Black British History by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786994288
Publisher: Book Network Int'l Limited trading as NBN International (NBNi)
Published: 2019-03-10T16:00:00+00:00

While it is unclear exactly which group began to paper the town of Smethwick with flyers emblazoned with the incendiary slogan ‘If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote for Labour’, the local popularity of the sentiment brought national attention to Griffith’s campaign and to the town of Smethwick. Although Griffiths did not take credit for openly adopting the slogan, which ultimately became synonymous with his campaign, as white constituents in his district embraced the underlying idea of the openly racist message captured in the slogan, Griffiths did little to distance himself from the sentiments. In fact, in an interview with The Times, he suggested that those who adopted such views did not deserve a rebuke since the slogan represented what he described as ‘a manifestation of popular feeling’.17

Even though Peter Griffiths entered the halls of parliament as an outcast because of the racist anti-immigrant views that he championed as a candidate for Smethwick in the general election of 1964, when Malcolm X came to Britain in February 1965, Griffiths was one of the people that he desired to meet.18 This meeting never happened. However, accompanied by a team from the BBC, Malcolm X made a point of documenting his face-to-face confrontation with the place that had brought Griffiths to political infamy. More specifically, during his visit, Malcolm X journeyed to Marshall Street in Smethwick, a place that flagrantly displayed an open hostility towards what was described at the time as the presence of ‘coloured immigrants’. Smartly dressed, wearing his signature browline glasses, BBC cameras captured footage of Malcolm X as he strolled down Marshall Street. Two of the most iconic frames from this footage depict him standing before a sign indicating his location on Marshall Street and another as he stood peering through a window at a for-sale sign posted on a property in the street. These images were not accidental. They functioned as part of a larger critique that Malcolm X intended to make about the state of race relations and the political economy of racism affecting black and Asian communities in Britain during the mid-1960s. As Malcolm X took questions from reporters who followed his short trek down Marshall Street, he explained that he had taken a detour from a speaking tour, which included stops at the London School of Economics and Birmingham University, to visit Smethwick because he had been disturbed by ‘reports that the coloured people in Smethwick are being treated badly’. He explained, ‘I have heard they are being treated as Jews were under Hitler,’ and suggested to reporters that people of colour in the area should work proactively to combat such treatment and not ‘wait for the fascist elements in Smethwick to erect gas ovens’.19 In doing so, he issued a call for direct resistance and strategic organising in the face of white supremacy, racial exclusion and discrimination.20

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