Heroes of British Black History – Darcus Howe

Another member of the Black Panthers and the Mangrove Nine, Howe established the Race Today Collective and chaired the Notting Hill Carnival Development Committee for many years. During his twelve years as editor of Race Today, the magazine supported several high profile campaigns including a strike over poor pay and conditions by female Asian workers at London’s Grunwick Film Processing Laboratory and drew attention to the suspected racist arson attack in New Cross that killed 13 young Black people, which had previously attracted worryingly little widespread attention.

Darcus Howe himself helped organise the largest all-Black demonstration in Britain to protest the government’s lack of concern about the incident, sadly only succeeding in provoking a racist government to expand stop and search powers in a bid to reassert control over London’s Black population. After the Brixton riots, Howe adopted a more militant stance, advocating direct resistance to white oppression for the rest of his life.