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Black Power! People's Power!
[reporter] "Black Power." The words can send shivers
down the spine of the nervous white man,
but while the white man struggles with his nightmare,
the Black man struggles with his dream.
You have to organize yourselves politically!
You have to say, "My power is not only the power to defend myself,
but the power of the population to defend itself by taking a collective action."
Black people!
[narrator] West London, 1970.
A group of protestors march against harassment by the police
of a Black-owned restaurant called the Mangrove.
[reporter] "Hands off the Mangrove," says the slogan,
and the restaurant was the gathering point for the march.
[narrator] Black Power had arrived in Britain.
It was like an awakening. It was like a Black awakening.
[narrator] Young Black people were fighting back
against their hostile environment.
It was an immigrant community in transition,
from victim to protagonist, and I just thought: at last.
[narrator] They stood up to the state,
and they defied the brutality of the police.
We were not as acquiescent as our parents.
We saw ourselves as revolutionary, you know.
[narrator] It was a conflict that reached
the highest courts in the land.
[woman] Since we've come here, we've suffered a long trail of abuses
by the police, with the active knowledge and support of the British state.
[Alan Moss] Policing, you have to take charge,
and sometimes, this wasn't possible.
Who had the prejudice?
[Frank Crichlow] You know, I want to fight, I want to fight.
I need to argue. I need to scream!
[narrator] And the question of violent resistance
would increasingly challenge the movement.
[reporter] The 20-hour siege started just before two this morning.
[Farrukh Dhondy] The outcome was quite tragic.
It was a criminal act, but it was for political purposes.
[narrator] For the first time on-screen,
many of the people who made it happen will tell the inside story.
A forgotten history of the rise and fall of the British Black Power movement.
I think Black Power said, "We're not going back home.
Britain belongs to us. We're here to stay."
We were fighting for our rights. We're still fighting for our rights.
I think the youngsters in the Black Lives Matter Movement
need to appraise themselves of what has gone before,
so that they can draw some lessons
from the battles that we fought and won.
I've never been a turn-the-other-cheek person.
You punch me in the face, I am gonna punch you back.
[♪ Small Faces: "What'cha Gonna Do About It"]
It was very interesting when I came to London
because I came in 1965.
It was a Thursday, and Top of the Pops was on.
[narrator] Rock 'n roll and revolution.
In Britain, the swinging sixties blew open a new era of possibility
for young people.
But not everyone felt included.
There was an unofficial color bar, which meant that Black and Asian people
were openly discriminated against.
For Black teenager Neil Kenlock and many like him,
it was the beginning of a struggle to feel part of Britain.
As a young boy in Brixton, and, um...
there was a-a club in Brixton...
and the person at the door said, "We don't want your type here.
Go home."
I said, "I am not going to leave."
Typical Black person, I am not going to go.
Um, they said, "Look, if you don't go, we're going to call the police."
Now, I didn't know how to cope with that. I didn't know what to do.
You'd walk into pubs, and they'd ignore your presence.
You'd stand at the bar for half an hour, and they wouldn't serve you.
Other customers would come in, you know, white customers,
and they would serve them straight away,
and then you'd get stubborn, you know, you wouldn't turn away.
"Excuse me, can I have two pints of beer?"
"Excuse me, you were not there."
[narrator] For a young Winston Trew,
newly arrived from Jamaica,
the welcome he received was a complete shock.
[Winston Trew] First day at school, I am the only Black boy in the school,
and a white boy walks up and punches me in the face,
so my first experience coming to this country
was racism and violence.
Every Sunday afternoon and Sunday evenings,
you'd have Tarzan movies played on the TV.
You'd see Tarzan as a white hero,
and you'd see Africans fearful, running from lions.
I feared going to school on the Monday mornings
because white people would say to you, "I saw you on the TV last night.
Was that your family I saw on the TV?"
There were only three other Black children in the school,
and I can only say my life there was absolutely horrendous.
We were ostracized in the playground.
I remember kids putting up their hands, and saying,
"Miss, Miss, why are all these people coming here?
My dad says it's to take our jobs."
My opinion is that they're taking all the jobs of the white-white people.
My husband's here now, and he can't get a job anywhere.
They're a nuisance when you've got to walk past them in the streets.
They won't move.
They're a nuisance at work. They won't work.
[narrator] Tensions had been building
since the UK government invited its Commonwealth citizens
to come and help the mother country get back on its feet
in the aftermath of the second world war.
Working in Britain's transport system, its factories,
and the newly formed National Health Service,
the migrants played a key role in rebuilding the nation.
Peter Knight, please.
[narrator] But as Caribbean, African,
and Asian families began to settle and create communities
in all the major cities,
some in Britain came to resent their new neighbors.
I know there's a lot of colored people working in hospitals,
and we couldn't do it without them,
but they're filling the hospitals up for staff to employ them,
to look after them, I mean the maternity.
I'm having a baby at the moment, and look at our street,
absolutely full of pregnant Indian women,
and they're there all the time.
[narrator] The new arrivals often had to put up with
poor housing conditions,
and they were facing increasingly hostile locals.
In 1958, violence exploded in London's Notting Hill,
when gangs of white youths, known as the Teddy Boys,
encouraged by far-right groups,
started attacking the local Black community.
[muffled commotion]
[reporter] An angry crowd of youths chases a Negro into a greengrocer shop,
while police reinforcements are called out to check the riots.
After the riots, I always remembered one afternoon,
I got attacked by some Teddy Boys.
I was about 14 at the time,
and this white woman came, put her arms around me,
and took me away,
and she told these Teddy Boys to go away.
"We've got sons as well. We've got sons as well.
You can't do that to a little colored kid."
Yeah, and I always remember that day.
Within our tight-knit community,
some of the white women used to take our sides,
and this is why I just thought I'd start taking photographs,
document some of these people, while growing up.
But this was the era that we had to go through,
fighting the Teddy Boys.
And this is how Kelso Cochrane got killed.
But the police didn't do anything.
[narrator] Kelso Cochrane, a carpenter from Antigua,
was stabbed to death by a white gang one night near Notting Hill.
The police denied that the killing was racially motivated,
and nobody was prosecuted.
For many Black people,
it appeared as if their lives did not matter.
Even at school,
children were not safe from institutional prejudice.
[Gutzmore] The British educational system
was pushing Black children into special schools,
misdiagnosing Caribbean youngsters
as educationally subnormal.
And the perception was that Black boys, especially,
had low IQ and were big and dangerous.
[Zainab Abbas] It was just the lack of opportunity.
I remember my teachers telling my mother,
even though I was a very bright kid,
that I should go and work in the local GEC factory,
stripping electrical wires
because they decided I wasn't going to do my O-levels,
and I wasn't going to do my A-levels, and I wasn't going to go to university.
So, you know, the anger inside me was just...
I can't describe it.
[narrator] Anxiety for the future was magnified
when Zainab and her family watched the news
and saw state-sponsored racism in action
under the apartheid regime of South Africa,
a former British colony.
Southern Africa, we would discuss it virtually every day at home.
You're growing up, you're a teenager,
and you're faced with all these struggles around the world,
and looking at what we were facing here.
They weren't killing us, but they might as well have been
because they were killing our lives. We had no future.
[Leila Hassan Howe] My mother was East End working-class,
my father was Muslim, and they married.
The marriage didn't last, and I lived a very kind of
isolated existence, 'cause in my family,
which was a very large working-class, East London family,
I was the only Black person.
[Leila Hassan Howe] My experience led me to read.
Mr. James Baldwin has hardly a need of introduction.
I read James Baldwin. I read any Black literature going.
But Baldwin was my kind of mainstay.
I...
[narrator] James Baldwin was a radical activist
and writer whose books exposed the impact of racism in America.
It comes as a great shock to discover that Gary Cooper killing off the Indians,
when you were rooting for Gary Cooper...
that the Indians were you.
It comes as a great shock to discover the country has not,
in its whole system of reality, evolved any place for you.
