Girlfridayz attending an event for black history month at Westminster University in the West end. The tutor talking about events which happened in 1596 to 2006. The title of this event is called the black British civil rights heroes and it in three parts.
Part 1
Since I attended uni today we at Girlfridayz decided to write a summative assessment of what we learned about the heroes of London and Bristol back in the days not so long ago who either paved the way for the Race Relation Act 1965. It was quite a learning curve for us because the three people we selected to discuss are unknown to say the least but they achieves major milestones to pave the way for all these Race Relations Acts and the latest in the bunch the Equality Act 2010.
Yet the British media do not mentioned these pioneers and it is not taught in English history class. This is an outraged and injustice still, do you believe this a bunch of hypocrite. If you take their counterpart America the people who created the civil right movement are well known all over the world. Malcom X, Rosa Park, Dr Martin Luther King and we know what they did and achieves.
But this little island called Britain lookalike they ashamed of these towering achievement by these people and shoved it under the table as if it's nothing major happened we do not need to talk about it. This is an outrage we think at Girlfridayz.
History paved the way we live now all history supposed to be talked about and remembering the greatest heroes of Britain who made all this happened for our own good now. The second world war is well publicised but these achievements and these great people are not. Another thing that baffled us but it is a fucking irony in England they have the racist law 1971 use for immigration and it is in force discrimination cover up by grand parent and parent clause what an ironic this is as they also have the Equality Act 2010 which contradict this law.
So without further a ado I would like to introduce these three great people Micheal X, Claudia Jones, Paul Stephenson
Paul Stephenson was the instigator of The Bristol Bus Boycott of 1963 arose from the refusal of the Bristol Omnibus Company to employ black or Asian bus crews in the city of Bristol, England.
In other British cities, there was widespread racial discrimination in housing and employment at that time against "coloureds". Led by youth worker Paul Stephenson and the West Indian Development Council, the boycott of the company's buses by Bristolians lasted for four months until the company backed down and overturned the colour bar.
The boycott drew national attention to racial discrimination in Britain, and the campaign was supported by national politicians, with interventions being made by church groups and the High Commissioner for Trinidad and Tobago.
The Bristol Bus Boycott was considered by some to have been influential in the passing of the Race Relations Act 1965 which made "racial discrimination unlawful in public places" and the Race Relations Act 1968, which extended the provisions to employment and housing.
Michael X was a self-styled black revolutionary and civil rights activist in 1960s London. He was also known as Michael Abdul Malik and Abdul Malik. Convicted of murder in 1972, Michael X was executed by hanging in 1975 in Port of Spain's Royal Jail. He was a gangster with a social justice cause and a hatred for white people but wanted justice for black people.
By the mid-1960s he had renamed himself "Michael X" and became a well-known exponent of Black Power in London. Writing in The Observer in 1965, Colin Mc Glashan called him the "authentic voice of black bitterness".
In 1965, under the name Abdul Malik, he founded the Racial Adjustment Action Society (RAAS). In 1967 he was involved with the counterculture/hippie organisation the London Free School (LFS) through his contact with John "Hoppy" Hopkins, which both helped widen the reach of the group, at least in the Notting Hill area, and create problems with local police who disliked his involvement.
Michael and the LFS were instrumental in organising the first outdoor Notting Hill Carnival later that year. Later that year, he became the first non-white person to be charged and imprisoned under the UK's Race Relations Act, which was designed to protect Britain's Black and Asian populations from discrimination.
He was sentenced to 12 months in jail for advocating the immediate killing of any white man seen "laying hands" on a black woman. He also said "white men have no soul".
In 1969, he became the self-appointed leader of a Black Power commune on Holloway Road, North London, called the "Black House." The commune was financed by a young millionaire benefactor, Nigel Samuel. Michael X said, "They've made me the archbishop of violence in this country. But that 'get a gun' rhetoric is over.
We're talking of really building things in the community needed by people in the community. We're keeping a sane approach. John Lennon and Yoko Ono donated a bag of their hair to be auctioned for the benefit of the Black House.
In what the media called "the slave collar affair," businessman Marvin Brown was enticed to The Black House, viciously attacked, and made to wear a spiked "slave" collar around his neck as Michael X and others threatened him in order to extort money.
The Black House closed in the autumn of 1970. The two men found guilty of assaulting Marvin Brown were imprisoned for 18 months. The Black House burned down in mysterious circumstances, and soon Michael X and four colleagues were arrested for extortion. His bail was paid by John Lennon in January 1971.
In February 1971, he fled to his native Trinidad, where he started an agricultural commune devoted to Black empowerment 16 miles (26 km) east of the capital, Port of Spain. "The only politics I ever understand is the politics of revolution," he told the Trinidad Express. "The politics of change, the politics of a completely new system." He began another commune, also called the Black House, which, in February 1972, also burned down in a fire. You could say it was faith two of his black house caught fire.
