British Black Panthers

The British Black Panther Movement was founded in 1968 by Obi B. Egbuna, a Nigerian-born writer who had moved to London a few years prior; it emerged from the broader British Black Power Movement. Shortly after it was set up, Altheia Jones-LeCointe, a female student from Trinidad, assumed the leadership role to replace Egbuna, who had been arrested on the grounds of conspiracy. The British Black Panthers modelled itself on the US Black Panther Party, aligning with messages about mobilizing Black political consciousness that were coming from across the Atlantic at this time.

Specifically, the movement was inspired by a speech given by Stokely Carmichael, who came to Camden, London in 1967 to speak about his civil rights activism in the US. Interestingly, Carmichael drew attention to, and commended, the involvement of Asian activists in the Black Power Movement in the UK, and its inclusivity surrounding the term ‘Blackness’, which referred predominantly to Afro-Caribbean but also Asian communities. The Black Power Movement emerged in the context of anti-immigration rhetoric of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s British political sphere and press. For instance, the inflammatory 'Rivers of Blood' speech by Enoch Powell in 1968 captured the hostility towards non-white communities. People who had settled in the UK following patterns of post-war Commonwealth immigration were treated as ‘second-class citizens’ and suffered social, economic and political inequality. Through campaigning for change, by forceful means if necessary, the British Black Panthers challenged racial discrimination and police brutality. The movement soon grew to a membership of 3,000 strong in the 1970s.

A number of South Asian activists joined the British Black Panther Movement under Jones-LeCointe, such as the artist Vivan Sundaram and the writers Mala Sen and Farrukh Dhondy. There had previously been an alliance between the Black Power Movement in Britain and South Asian rights organizations such as the Indian Workers’ Association (IWA) (particularly under Jagmohan Joshi, who strove for unity with Black causes). Dhondy, who came to England from India in 1964 to study at the University of Cambridge, worked with the IWA and through this he became aware of the British Black Panthers at a conference in 1969. He has since explained that his initial role in the movement was to record information from the trials of the ‘Mangrove Nine’. The ‘Nine’ were arrested for protesting against abuses of power by the police at the Mangrove, a Caribbean restaurant and hotspot in Notting Hill. He was soon accepted into the ‘core’ membership of the British Black Panthers, and developed a close relationship with Darcus Howe, one of the ‘Mangrove Nine’. Members, including Dhondy, wrote for the movement’s key publication, called Freedom News, recording their experiences of everyday racism.

The movement broke up in the early 1970s, but a new collective emerged in its place, which took over the Race Today magazine. The magazine was originally started by the Institute of Race Relations in the 1960s but the influence of the British Black Panther Movement led to its transformation into a more radical publication, under the editorship of Darcus Howe.

As the first Black Panther Movement outside of the US, the British strand has been surprisingly overlooked in the history of racial justice work in the UK. The Panthers gained some public recognition with the release of Guerrilla, a Sky Atlantic television mini-series, directed by John Ridley, which dramatized the movement. It followed the relationship of two Panther leaders, one of whom was played by the South Asian actress Freida Pinto, as a gesture to the role of Mala Sen in the movement. This casting decision was controversial, given the absence of Black women in leading roles (despite their evidently central role in the history of the Black Power Movement), but surviving members of the movement have also commented on the importance of recognizing South Asian contributions to its campaign.