Anti-Racist Marches and Protests

by Chris Scales, Archive Officer

While exploring the history of Anti-Racism in Southwark (see our recent post for details), we came across a rich history of marching and protests. Documents and photographs held at Southwark Archives show local people and organisations rising up over the decades to fight for equality and human rights.

Campaigns against racism in the 1960s were established in the borough through the petitioning of Southwark and Bermondsey Trades Councils and Southwark Rotary Club, who led the call to launch what became the Southwark Council for Community Relations. Other early organisations include the West Indian League, set up in 1964 following the suicide of a young West Indian nurse at Lewisham hospital. The League aimed to combat loneliness for West Indians in London, and fight racial discrimination.

In the 1970s the Southwark Campaign Against Racialism and Fascism was set up and took to the streets of Walworth and elsewhere to stand up to the resurgent National Front. Socialist organisations and local branches of the Labour Party also took a prominent part in marching. In 1983 the Southwark Black Consortium was founded to represent the community voice at the new Southwark Race Equality Committee. Later, as Southwark Black Communities Consortium, the organisation ran large protest marches against racism in Peckham and Bermondsey. The Southwark Anti-Apartheid Group took the lead in marching against apartheid in South Africa, something reflected also by the council who declared ‘war on apartheid’ in 1984 and ran yearly Anti-Apartheid programming until the early 1990s.

The following is a selection of images found so far, please get in touch with us if you’d like to contribute further images or information.

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  Several hundred anti-racism campaigners march from Elephant and Castle to a rally in Brixton organised by the London Communist Party, 26 June 1976

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  A 2000-strong march organised by the South London Anti-Fascism and Anti Racism Co-ordinating Committee. Supporters marched from Elephant and Castle down Walworth Road and Rye Lane to Peckham Rye, 10 September 1977

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  Southwark Campaign Against Racialism and Fascism meeting in Walworth Road, 1977

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  Anti-racism protesters in a march on 23rd September 1978 organised by Southwark Trades Council. The marchers proceeded from Elephant and Castle down Walworth Road, and along John Ruskin Street to join the Anti-Nazi League march at Stockwell en route to the Rock Against Racism rally in Brockwell Park. The chorus chant of the day was: “Black and White, unite and fight, smash the National Front”. Southwark Campaign Against Racialism and Fascism had a stall in the park whose main attraction was a giant effigy of National Front boss Martin Webster with a hole in his mouth, which visitors could kick balls through to win prizes. (Photo by Bjorn Sundstrom, Peckham Pulse)

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  Marching from Elephant and Castle to Brockwell Park for ‘Rock Against Racism’, 1978

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  Anti-National Front march leaving Camberwell towards Elephant and Castle, 1979

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  Southwark Campaign Against Racialism and Fascism at Aylesbury Festival, 1979

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  Southwark Campaign Against Racialism and Fascism, ‘No Nazis On East Street’ protest, 1979

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  Southwark Campaign Against Racialism and Fascism, ‘No Nazis On East Street’ protest, 1979

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  Anti-racist activists picket National Front march on Camberwell Road, 1980

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  Southwark Campaign Against Racialism and Fascism marching in Camberwell, 1980

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  Southwark Anti-Apartheid Group marching in Westminster, 1984

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  Southwark Anti-Apartheid Group at demonstration against apartheid in Central London, 1984

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  ‘Don’t Buy Apartheid’ protest on Walworth Road, 1987

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  Southwark Anti-Apartheid Group at the Jamdown Apartheid day in Burgess Park, 1989

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  Lee Jasper from Southwark Black Communities Consortium, and Cllr Winton Stafford, at the anti-racism march from Peckham to Bermondsey, 1991

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  Anti-racism march from Peckham to Bermondsey, 1991

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  Police hold back British National Party fascists at an anti-racist demo in Bermondsey, 1991

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  Local activists protesting at a National Front March in Bermondsey, 2001

A History of Anti-Racism in Southwark

by Chris Scales, Archive Officer

This Black History Month at Southwark Archives we have been delving into our collections to try and discover more about the history of anti-racism at the council and in the community. Over the decades countless individuals have fought for equal rights, the removal of the colour bar, and against racism in its many forms, and there are many milestones along the continuing journey.

Pioneering community-led initiatives included: the work of Dr Harold Moody and the League of Coloured Peoples in the 1930s, among whose many achievements was the lifting of the colour bar in the armed forces; the West Indian League started in 1964 by George Croasdaile, who campaigned for racial equality and supported young people for over 30 years; and the Southwark Inter-Racial Council that became Southwark Council For Community Relations in 1966 and oversaw black and minority ethnic communities’ liaison with the borough over the following four decades.

