Born in Trinidad during the dying days of British colonialism, Darcus Howe has become an uncompromising champion of racial justice. The book examines how Howe's unique political outlook was inspired by the example of his friend and mentor C.L.R. James, and forged in the heat of the American civil rights movement, as well as Trinidad's Black Power Revolution.
The book sheds new light on Howe's leading role in the defining struggles in Britain against institutional racism in the police, the courts and the media. It focuses on his part as a defendant in the trial of the Mangrove Nine, the high point of Black Power in Britain; his role in conceiving and organizing the Black People's Day of Action, the largest ever demonstration by the black community in Britain; and his later work as one of a prominent journalist and political commentator
Bloomsbury sold the film rights last year to the UK production company that made the gay rights movie "Pride". The authors are also acting as consultants for a tv miniseries called Guerrilla about the post-war Black Rights Movement in Britain. Due for broadcast in February 2017 it stars Idris Elba.
Robin Bunce is Director of Studies for Politics at Homerton College, Cambridge, and a Bye-Fellow in History at St Edmund's College, Cambridge. He is the author of a study of Thomas Hobbes for Continuum's Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers series (2009) and he has published several books on civil rights in America for the schools market. He is also an editor of Twentieth Century History Review.
Paul Field worked as a journalist for many years, specialising in issues of policing, asylum and institutional racism, before becoming a lawyer specialising in the fields of discrimination and employment
This biography of Darcus Howe is undoubtedly a labour of love. Robin Bunce and Paul Field have made a creditable attempt to chart postwar black activism though one man's life. And there can be no other person more appropriate to build the story around - because Darcus Howe is one of the standout activists and public intellectuals of his generation ... for many of us, he will always be that man in the dock at the Mangrove trail, standing up to an institutioanlly racist state - and standing up for us all. This meticulous biography sets out the facts about a life and an era that should be far more widely known.