Even though he was a criminal and racist he brought some changes which were good for the black community and had major celebrity endorsement.
Claudia Jones, born Claudia Vera Cumberbatch, was a Trinidad-born journalist and activist. As a child she migrated with her family to the US, where she became a political activist and black nationalist through Communism, using the false name Jones as "self-protective disinformation". As a result of her political activities, she was deported in 1955 and subsequently resided in the United Kingdom. She founded Britain's first major black newspaper, The West Indian Gazette (WIG), in 1958.
Jones arrived in London two weeks later, at the time of the building of the Empire Windrush community, and vast expansion of the British African-Caribbean community. However, on engaging the political community that she had just left in the United States, she was disappointed to find that many British communists were hostile to a black woman.
As an activist she wrote her famous main article: British African-Caribbean community
Landing in England at a time when many landlords, shops and even some government establishments displayed signs saying "No Irish, No Coloured, No Dogs", Jones found a community that needed active organisation. She began to get involved in the British African-Caribbean community to organise both access to basic facilities, as well as the early movement for equal rights.
Supported by her friends Trevor Carter, Nadia Cattouse, Amy Ashwood Garvey, Beryl McBurnie, Pearl Prescod and her lifelong mentor Paul Robeson, Jones campaigned against racism in housing, education and employment. She addressed peace rallies and the Trade Union Congress, and visited Japan, Russia, and China, where she met with Mao Zedong.
In the early 1960s, despite failing health, Jones helped organise campaigns against the 1876 Immigration Act, which would make it harder for non-Whites to migrate to Britain. She also campaigned for the release of Nelson Mandela, and spoke out against racism in the workplace.
The West Indian Gazette and Afro-Asian Caribbean News, 1958
From her experiences in the United States, Jones knew that "people without a voice were as lambs to the slaughter." Therefore, in 1958 above a barber's shop in Brixton, she founded and thereafter edited the anti-imperialist, anti-racist paper, The West Indian Gazette and Afro-Asian Caribbean News (WIG). The paper became a key contributor to the rise of consciousness within the Black British community.
Jones wrote in her last published essay, "The Caribbean Community in Britain", in Freedom ways (Summer 1964)
“The newspaper has served as a catalyst, quickening the awareness, socially and politically, of West Indians, Afro-Asians and their friends. Its editorial stand is for a united, independent West Indies, full economic, social and political equality and respect for human dignity for West Indians and Afro-Asians in Britain, and for peace and friendship between all Commonwealth and world peoples.”
Always strapped for cash, WIG folded eight months and four editions after Jones's death in December 1964.
Notting Hill riots and "Caribbean Carnival", 1959
Claudia Jones blue plaque, Notting Hill
Four months after launching WIG, racial riots broke out in August 1958 in Notting Hill, London and in Robin Hood Chase, Nottingham. In view of the racially driven analysis of these events by the existing British daily newspapers, Jones began receiving visits from members of the black British community and also from various national leaders responding to the concern of their citizens, including Cheddi Jagan of British Guiana, Norman Manley of Jamaica, Eric Williams of Trinidad and Tobago, as well as Phyllis Shand Allfrey and Carl La Corbinière of the West Indies Federation.
As a result, Jones identified the need to "wash the taste of Notting Hill and Nottingham out of our mouths". It was suggested that the British black community should have a carnival; it was December 1958, so the next question was: "In the winter?" Jones used her connections to gain use of St Pancras Town Hall in January 1959 for the first Mardi-Gras-based carnival, which was directed by Edric Connor and headlined the Boscoe Holder Dance Troupe, jazz guitarist Fitzroy Coleman and singer Cleo Laine; and was televised nationally by the BBC.
These early celebrations were epitomised by the slogan: "A people's art is the genesis of their freedom."
A footnote on the front cover of the original 1959 souvenir brochure states: "A part of the proceeds from the sale of this brochure are to assist the payments of fines of coloured and white youths involved in the Notting Hill events."
Jones and the West Indian Gazette also organised five other annual indoor Caribbean Carnival cabarets at such London venues as Seymour Hall, Porchester Hall and the Lyceum Ballroom, which events are seen as precursors of the celebration of Caribbean Carnival that culminated in the Notting Hill Carnival.
In conclusion
Here a piece of untold history uncommon of British Black History about Black People greatest achievement back in a day and not so long ago as some people who were born in this generation are still alive and may remember these great heroes or famous criminal but it is part the British Black History and paved the way to the Equality Act 2010 and it's predecessors also the Notting Hill Carnival that we attend every end of August for two days.
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