The Alternative News Story

BCA collections show why during this period, between the 1970s and 1990s, there was a need for alternative newspaper outlets that included Black perspectives. Newsletter and small press magazines were the pre-digital way to keep up to date on the rapidly expanding scene. The collections at Black Cultural Archives include the original publications that document these exchanges. Presented here is a glimpse into the archives.

Here we explore how these publications were formed, the role they played in raising awareness of the issues that were prevalent within the Black community, and their wider social impact. This exhibit showcases some of those alternative news formats, including newsletters of FOWAAD, Grassroots Community Newspaper, Speak Out, and Panther News (with artwork by Emory Douglas), alongside an increasing number of Black-led dance companies who published material.

Hotfoot, the magazine of the Association for Dance of the African Diaspora (ADAD, set up in 1984) began as a quarterly newsletter. It started life as a paper newsletter, then became a glossy magazine before transforming into an online digital resource. The issues in the archive include articles showcasing the many influences on the development of ‘Black Dance’ in Britain, as well as how Black Dance impacted the wider dance world. Hotfoot was intended to catalyse debates affecting UK based dance artists working with dance of African descent. It brought the UK practice into the context of global developments.

Straight No Chaser was a popular music magazine, founded in London in 1988 to capture the growing black music scene emerging across the capital and the UK around this time. It ran from 1988-2007, with 92 issues published during this period.

Straight No Chaser was originally founded by music lover, journalist and club goer Paul Bradshaw to cover various forms of black music and electronic sounds that he saw expanding in London and Britain.

It was also around the same time that house music hit British shores, in the summer of 1988.

FOWAAD was a newsletter set up by the Organisation for Women of Asian and African Descent to inform and engage their members about key issues, campaigns and new policies of concern for Black Women. This newsletter highlights the issue of health for black women and explores the prominence of sickle cell disease amongst other health concerns in the community. FOWAAD also played a key role in awareness-raising amongst the women in their networks, enabling them to keep up with any recent developments of campaigns and causes led by the many membership groups.

Political groups such as Black Liberation Front also played a key role disseminating information to the black community through their newspaper ‘Grassroots’. Established in 1971, with the original aim of covering events, issues and concerns of importance to black people in the UK, it eventually became a tool for outreach as members would distribute the Grassroots newspaper to attract new membership. Their storefront was based at 61 Golborne Road, W10. Another key event that was covered was the New Cross Fire. In 1981, 13 young people were killed in a racially motivated fire bombing, however this received little coverage in mainstream media to the outcry of many groups in the Black Community.

Darcus Howe, John La Rose, Alex Pascall and Jessica Huntley helped to organise a march of 20,000 people, New Cross to Central London to raise awareness about this injustice.

African Red Family was a Nigeria-based revolutionary Marxist-Leninist organisation which wanted to inspire a proletarian socialist revolution in Africa. Overall, the organisation tried to promote scientific Socialism/Communism as the true and only genuine socialist ideology.

The Black Liberator was launched by Alrick Cambridge, a founding member of the Black Unity and Freedom Party and later joined by Cecil Gutzmore but ran as a collective. The Black Liberator was the theoretical arm of Black, radical, Marxist thought in Britain. The journal focused on interpreting the actions and experiences of the Black youth and sought to address and support the variety of resistances to racism within the community.