Coming of Age : 1976 and the Road to Anti-Racism

published short fiction and non-fiction pieces by a range of writers; Changing Britannia: life
experience with Britain, edited by Roxy Harris and Sarah White (1999)(24) encompasses narratives
by and interviews with seven ‘prominent figures’.
Slightly to one side stands Black British Culture & Society: a text reader edited by Kwesi
Owusu (2000), which, while reflecting the interest in the cultural development of Black Britain,
included within its forty-two contributions key historical political pieces by Claudia Jones
and Obi Egbuna, Paul Gilroy’s ‘Black Atantic’ thesis and a strong hearing from Black women
as well as original interviews debating ‘Black’ with Stuart Hall, and A. Sivanandan (the latter
reproduced in this issue of Race & Class). It should be noted that the eminent black scholars
Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy have primarily, in their many publications, discussed ‘Black’ as cultural
theorists. But, although their focus has not been on the period under review here, both
have written key texts on young black men and the state/policing in, respectively, Policing
the crisis: mugging, the state and law and order (1978) and ‘Steppin’ out of Babylon’ in The
Empire Strikes back: race and racism in 70s Britain (1982). Paul Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic:
modernity and double consciousness (1993), published well after Black had ceased to be a
political colour, can be seen as a useful (if rather theoretical) framing of and antidote to the
essentialism and nationalism of the time.
Students dipping into later reference tomes such as the beautifully produced Black
Britain: a photographic history by Paul Gilroy and Stuart Hall (2007) or The Oxford Companion
to Black British History by David Dabydeen, John Gilmore and Cicely Jones (2007) will
be disappointed. Though the first is evocative and thus emotionally charged, it says next
to nothing about Black Power as political agency; (25) the second, organised as a kind of
dictionary of world events and people, is not just patchy in coverage but necessarily without
coherence or narrative.
However, two recently published memoirs from erstwhile Black Power activists may
prove more fruitful. The first by Winston Trew, one of the (Black Power activist) Fasimbas
in the 1972 ‘Oval 4 case’, Black for a Cause … Not Just Because: the case of the ‘Oval 4’ and
the story of Black Power in 1970s Britain (2010) amongst other things graphically recalls in
a telling chapter experiences at the hands of the police. The second book, a biography of
activist Darcus Howe, largely based on interviews with him, partner Leila Hassan and friend
Farrukh Dhondy, is more problematic. All renderings of history, especially from its protagonists,
are going to be partial (Winston James, for example, finds Sivanandan a romantic (26),
but this hagiographic rendering in a political biography by Robin Bunce and Paul Field (2013)
tends to conflate one man’s story with the history of the time. Without doubt Howe, a former
Black Panther, was involved in key moments of Black history – from the 1970 uprising in
Trinidad to the Mangrove trial, the editing of Race Today to the Black People’s Day of Action
– and was influential for some years (27) but in this retelling of history through Howe’s
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