Darcus Howe

Darcus Howe

Leighton Rhett Radford Howe was a British broadcaster, writer, and racial justice campaigner. Originally from Trinidad, Howe arrived in England as a teenager in 1961, intending to study law and settling in London. There he joined the British Black Panthers, a group named in sympathy with the US Black Panther Party. He came to public attention in 1970 as one of the nine protestors, known as the Mangrove Nine, arrested and tried on charges that included conspiracy to incite a riot.

About Darcus Howe in brief

Summary Darcus HoweLeighton Rhett Radford Howe was a British broadcaster, writer, and racial justice campaigner. Originally from Trinidad, Howe arrived in England as a teenager in 1961, intending to study law and settling in London. There he joined the British Black Panthers, a group named in sympathy with the US Black Panther Party. He came to public attention in 1970 as one of the nine protestors, known as the Mangrove Nine, arrested and tried on charges that included conspiracy to incite a riot. They were all acquitted of the most serious charges and the trial became the first judicial acknowledgement of behaviour motivated by racial hatred, rather than legitimate crime control. Howe was an editor of Race Today, and chairman of the Notting Hill Carnival. He was best known as a television broadcaster in the UK for his Black on Black series on Channel 4, his current affairs programme Devil’s Advocate, and his work with Tariq Ali on Bandung File. His television work also included White Tribe; Slave Nation ; Who You Callin’ a Nigger? ; and Is This My Country? He also wrote columns for the New Statesman and The Voice.

In 1977, Howe was sentenced to three months imprisonment after a racially motivated assault at a London Underground Station, but was released upon appeal after his arrest. The Brixton-based Race Today Collective also included Linton Kwesi Johnson, Barbara Beese, and others, including writer and activist Farrukh Dhondy. In 2013, Howe recalled in 2013: When the institute set up Race Today, it began by publishing mainly academic articles on the colonial territories. It later focused on British immigration, especially the children of the first generation, from India, Pakistan, Africa and the Caribbean. We turned it into a radical black newspaper. We moved it into Brixton, and worked with ex-Panthers who’d squatted in Brixton. The intention was to be aggressively campaigning, aggressively ‘record and recognise the emerging struggles in the black community.’ ‘