Strained Solidarities: Black Power and the British Left, 1960-80
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Birmingham
Department Name: History and Cultures
Abstract
This study examines the Black Power movement in Britain during the 1960s-70s and how it interacted with the wider radical left, with a regional focus on the Midlands area. The study investigates two unexplored aspects of British Black Power, where it intersected with 'traditional' socialist politics: its role in the post-war resurgence of industrial militancy, and in the anti-fascist movement against the National Front. The PhD dislodges the 'methodological whiteness' (Bhambra, 2017) of prevailing accounts of the extra-parliamentary left in Britain, by charting the responses of Black radicals to racialised issues of state repression, workplace exploitation and right-wing extremism. Interrogating the tensions between Black Power groups and the established 'white' left will highlight antagonistic visions of liberation in a neocolonial world, complicating Virdee (2014)'s influential thesis that the 1970s witnessed a novel convergence of class-based and anti-racist struggles.
While British Black Power is often assumed to be a primarily American import, the study examines how the movement was shaped by distinctive patterns of anti-colonialism developed within the imperial metropole. The PhD foregrounds how Black radicals in post-war Britain challenged the Eurocentrism of the left-wing mainstream, by reviving the 'subaltern cosmopolitanism' (Featherstone, 2012) of earlier metropolitan anti-imperialists like Claudia Jones and Shapurji Saklatvala. In the Midlands area particularly, Black Power organisations contained many South Asian activists, and the regional focus of the study will contribute to an understanding of 'political Blackness' as an expansive coalitional identity among immigrant radicals. In contrast to flattened textual readings of political Blackness (Modood, 1994), the PhD recovers the dynamic history of political Blackness as an insurgent counter-racialisation from below.
The PhD encompasses new research into Midlands-based groups including the Black People's Freedom Movement and the Birmingham Black Sisters. The written sources used will include Black radical periodicals, trade union archives and ephemera produced by far-left groups. These materials are found in local archives including the Sivanandan Collection, Modern Records Centre, Wolfson Centre for Archival Research, and Cadbury Research Library. Documents held in the London-based Institute of Race Relations and Black Cultural Archives will facilitate regional comparisons. As many activists involved in the British Black Power movement are still alive, use of primary written documents will be supplemented by oral interviews.
The study has clear significance beyond academia, particularly in light of the transnational Movement for Black Lives. The PhD's investigation of Black political strategies within white-dominated social movements is notably of interest to racial justice-oriented think tanks such as the Institute of Race Relations and Runnymede Trust, as well as policy debates addressing racism within trade unions (Ashe, 2019).
While British Black Power is often assumed to be a primarily American import, the study examines how the movement was shaped by distinctive patterns of anti-colonialism developed within the imperial metropole. The PhD foregrounds how Black radicals in post-war Britain challenged the Eurocentrism of the left-wing mainstream, by reviving the 'subaltern cosmopolitanism' (Featherstone, 2012) of earlier metropolitan anti-imperialists like Claudia Jones and Shapurji Saklatvala. In the Midlands area particularly, Black Power organisations contained many South Asian activists, and the regional focus of the study will contribute to an understanding of 'political Blackness' as an expansive coalitional identity among immigrant radicals. In contrast to flattened textual readings of political Blackness (Modood, 1994), the PhD recovers the dynamic history of political Blackness as an insurgent counter-racialisation from below.
The PhD encompasses new research into Midlands-based groups including the Black People's Freedom Movement and the Birmingham Black Sisters. The written sources used will include Black radical periodicals, trade union archives and ephemera produced by far-left groups. These materials are found in local archives including the Sivanandan Collection, Modern Records Centre, Wolfson Centre for Archival Research, and Cadbury Research Library. Documents held in the London-based Institute of Race Relations and Black Cultural Archives will facilitate regional comparisons. As many activists involved in the British Black Power movement are still alive, use of primary written documents will be supplemented by oral interviews.
The study has clear significance beyond academia, particularly in light of the transnational Movement for Black Lives. The PhD's investigation of Black political strategies within white-dominated social movements is notably of interest to racial justice-oriented think tanks such as the Institute of Race Relations and Runnymede Trust, as well as policy debates addressing racism within trade unions (Ashe, 2019).
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Gavin Schaffer (Primary Supervisor) | |
| Alfred Hancox (Student) |