With a TV series, film and first university course in 2017, the authors of a history of the UK movement reflect on its turnabout

When Robin Bunce and Paul Field began their research into the British black power movement about six years ago the repeated response was: “What British black power movement? Do you mean America?”

Now, with two major TV series expected, a film in the planning, inclusion on the school syllabus and the first university course in black studies, it is a question heard less and less.

“It has been an extraordinary turnaround,” said Bunce. “I imagine by the end of this year the black power movement will be something seen as part of the fabric of our history. It will be accepted by everyone. That will be an amazing reversal and it is enormously exciting.”

His and Field’s history of the British black power movement is being reissued in paperback next month. When it was first published at the end of 2013, they said the movement was in danger of being written out of recent cultural history.

There was a mixture of denial and amnesia, the pair said, and while the US civil rights movement was part of the UK education system, the British equivalent was not.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Idris Elba will star in Guerrilla, a six-part TV drama for Sky Atlantic set in 1970s London. Photograph: Steffan Hill/AP

Things have changed on a number of fronts. Guerrilla, a six-part TV drama by John Ridley – who also wrote 12 Years a Slave) – and starring Idris Elba and Frieda Pinto, will air on Sky Atlantic this spring. It tells the story of an early 1970s underground cell that targets a special branch counterintelligence unit called the black power desk.



A planned film that tells the story of the Mangrove Nine trial in 1970, a case which exposed police racism, is also at an advanced stage.

And a six-part BBC series by the Oscar-winning director and writer Steve McQueen that tells the stories of black Britons from 1968 to 2014 is also expected this year.

Bunce and Field, whose book uses the life of Darcus Howe as the framework for the wider history of British black power, are consultants on both Guerrilla and the Mangrove Nine film project. They are also to appear as extras in Guerrilla along with Howe and fellow activists Leila Hassan and Farrukh Dhondy.

The pair discovered the existence of the black power desk through freedom of information requests and work in the national archives, and passed their research on to the makers of Guerrilla, which will also be broadcast on Showtime in the US.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Steve McQueen has directed a six-part BBC series that tells the lives of Black Britons from 1968 to 2014. Photograph: Niklas Halle'N/AFP/Getty Images

The Mangrove Nine film is being made by Calamity Films, the team behind Pride, which told the story of gay activists supporting the miner’s strike.

The story is an important one. Frank Crichlow’s Mangrove was a restaurant in Notting Hill and the beating heart of the area’s Caribbean community in the late sixties. The police, however, saw it as a place where terrorism was planned and raided it repeatedly.

Howe masterminded a campaign against police harassment that climaxed in a pitched battle after, which he and eight others were put on trial. All were acquitted of incitement to riot.

The film producer David Livingstone lives near the site where Mangrove used to be on All Saints Road, but knew nothing about the story until a plaque was unveiled for Crichlow in 2011.

“I thought this is an amazing story, it is David v Goliath, to go to the Old Bailey to defend yourself and win, especially during that period when there was both rampant and casual racism, both probably as repugnant as the other. It was very moving.

“No one knows about it where I live, I swear to God, I discuss it with people and the majority look at me with a blank face. Once in a blue moon someone says they know.”

Livingstone was already on to the story, and when Bunce and Field’s book came out he approached them and bought the rights. “The minute I talked to them I thought: ‘They are so astoundingly well-informed on the subject, I don’t think I want to do it without them.’”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Frank Crichlow (left) ran the Mangrove restaurant in Notting Hill. Photograph: Homer Sykes

He said the resonance between historical events and the contemporary stories highlighted by campaigns such as Black Lives Matter were striking: “It won’t feel like an alien universe, you will recognise it from something you saw on television last week.”

In cinematic terms there are also parallels with Pride, a small group of determined people organising against adversity when others were not. “It is one of those very rare stories,” said Livingstone. “It has those elements of people power and solidarity and a few people can make a difference.”

The Mangrove is also at the heart of McQueen’s drama, announced in 2015, which describes it as “a place of camaraderie and friendship that becomes a social heart for the community and, over time, a flashpoint for resistance”.

McQueen said at the time: “These stories are passionate, personal and unique. They are testimony to the truth of real lives and urgently need to be told. This is about a legacy which has not only made my life as an artist possible, but also has shaped the Britain that we live in today.”

Things are also changing in terms of education. Birmingham City University will this year become the first in Europe to offer a degree in black studies.

Bunce has also been working with the Runnymede Trust on British black power stories that may make it on the GCSE syllabus. He is also collaborating with the textbook publisher Hodder on stories that will be part of an option on A-level courses.

All these developments are a stark contrast to just three years ago, Field said. “There wasn’t much interest, but now there seems to be growing interest.”

There are many reasons for the change. One is the Black Lives Matter campaign, which began as a reaction to police killing and brutality in the US in 2013 and has spawned protests in the UK.

There was also the Oscars So White campaign and the powerful interventions by actors such as David Oyelowo, Elba and Lenny Henry. In education there was the Rhodes Must Fall campaign, which began in Cape Town and spread to University of Oxford where there were calls for the removal of a statue of Cecil Rhodes from Oriel College.

I, too, am Oxford and I, too, am Cambridge had previously highlighted incidences of discrimination and stereotyping at the two universities.

Bunce, the director of studies for politics at Homerton College, Cambridge, said he thought there were two contradictory trends in Britain.

“The nativist Brexit trend, which is very much about Britain, a kind of white English nationalism really, seems to be riding high.

“But in terms of culture more generally we are an increasingly diverse society and people are making sure their voices are heard.”

• Renegade, The Life and Times of Darcus Howe is republished in paperback on 9 February