This year marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Black Parents Movement (BPM), founded in 1975 following the arrest of an innocent West Indian student in Haringey. On 17 April 1975, 17-year-old Cliff McDaniel and his two friends, Keith and Chris, all students of the Stationer’s Company's School in Hornsey, were on their lunch break when they were targeted by police officers. McDaniel was singled out by Metropolitan Police Officer Ryan David Y650 who demanded to search the innocent student, and later assaulted him in broad daylight. McDaniel was then taken to Hornsey Police Station and arrested on false accusations of ‘breaching the peace’ and ‘assaulting a police officer’.
McDaniel was well known to the teaching staff, pupils and parents associated with the George Padmore Supplementary School, founded by Trinidadian activist John La Rose in 1966. Following this incident, many parents and teachers rallied support for McDaniel and formed the Black Parents Movement. At the same time a group of pupils and young black people formed their own independent but collaborative organisation called the Black Students Movement (later renamed the Black Youth Movement) with La Rose’s son's Keith and Michael as founding members. With the unlawful arrest of McDaniel acting as the catalyst, the aims of the BPM were to advance the interests of black working class, unemployed and young people.
John La Rose was a key founding member with early members including local supplementary school teachers Roxy Harris and Albertina Sylvester, as well as educator and campaigner Gus John. Guyanese publishers and activists Jessica and Eric Huntley, who founded the Ealing Concerned Black Parents and Youth Movement in 1976, were also closely affiliated with the activity of the BPM in its most active period.
The movement can be seen as an extension of the Black Education Movement (BEM) which was founded in 1965, alongside the Black Supplementary School Movement (BSSM). Both movements were founded as a form of self-help at a time when the black community was faced with a national education system that was prejudiced towards the needs of black children and which laid the foundations for the BPM. Current Chairman of the George Padmore Institute (GPI) and BPM member Roxy Harris says of the movement:
‘The BPM played a leading role in developing strategies and action in Britain for black people to fight back against the racism and discrimination in the schooling system and against police corruption and violence and the complicity of the courts. John La Rose’s leadership was inspiring and down to earth. One memory is that however urgent and serious a meeting was, John never objected to the presence of children. Indeed he would take persistent fractiousness by the children present as a sign that we had gone on too long and that it was time for the meeting to end!’
The BPM grew out of Haringey’s wider history of black radical activism and led to the formation of the Alliance in 1979, a partnership of the Black Youth Movement, Bradford Black Collective and the Race Today Collective. Whilst each group maintained its autonomy, the Alliance regularly collaborated on local and national campaigns such as the George Lindo Campaign (Bradford) and the Stephen Locke Action Committee (Manchester). The BPM went on to develop its largest sections (defined as a regional branch large enough to have a monthly membership meeting) in Bradford and Manchester, as well as other sections and groups (defined as having a smaller membership) across London in Ealing, Hackney, Brixton and Brent.
In the 1970s the BPM was a key partner in the Bookshop Joint Action Committee (BJAC) which was formed to campaign against a string of racist and violent attacks on black and progressive bookshops across the country. The Huntley’s were key campaign members following the attack on their bookshop and publishing house Bogle L’Ouverture Publications in Ealing in the summer of 1977. The movement also participated in international solidarity campaigns against apartheid in South Africa; against repression in Guyana; and in support of Maurice Bishop and the New Jewel Movement in Grenada, with young black people consistently involved in this work too.
The Black Parents Movement archive collection at the George Padmore Institute (GPI) is a comprehensive resource preserving the history of the organisation’s founding, key activities, collaborators and organisational principles. Fifty years on from its creation, the GPI is marking the occasion by acknowledging this movement’s contributions to successfully campaigning for the rights of black youths and workers against a racist criminal justice system, building alliances and community organising in Haringey and across wider British society. With Haringey being announced as the London Borough of Culture for 2027, the GPI is proud to celebrate the BPM as a leading force among black radical movements in the local area.
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