Darcus Howe

Leighton Rhett Radford Howe, known as Darcus, was born on 26 February 1943 in Moruga, Trinidad, to Cipriani and Lucille Howe. His father was a teacher and Anglican priest. He arrived in London in 1961 to study law, but was soon absorbed in radical politics and joined the British Black Panthers, taking the nickname Darcus around that time.

In August 1970 Howe helped organise a march to Notting Hill police station in protest at repeated police raids on the Mangrove, a Caribbean restaurant that was a hub for the Black community. Violence broke out, and he and eight others, the Mangrove Nine, were arrested and charged with riot, affray and assault. At the Old Bailey he represented himself and demanded an all-Black jury, a request that was refused.

The trial lasted 55 days and ended on 16 December 1971, when the Nine were cleared of the most serious charges, and Howe and several co-defendants were acquitted of all charges. The judge acknowledged evidence of racial hatred in the Metropolitan Police, making it the first judicial acknowledgement of behaviour motivated by racial hatred rather than legitimate crime control within the force.

Afterwards Howe helped form the Race Today Collective, based in Brixton, and was editor of its magazine Race Today from 1973 to 1985, giving a platform to Black and Asian community struggles. In 1981, after 13 young Black people died in the New Cross house fire, he helped organise the Black People's Day of Action, a march of around 20,000 people on 2 March that has been described as a turning point in Black British identity.

He then became a prominent broadcaster, producing and presenting series for Channel 4 including Black on Black and The Bandung File, and writing as a columnist. He died on 1 April 2017, aged 74. He was married to the editor Leila Hassan, was the partner of Barbara Beese, and his son Darcus Beese went on to lead Island Records in the UK.