Black People’s Alliance

Formed in 1968 the Black People’s Alliance (BPA) was conceived of by activists in the wake of the 1968 Kenyan Asian crisis and Enoch Powell’s infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech. It was considered a necessary vehicle to unite Black people across Britain and thus organize collective action. As a national anti-racist umbrella group in Britain, it was made up of over fifty local anti-racist activist movements and organizations.

It was intended that the various member organizations would operate as normal at the local level, working with the communities in which they were situated. The BPA aimed to bring these movements together to support each other and demonstrate on national issues. Through the BPA, organizations across different localities in Britain, with members from around the world, worked together to fight British state racism and local conflicts, using international political theories. For example, the BPA often provided coaches from the Midlands to London so member organizations could participate in national events, such as a 1969 demonstration against police brutality. The BPA was largely shaped by Jagmohan Joshi of the Indian Workers’ Association of Great Britain (IWA GB). The BPA framed itself as militantly anti-establishment and against collaboration with the British state, seeing the state as a vehicle of imperialism and drawing parallels between racism in Britain, (legacies of) European colonialism and US imperialism.