So I wrote to Baldwin and probably poured my heart out,
and told him what I was experiencing,
and told him that his books had given me hope.
Thank you.
[applause]
And James Baldwin sent me a telegram back,
telling me to keep the faith.
I remember those words.
"Keep the faith, signed Jimmy."
[narrator] But keeping faith was increasingly hard.
The 1964 general election showed that immigration and race
were now a political time bomb.
[Gutzmore] My initial job was in a factory,
and I first became politicized in
the mid-'60s.
I was in the British Midlands,
where racism was a big feature amongst the people.
We know in Smethwick place there's the problem
of immigration, for example.
You and I know that here, in this town,
this is a problem.
[Gutzmore] In fact, there was an MP, a man called Peter Griffiths,
who stood on the slogan,
"If you want a nigger for a neighbor, vote Labour."
[reporter] People have stuck up posters like, "Keep Britain white,"
or "If you want a nigger neighbor, vote Labour."
Yes, um, well, I understand that the people who stuck up those posters
have since made their statement themselves
that they did it entirely on their own, and without any contact with me,
but this is a community that wants to keep its identity.
That's why I have refused to condemn people
who have made extreme statements.
I have said, if people feel so strongly
that they are prepared to put things in these words,
we should find out what is it that makes them feel so strongly,
and we should remove the causes.
[reporter] I'd like to quote to you a slogan,
"If you want a nigger neighbor, vote Labour."
I think that's an utterly squalid and degrading thing for any Englishman,
or any member of the Commonwealth to say.
It was said, in fact, I understand,
by the Conservative candidate in the Smethwick division.
[reporter] That is what the report says.
Yes, where they are, I think,
degrading politics to about the lowest level
I have known in my lifetime.
Griffiths, Peter...
Conservative...
-Sixteen thousand... -[cheering]
Sixteen thousand, six hundred and ninety...
Seven percent swing to the Conservatives in Smethwick.
And that's the context in which my own politics emerged.
[narrator] Conservative Peter Griffiths
won an overwhelming victory,
showing the electoral power of racism in politics.
The government has agreed to make big changes in the race relations bill.
[narrator] Shortly afterwards,
the Labour government introduced a Race Relations Act,
which sought to remove the color bar,
and made the promotion of racial hatred illegal.
It was a first attempt to address the discrimination that was happening
in public places in the UK.
But the Race Relations Act did not prevent discrimination
in housing, education, or at the hands of the police.
[muffled police radio announcements]
[woman] Certain rights in our jobs.
[indistinct] It's due to bloody coloreds, that's why.
[reporter] What's the matter with him?
[Peter Edrich] When I joined the Met Police, I was posted to Harlesden.
That was a working-class area, really, and a lot of incoming West Indians.
When I got there, there was-there was definitely prejudice
because I remember on-on my first day, when I was picked up,
and the police constable was taking us to report,
took us Harlesden.
As we crossed the north circular from when we enter Harlesden,
he said, "You can tell you're in Harlesden.
There's your first spade."
[men] We do ask a great deal of our policemen...
Thank you.
...the men empowered to deprive us of our liberty.
But in the police force,
half of them never managed to pass a single O-level at school.
[Phillip] The police and them weren't bright, you know.
Police was like Teddy Boys, National Front...
who joined the force, and they had a license now
to beat up Black people.
[reporter] The report criticizes, particularly,
the junior ranks of the Metropolitan police, the constables
or sergeants, who, and I quote, "go out nigger-hunting,"
determined, without instructions from their superiors,
to bring in a colored person, at all costs.
[muffled radio speech]
[Edrich] Police officers tended to be prejudiced,
but I never went after a Black person
and, you know, made up a crime he was committing just to arrest him
and I'm not saying it didn't happen, but I didn't do it.
There was certainly plenty of crime going on.
Mostly boys that couldn't get jobs,
or this kind of thing.
They were most likely to be doing something wrong.
Our job was to just, you know, lock 'em up.
[narrator] In December 1964,
American civil rights leader, Martin Luther King,
known for his non-violent philosophy, stopped off in Britain
on his way to accept a Nobel Peace Prize.
He delivered a speech which highlighted the similarities
between British and American racism.
Skin may differ, but affection dwells in Black and white the same.
This reveals that whether they be in the United States,
or whether they be in London, England,
the system is on its deathbed.
[narrator] The following year,
King's militant counterpart, Malcolm X, came to Britain
and visited Smethwick's Black and Asian communities,
where he spoke of the need to fight back
against racial prejudice, using whatever means necessary,
including violent resistance.
Now, your views differs fundamentally from that of Doctor Martin Luther King.
Is it really a choice between non-violence and violence now?
I think it's a choice between intelligence and-and, uh,
the lack of intelligence, and any intelligent human being
is going to protect himself when he's attacked.
I've never been a turn-the-other-cheek person.
I was never the big fan of Martin Luther King's
turn-the-other-cheek and peaceful demonstration,
and so I was attracted to people like Malcolm X.
They made sense to me.
If you want to fight fire, then you must take fire to fight fire.
[narrator] Malcolm X's philosophy of self-defense
was becoming increasingly commonplace
in Hyde Park Speakers' Corner in London.
[Roy Sawh] When I talk about white people,
you have killed more people in two world wars
than people have died from natural diseases.
Are you civilized?
We do not advocate killing of white people,
but if kill we may to defend our rights, we shall kill you.
We used to go, friends and I, to Speakers' Corner, Hyde Park,
where Roy Sawh was speaking up
for the Black population against racism.
Look at the map of Africa. Every island belongs to a white nation.
Every island. But look at Europe.
The whole concept of Black Power really came out of a growing awareness
among many people within the Black communities
who were influenced by things around them.
We don't know how to use it. Let's be a...
One aspect of that is clearly Speakers' Corner,
and my memory of that is Roy Sawh.
You have committed more crimes...
This rhetoric was very dismissive of white people.
He was quite plain about it.
...so when you talk about freedom and you talk about...
[narrator] The Hyde Park speeches
were monitored closely by undercover police officers,
and Roy Sawh was constantly being charged
with incitement to racial hatred.
Please, for taking your notes,
make sure you get the exact things I am saying...
because at the last hearing at the Old Bailey,
the police couldn't even read their own handwriting!
[crowd laughs]
[♪ Nina Simone: "Revolution"]
[narrator] Roy Sawh's provocative speeches
were an attempt to get Black people's grievances heard.
Like many in the Black and Asian communities,
he wanted improvements in housing, equality in work, and fair policing.
In 1967, he formed the group called the Universal Colored People's Association
with Nigerian novelist and playwright, Obi Egbuna.
Well, life's full of every constructive revolutionary movement
in this world.
What kind of ties does your organization have
with the Black Power movement in the United States?
Well, I cannot go into specifics, but all I can say is that
there is an international link.
[narrator] With the UCPA,
Obi Egbuna and Roy Sawh had effectively kickstarted
the British Black Power movement.
But the man credited for doing so by the press
was a Trinidadian immigrant to Britain,
who called himself Michael X.
[reporter] Michael X is 32, and he comes from Trinidad.
He's the leader now of an organization called RAAS.
[narrator] He had started his own group
called the Racial Adjustment Action Society.
[Dhondy] Michael X was actually a fellow called Michael De Fratas.
He was a Trinidadian of Portuguese origin, I think,
who turned up in Britain.
You mustn't be afraid to fight for what you want.
You must not be afraid to fight for what is just.
Brother Malcolm was once asked, that was my first teaching,
Malcolm X.
[Dhondy] And then, when Malcolm X came to Britain,
Michael changed his name to Michael X.
I can't live in this system. I don't like it.
I don't want it. I want to destroy it, everything.
Down to the ground. The lot. Ashes.
The Racial Adjustment Action Society was Michael's baby,
but it didn't--it never--it never achieved no kind of racial adjustment.
Michael was good at selling himself.
[Charlie Phillips] That was taken in Tabernacle.
On the left is Michael X, smoking a cigar.
