanyu Manchanda Remembered’ http://abhimanyumanchandaremembered.weebly.com/ [accessed February 2023]
[11] Dialectics of Liberation | Hidden Persuaders (bbk.ac.uk)
[13] British Black Panther Party (1968–1973) • (blackpast.org)
[14] Britain’s most racist election: the story of Smethwick, 50 years on | Race | The Guardian
[15] Fryer, Staying Power, p.381
[16] Wild, Black Power in Britain, 1955–1976, p.73 [E-Book]
[17] Cooper, The Dialectics of Liberation, p.172
[18] Cooper, The Dialectics of Liberation, p.161
[19] Obi Egbuna, Destroy This Temple: the Voice of Black Power In Britain (London, 197 1), p.15
[21] Altheia Jones-Lecointe: the Black Panther who became a Mangrove Nine hero | Society | The Guardian
[22] Altheia Jones-Lecointe: the Black Panther who became a Mangrove Nine hero | Society | The Guardian
[23] Altheia Jones-LeCointe by Organised Youth (soundcloud.com)
[24] Black Power — 2. Main groups — Special Branch Files Project
[25] Altheia Jones-Lecointe: the Black Panther who became a Mangrove Nine hero | Society | The Guardian
[26] United Kingdom — The Black Panther Party: History and Theory (nyu.edu)
[27] United Kingdom — The Black Panther Party: History and Theory (nyu.edu)
[28] Angelo, Anne-Marie (2018) ‘Black oppressed people all over the world are one’: the British Black Panthers’ grassroots internationalism, 1969–1973. Journal of Civil and Human Rights, 4, p.8 [PDF File] Available from: Microsoft Word — Angelo — JCHR v 3 external.docx (sussex.ac.uk)
[29] United Kingdom — The Black Panther Party: History and Theory (nyu.edu)
[30] Obituary: Frank Crichlow, founder of Mangrove Community Association | (wordpress.com)
[31] Cohen, Masquerade Politics: Explorations in the Structure of Urban Cultural Movements, p.109
[32] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/sep/26/frank-crichlow-obituary-civil-rights-activist
[33] https://socialistworker.co.uk/features/frank-crichlow-taking-an-inspiring-stand-against-the-establishment/
[34] https://roape.net/2021/01/07/marxism-pan-africanism-and-the-international-african-service-bureau/
[35] https://www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/makingbritain/content/george-padmore
[36] https://womenwhomeantbusiness.com/2021/10/31/amy-ashwood-garvey-1897-1969/
[37] https://www.marxists.org/archive/padmore/1947/pan-african-congress/ch02.htm
[38] https://www.marxists.org/archive/padmore/1947/pan-african-congress/ch03.htm
[39] https://www.marxists.org/archive/padmore/1947/pan-african-congress/ch11.htm
[41] Bardolph, Telling Stories: Postcolonial Short Fiction in English, p.103
[42] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Life-Captain-Cipriani-Government-West-Indian-ebook/dp/B00NRKKID4
[43] https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11316nc
[44] https://www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/makingbritain/content/c-l-r-james
[45] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/03/darcus-howe-obituary
[46] http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/1303360/
[47] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/03/darcus-howe-obituary
[50] George Padmore Institute — BLACK PARENTS MOVEMENT
[51] DREAM TO CHANGE THE WORLD — Peter Stern (petestern.com)
[52] Michael X and the British war on black power | HistoryExtra
[53] Michael X (1933–1975) • (blackpast.org)
[54] Black radicals don’t need white saviours — UnHerd
[55] Michael X and the British war on black power | HistoryExtra
[56] Michael X and the British war on black power | HistoryExtra
[57] Michael X (1933–1975) • (blackpast.org)
[58] (PDF) V. S. Naipaul and the Black Power Killings in Trinidad (researchgate.net)
