Recognising Haringey’s pioneering black protest leaders

 From Haringey Community Press.

Hannah Francis from the George Padmore Institute on the significance of the Black Parents Movement in Haringey 50 years ago.

The Black Parents Movement protest in 1975 with John La Rose at the front right of the group (credit Julian Stapleton)

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Black Parents Movement (BPM), founded in 1975 following the arrest of an innocent West Indian student in Haringey.

On 17th April 1975, 17-year-old Cliff McDaniel and his two friends, Keith and Chris, all students of the Stationer’s Company’s School in Hornsey, were on their lunch break when they were targeted by police officers. McDaniel was well known to the teaching staff, pupils and parents associated with the George Padmore Supplementary School, founded by Trinidadian activist John La Rose in 1966.

Following this incident, many parents and teachers rallied support for McDaniel and formed the Black Parents Movement. At the same time, a group of pupils and young black people formed their own independent but collaborative organisation called the Black Students Movement (later renamed Black Youth Movement). With the unlawful arrest of McDaniel acting as the catalyst, the aims of the BPM were to advance the interests of black working class, unemployed and young people.

John La Rose was a key founding member with early members including local supplementary school teachers Roxy Harris and Albertina Sylvester, as well as educator and campaigner Gus John. Guyanese publishers and activists Jessica and Eric Huntley, who founded the Ealing Concerned Black Parents and Youth Movement in 1976, were also closely affiliated with the activity of the BPM in its most active period.

Current George Padmore Institute (GPI) chair and BPM member Roxy Harris says of the movement: “The BPM played a leading role in developing strategies and action in Britain for black people to fight back against the racism and discrimination in the schooling system and against police corruption and violence and the complicity of the courts.

“John La Rose’s leadership was inspiring and down to earth. One memory is that however urgent and serious a meeting was, John never objected to the presence of children. Indeed he would take persistent fractiousness by the children present as a sign that we had gone on too long and that it was time for the meeting to end!”

BPM grew out of Haringey’s wider history of black radical activism and led to the formation of the Alliance in 1979, a partnership of the Black Youth Movement, Bradford Black Collective and the Race Today Collective. Key campaigns included the Bookshop Joint Action Committee (BJAC) which was formed to campaign against a string of racist and violent attacks on black and progressive bookshops across the country, as well as international solidarity campaigns such as demonstrating against apartheid in South Africa.

The BPM archive collection at GPI is a comprehensive resource preserving the history of the organisation’s founding, key activities, collaborators and organisational principles. Fifty years on, the GPI is marking the occasion by acknowledging this movement’s contributions to campaigning for the rights of black youths and workers against a racist criminal justice system, building alliances and community organising in Haringey and wider British society.