In the middle is Bobby, a militant friend of Stokely Carmichael.
And Michael, he said, "Take it down to United Press."
So I rushed down in United Press, and I got two pounds, ten shillings.
That's the first photograph I've ever had published.
That photograph was taken of Stokely Carmichael outside the Cue Club.
I met him, and I took the photograph of him.
[narrator] Stokely Carmichael was born in Trinidad
and grew up in America.
He had become a powerful campaigner,
working alongside Martin Luther King in the American Civil Rights Movement.
Black people are not gonna let white people just slap 'em anymore.
[reporter] Then what do you see happening now?
Well, every time they slap us, we're gon' move to break their arms.
[narrator] After his friend was shot
while protesting peacefully in Tennessee,
Stokely Carmichael stopped calling for nonviolence
and started calling for Black Power.
There's a lot of confusion about the phrase, "Black Power".
[reporter] What does it really mean?
The coming together of Black people
to fight for their liberation by any means necessary.
[narrator] Stokely Carmichael was presenting
a new philosophy of Black unity and self-empowerment
that had a profound influence on
the formation of the American Black Panther Party.
I think I became aware of the Black Power movement
when I snuck down to London, '67,
when Stokely Carmichael was speaking.
Isn't it absurd for them to say that "Columbus discovered America"?
When Columbus got there, he found people there.
And what of the Caribbean?
We did not wake up until Sir Walter Raleigh came along
and discovered us.
And all of our history begins when a white man comes along
and says, "Poof, I have discovered you. Come alive, Black man!"
The white man's definitions is what we find ourselves trapped by.
We have come to tell you that if you see your lot and your culture
being thrown with that of England,
then we see you as part of England,
who suppresses and oppresses us.
You will be with England when the lines are drawn.
You had better come on home!
Home!
He was talking to us. He was talking to young Black people.
We've got nappy hair. We've got thick lips.
We're Black, and we're beautiful.
Black Power, of course, you know.
That was just wow. Wow!
We have finally come to tell you, we know we are going to win.
-Thank you. -[cheers and applause]
[♪ James Brown: "Say it Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud"]
James Brown, "Say it Loud - I am Black and I am Proud".
That tune is one of the first earliest rap tunes
because James Brown isn't actually singing on that tune.
He is talking.
[♪ "Say it Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud" continues]
Put your hands like this! Black Power!
Hey! One more time!
Black Power!
-Black Power! -Yeah!
His name has become synonymous with Black racialism,
and, for that, he will not be allowed back into this country,
where the Race Relations Act is designed to condemn racialism of any kind.
[narrator] Stokely Carmichael's visit
had the Labour government so concerned
that Special Branch ordered him to leave the country
and he was banned from re-entering.
Soon afterwards, the Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins,
set up a secret police department
specifically to monitor Black radical groups in Britain.
But the impact of the Black Power message had been felt by many,
particularly Michael X, who took the baton and ran with it.
What do you hope to gain from
the sort of inflammatory speech that you made last night?
I do not make inflammatory speeches.
I simply speak the truth. I speak the truth,
and when I speak the truth,
white people say this is inflammatory statements
because they would like to see Black men
pretend and be Uncle Toms
and aspire solely to go to the Queen's garden parties.
Well, I don't give a damn about the Queen's garden parties.
That's not where I want to go.
[narrator] Michael X's words were calculated
to shake up enduring colonial attitudes around Black subservience.
But when he made a statement,
that called for the killing of any white man
seen to physically abuse a Black woman,
the state decided to prosecute him.
He became the first person
to be sent to prison under the UK's 1965 Race Relations Act.
A law which had been designed to protect Britain's Black and Asian populations
from discrimination.
Watching very closely how the state dealt with Michael X
was Darcus Howe, a legal student,
who had arrived in Britain from Trinidad in 1961.
What struck me about Michael X was,
I used to like to hear Black people say things that were brave and bold.
Even though if it didn't make sense, because we were too quiet.
And almighty Darcus, yes, his photograph came up in the darkroom,
and I was very impressed with it.
The leader, well-educated, as we know,
Darcus has been an incredible person.
He-He never talked down to people.
And he doesn't insult anybody,
And he were determined that, you know, things should change in this country.
[narrator] Darcus was heavily influenced
by his uncle, C.L.R. James,
a renowned Trinidadian writer and intellectual.
His politically charged books inspired a new generation of Black Power activists.
Is there a measure of racial prejudice in the police?
[narrator] When Darcus was invited to speak
on a BBC television program,
which highlighted the numerous cases of police framing Black people
for crimes they had not committed, he seized the opportunity.
The policeman who frames the Black man is doing so
with a confidence that the system is going to give him a conviction,
which reproduces a lack of confidence in the Black man.
[reporter] Why do so few people complain?
Who is going to take up a case,
when you have that whole weight of the system against you?
And-And-And the West Indian, the Black West Indian isn't doing this,
and I don't think one should ask him to do this either.
Darcus was a lawyer by training, you know,
and, of course, he contributed very strongly.
But it's presented out of context.
[narrator] The program caused
a storm of controversy, and on live television,
Darcus confronted the Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan police, Robert Mark.
It's a complete disrespect for the way of life,
historical and present-day of Black people.
[Darcus Howe] Educated in the world of reason,
I was equipped with a certain confidence.
And I knew what was happening in America.
I had been there,
and I wasn't going to come back here and put up with that crap.
A policeman is only racist in that he is part of a racist society.
And you cannot ask the policeman to change his racist clothing,
if you don't change the society, and that is the only solution.
The Black community says, "Stop it, and stop it now."
[reporter] The violent death
of America's negro apostle of nonviolence.
The Reverend Martin Luther King is dead,
killed by an assassin's bullet.
Compounding the tragedy,
there's now rioting in the streets of many American cities.
[narrator] While the voices of Black Power
were causing a stir in the UK,
the progress of the Civil Rights struggle was dealt a devastating blow
when Martin Luther King was assassinated in America.
[♪ Nina Simone: "Why? (The King Of Love Is Dead)"]
It affected me very deeply that Martin Luther King is dead,
but, um, I feel that his name will live on,
and that, um, what he had to do, we'll continue to do it.
In this country, in 15 or 20 years' time,
the Black man will have the whip hand over the white man.
[narrator] Two weeks after King's assassination,
the Conservative MP, Enoch Powell,
in a bid to position himself as party leader,
delivered a speech that put race and immigration
back at the center of the political debate.
We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation...
to be permitted the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependents.
The discrimination and the deprivation, the sense of alarm,
and the resentment lie not with the immigrant population...
[chanting] We don't want to be replaced!
...but with those among whom they have come.
And are still coming.
This is why to enact legislation of the kind before parliament at this moment
is to risk throwing a match onto gunpowder.
What the great British public think is that he is telling the truth
on behalf of his constituents.
A gunpowder-- well, gunpowder to me
means Guy Fawkes Day and blowing up Parliament.
Gunpowder also can mean the assassination of Martin Luther King.
It could do, yes.
[narrator] Enoch Powell was speaking out
against a new expanded 1968 Race Relations Act
that attempted to prevent discrimination in housing and employment.
As a former Health Secretary,
Powell had once championed the recruitment of people
from the Caribbean to come to Britain to work in the NHS.
His re-casting of immigrants as an invading force
now struck fear into the hearts of Black and Asian communities.
It was a watershed because we knew that there was this attitude
in the Tory Party, and he thought to himself
that he would speak about the rivers of blood.
It wasn't at all welcome, but he put it out in the open,
and we could now fight against it openly.
Men like Michael De Freitas.
Exactly what Michael De Freitas has said.
It's really equivalent to what Mr. Enoch Powell said,
but Mr. Michael De Freitas goes in jail.
Now, why?
There must be a reason,
and the only reason that I can see is that one is Black and one is white.
[narrator] The Black and Asian population
of the country was now over a million, and for many of them,
the fickle attitudes of British politicians
could not be allowed to pass without a fight.
