Black Power: A British Story of Resistance TV -
Black power: the words that can send shivers down the spine of the nervous white man. While the white man struggles with his nightmare, the black man struggles with his dream. Black Power: A British Story of Resistance, original commentary of march, BBC 2021
West London 1970: a group of protesters march against harassment by the police of a black-owned restaurant called The Mangrove. Black power had arrived in Britain. Young black people were fighting back against a hostile environment. They stood up to the state and they defied the brutality of the police. It was a conflict that reached the highest courts in the land. ibid.
The migrants played a key role in rebuilding Britain. ibid.
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. ibid.
Even at school children were not safe from institutional racism. ibid.
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 radical black groups in Britain. ibid.
On Sunday 9th August 1970 a crowd of over 100 people gathered outside the Mangrove restaurant to show their support … ‘They [Conservatives] wanted to justify the Immigration Bill’ … For the 9 people arrested following the Mangrove Demonstration, it seemed that the whole machinery of the state was now set against them, and the idea of Black Power in Britain was being unfairly demonised. ibid. activist
Oval 4: When a BBC journalist started investigating Winston’s case, it was revealed that Detective Sergeant Derek Ridgewell’s testimony was directly contradicted by eye-witnesses … ‘The only [mugging] witnesses were the anti-mugging squad themselves’ … The media’s account of Winston’s case helped him appeal and his sentence was reduced, but the judge did not overturn the criminal conviction. ibid.