Britain’s Black Power movement is being written out of history, according to a new book on racial justice campaigner Darcus Howe. In Darcus Howe: A Political Biography, Robin Bunce – director of studies in politics at Homerton College and bye-fellow at St Edmunds College – and co-author Paul Field warn that the struggle against institutionalised police racism is in danger of fading from living memory. "There is this fundamental belief in Britain that racism is always someone else’s problem", says Bunce. “Black Power made a very big impact in Britain, as it did in America, but it hasn’t really had the write up here.”

Bunce and Field’s biography tells the story of Howe’s involvement in campaigns to expose racist policing in Britain throughout the 1970s. 

Bunce also expressed concerns about Michael Gove’s attempts to reshape the national history curriculum. The successful campaign in 2013 to ensure that pioneering Jamaican-born nurse Mary Seacole and black anti-slavery campaigner Olaudah Equiano were not removed from the curriculum represented a victory against what some saw as an attempt to ‘white-wash’ school history

Girton student Priscilla Mensah, who organised a panel discussion entitled 'A Vindication of the Rights of Black Women' at the beginning of Michaelmas term, expressed her frustration at this "one-dimensional and un-diverse image of British identity".

Bunce hopes that tying his biographical narrative to the charismatic figure of Howe will help push the history of British Black Power into the mainstream political and cultural agenda. “We wanted to make this something that would impact the national dialogue about what Britain has been", he states.

CUSU's Black and Ethnic Minorities Campaign President, Yasmin Lawal, agrees with the points raised by Bunce and Field in their book: "It underlined the significance of the British Black Power movement and Darcus Howe’s vital role in propelling it forward."

She added: "The Cambridge University student body are more willing than ever to discuss BME concerns; as evidenced by a regularly impressive turnout to our events. Being informed, and informing those around us, of the British Black Power movement can only further such progression."