Mangrove is a film that is first instalment of a series of films from director Steve McQueen called Little Axe.
The Mangrove restaurant in Notting Hill in the 1960s, became much more than just a restaurant –it grew into an organising hub for the black community.
Its reputation went before it, as it attracted not just ordinary members of the community but a host of celebrities too, from rock pioneer Jimi Hendrix to left-wing actress Vanessa Redgrave.
And when the Black Panthers came onto the scene in the UK as an offshoot of the US organisation, it became a base for the militant group.
Saluting Frank Critchlow Altheia Jones-Le Cointe and the other heroes
Frank Critchlow was the owner of the restaurant and he was joined by the likes of Altheia Jones-LeCointe, Darcus Howe and Barbara Beese as key organisers.
This was all too much for the racist Met police, and in particular a certain PC Frank Pulley.
It was Pully who led the constant raids on the restaurant that eventually led to the framing of Mangrove Nine.
The framed activists defended themselves in court and powerfully exposed the racism of the British police at the time, and the film leaves you asking at the end, so what has changed as far as racist policing goes?
Eventually all the defendants were to walk free, acquitted of all the most serious charges.
This is a story whose telling is long overdue, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.
The choice of the title Small Axe for the series of films from McQueen exploring the African Caribbean Windrush generation’s experience in the UK, is based on a line from the Bob Marley and The Wailers song of the same name:
“So if you are the big tree, We are the small axe Ready to cut you down, (well sharp), To cut you down.”
The million maga march is a flop – official! The Trump diehards haven’t quite managed the million they had claimed would be in attendance.
Instead, there was a rag-bag showing more like in the hundreds, not even the thousands.
Trump, who didn’t exactly do a lot of work for the people in his four years as president, is doing even less now.
Indeed, it was when he was on the way to play golf at one of his nearby courses that his cavalcade ran into a gaggle of his enthusiastically deranged supporters who swarmed his car.
They couldn’t find any black people to beat up on and looked rather disconsulate (turns out the cowards waited until nightfall to do that).
As usual at gatherings of the Trump meat-heads, there were no masks in evidence on Freedom Plaza, so the covid virus was certainly having a good day out.
After they had finished with the bonding thing, the Proud Boy thugs started rioting, pretty much on the order of Trump:
Is THIS what trump meant when he hold his terrorist Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by?"
ANTIFA SCUM ran for the hills today when they tried attacking the people at the Trump Rally, because those people aggressively fought back. Antifa waited until tonight, when 99% were gone, to attack innocent #MAGA People. DC Police, get going — do your job and don’t hold back!!!
Million MAGA March of racists ‘heartwarming’ says Trump
Trump called the gathering of the far right and various hangers on “heartwarming”, as you would expect of the fascist enabler.
But the Trump well-wishers are not having the streets to themselves – far from it.
BLM and anti-fascist counter-protesters showed up early and made sure ‘LOSER’ signs were in view for the arriving ‘millions’.
There’s no sign yet of Alex Jones and his gang of militia terrorists who said on Thursday they would be showing up today.
Meanwhile, the TikTok generation is raining on Trump’s parade again. The #millionmagamarch hashtag has been taken over by the youth of America, with a proliferation of pancakes (Biden flipped four states, Trump none) to make the point about who actually won the election.
what to do about the million mega mad boy march on sat
The MAGA crowd earlier in the day ripped down BLM memorials to Black men mudered by police. Those memorials have largely since been repaired, as the smell of buring MAGA flags fills the air:
One of the many MAGA flags that burned last night as the Million MAGA March descended into fascist-inspired violence. 20 were arrested. Trump’s neo-Confederate white supremacist base seems to have forgotten that since the civil war Washington DC has been a black city. Don’t come back!
The institutionally racist London Met police introduces its so-called “race action plan” today, and a key recommendation will be that 40% of new recruits must come from black and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds.
Unfortunately, however, the head of the London police, Commissioner Cressida Dick, remains in denial about racism in the force.
At a recent select committee parliamentary hearing on the police’s outrageous racial profiling seen in its rampant and ineffective (from the point of view fighting or preventing the commission of crimes) stop and search policies, Dick claimed the disproportionate number of black people being stopped was “because they committed more crime”, despite evidence to the contrary.
Netpol highlights over-policing of BLM protests
In addition, a report this week from from Netpol, a network of police monitoring groups, has discovered what we already knew – the BLM protests were over policed by Uk police.
Violent incidents were almost not existents around the country and when some scuffles with police happened in London it was in response to police actions, such as when they charged horses into peaceful protesters on Whitehall.
Police more violent towards black people
Not only are black people disproportionately stopped and search, the police also use more violence when doing so than the average for society as a whole.
Recruitment of officers from minority backgrounds has increased markedly in recent years, but that has made no difference to the institutional racism with the ranks of the Met. This is no surprise – it is the institution that is the problem.
Individual police officers can no doubt be “non-racist” or even “anti-racist” but the culture and operational practice of the police is the problem and that stems from the nature of the work they do. Policing is about maintaining the rule of those at the top of society and racism is a useful divide and rule stratagem.
Police are more racist than rest of society
Add to that the fact that we live in a racist society, it is not surprising that the police are racist. But the key point here is that the police do not just reflect society – they are the worst of society. The oppressive nature of their job leads them to operate in a fashion that presupposes that working-class people commit more crimes and that black people as part of that, are the worst offenders.