Black Power groups started to form all over Britain
in cities such as London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leicester, Cardiff, and Leeds.
Black is a symbol for me of the opposition against oppression.
I had two friends who were both poets,
one of them was called Farrukh Dhondy.
It seemed that they were going to be involved with the Black Panther movement.
The way that I was first introduced to an actual organization of Black Power,
which I wanted to join, was Alexandra Palace,
where there was a large conference
of all the radical organizations of Asians and blacks.
[male activist] And we can never regard them
as revolutionaries...
I went, and a lot of the speakers were bullshit rhetoric,
but Althea Jones.
[Althea] To us, Black people...
She spoke very eloquently,
and she said she was from the Black Panther movement.
[narrator] Althea Jones LeCointe
came to England from Trinidad to study biochemistry
at University College, London.
She was a fierce opponent of state-sponsored racism
in Britain's former colonies,
and soon became leader of the Black Panther movement.
The camera is there to protect and to help and to show.
This is Althea.
Althea is one of the most striking, strong, determined young women.
Despite a protest from that section of the British population,
your government is prepared to continue supporting the racism and repression
that the South African regime represents.
Our brothers and sisters in the townships in South Africa,
our brothers and sisters who are fighting right now
in Zimbabwe and taking these words...
I became a member of the Black Panther movement as a consequence
of hearing Althea LeCointe Jones,
the leader of the Black Panthers in Brixton, speak.
She was bright, she was articulate,
and I decided I wanted to go to meetings,
to-to find out more about this Black Panther movement.
[Althea] This is what the system's getting at.
Our generation can't tolerate schools
that only prepare us to do the menial tasks.
[Jean Ambrose] It was in Southeast London.
The organization was called Black Unity and Freedom Party.
There were predominantly young men,
and, at the meeting, we had a speaker.
It was like an awakening.
And I just went back, all full of excitement
about what I had heard and seen,
and invited my school friends to come with me the following week.
There were lots of us. It was a young movement.
A young movement of young men and women.
There were the Fasimbas.
There was the Black Liberation Front, Black Panthers.
I came to join the Black Unity and Freedom Party
because I was ready to join a movement.
[male speaker] We need more Black symbols,
Black Tories...
March 1970, I joined the Black Power organization,
the Fasimbas.
I walked into the room, and I saw a sea of Black faces.
The first time that I had experienced that.
I was overwhelmed.
The best armor we have against the prejudice...
Listened to the speaker speak,
said we had been exploited for centuries.
Now time for us to unite.
He said, "Black Power, Black Power, Black Power."
[cheering and applause]
I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
I found something I could belong to, something I believe in.
It was Black people standing up for the first time,
in a way that was extremely militant.
It wasn't begging.
It wasn't trying to show we were equal.
It was saying, "We know we're equal,
and we're not putting up with it."
That's the attraction for all of us.
We were all part of a huge movement of belief.
I mean, Black Unity and Freedom Party people knew people
in Black Liberation Front.
We knew people in the Panthers. We all knew each other.
My wife was a member of the Black Panther movement.
Um, I was BLF, she was Black Panther,
so we came together, we got married,
so there was that kind of synergy.
We were just part of a bigger Black movement
and wanted to, you know, do what we had to do.
Demonstrate. Demand.
[protesting and chanting]
[narrator] This feeling of solidarity
and increasing membership saw Black Power groups
staging large demonstrations against police harassment.
What are we here for? What do we want?
I got involved with the Black Liberation Front
because it was a doer organization.
The main focus of the Black Power movement
of that era was education and social programs.
That's what we were about.
There was nothing devious about what we were doing.
[narrator] With immigrant communities
feeling stigmatized by politicians and the press,
these activists were standing up for their rights
in housing, education, and policing.
Rhodan Gordon, a community activist, originally from Grenada,
set up a Black citizens advice center in the heart of Notting Hill.
It was called the Black Peoples' Information Centre,
and Black self-empowerment was the organization's objective.
We started off with the Back-Ah-Yard restaurant.
It was an advice and action center
around the issues of housing, education and legal services,
and it was fundamentally a Black Power institution.
I felt that there was a bigger picture here.
♪ Young, gifted and black ♪
Times were changing.
Marcia was singing, "Young, gifted, and Black."
♪ To be young, gifted, and Black ♪
♪ Open your heart to what I mean ♪
It was just a different time. It-It felt good.
It felt like you could express yourself.
And I had an afro. The style of the day was afro.
I wore all the-the African gowns.
And I remember I went into school once
and asked the teacher why we couldn't have Black history.
[♪ Carl Douglas: "Kung Fu Fighting"]
Wednesday, we used to have an advanced karate class.
Martial arts were very important to us because it gave you confidence.
Enormous amount of confidence.
Black power for us men.
We weren't going to take any rubbish.
We weren't anymore going to be victims.
I felt great.
[♪ Niney the Observer: "Blood And Fire"]
The musical soundtrack to the Black Power movement
was Jamaica reggae tunes, you know.
Tunes like "Blood and Fire" by Niney,
which was kinda apocalyptic.
[♪ "Blood and Fire" continues]
Talked about Black redemption.
I was, like many youth of my generation,
swept along by the wave of new consciousness,
and all that has to be seen in the context of the anti-apartheid struggle,
the struggle for independence in African territories.
[♪ "Blood and Fire" continues]
We all saw American athletes give the Black Power salute
in Mexico, 1968.
♪ Let it burn, let it burn ♪
That had a major impact on my life.
Some could hear the screams worldwide.
Black people around the world reacted to that.
[narrator] This spirit of revolution,
combined with the possibility of real cultural change,
was inspiring people like Linton Kwesi Johnson.
The Black Panther Movement had a profound effect on me
and helped me to look at myself in time and space, if you like.
It was there for the first time I discovered Black literature.
It was a-a revelation because as a schoolboy,
I wasn't even aware that Black people wrote books.
One of the books was a book called The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois,
and it was that book that stirred something within me,
that got me writing poetry, and there were also records.
But one record, in particular, by The Last Poets.
African American poetry, they were talking about revolution,
you know, they were just telling it like it is.
[♪ The Last Poets: "When the Revolution Comes"]
And I thought to myself,
well, this is the kind of poetry I want to write,
but from a Caribbean perspective, or roots.
[narrator] But as a new generation
of young Black people were exploring their identity in Britain,
relations with the police were deteriorating.
In those days, it was clear to the Black youth of my generation
that the Metropolitan Police force had declared war
against the youth of my generation.
The canteen culture, the racist culture,
is so ingrained in the police.
The police was the enemy.
[Linton Kwesi Johnson on recording]
Look out! Look out! Look out!
Wi feel bad
Look sad
Smoke weedan
And if yu eye sharp
Read the violence inna wi
We goin' smash this guy with the bad, bad blood
Look out! Look out! Look out!
[Moss] There's an old saying that
the community gets the policing it deserves.
When I was a sergeant, I was at Brixton,
and what was surprising to me
was the almost, like, boisterous hostility
you faced as a police officer on the street.
[commotion and honking]
If you're called to an incident,
you have to exert your authority, you have to take charge,
and sometimes, in Brixton, this wasn't possible.
And so, not believing that I would do a professional job,
you know, who had the prejudice?
We had that spirit, that tradition of defiance
from our experiences, going about our daily lives,
the racial profiling, harassment, and treatment.
That war that the police had declared against us
manifested itself in all kinds of ways.
Being arrested for sus, attempting to steal from persons unknown.
The raids on our--on our parties.
[♪ Gregory Isaacs: "Black Liberation Struggle"]
A war of attrition against sound systems,
that provided the nexus for our culture of resistance
through reggae music and so on.
[♪ "Black Liberation Struggle" continues]
[Moss] One of the conflict points, if you like,
was sort of noisy parties on a Saturday night.
A house full of two or three hundred Black people.
[Phillips] There wasn't any music entertainment to suit our tastes,
and half the time, we weren't welcome,
so we created these house parties.
The West Indians love to have parties.
