“Black Oppressed People All over the World Are One”: The British Black Panthers’ Grassroots Internationalism, 1969–73

Abstract

Immigration Bill marched from Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park, London to Whitehall. The marchers, mostly people of color, paraded across the metropole under the banners of anti-racist organizations such as the Black Unity and Freedom Party, the Pakistani National League, and the British Black Panther Movement (BBPM). The Bill had drawn their ire because of its extensive restrictions. For Commonwealth citizens, the Bill's patriality clause meant that unless they had lived in the country for five years or had a parent or grandparent who had been born in the UK, they could be asked for papers or deported at any time. Since the Commonwealth Immigrants Act in 1962, the government had curtailed the free flow of migration, and the proposed Bill would taper that flow to a drip. The Bill sent the message that, if passed, the United Kingdom would not welcome any more black immigrants. 1 The marchers delivered letters to 10 Downing Street and the Home Office that called for the bill's immediate withdrawal. The letters decried the bill as, "blatantly racialist" and "a gross violation of the rights of black people in Britain." The Times reported that the protest had been organized by the Indian and Pakistani Workers' Associations, who had brought workers from Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Sheffield, Leeds, and Bradford to London. Among the groups, The Times observed that, "the most militant marchers came from the Black Panther Movement." 2 The BBPM's protest tactics led in part to their characterization as the most militant protestors. "For most of the two-hour [march]," The Times noted, "[the Panthers] shouted slogans and gave the clenched fist salute." 3 Indeed, Panther members foregrounded the

Oppressive Even As It Inspires

“…The common and deliberate usage of 'Blackness' as a social and/or political identity or "an all-inclusive term for all who experience racism" by a broad spectrum of European citizens-as well as negative reactions to this usage-also factors into Black Europeans' simultaneously open and ambivalent responses towards African America (Obasi 2019, p. 233). The adoption of 'Black' as a strategic choice by South Asian immigrants to the United Kingdom or Dutch citizens of Moroccan and Indonesian descent; the addition of the prefix 'Afro'; the deliberate rejection of such practices; or attempts at new identification markers such as 'Afropean' and 'luso-Africanos' showcase the instability of meanings of 'Blackness' among various national, racial, and ethnic groups within Europe across time and space (Angelo 2018;Bedasse et al, 2020;Guadeloupe 2022;Pitts 2020). During the 1980s, for instance, a hallmark of Black European feminism was its rejection of race essentialism, which partly explains these women's openness to African Americans who shared such views, like Audre Lorde.…”

Historical geographies of alternative, and non‐formal education: Learning from the histories of Black education

“…Across various scales and disciplines, scholars have referred to such transnational connections and solidarities through concepts like the ‘Black Atlantic’ (Gilroy, 1992) and the ‘Third World Project’ (Prashad, 2007), and have drawn attention to the everyday political currents that connected Britain and the US, and Britain and Caribbean in the post‐WWII decades (Kramer‐Taylor, 2023, Waters, 2018). This has included bringing into view accounts of internationalist self‐help collective Race Today's connecting of Black struggle in Britain with anticolonial struggles in the various ‘homelands’ of its members (Field et al., 2019), as well as insight on similar groups hosting and visiting key figures involved in radical political organising in the US, Caribbean and Africa (Angelo, 2015; Trew, 2012). Less is known however about how these circulations of radical, internationalist and decolonial politics influenced spaces of learning or education (though see Andrews, 2013, p. 52 and Gerrard, 2014, p. 144 on one supplementary school's links with a similar organisation in the US), or how non‐formal education spaces formed important nodes in transnational networks of solidarity between the UK and decolonising nations elsewhere (though see Fairless Nicholson, 2023).…”