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Hey, you'll recall that we were in an unseemly rush

uh, in our last session.

And as I was trying to cram too much in

as per usual, and I did say that I would

eventually get around to making a short film just to

try to pick up some of those fred that I

failed to do in the talk session.

So here it is, I'm going to just pick out

one or two things from the 1970s in particular, that

I didn't get to cover properly.

And so let's do that.

So, as I think we we saw in the session

itself, that there is this change of emphasis In the

1970s with, or maybe it's not right to call it

a decline militant radicalism, Maybe it's a shift in emphasis

and tactic and operation.

Yeah. Um, okay, there there is certainly a continuation of

and an expansion of community work of the type Um

carried out by the Black Panthers, for example.

But even before that, I'm going way back into the

1930s and 1920s, um uh in some of those community

organizations and pressure groups that we've seen.

Yeah. Um, there is no doubt.

I think that the various kinds of repression and suppression

that were experienced by the black community added to um

racial disadvantage in terms of education and health and uh,

and the workplace, um, if you add that to police

harassment, particularly in terms of black youth.

Um, and then of course, we have this not resurgence,

but emergence, if you like, in a different form of

uh, of uh right wing extremism, which has always been

there, but again, raise its head as the national front

in particular In the 1970s.

Um, All of these are challenges in the 1970s.

I think I'm met by the black community with We've

adapted resistance and that of course, will lead us into

the 1980s away from the remit this course into such

responses as the Brixton and toxteth riots, and so on,

and so forth.

Car, Okay.

Yeah. Um, so we spoke a little about some of

these community organizations and projects and I just want to

um pick out a few of them again, some of

which we did talk about in the session.

But my apologies for going over material that we might

already have covered, but some of this will definitely be

stuff that I cut out.

So, in particular, um, and if any of you have

seen the small acts series of films by steve McQueen

recently, I really do recommend to you not just for

their status as a historical record, but as works of

art, truly remarkable in my opinion.

Um, but there is one that is specifically concerned with

education, the black experience of education, and this is not

by happen chance, and this is a really important issue

that perhaps gets first comes first to prominence in the

black community in the 19 seventies.

So the North London West Indian Association, for example, based

in Haren Gay, uh um certainly has an educational campaigning

angle and the question of what we would now call

special needs and the way in which black Children's needs

were served or not, or the way in which they

were judged profiled um and constrained.

Um It was a huge matter of importance and uh

I brought to your attention here, the Caribbean Education Association,

having a conference on special schools, and the way in

which disproportionately black students might find themselves in these schools,

which of course is that is the subject to Stephen

Queens education film, um and also the work of Burn

accord, um um and his landmark work how the West

indian child has made educationally subnormal starts to bring that

whole issue to the surface to national attention.

And this really does not start off, but it certainly

does expedite supplementary schools in the black community which continue

to this day of course.

Um and there's various examples that I give you hear

the choir, Ming and Krumer School in Hackney, Southeast London

Summer School, which was really the work of um Buf

p um and then there was head start and so

on and so forth.

And also there was going along with this a corresponding

attempt to teach skills to maybe slightly older Children for

black teenagers.

Um the Catano project for example, um in the early

70s teaching typing of photography, amongst other things.

Uh huh.

And then there was the Free University for Black Studies

for older students.

And I give you a whole list here of various

community responses, um, to the black experience in Britain.

Mm And I think you can see here how there

is this kind of translation from those very vocal and

very visible militant groups uh, into these community organizations in

almost a seamless kind of way.

And we should also mention the publications, both the weekly

and the monthly journals and newspapers important uh in continuing

that black resistance and black community organization and Black Voice

and grassroots amongst them, for example.

Um, uh, and increasingly in the 70s, as we as

we did speak about in in the talk session, um,

the Question of black women Does start to get some

of the airplane, if you like, that.

It maybe had not done in the 1960s.

Okay. Um, we didn't talk about the symbols and I

want to talk to you just a little about the

symbols, um, for a couple of reasons, really.

Um, so for sympathy is, um, an organization.

It's largely based in Lucien in South London.

Yeah. Um, and it's a community organization and uh, offers

a whole range of fence as you can see here

from plumbing to self defense and also black history.

Um, And a considerable organization in terms of membership.

Some 500 members maybe.

Um, and does important work in that, that part of

South East London In the first part of the 1970s.

Mm. But a member of that group Winston.

True. And I'm showing you his story here, uh, experienced

the sharp end of, um, the kind of racist treatment

that The black community experienced all too often in the

1970s. And this this is interesting.

I think as an example of of how activists could

find themselves being treated by the powers of law and

order. So uh as it says that you hear, they

were confronted by a group of white men.

Um They were accused of having stolen handbags.

They were attacked.

It then transpired that the men assaulting them were undercover

transport police officers and they were arrested um for robbery

and for assaulting a police officer.

Yeah. And threw himself has always maintained that the first

symbols as an organization was under surveillance and that's why

they were targeted.

Um so they go on trial at L.

five week trial widely reported on, as you might imagine

now after the mangrove Trial in 1971, um and they

were convicted, although um the bulk of the evidence that

the defendants were convicted on were their own confessions, which

they later claimed they had been extracted under duress.

Um and all four of them go to prison uh

for several months.

Yeah, and those convictions, as you can imagine, do have

their effect upon these people's lives.

And it's not until much much later, 10 years later

that the officer in charge of that operation himself was

convicted a theft.

Uh and But then it's enough for 30 years uh

before anyone thinks to challenge the convictions secured by this

officer, um and eventually to cut a long story short,

the Criminal cases Review Commission does revisit the conviction to

examine lots of people who had gone to prison on

the basis of Ridgewell's evidence, And finally, in 2000 and

1947 years after their conviction, um the convictions were overturned

by the court of appeal, and I just throw that

in as a as a kind of example, and there's

many, many others as I'm sure, you know, of of

the of the kind of atmosphere and conditions in which

the black community from black radicals were operating.

And some of you you might like to draw parallels

with this story and the the much earlier treatment of

people like robert Wedderburn and William Cafe, of course.

Uh and see parallels there.

Perhaps it's just um think about saturday school for a

moment, and here's Beverley brian um leading member of the

black panthers and later the Brixton uh women's groups and

is collective.

Uh and this is what she has to say about

saturday schools.

And of course she's she's running she's talking about talking

here about the experience of the black panther activist uh

running putting on the saturday school.

Okay, I hope you had a chance to have a

quick skim through of that life.

I think it's interesting how she talks about how grateful

the parents were, even if their parents you get the

idea that that these black parents are maybe a little

suspicious of the black panthers and their leather jackets and

Berets, and of course the the images coming from the

USa but there are only too glad to have a

couple of hours of child care if you like.

Um And it's just interesting to note that that that

perhaps is performing a social uh Service as well as

an educational one.

Okay. Mhm.

Okay. Um so that's just a couple of things about

the community um In the 1970s.

Um and time is just gonna run out on this

video now, so in I'll make another one um in

which I'll just discuss one or two of the friends

that I'd like to pull together um for the entirety,

of course, really.

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