Big parties, small parties,
and the person holding the party would buy all the stuff,
and then people who came to the party would pay,
and that is technically illegal.
I mean, it's a nothing-crime, but it was technically illegal.
[Moss] The police have to uphold the law,
and white people didn't have noisy parties in Brixton.
If it had been a white people's party,
they wouldn't have been raiding it.
Oh, yeah, it was racism.
Mostly there was just a little squad that did it,
but for some reason,
this one night, they were going to raid about six houses,
and they wanted volunteers,
so we volunteered.
It was exciting. Plainclothes, you know. Wow.
Went into this house, and there was loads of West Indians there
having a big party,
and I remember one of the police officers,
they bashed down the living room door.
And, I mean, I said, "Why'd you do that?"
It was an absolute melee,
and they were arresting people,
and a police officer got hit over the head.
And we ended up dragging about half a dozen of these West Indians
back to the station in the van.
And then after that,
the one man they thought had-had-had smashed a beer can
over the police officer's head, they took him into a cell.
And this one police officer from Kilburn,
a really big fella, just beat him up.
And I just remember standing there, watching.
He was bleeding, and-and he was just...
and he was pleading,
and he was just saying, "No, stop it."
I-I-I don't remember, he was just, he was just asking them to stop it
and asking God to help him.
That's all I remember, and-and-and I thought,
"I-I didn't join the police to beat people up."
[sighs]
And I was just very upset about it, and I was kind of ashamed I was there.
But I didn't do anything. I didn't say anything.
I didn't have the courage to do that.
I mean, in a perfect world, I would have stepped in
and said, "Stop this right now, otherwise, I will report everybody."
But I was a young police officer on probation.
It-It never even occurred to me to do that.
I just-- I didn't know what to do. I just didn't know what to do.
[narrator] With brutal treatment
at the hands of the police
a constant source of outrage,
the Black Power movement needed strong leadership.
And as far as the press were concerned,
Michael X was the movement's de facto leader.
Now released from prison,
Michael X's talent for self-promotion had garnered him financial support
from celebrities such as John Lennon and Yoko Ono,
who auctioned off their hair
to raise funds in the name of Black Power.
[reporter] I don't want to sound unkind,
but don't you think that, um,
this may have been pursued as just another "Lennon stunt"?
Well, we tried to keep it quiet.
-It'd be nice if it did. -I don't care. It came useful for this.
[narrator] But Michael X's past
revealed another side to him.
[Dhondy] Michael X, he was quite charismatic,
but he was basically a hustler.
[Desmond Gittens] Michael X, in his early times, was a strong-arm man
for a landlord that rented, to poor people, bad housing.
Why will you not take the rent from this man here?
I don't own the property.
But your name is on the rent book.
[narrator] Michael X set up a new group
called the Black Eagles,
and with it, a radical commune in North London,
which he called the Black House.
And he had recruited one of the most powerful voices in the movement.
A group of friends were returning with me from Speakers' Corner,
and, as we were going along, two Black guys started selling
their newspapers called The Black Eagle.
So, my friend Shahid bought a paper, and this guy asked me,
"Would you like to buy a paper?"
I said, "I'll share his."
This guy said, "Will you share his prison sentence?"
And that was Darcus Howe. A loose cannon.
At the time, Darcus was looking for a place to-to settle,
and Michael X, the so-called leader of the Black Eagles,
he depended on Darcus, who was more political.
He depended on him to give him a kudos.
He wasn't an intellectual.
He didn't know much about Black Power.
He would take things, and then use it.
[Darcus Howe] The press
made him the militant activist he was,
and he had a remarkable capacity to raise money
from the likes of John Lennon and Sammy Davis.
Michael never organized any large numbers of people
in pursuit of any right, civil or human.
Michael was a hippy with a commune always,
and I was the Prime Minister of his commune at one time.
Michael, he was still involved in criminal activity,
and it bled into the Black Eagles and the Black House.
[reporter] Do you think that the Black House
could have succeeded?
Yes, it could.
[reporter] Why don't you think it did succeed?
Because Michael was putting every single cent he could get
in his own pocket.
He didn't care about Black people.
[narrator] Faced with allegations
of violence and corruption,
the Black Eagles fell apart,
and the Black House was burned down in mysterious circumstances.
Facing arrest for extortion, Michael X fled to Trinidad.
Darcus Howe remained in West London,
where the British Black Power movement was about to face its biggest challenge.
Darcus was wise enough to kind of leave,
and ended up working with Frank on the Mangrove.
[muffled commotion]
[narrator] Frank Crichlow's Mangrove Restaurant
was located in the heart of Notting Hill.
The Caribbean community had put down roots here
since the turmoil of the 1958 race riots,
and now celebrated the rapidly-growing Notting Hill Carnival,
which showcased the pride of Caribbean culture.
Frank Crichlow was a local restaurateur,
originally from Trinidad,
who had set up the Mangrove to serve Caribbean food.
He had no idea that his new business venture
was about to become the focal point of the British Black Power struggle.
The Mangrove quickly proved its appeal,
attracting a diverse range of customers, including celebrities
like Sammy Davis Junior, Bob Marley, Nina Simone, and Vanessa Redgrave,
who were keen to be a part of the new Caribbean scene.
And it became an unofficial community center,
with outspoken Black power activist Darcus Howe working behind the bar.
You have a society with a million and a half Black people
on the sidelines.
That is what you have. Everything goes on.
Parliament goes on, the economy goes on,
everything goes on, and all they need Black people for
is to produce whenever they want them to produce.
Apart from that, you stand on the sidelines,
rotting, dying, festering.
The Black youths today had been through so much police harassment,
being hounded by police officers.
Police is bad news.
Police in the Black community are bad news.
[Phillip] The police are watching all of us!
Every night I leave the Ladbroke Grove, I had a search.
If you come off All Saints Road, you are guaranteed to get a search.
[narrator] All Saints Road,
where the Mangrove restaurant was situated,
was considered a high-crime area by the police.
[Moss] The briefings we had
for the Notting Hill Situation
was that they had their fair share of rising drug crime...
rising street robberies, and the center of activity
was all around All Saints Road and the Mangrove Club,
so the Mangrove club was raided on numerous occasions.
[narrator] Local people were convinced
that the Mangrove was being unfairly targeted by police officers.
When Frank opened the restaurant, the police approach him.
This policeman, everybody knows him, Pulley,
he don't forget a face, and he know everybody,
and then he had a way,
he would talk with these accents he would put on.
"What's happening? Open up na."
And talk like he was a Jamaican.
It was a racist thing that they can take liberty with us,
but Frank wasn't having it.
Pulley was a notorious police constable from Notting Hill Gate Police Station.
He was absolutely racist,
because all he did was harass Black youngsters.
He was very well-known for being that kind of a policeman.
[reporter] "Hands off the Mangrove," says the slogan.
A favorite haunt of West Indians, and which has been subject to
frequent visits by the police.
No charges have ever been brought.
[Darcus Howe] I was working at the till,
and the police,
they said that there was marijuana being sold there.
There was none!
There were three raids on the restaurant, ostensibly for drugs.
Nothing was found!
[Darcus Howe] They want it closed down.
So they started raiding the place.
Because there was nobody
to take on the police at that time.
[narrator] The constant raids on the Mangrove
meant that Frank's customers started to stay away.
It was complete harassment
on this restaurant.
Complete harassment on a Black business.
And they end up by destroying it.
Destroying it because they would raid on a Friday night,
which is the busiest night,
and people got fed up and stopped coming.
Frank used to walk around the block,
just looking to see if the police van or truck.
It caused a kind of battle thing.
[Darcus Howe] I was sitting downstairs of the Mangrove.
Frank was talking to a member of parliament
about how the police were raiding the restaurant.
So I sat listening to this, and a young terror I was.
After they left, I said, "Frank, let's have a demonstration,
and we're going to march to every police station in the area."
You know, I want to fight, I want to fight.
I need to fight to express something.
