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

The practice of banding and busing children from the Caribbean Diaspora on the basis of racist stereotypes and assumptions.
The licence given to schools by the department for education to bus such children away from their local
area to schools elsewhere once their number in any one school was in excess of 30% of the school’s roll
The culturally and racially biased intelligence tests that were administered to our children with dire consequences, especially
if the children had recently arrived from the Caribbean to join parents/relatives
Police in schools, not just for community liaison purposes but in order to perform clandestine and often not so overt
policing functions and place our children in the school-to-prison pipeline, a system imported from the USA
The criminalisation of our youth, including school students
Police aggressive and illegal ‘Stop & Search’ operations
Careers officers and their low expectations of and aspirations for our children, often pointing them in the direction of
dead end jobs
The development of Saturday/Supplementary Schools and strategies for dealing with mainstream headteachers, as well
as the police, who sought to obstruct those schools and victimise students who attended them.
New Beacon was instrumental in the formation of the Black Parents Movement and the Black Youth Movement
New Beacon provided advice and guidance to groups wishing to set up supplementary schools, drawing upon the
experience of the Black Parents Movement in running its own, viz.: the Albertina Sylvester Saturday School and the
George Padmore Supplementary School
New Beacon introduced many school students and their families to writers in the community, or/and to those visiting
London from the wider Diaspora whom New Beacon persuaded to come and talk about their work in the bookshop or
some other community venue. That was something Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications also did and to a far greater extent.
School students would crowd into the bookshops with their teachers and hear and interact with established publishers
whom they and their parents never thought they would ever set eyes upon. Such was the organic rootedness of our
bookshops and publishing houses in our communities.
For example, it was hugely inspiring, motivating and self-affirming to be able to discuss with writers such as Andrew
Salkey, John La Rose himself, Eddie (later Kamau) Brathwaite, George Lamming, Sylvia Wynter, Sam Selvon at our regular
meetings at the West Indian Students Centre in Earls Court, the base of the Caribbean Education and Community
Workers Association.
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