the history of the black movement for two reasons. First, to dispel the myth that the history of black people has just been one of slavery — it has been of revolt and struggle.
Second because each phase in the black movement's development has showcommon characteristics: There has been one theme constantly present LIOSE dynamic revolutionary sections of the black movement. that it will struggles of black people themselves which can bring about liberation, and that black themselves determine control, through their own organisations, their own future.
Whether It took the torm Garvey's call for black pride in the slogan 'Up you mighty race, Malcolm X's revolutionary slogan of 'Our freedom by any necessary' the essence was lne same — in short, black nationalism. Reverse 'Many whites charge organisations as nationalist. To them nanonansm is helle more than an epither, reverse. These whites demonstrate and means an ignorance on the question of racial oppression. They fail to understand that a racially oppressed drawn into struggle against oopression through Black nationalism is nothing than the desire of Black une as a group into their movement to fight that oppression'. (Page 21).
That black people consistently turn to their organisation, an independent political movement, despite their accident. It is both a product of the racism prevalent within working class, and the character of the oppression suffered by people.
African peoples taken as slaves racial Black people coming to Britain, the and even their descendants, retain the black Dangers develop divisions campaign black peoples.
these issues. within it.
Furthermore, that movement will Not the debates and growing In Ine existing organisations of black people and the new organisations thrown up by the struggle — the youth movements, the defence committees, and the different coalitions between the It will be a long I feel the comrades are unclear on There is a danger that Flame, their 'independent revolutionary organisation of blacks', is seen as the liberation movement. If so it can only weaken the struggle to build a black liberation movement, and the standing of revolutionary •socialists