So when shocking crimes such as the ignoring of fire regulations that led to the installation of flammable cladding to blocks of flats, such as at Grenfell in west London, leading directly to the deaths of at least 81 people, not a single person has gone to prison or even been prosecuted.
So what are the chances of the police hitting their 40% target for black and minority ethnic new recruits? Zilch. The police are uniformly hated in the black community for good reason.
BLM movement puts Met police on the back foot
But the fact that the Met police are talking about a “race action plan” is because of the power of the mass movement on the streets that took hold in the BAME mobilisations – supported by hundreds of thousand of white allies – behind Black Lives Matter summer.
The police have been forced to do some window dressing, but behind the scenes nothing much will change.
Instead, we need to strengthen the movement on the streets and in our communities and social organisations as our best defence against police racism.
We need to get to a situation where every time they stop and search a black youth in London, they are met by a surrounding throng of concerned citizenry challenging their behaviour.
Met police BAME effort set to fail
Having more black faces in the police will make no difference. Just as in the US where there are plenty of black officers in police forces, it hasn’t stopped the continuing reign of terror by the police there. Indeed, whole police departments in the inner cities are supposedly run by black politicians – from police chiefs to attorney generals – but the racist murders by police still take place daily.
https://player.vimeo.com/video/478270414
Dr Adam Elliott-Cooper on the Netpol report into over-policing of Black Lives Matter protests in the UK
Read more on the case for scrapping Section 60 – the powers that allow police to apply draconian laws to whole borough so they don’t even have to provide a reason for stopping people. The number of such stops are on the rise in the big cities, especially London and the Birmingham.
Despite the well-documented fact that those from Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds are twice as likely to die from Covid, that’s not enough to warrant inclusion on the priority list for the rollout of Covid vaccinations.
This is because working-class people are much more likely to be in jobs where they can’t work from home, and this applies doubly so to those from Black and Asian backgrounds.
Health inequalities key to understanding higher death rates among those from BAME and working-class backgrounds
Professor Wei Shen Lim, chair of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, said yesterday that it was “really, really important” to take into account disparities between ethnic groups and the related health inequalities.
It should be added that the disparities between social groups, namely those doing the frontline jobs from all ethnic backgrounds, should be at the front of the queue for a Covid vaccine.
“We know that there has been a disproportionate representation of Black, Asian and minority ethnic groups for severe Covid disease, and the underlying factors behind that association are complex, and they are multiple,” said Lim.
But the government is ignoring the scientists, as usual.
The first doctors to die from Covid in the UK were all from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds
Researchers at the universities of Leicester and Nottingham have found that Asian people are the most likely to have the worst outcomes (a euphemism for being most likely to die) from Covid and this was because of social conditions not genetics.
Dr Shirley Sze from the University of Leicester who led the study said: “The clear evidence of increased risk of infection amongst ethnic minority groups is of urgent public health importance.
“We must work to minimise exposure to the virus in these at-risk groups by facilitating their timely access to healthcare resources and target the social and structural disparities that contribute to health inequalities.”
– Dr Shirley Sze
And even where a middle-class demographic is concerned, such as doctors from BAME backgrounds in the NHS (see picture above), the impact of institutional racism rears its head: non-white doctors are far more likely to be working on the Covid wards (as our BAME nurses) and much less likely to be the senior consultants who are most distanced from the frontline.
But despite all of this evidence, and the mounting death toll which is now the highest in Europe, the government has so far refused to make those from Black and Asian communities – or the poorest in the northern cities for that matter where the incidence of poverty and other markers such as overcrowding and poor diet are more prevalent – a priority for the rollout of the Pfizer vaccine.
Since this video was made, Hesketh Benoit can count 37 people he personally knows who have died from Covid, as reported in the Huffington Post
One third of the players in the premier league are from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at the top of the game.
In comments to the culture and sport select committee in parliament yesterday, he managed to offend almost everyone.
Girls scared of getting hurt by the ball says Clarke
He wrote-off half of humanity when he claimed that girls and women were scared of getting hurt by the football.
Tell that to Megan Rapinoe!
Megan Rapinoe
Being gay a ‘life choice’ says Clarke
He then moved on to gay people, where he said sexuality was a “life choice”.
Racist generalisations about Asian fans and players
As for people from South Asian backgrounds, he reckons they are more interested in being a doctor or accountants, which apparently is meant to explain why there are so few Asian people involved at the higher levels of the game.
According to Clarke, there’s “a lot more South Asians than there are Afro-Caribbeans” in the FA IT department because “they have different career interests”.
“Coloured” like its 1950 or apartheid South Africa
And just to cap it off he decided to deploy the racist 1950s word coloured to descrribe black people.
This all comes after months of Black Lives Matter movement protests.
This is after the FA claimed to be supporting the cause of racial equality by urging players and clubs to get behind taking the knee.
The sad truth is that the people who run the game are far behind the times and need to be cleared out wholesale.
Players should strike action against Football Association’s racist bosses
It is not surprising when people like Clarke are running the game that such little progress has been made on diversity. There are still just three non-white managers in the whole of the professional game.
Fans – black and white – deserve better than this.
BLMM urges black players and their white colleagues to demand that this happens and to threaten strike action until it does.
As campaign group Kick it Out has pointed out, the FA launched its diversity code just a couple of weeks ago – it’s such a shame the FA don’t follow it!
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