The 1970s saw a rise in activity from the National Front and organisations rose up to protest against them including the Anti-Nazi League, Southwark Campaign Against Racialism and Fascism, and Southwark Black Communities Consortium, supported by Southwark Trades Council and the local Labour parties. In 1978, Southwark residents and organisations marched to the ‘Rock Against Racism’ rally and protests at Brockwell Park, the UK’s largest anti-racism rally. Through the 1980s and 1990s the community organised local marches and rallies to combat racism across the borough, in Peckham, Walworth and Bermondsey.

In 1983 Southwark Council established a Race Equality Committee and Unit, which provided funding and support for a range of community initiatives, as well as embedding anti-racist practices across the council and leading the way in addressing racist hate crimes. In 1994, Southwark Council won the Commission for Racial Equality’s first Local Authority Race Award for its work prosecuting the perpetrators of racial harassment on housing estates.

The shocking killing of George Floyd this year and the Black Lives Matter movement and protests around the world have shown that racism is still widespread and there is still much to do. The ongoing Southwark Stands Together programme gives detail on the council’s current work in this area and how “as a borough we knew that now, more than ever, we had to listen, react and together develop solutions”. The latest progress report for the programme can be read online here.

We hope to turn what we find into an online study resource in the coming months, but in the meantime we present here a selection of some key items from the archives that begin telling this story. If you would like to be involved in the project, please drop us an email at lhlibrary@southwark.gov.uk

Click through the slideshow below to see a selection of posters and flyers from 1930s to 2000s about anti-racism in Southwark:

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The next post in this series will look at the history of marching and protesting in the archives.

Dr. Cecil Belfield Clarke (1894-1970)

by Lisa Soverall, Heritage Officer

Dr. Cecil Belfield Clarke was born in Barbados in 1894 and on winning an island scholarship came to London in 1914 to study medicine. In 1918 he graduated from Cambridge University, became a qualified surgeon and then set up his medical practice at 112 Newington Causeway, Southwark. He worked as a doctor, serving the local community for over 40 years and London for over 50.  During that time he served as a doctor and medical professional in Africa, the Caribbean and throughout the UK.

^{Entry in the London Post Office Directory, 1924}  

Clarke was one of the founder members of the League of Coloured Peoples (LCP) which began in 1931. The organisation was set up to achieve a number of objectives with a focus on racial equality and civil rights for Black people in Great Britain. Clarke was an active member but was also associated with other Pan-African causes, including as the first chairman of the House Committee of Aggrey House, a hostel for students from Africa and the Caribbean. Clarke was diplomatic and this enabled him to be an effective communicator between the politically left and right of the Pan-African movements of the 1930s and 40s, so much so that he was a mediator during the planning for the Conference on the African Peoples, Democracy, and World Peace held in London in July 1939.

Clarke hosted many LCP events at his home and was a good friend of author and American civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois, with whom he continued correspondence right up to the 1960s, supporting many of his civil rights causes. Many of Dr Clarke’s letters to Du Bois can be read at the Special Collections and University Archives, at the University of Massachusetts Amhurst. The letters reveal the great affection and respect Clarke had for Du Bois and the importance of continuing the civil rights message.  In one such letter dated 4^th July 1929, Dr Clarke encloses his annual subscription to The Crisis magazine which he felt was his “duty” as “one of the few coloured Drs practising in London”. He kept the magazine in his doctor’s surgery waiting room and it proved to be a popular read. The Crisis is the official magazine for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) co-founded by W.E.B Du Bois and is still operating.

^{League of Coloured People’s conference attendees, from The Keys, vol.4, 1936. Dr Cecil Belfield-Clarke is in the middle of the back row.}  

What may be little known about Dr Clarke is that he formulated the early mathematical dosage for paediatric medicine known as ‘Clark’s rule’. He was the first black District Medical Officer for London in 1936 and the Belfield Clark Prize, which first began in 1952 at St Catharine’s College, Oxford is still awarded to students in Biological Natural Sciences Tripos examinations.

Sources

• Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries
• The Keys magazine (Southwark Local History Library and Archive).
• Matera, M., Black London: the Imperial Metropolis and Decolonization in the 20^th Century, 1st ed., University of California Press, Oakland, California, 2015.
• St Catharine’s College, Cambridge University.