[reporter] Mm-hmm.
I need to argue. I need to scream!
That is the situation that British society has placed me in.
[narrator] With feelings of anger
rising within the community,
the Black Panther Movement, led by Althea Jones LeCointe,
stepped in to help organize a peaceful protest.
I believe the Mangrove, what they seek to do
is not to close down a restaurant,
but to close down what they see as an area where Black people
can collectively put up some kind of resistance
to day-to-day harassment by the police.
[narrator] But some locals doubted
whether the protest would remain peaceful.
Demonstration, I agree with it, but me and Frank fell out over it
because I went in there, and I see them writing up these placards.
"The Pigs," "Police Harassment," and then I see them stapling it
onto some flimsy piece of wood, so I said to Frank, I said,
"Frank, what you doing?"
I said, "Frank, you need some two by two to defend we-self."
He went mad, he said, "Listen, every time you come here,
you're preaching violence."
I was into violence
because I used to feel so hurt inside
when I see liberties taken with people.
[distant clamoring, indistinct speech]
[narrator] On Sunday 9th of August 1970,
a crowd of over a hundred people gathered outside the Mangrove Restaurant
to show their support.
Darcus Howe stood on the roof of a car to address the crowd.
[Darcus Howe on recording] It has been for some time now
that Black people have been caught up
in complaining to police about police, yeah,
complaining to magistrate about magistrate.
[laughter]
Complaining to politicians about politicians.
[♪ B.B. Seaton: "I Want Justice"]
[narrator] The protestors, now numbering about 150,
set off with the intention of peacefully marching past
several police stations in the area.
[♪ "I Want Justice" continues]
Up to that time, blacks hadn't moved to that kind of militancy before...
but the police, in their relations with blacks every day,
had prepared blacks to revolt,
and we called the demonstration to express politically
what was at large socially.
[narrator] By the time the demonstrators
reached Notting Hill Police Station,
there were over 500 plainclothes and uniformed police officers
surrounding the marches.
With the protestors vastly outnumbered by police,
resentment on both sides was at fever pitch.
[Darcus Howe] What I want activists to do,
what this is going to continue to be
is a concerted, determined attempt
to prevent any infringement on our rights.
[chanting] Hands off Black people!
We went to Notting Hill Police Station,
by which time
it had accumulated in the minds of the policemen
who were on that demonstration that we had taken that issue too far.
They believed, what are these cheeky West Indians doing on the street,
challenging our authority with such confidence?
[crowd chanting] Hands off Black people!
On our way to Harrow Road Police Station,
there was trouble.
[Phillip] We see a bus with police.
Police and dem jump on the bus,
fighting start.
[♪ Peter Tosh: "Them A Fi Get A Beaten"]
[narrator] The police strategy at the demonstration
raised concerns amongst activists.
[male activist] Immigration bill!
[narrator] A new conservative government
was pushing a harsher immigration policy
through Parliament,
and the fear was that the sensational news
about riots in Notting Hill will be used to justify it.
I believe that's why that attack was launched,
and why subsequent to that attacks by the police are being launched.
This thing was blown out of all proportion,
was that the government had certain things in mind
for Black people in relation to the population as a whole.
Where have you heard anywhere of a demonstration
in a community of about 150 people hitting the Manchester Guardian,
The Yorkshire Post.
That thing is projected to the population for a particular reason.
They wanted to justify the Immigration Bill.
They wanted to justify saying that Black people
had to register with the police,
that Black people had to ask permission to have certain jobs,
and to move from place to place.
They wanted to justify these kinds of measures.
[Darcus Howe] The police, Special Branch, Scotland Yard,
and Reginald Maulding, the Home Secretary,
and political people, all of them, met
and decided to put us in jail.
I thought this is a hell of a thing,
this is serious trouble.
[narrator] For the nine people arrested
following the Mangrove Demonstration,
it seemed like the whole machinery of the state
was now set against them
and the idea of Black Power in Britain was being unfairly demonized.
[reporter] The Mangrove Nine,
two women, seven men,
31 charges.
[Gittens] Some of the more vocal people
like Rhodan, Darcus, Frank,
Altheia, Barbara Beese.
They were targeted.
That was a method of actually decapitating
the Black Power leadership,
the effective ones.
[narrator] The trial of the Mangrove Nine
began in October 1971 at the Old Bailey.
Representing one of the nine defendants was Ian MacDonald,
a young barrister, who was to become a pioneer
of anti-racist legal practice in Britain.
[Ian MacDonald] The Mangrove Nine came in '71,
and it was really an attempt to put on trial the leadership
of the Black Panther Movement,
which was one of the largest, um, mass movements of Black youth
that there has ever been in this country.
They were charged with affray,
they were charged with assault on police,
and then they were charged with riot at the last minute.
[narrator] Now facing up to five years in prison,
Darcus Howe demanded an all-Black jury, citing the Magna Carta,
a medieval charter that asserted the right of citizens to be judged
without prejudice by a jury of their peers.
[MacDonald] It was really a kind of statement
that they were making,
that they weren't going to be forced by
any kind of racist part of the court.
The structure of the court is such that, uh,
there is a tendency for that jury to identify, uh, with the judge.
Ian Macdonald, he wasn't saying what the other lawyers were saying,
and they knew that.
He attacked the whole structure of the court,
He tell the jury how the judge keep them under control.
He tell the jury how the judge keep us under control.
He tell the jury how the judge sit on high,
everybody have to bow to him.
He don't have to bow to nobody, and he exposed that whole structure,
and how it meant to psychologically terrorize ordinary people.
[narrator] Defying legal convention,
Darcus and Altheia decide to represent themselves in court
so they could spell out their case to the jury,
that the police were lying,
and they had been motivated by racism.
[Altheia] Since we've come here,
we have suffered a long chain of abuses by the police,
with the active knowledge and support of the British state.
[Darcus Howe] This case is about a real situation
involving people who are prepared to come to say what that situation is.
[narrator] Darcus wanted to convey
this real situation to white working-class members of the jury,
who he believed they were more likely than their middle-class counterparts
to have experienced everyday police injustice.
[Darcus Howe] At the end of the day,
I knew there were white people I could convince.
Ordinary whites, working whites, that I could speak to
about what their police was doing to me, and win.
I remember attending demonstrations at the Mangrove Nine trial.
Darcus, you know, he had style, and he had flair.
[Darcus Howe] I am interested in the truth.
You come from Brixton, you are unemployed,
you steal something, not a single lawyer in this country
is going to talk about your unemployment,
is going to talk about the housing condition,
is going to talk about the pressures under which you live.
And that is central to your case,
and central to the case of every Black person in this country.
[Dhondy] Darcus bought his lawyer's skills to bear
about the cross-examination which he gave the police.
Darcus was extremely flamboyant.
He would use quotations from Shakespeare in defending himself.
You know, "The time is out of joint, O cursed spite,
that nine West Indians were born to put it right."
[♪ Derrick Morgan: "Conquering Ruler"]
The Mangrove trial generated a lot of publicity
and Darcus and Altheia used it as a platform
to publicize the discrimination that we felt.
I think this is why more and more people should defend themselves.
However inadequately, some of the truth will get through.
[♪ "Conquering Ruler" continues]
[reporter] Radford Darcus Howe, not guilty.
Frank Crichlow, not guilty.
Not guilty.
[narrator] All of the Mangrove Nine
were found not guilty of riot and were spared prison.
The police had been humiliated in court.
Crucially, the presiding judge said in his summary
that he had found evidence of racial hatred on both sides.
It was the first official acknowledgment from anybody in the British state
that there was racism in the police force.
[MacDonald] It was a watershed trial
because it was the beginning
of a realization that the police didn't behave like gentlemen,
and all the rest of it, by the establishment in this country.
That was a historic victory.
It was a sense of what Black Power was all about.
Black Power really meant
the only way you are going to effectively challenge racism
was to organize yourselves and fight back.
[narrator] The Mangrove victory
created a sense of possibility as other Black activists
were making progress in their struggle.
