Barbara Beese

Barbara Beese (born 2 January 1946) is a British activist, writer, and former member of the British Black Panthers.[1][2] She is most notable as one of the Black activists known as the Mangrove Nine, charged in 1970 with inciting a riot, following a protest against repeated police raids of The Mangrove, a Caribbean restaurant in Notting Hill, west London. They were all acquitted of the most serious charges and the trial became the first judicial acknowledgement of behaviour (the repeated raids) motivated by racial hatred, rather than legitimate crime control, within the Metropolitan Police.

Barbara Beese during the Mangrove Nine demonstration of 9 August 1970

Black Panthers and activism

Beese came to public attention in 1970 as one of the Mangrove Nine, who on 9 August that year marched to the police station in Notting Hill, London, to protest against police raids of The Mangrove, a restaurant run by Frank Crichlow, which was a meeting place for the Black community in the area.[3] Violent clashes between the police and the Black marchers led to charges and an important trial that is said to have "changed racial justice in the UK forever".[3] Beese was one of those arrested and charged on a number of counts, and she was found not guilty of all charges.[4]

She contributed to the journal Race Today on a number of topics, including education.[5]

Personal life

Beese had a relationship with fellow British Black Panther and Mangrove Nine activist Darcus Howe, with whom she had a son, Darcus Beese.[6][7]

Beese appears in the 1973 Franco Rosso and John La Rose documentary film The Mangrove Nine.[8]

Actress Rochenda Sandall portrays Beese in the Mangrove episode of Steve McQueen's 2020 film anthology/television miniseries Small Axe.[9]

See also

References
  1. Field, Paul (14 April 2017). "The Real Guerrillas". Jacobin. Retrieved 6 February 2018.
  2. Qasim, Wail (11 April 2017), "Freida Pinto's casting as the only lead female character in Guerilla erases women from the history of Black Power", The Independent.
  3. Bunce, Robin; Field, Paul (29 November 2010). "Mangrove Nine: the court challenge against police racism in Notting Hill". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 February 2018.
  4. Brook, Pete (4 February 2018), "When cops raided a hip 1970s London cafe, Britain's Black Power movement rose up", Timeline, Medium.
  5. Paul, Warmington (2014). Black British Intellectuals and Education: Multiculturalism's Hidden History. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, Taylor and Francis. ISBN 9781317752363. OCLC 871224341.
  6. Fuscoe, Jan (29 September 2020). "The Woman With the Afro: The Story of Barbara Beese". Byline Times. Retrieved 16 October 2020. I made contact with Barbara’s son Darcus (named after his father and the well-known activist Darcus Howe), who confirmed that the image was of his mother and that he was the boy, aged around five years old at the time.
  7. Hume, Lucy (2017). People of Today 2017. London: Debrett's. ISBN 9781999767037. OCLC 1007310029. Retrieved 6 February 2018 – via Google Books.
  8. "Black History Month 2016: Mangrove Nine". George Padmore Institute. 4 March 2016. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 24 November 2020. The Mangrove Nine film portrays interviews with the defendants recorded before the final verdicts were delivered at the trial, as well as contemporary comments from Ian Macdonald and others.
  9. Arboine, Niellah (11 November 2020). "Where Are The Mangrove 9 Now?". Bustle. Retrieved 24 November 2020.
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