Black British Civil Rights: An untold story

Although many Americans are astonished to find out there are black people in  England in the first place, there are numerous comparisons to be made. Here are just a few starting in 1945 and going up to 2011. See if anything sounds familiar…

1945 Black British troops who have fought for Britain in World War 2 are told to ‘Piss off back where they came from’. They are barred from good jobs

1945 Black American troops who fought for America in World War 2 are lynched in their uniforms. They are not allowed to vote

1952 British increase terrorist tactics in Kenya to put down the Land and Freedom Army’s fight for independence. Kenyans/Somalis are tortured, castrated, mutilated and raped by white soldiers who sometimes use bottles filled with hot water and spices.Tens of thousands are killed, starved, or worked to death. See Video

1954 In South Africa the Bantu Education Act restricts education for black children

1955 Rosa Parks sparks the Montgomery Bus Boycott which leads to the rise of Martin Luther King as a civil rights leader .

1958 after months of white racist attacks and fire-bombings in London’s Notting  Hill, black people fight back en masse. This resistance is referred to as the Notting Hill Race Riots. Police take the side of the racists but deny any racist motivations.See video
1958 The West Indian Standing Conference (W.I.S.C) is founded  in London. They aim to fight for equality in education, housing and employment. The group unites the Caribbean diaspora in opposition to racism

1959 Claudia Jones, as a response to the riots initiates the London Carnival now known as Notting Hill Carnival, the biggest street party in Europe. Kelso Cochrane is a victim of white racist murderers the same year

1962 Black Churches are burned and black men are lynched in the USA. US Senate blocks anti-lynching laws

1962 Commonwealth Immigration Act comes into effect. It is specifically designed to keep black and asian people out of England but to allow white immigrants in. This is denied at the time but revealed under the thirty year rule in 1993

1963 Royal Air Force veteran Paul Stephenson leads the successful Bristol Bus Boycott in England because black people are not allowed jobs on the buses.

1963 the March on Washington. ‘I have a dream’ speech by Martin Luther King. 16th street Baptist church Birmingham, Alabama blown up by white racist terrorists. Four little girls are killed

1963 Britain passes the first Race Relations Act, as a direct result of the Bristol Bus Boycott and increased lobbying by people like Clarence Thompson and W.I.S.C

1964 After years of lobbying, protests and racist murders the US government passes the Civil Rights Act

1965 Voting Rights Act passed in the USA

1965 Race Relations Act passed by UK government

1966 Huey P Newton and Bobby Seale set up the Black Panther Party to combat police brutality and institutional racism

1966 Joe Hunte of W.I.S.C publishes ‘Nigger Hunting in England’ a report on the widespread practice of white youth and police searching out black people to assault

1967 Black people in Britain are routinely thrown out of Anglican and Catholic churches and told not to come back. Black Churches are established in people’s front rooms but soon outgrow them so they build their own as banks like Barclays refuse to lend money to Africans. In one instance a church was destroyed by the local authority See video .Catholic and Anglican churches are sending missionaries to Africa throughout this period. Many priests are transferred to Africa and the Caribbean after allegations of paedophilia

1968 In three days the government rushes through the Commonwealth Immigration  Act which has the effect of blocking the entry of Asian British passport holders from Kenya but allowing in white British passport holders. This comes a few years after the infamous ‘If you want a nigger for a neighbour Vote Labour’ campaign. See video

1968 Nigerian David Oluwale is beaten,  urinated on and thrown in the Leeds river by two white police officers. They are convicted and remain the only officers ever convicted of a black death in custody

1968 in Australia Aborigines/Black people are recognised as human beings by law

1969 US Black Panther Party sets up free breakfast programme for poor kids. Director of the FBI J Edgar Hoover states ‘It’s a threat to the national security of the USA’

1970′s Black British children are labelled Educationally Sub Normal (ESN) and educated separately from white children.The Black community sets up Saturday Schools in response. Jessica Huntley and John la Rose led the movement for educational equality. They are attacked and firebombed by white racists and the National Front

1971 British Black panthers use Frank ’Chrichlows’ Mangrove Restaurant in All Saints Road as a meeting place. Mangrove 9 trial begins. Black people who fight for equality are subjected to politically motivated trials with no evidence of actual criminality. Black Panther Darcus Howe defends himself as his white lawyer says he should plead guilty. Police officers lie on oath and fabricate evidence. Judge states the police are racist.Mangrove 9 are acquitted

1971 Immigration Act clamps down on immigration into England from African/Caribbean and Asian countries but encourages immigration from Canada, Australia and South Africa via the ‘grandfather’ clause See video

1971 How the West Indian Child is made Educationally Sub Normal is published by Bernard Coard. He states the British education system negates the identity of black children and creates an inferiority complex

1972 Shirley Chisholm becomes the first black woman to run for President of the United States of America. She suffers 3 assassination attempts. Her campaign is endorsed and supported by the Black Panther Party See video

1972 Black community in Toxteth Liverpool erect barricades around their houses to prevent attacks from racist white people and the police

1972 Black communities in Harlem and Los Angeles are flooded with heroin from South East Asia by CIA operatives using black stooges as referenced in the movie American Gangster about Frank Lucas

1973 The Spook Who Sat By the Door movie is released. The film shows black people uniting to fight against white racist institutions. The FBI scours the country and destroys all but two prints.

Black Panthers in Brixton, London use  Shakespeare road as their HQ. Olive Morris is a very active member.

1972 Sus Laws are used by British police to detain, assault, criminalize, and imprison  thousands of young black men

1976 Britain passes another Race Relations act this stops black and asian children being bussed out of boroughs like Ealing as there are ‘too many of them’ and outlaws discrimination in Housing, Education and Employment. For the first time black people have equal rights to white people and this is explicitly recognised by law 

1976 Soweto Uprising in South Africa. Thousands of school children demonstrate in protest of sub-standard education for Africans. At least 500 are shot dead. Many youth leave South Africa to join the armed wing of the ANC

1978 Blacks Britannica, a ground-breaking documentary film featuring black british activists like Colin Prescod, Gus John and John la Rose is banned and has never been screened on UK tv to this day. British government intervenes with US TV stations complaining that it shows Britain ‘as racist when it is not’

1978 racist murder of Michael Ferreria by the National Front leads to the setting up of the Hackney Black Peoples Defence Organisation. Altab Ali is murdered by racists in Whitechapel

1981 Britain stops virginity testing of Asian women immigrants See Video

1981 London New Cross Fire 13 Black youngsters are burned to death at a house party in New Cross. Police show little interest but are known to intimidate witnesses

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About Tony

Tony Warner is an African-British management consultant specialising in diversity. He has worked with a variety of British agencies consulting and training of the issues of equality and institutional racism. For the last 8 years he has been working with the West Indian Ex Servicemen’s association to show the hidden history of the African/Caribbean War effort in WW1 and WW2 and its links to the fight for civil/human rights. More recently he has designed a 12 and 26 week course for pupils in primary and secondary schools to improve self esteem, behaviour and academic performance by using interactive history sessions combined with information on peer pressure and media analysis. He facilitates teacher and parent training and runs monthly educational film programmes on black history in collaboration with numerous UK institutions. He specialises in regularly exhibiting African/Caribbean films with positive images and is part of the collective that runs guided black history walking tours designed to uncover the 3500 years of African history in London. The walks were recently listed in the Top ten best guided walks by the Guardian newspaper. He has been featured on BBC, ITV and written and presented documentaries for Teachers TV.

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