[Leila Hassan Howe] You know, we were young radicals.
We were going to change the world.
We'd seen the big protests against the Vietnam war,
which was revolutionary.
We'd seen the women's liberation movement come to the fore,
and that was revolutionary, so, for us,
yeah, we were about revolution.
[♪ Bob Marley & The Wailers: "Coming In From The Cold"]
[narrator] In South London,
Black Panther member Olive Morris
worked alongside other notable Black and Asian women
to create a pioneering feminist movement
for women of color.
[♪ "Coming In From The Cold" continues]
Olive Morris was the most fearless Black woman I have ever met.
And we created the first Brixton Black women's group.
[narrator] Olive also led the Black community's
fightback against poor housing conditions
through her involvement with the Squatting Movement.
She was a woman with a lot of guts,
and she saw squatting as a political movement.
[narrator] Darcus Howe found a new platform,
editing in a magazine with the Race Today Collective.
He was joined there by poet and activist Linton Kwesi Johnson.
The Black Parents Movement challenged racism within the education system
by creating supplementary schools to improve teaching for their children.
Being Black, being confident,
being assured of who you are and what you believe in,
that's what the Black Power movement did.
[narrator] Much of the energy of the movement
was devoted to forcing the state to acknowledge equal rights.
But there was a growing backlash for those involved.
The police continued to raid the Mangrove
and harass its owner, Frank Crichlow.
[Crichlow] I think I suffered very badly
for what has happened.
I have been arrested on nearly every year in the '70s.
I was on bail--you can easily say I was on bail for ten years.
One case after the other.
Don't ask me what kept me going.
Um, I think that I was standing up for my rights,
and that's where I got my strength from.
[reporter] Police took two alleged Panthers
with them as hostages and as shields.
[narrator] The early '70s saw governments
on both sides of the Atlantic cracking down on Black Power.
They saw these groups as a hotbed of criminality
and potential terrorism.
[rapid gunfire]
In America, the Black Panthers were ruthlessly eliminated
by the FBI and the police.
[reporter] Yet as Panther raids go these days,
it was unique in that no one,
policeman or Panther, got killed.
[narrator] The UK government continued to spy
on Black Power groups,
concerned that some might be planning acts of violent insurrection.
In their sights was a North London group
called the Black Liberation Front,
who had established close links with the American Black Panthers.
[Abbas] We reproduced an article in Grassroots, our newspaper,
which was from the Black Panther newspaper in the United States.
And in it was an article about how to put together a bomb.
Now you've got to remember, the Panther newspaper
was freely available not only in America, but also in the UK.
[narrator] Publishing bomb-making instructions
was the all the state needed to prosecute
one of the Black Liberation Front's leaders,
known as Tony Sonares.
[Ansel Wong] Even though the publication is a collective effort,
Tony was arrested for incitement to, um, racial hatred and to murder
and was found guilty.
[Abbas] It was a mistake,
and it was a mistake not done by Tony.
He had nothing to do with that article appearing.
Tony took the fall because the police insisted he was in charge
of the newspaper at that moment in time.
[narrator] Despite the bomb article being a reprint
from a publication already in circulation in the UK,
Tony would be held in prison for several months for this offense.
We were then put under surveillance by Special Branch.
[Abbas] In the early days of phone tapping,
you could hear the phone being tapped,
and I have had conversations I have had on the phone read back to me.
[Abbas] In every Black organization,
there's no doubt,
there were people who were working for the security services.
[narrator] As the Black Liberation Front struggled
to survive the imprisonment of one of its leaders,
it rallied support from other Black Power groups.
Winston Trew was a member of the Fasimbas,
a youth group in the Black Power movement
which encouraged community work, education, and self-defense.
On the morning of 16th of March 1972,
I had gone to sign on, as normal, at Peckham Labor Exchange.
In the evening, we had a meeting to go and see the Black Liberation Front.
We had left the meeting at about 10:15, took the train from Manor House,
changed at Leicester Square,
got the northern line to Oval underground station.
The bottom of the escalator was very, very crowded, so we decided to walk up.
Halfway up the escalator, there were two men in front of us,
wouldn't let us pass.
When we got to the top, two men suddenly turned round and said,
"Get over there! Get over there!"
"What do you want?"
"We are police." I said, "So? Where's your ID?"
[narrator] Winston and his three Fasimba colleagues
were arrested for allegedly stealing handbags
and assaulting police officers.
[Trew] The detective in charge of our arrest
was called Detective Sergeant Derek Ridgewell.
After we were arrested and taken in the police station,
I said to them, "We've got a right to a phone call."
He ran over to me, looked at my face,
and said to me, "You blacks got no bloody rights."
[narrator] Winston was facing the very thing
he and other Black Power groups had campaigned against,
being fitted up by corrupt police officers.
The charge had said there's a head-on collision of evidence.
Either defendants are lying, or the police are lying.
Now what jury is going to say that the police are lying?
When they announced the guilty verdict,
I was in a state of shock.
I couldn't believe it, but I had to believe it.
I woke up the following morning in wormwood scrubs, 9th of November.
The 9th of November was the birthday of my oldest son.
I felt like crap.
[narrator] Building on the example
of the Mangrove Nine,
Winston and his friends quickly became known as the Oval Four
and captured media attention.
[reporter] Back at the Oval station,
Ridgewell had arrested a group of Black youths,
the group that became known as the Oval Four.
[narrator] When a BBC journalist
started investigating Winston's case,
it was revealed that Detective Sergeant Derek Ridgwell's testimony
was directly contradicted by eyewitnesses.
They claim that after getting off a train at the Oval,
three of the youths jostled an elderly passenger,
while Trew ran his hand over the man's pocket.
Ridgewell claimed that he saw Trew put his hand into the pocket
of another elderly passenger,
but the police didn't produce either victim,
and the only witnesses were the anti-mugging squad themselves.
But Mrs. O'Connor, the woman who intervened
and tried to break up the fight, says otherwise.
He definitely hadn't got a handbag at that stage when I saw him.
[narrator] The media account of Winston's case
helped him to appeal and his sentence was reduced.
But the judge did not overturn the conviction,
leaving Winston with a criminal record.
It later emerged that Derek Ridgewell was a corrupt police officer
whose tactic was to arrest Black men for crimes they had not committed.
On this occasion, Ridgewell's actions
had helped to destroy a Black Power organization.
So I came out of prison, July 1973.
People were so shocked by what happened to the four of us,
the Fasimbas closed, they disbanded.
I lost confidence in myself. I became turned inwards.
It was hell.
[narrator] The British press had for a long time,
used Michael X's activities to tarnish the image of Black Power.
Despite his absence from the UK, he was still reported on
as if he were the movement's overall leader.
But Michael X had been arrested 4,000 miles away
after two bodies were found buried in shallow graves
on his commune in Trinidad.
All he was after, Michael X,
was taking money from people.
He was slightly mad,
and he murdered poor Gail Benson,
a woman who had gone following his charisma.
[reporter] As Michael X is taken into custody,
the search goes on for the sort of clues that might help unravel
this murder mystery at his burnt-out home at Arriva,
16 miles from the capital.
In the burnt-out shell of Malik's house,
there is a great deal of Black Power literature,
but there is a strong feeling here
that Malik was using his connections with the Black Power movement
as a cover for other activities.
The one hard fact Malik will have to explain
is how two bodies brutally murdered came to be buried in his garden.
[Dhondy] Michael X made the biggest noise of all
and had the least effect on
any reform or change or progress
in the lives of Black people in Britain.
[reporter] His lawyer says
the only money he's had towards the defense case
has come from John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who are friends of Michael X.
[narrator] But this time,
Michael X's celebrity friends couldn't help him.
He was found guilty of murder by Trinidadian court and sentenced to death.
On the 16th of May, 1975, he was hanged in Trinidad for murder.
The fall of Michael X showed how vulnerable
the Black Power cause was to being hijacked
and the fine line between revolutionary ideas and criminal deeds.
