̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Robin Bunce

Black Power in Britain becoming “forgotten history”

tdk25 — Sun, 05 Jan 2014 11:53:27 +0000

Britain’s Black Power movement - and its battle against institutional racism - is in danger of being “written out of history”, according to a new book about its principal figurehead, Darcus Howe.

̽��ֱ��claim is one of the opening contentions in Darcus Howe: A political biography, in which the authors argue that the major flashpoints of black political activism - such as the trial of the Mangrove Nine, and the Black People’s March of 1981 - are being overlooked in favour of a more palatable version of British history.

Writing in their introduction, Robin Bunce and Paul Field argue that “there has been a resurgence of outright denial, linked to a romantic, dumbed-down ‘whiggish’ view of history that suggests that racism was always someone else’s problem.”

They add that Britain is consistently portrayed by politicians as being “on the side of the angels” in race relations, and point to the 2007 celebrations of the abolition of the slave trade as an example of how Britain prefers to propagate a myth of itself as “the utopia of civilized fair play”.

Their book, which is published by Bloomsbury, claims to correct and balance some of that denial by using Darcus Howe’s biography as the framework for the first, detailed history of Black Power in Britain. It traces the story from Howe’s Trinidadian origins, through his political activism in the 1970s and 80s, his subsequent broadcasting career, and up to his controversial refusal to condemn the London Riots of 2011.

Dr Bunce, Director of Studies for Politics at Homerton College, Cambridge, was moved to research the book a few years ago when Howe was diagnosed with prostate cancer, from which he fortunately recovered. Over the course of two years he met with Howe, who is now 70, once a fortnight, sorting through documents and conducting interviews.

“It occurred to me that Darcus Howe was striving for many of the same things as the Black Power Movement in America, which is obviously much better known,” Bunce said. “What nobody has documented is the British struggle. We are now reaching a stage where the people who can tell us about it are not going to be around for much longer.”

“One reason that the story is not well-known is that we prefer to tell a story which presents Britain as a place of civilisation and fairness. ̽��ֱ��effect is that people like Howe, and what they did, are being written out of British history. Sadly, the truth was never as good as we like to think; the history of black people in this country from Windrush until at least the 1970s is one of being treated as second-class citizens.”

British Black Power was far less prominent than the American black rights movement, which had a clear political focus in segregation, and produced iconic, internationally-recognisable figures such as Malcolm X and Martin Luther-King. Despite its lower profile, however, it played an critical role in the fight against the less visible problem of institutional racism in the police, the justice system, and the jobs market.

̽��ֱ��story of the movement is inextricably tangled up with that of Darcus Howe himself. Born in Trinidad, he originally moved to the UK in 1961 to study law, although he subsequently entered journalism. In 1968, on the advice of his uncle, the Caribbean intellectual, CLR James, he attended the 1968 Montreal Congress of Black Writers, where he met members of the Black Panthers and various West Indian political movements. Stimulated by their views, he then became involved in the 1970 Trinidadian black power revolution.

After returning to London, Howe became a leader of black political activism in the UK. Famously, in 1970, he masterminded a campaign to stop the Metropolitan Police from closing down the Mangrove Restaurant in Notting Hill, a centre of black and celebrity culture in London which was raided 12 times in six months by the force. This climaxed in a pitched battle between police and 250 protesters, following which Howe and eight others - the so-called “Mangrove Nine” were charged with riot, affray and assault.

Conducting his own defence over 55 days at the trial, Howe not only secured some measure of acquittal for all the defendants, but forced the judge to acknowledge a level of racial hatred within the Met. “He basically turned it into a trial of the Police,” Bunce concludes. “His defence appealed to the Magna Carta, and the media loved it because it was rooted in English traditions of fair play, but was also enormously radical and subversively funny.”

Ten years later, Howe was again at the centre of a landmark moment in racial politics in Britain when, after the New Cross Fire, in which 13 young black people died, he organised ̽��ֱ��Black People’s Day of Action, a march across London, protesting against police mishandling of the case. During the 1970s and 80s, he also became a prominent journalist and broadcaster, writing for publications including ̽��ֱ��Guardian and editing the magazine Race Today, while presenting a series of programmes which covered ethnic minority issues for a general TV audience on Channel 4.

As late as 2011 he remained a controversial public figure, by refusing to condemn the London Riots and instead demanding action on the disproportionate number of young black men who were being targeted by police stop-and-search strategies - a policy which had resulted in the shooting of Mark Duggan and precipitated the unrest.

But even though the urban black poor in Britain remain a marginalised group in society today, Bunce argues that the history of British Black Power should be also be seen as having created real social change, not least in the form of a cultural shift which enabled the equality bills of the 2000s, and the more effective representation of ethnic diversity in the media.

“ ̽��ֱ��vast majority of people in Britain today want a fair and decent society,” he added. “ ̽��ֱ��debate now is about how we achieve that. ̽��ֱ��idea that, for example, there is racism within the police force would have been entirely unacceptable in the 1970s. What Howe and the Black Power Movement achieved is recognition that grass-roots activism and community action can contribute to real change.”

A new biography of Darcus Howe, which offers the first detailed history of Britain’s little-known Black Power movement, claims that the racism it fought is being overlooked in modern narratives about the nation’s past.

̽��ֱ��truth was never as good as we like to think; the history of black people in this country from Windrush until at least the 1970s is one of being treated as second-class citizens.

Robin Bunce

Private collection of Darcus Howe

Darcus Howe, far right, leading the demonstration on the Black People’s Day of Action, March 2, 1981. He is accompanied on the truck by two of his sons, Darcus Jr. and Rap.

