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

experience, the importance of the ideas of C. L. R. James (his great-uncle) to Black Power
and black community perspectives appears overblown. (28)
This same elevation of the importance of James’ anti-vanguardist line on the spontaneity
of British black struggle can be read in Oobi B. Egbuna, C. L. R. James and the birth of black
radicalism in Britain 1967–72’ also by Bunce and Field in Twentieth Century British History 22,
no. 3 (2010), pp. 391–414. But Anne-Marie Angelo somewhat balances the historical account
by revealing the influence of the US Black Panthers on the British movement in ‘The Black
Panthers in London, 1967–1972: a diasporic struggle navigates the Black Atlantic’ in Radical
History Review 103 (Winter 2009). And in Radicals Against Race: black activism and cultural
politics (2002) Brian W. Alleyne seeks, in his account of the mainly educational/cultural work
of the ‘New Beacon Circle’ around John la Rose, to further question the relationship between
organisation and activism.
It is a pity that so many of those who were active in that period but in other factions
of the movement have now ‘gone home’, some have died, some left the fray or otherwise
shunned publicity and accounting for Black Power in Britain. The full story is yet to be written.
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