I think one of the issues for the Black Power movement
was that you were really an open church to any and everybody,
and there are groups of people within the BLF
who did certain things that were very much on the fringes of criminality,
on the edge of subversion and terrorism.
[reporter] The siege started
just before two this morning
when police surrounded the restaurant.
Take everything out of your pockets, and put it on the counter! Move!
[narrator] On the 28th of September, 1975,
three armed men claiming to be from the Black Liberation Front
entered a restaurant in Knightsbridge and demanded money.
When police quickly arrived on the scene,
the gunmen took six members of staff hostage,
and a standoff began that would become known
as the Spaghetti House Siege.
The ensuing events would be turned into an iconic film by director Horace Ove.
It was a total surprise.
It is not part and parcel of, or-or action that we wanted to endorse.
We now can confirm that there are, in fact, three gunmen.
[narrator] The three gunmen were identified as
Wesley Dick, Anthony Munroe, and Frank Davis.
They were all regular attendees at Black Power meetings.
All three claimed to be members,
but there was a doubtful issue about who is a member of the BLF
because we didn't have membership.
Nobody paid any money to become a member.
[Abbas] I knew one, but he wasn't a member.
He was an interested young person.
[reporter] The scene outside
the Spaghetti House restaurant
is taking on something of an air of permanence.
As the traffic flows past just a few feet away,
the police have erected a scaffold and tarpaulin canopy
that completely hides the building from public gaze.
My instinct was, this is criminal activity.
My instinct was, "You can't--you can't do this. Surrender."
On the other side, I was getting political pressures
to say these are freedom fighters.
These are people taking up the struggle.
You can't ask them to surrender.
[narrator] The siege rolled on for five days
with crowds gathering outside to watch.
Inside the restaurant,
the three gunmen, led by 24-year-old Wesley Dick,
were making politically-motivated demands...
but police commissioner Robert Mark was quick to point out the problem.
I have, in fact, asked for the release of, uh, two prisoners,
who have completed their sentences.
[reporter] These people are not in prison, is that correct?
[overlapping commotion]
[reporter #2] But you can see, as was said earlier--
But it is--but it is right to say that that is only one of their demands,
and their demands are very confusing.
Because the brothers were asking for someone from the BLF
to go down, to talk to them,
so that their demands could be made in public,
Ansel and Tony, in their wisdom, decided to send me,
and what they sent me to was the strangest situation
I have ever been in in my life.
You couldn't even tell it was a restaurant
because the police vans and cars and everything
blocked off the whole of Knightsbridge,
and I was taken in, downstairs to a basement...
surrounded by policemen,
and I was shouting up to a hole in the wall.
They are asking me to ask you to give yourselves up...
which is the only way they'd let us speak to them.
We couldn't get out what they wanted to say.
The police confiscated it immediately,
so they handed, um, a-a written statement out,
but I got to view it for 30 seconds.
[reporter] It's obvious from the careful surveying
of the whole building
that's been going on that the police are considering
and drawing up plans to cope with all possibilities.
I have never understood Spaghetti House.
Everybody in the BLF thought it was a criminal act gone wrong.
[reporter] Just before four o'clock this morning,
ambulances began arriving at Spaghetti House Restaurant.
Minutes later, the six exhausted but unhurt Italian hostages were led out.
Shortly afterwards, handcuffed to detectives,
came two of the captors, who'd surrendered peacefully.
Seconds later, the third gunman shot himself.
[Dhondy] He didn't kill himself.
He was taken to hospital,
straightened out, tried, and jailed.
[Wong] Consequences of that siege, for me,
it really knocked me back, in terms of my own understanding,
belief and commitment to the BLF.
Something that I could not support.
[narrator] The confusion over,
the Spaghetti House Siege
proved to be a turning point,
exposing the messy realties of revolutionary politics.
The radical energy of the British Black Power movement
appeared to be waning.
[Leila Hassan Howe] By then,
the Black Power movement was in decline in Britain.
Definitely, we were a hodgepodge of different ideologies,
and of course, the government did respond to the change in Black Power
because they co-opted many of the Black Power people.
Money was being poured into the Black community for projects
to try and defuse the demands that were being made.
So, if your demand was for decent housing for young Black men,
they would give you money for a hostel.
So the demand for decent housing was defused
'cause they didn't get decent housing.
They got a hostel.
But the hostel was run by a Black person.
[Gutzmore] Nothing in the nature of social movements
exists forever.
If you have hundreds of Black young people,
militant, eager, wanting to do something,
what do you actually get them to do?
So, they march, they attend meetings,
and then you run out of things to do.
The achievement of the movement was that it represented
a population that was not prepared to put up with what British society
had defined it should do.
I think Black Power said, "We're not going back home.
Britain belongs to us. We're here to stay,
and we're going to fight for our rights, here in this country."
That's what Black Power did.
[narrator] Black Power had moved on,
and so had the country.
The Notting Hill Carnival,
which began as a response to racism of the 1950s,
was now a global attraction with a quarter of a million people attending.
A new Race Relations Act in 1976 made it illegal to discriminate
in housing or in education,
two of the key concerns that motivated Black Power.
But the police remained legally exempt from anti-racist legislation,
and at the Carnival in 1976,
they now faced a new generation of young people
who had grown up with the Black Power message
and would not back down in the face of police brutality.
[Gutzmore] The Notting Hill 1976 Carnival,
the Metropolitan Police tried, by force,
to police the carnival into submission.
How many policemen are you using this year?
Approximately about fourteen hundred.
And last year, it said that there were only sixty.
[narrator] As tensions around the carnival mounted,
Darcus Howe warned of the risk of using the same policing tactics
deployed at the Mangrove protest.
If there is a risk on carnival day,
then it's going to be an explosion of the kind
that hasn't been seen in this country before.
I say that with no joy.
[narrator] And he was right.
Heavy-handed policing resulted in a riot
that was the biggest seen on British soil
since the second world war.
It signaled a new era of confrontation with the police,
where organized protest gave way
to spontaneous outbursts of anger and rioting.
For many Black people, these were known as uprisings.
[Abbas] People talk about the United States in terms of racism,
as though it was so much better here.
You've got to remember,
who were the pilgrims to America?
They were Brits.
OK? All over Africa,
who was in the forefront, besides the Portuguese, of slavery?
It was the British.
[glass shattering]
[narrator] Fifty years after the Mangrove protests,
relations between the police and Black people remain problematic.
The police are no different towards young Black men
than they were to me when I was a teenager.
They don't beat you up in the police station anymore
because all things are recorded.
But they still tell lies.
They'll still verbally deny your rights.
What kind of country do we live in?
[chanting "Black Lives Matter"]
I have been in the Black Power movement
and proud to have been in it.
I am very conscious of the color of my skin
because I won't deny the color of my skin.
I'm 70 years of age, and I was born in Britain.
And to this day, people ask me where I come from.
To this day!
This is a v-- a very strange country.
[Trew] On the 5th of December, I walked into the Court of Appeal,
with my wife before the Lord Chief Justice
to have our convictions overturned.
He quashed the convictions. I was so happy.
I was even seen smiling. I was so happy.
Today the Lord Chief Justice has told me exactly what I wanted to hear.
He said he is only sorry this has taken so long
for this injustice to be remedied.
[interviewer] How long had it taken?
It had taken me 47 years.
That's where my Black activism comes in. I was not giving up.
[Johnson] I think that the youngsters in the Black Lives Matter movement
need to appraise themselves of what has gone before,
so that they can draw some lessons
from the battles that we fought and won.
[narrator] The story of Britain's
Black Power movement has, until recently,
been largely overlooked,
but to ignore this history
is to risk not learning key lessons from the past.
The Black Power story reveals the struggle faced by British citizens
to be treated fairly by the state
and their willingness to fight back when they weren't.
Black Power in Britain showed that with unity and self-empowerment,
it was possible to take a stand
and bring about change.
[♪ Linton Kwesi Johnson: "Time Come"]