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Newham: the forging of a black community

01 July 1991

Newham Monitoring Project/CARF £3.50. Keeping the fight alive: Newham Monitoring Project Annual Report 1990. What led black people to settle in Newham? Why is it that the north of this London borough has witnessed the growth of a strong powerful resistant community whereas in the south it is small isolated and beleaguered by white racists? How do central and local government policies and industrial development and decline change the shape of communities and the struggles they have to fight? Newham: the forging of a black community locates the growth of Newham's black community and its struggles against racism within the economic political and social history of Newham since the end of the Second World War. It reveals the complacent racism of the old stultified Labour administration riddled with patronage and freemasonry and demonstrates how the struggles of the earlier generations to build a community in the face of racism at work in finding somewhere to live and somewhere to pray laid the foundation for later generations" struggles against racism at school and on the streets. The book ends with a recognition of the changing face of the community in Newham the arrival of new groups of refugees and migrants and the new struggles they will have to face. An illuminating and informative study. The reality of black struggles against racism is graphically captured in Keeping the Fight Alive Newham Monitoring Project's annual report for 1990. NMP's annual reports are consistently excellent and this is no exception. By "opening its files" the Project informs the reader of what is actually happening daily the barrage of racist abuse vicious attacks police indifference harassment and blaming the victim that those who come to NMP have experienced and the hard and arduous work needed to achieve justice for each of them. The material shocking at times is written in a down-to-earth non-rhetorical way amply illustrated with photographs cartoons and news cuttings. An important document.