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EX-TRA-PO-LATE! Moral philosophy and the Daleks

bjb42 — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 00:01:03 +0000

It shouldn’t work, but somehow it does. Ever since Doctor Who first aired in 1963, the series has been internationally recognisable thanks to one of the most ridiculous space-creatures ever conceived; a master race of intergalactic pepperpots, armed with a sink plunger and an egg whisk, who (according to popular mythology), are hell-bent on conquering anywhere, provided it doesn’t involve stairs.

But don’t let that fool you. For more than 45 years, the Doctor’s arch-enemies, the Daleks, have been striking fear into young viewers with their chilling war-cry of “Exterminate!”. Like the Doctor himself, they have become an icon of British culture. For many, hiding behind the sofa when they appear is virtually a rite of passage.

Now, with the new season of Doctor Who nearly upon us, a Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� academic has turned his mind to what makes the Daleks so terrifying. Writing in a new paper, Dr Robin Bunce – normally a researcher in intellectual history – explores why these unlikeliest of sci-fi foes bettered the rest, and became the most menacing alien ever to invade the small screen.

His answer has nothing to do with their often-cited, non-human appearance, nor their weird, electronic voices. In fact, Dr Bunce believes that the Daleks succeed because they offer us a moral lesson in what it means to be human in the first place. They terrify us because the evil they represent is a more precise definition than that of philosophers stretching from Socrates to Kant. They are chilling, he argues, because they are a vision of what we ourselves might become.

“ ̽��ֱ��reason the Daleks are evil is because we recognise that they were once better,” Dr Bunce explained. “They are the nightmare future we dread.”

“According to their back-story, once they were capable of genuine emotion and real moral good. Now they are sexless, heartless brains, shut up in machines incapable of intimacy, who have forgotten what it means to laugh and no longer think of themselves as individuals. We recognise the Daleks as evil because they have lost all that we hold most dear.”

̽��ֱ��Daleks are perhaps Doctor Who’s greatest success. After their first appearance, they boosted ratings and turned the show into a national phenomenon. “Dalekmania” became a common term and “Dalek” itself now commands its own entry in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Almost half a century later, their popularity shows little sign of subsiding. A 2008 survey by the National Trust found that while only 53% of children could identify an oak leaf, nine out of 10 could identify a Dalek. In 2010, readers of the science fiction magazine SFX voted the Dalek as the all-time greatest monster, beating both Godzilla and Gollum from ̽��ֱ��Lord Of ̽��ֱ��Rings.

Dr Bunce, a bye-fellow at St Edmund’s College, Cambridge, decided to explore what it is that makes these villains so villainous in the first place. He returned to the original 1963 script for “ ̽��ֱ��Daleks”, in which they first appeared, which was written by their creator, Terry Nation. In the story, the Doctor and his companions arrive on a post-apocalyptic planet, Skaro. They encounter both Daleks and the more peaceful Thals.

His paper concludes that the Daleks are a more powerful representation of evil than most of their extra-terrestrial competitors. ̽��ֱ��fact that they are so morally repugnant is, he suggests, what makes them both frightening for viewers and (as a result) an enduring success. This stems from a very modern take on the idea of evil.

Nation’s script stresses the Daleks’ lack of humanity as the essence of their evil nature. This in itself is nothing new – since time immemorial evil people have been described as animals, because animals are not rational. Socrates had a similar view, arguing that reason and knowledge make humans good.

Daleks are different, however, because they are more rational than humans, but also far more evil. Instead of losing their capacity for rational thought, they have lost their ability to feel. As the plot of ‘ ̽��ֱ��Daleks’ unfolds, we discover that after an apocalyptic “Neutronic war”, they retreated into metal shells in which their emotions withered. ̽��ֱ��fact that they were once better, Bunce says, makes them horrifying: “We dread becoming like them.”

For viewers in 1963, living shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis, some of the connotations in Nation’s original script would have been more relevant than they are today. ̽��ֱ��surface of Skaro resembles contemporary ideas about how Earth might look after a nuclear war. ̽��ֱ��“Neutronic War” refers to the spectre of the neutron bomb – which could emit more radiation than an atomic bomb, but with a lower blast. As a result, it was more selective in wiping out humans and animal life, but not buildings and infrastructure. ̽��ֱ��Daleks represented the consequences of these very real nightmares at the time.

In the 21^st century, Bunce suggests that they embody a more general fear, about the triumph of technology and science over humanity. Once creatures like us, they have mutated into something far more sinister. Inside their metal shells, they have oversized brains representing the dominance of scientific reason, at the expense of shrivelled bodies. This fear about what we might become, through scientific advancement, has existed since Victorian times. Like the Daleks, it shows little sign of abating today.

Bunce considers the Daleks a lesson in moral philosophy: “ ̽��ֱ��final lesson is that moral progress is achieved by enlarging the moral imagination, not by increasing our knowledge or becoming more rational,” he said.

“Empathy is the key. We are more likely to act well when we understand that our enemy, however different they may seem, is part of a community who will grieve if they are harmed. ̽��ֱ��Thals are good because they love each other. ̽��ֱ��Daleks don’t and that’s why they’re evil.”

A peculiar breed of evil, in fact, which has also made them a terrific success.

̽��ֱ��study appears in the book, Doctor Who and Philosophy, which is published by Open Court Books: http://www.opencourtbooks.com/books_n/doctor_who.htm

They’ve had viewers cowering behind the sofa since ‘Doctor Who’ began – but what exactly is it that makes people so frightened of the Daleks? A new study by a Cambridge researcher claims to have the answer.

̽��ֱ��reason the Daleks are evil is because we recognise that they were once better. They are the nightmare future we dread.

Dr Robin Bunce

M. Seckington from Flickr

Dalek

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