Since the 1960s, the Labour Party has relied on votes from Britain's large African, Caribbean, and Asian ("politically black") communities, its demographically most loyal supporters, in urban areas.
[1] The Labour Party Black Sections debate emerged in the context of African, Caribbean, and Asian voting patterns gaining prominence from 1974.
[3] The English youth riots/uprisings that occurred at the start of the 1980s in Brixton, Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool and elsewhere acted as a warning to a British society that was indifferent or hostile to the demands of disenfranchised and disadvantaged black people.
For supporters of the organisation, the rationale for its existence was the fact[5] that although for decades more than 80% of black people who went to the polls had voted Labour, this was not reflected in the party's policies, priorities, hierarchy or among its political representatives.
[8] Supporters argued Black Sections would act as a transmission belt to get more African, Caribbean, and Asian people into Labour membership and actively involved in decision-making and representative roles in the party.
The Black Section's argument was, if its demands were agreed by Labour, the organisation would provide the party with the electoral support it needed in key inner-city seats.
[13] Positive discrimination were the preferred words of the left-wing Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, which had helped draft early Black Sections resolutions and circulated them among its extensive network of CLPs and trade union branches.
Labour deputy leader Roy Hattersley, who was MP for Birmingham Sparkbrook, a parliamentary constituency with a large Asian party membership that he feared would replace him if they were allowed to get organised, opposed Black Sections.
Despite opposition from the Labour and trade union leaderships and a hostile news media, within a few years Black Sections had 35 branches, several of them in London and the Midlands, most sending "unofficial" delegates to their CLP party management and executive committees.
This put pressure on the Labour leadership to tackle poor African Caribbean and Asian representation in the party and to focus its attention on policies that black communities wanted.
[13] In the face of opposition from Labour, Black Sections members operated as if their group was legitimate, often with the support of their CLPs and branches (wards).
[4] Paul Boateng, Diane Abbott, Bernie Grant, Russell Profitt and Keith Vaz stopped acting as Black Sections activists when they were selected for safe or winnable seats in the 1980s.
[6] However Black Sections chair Sharon Atkin, a left-wing Lambeth councillor, was controversially deselected as the Nottingham East prospective Labour parliamentary candidate the same year, at the insistence of Kinnock.
Four Birmingham Labour MPs, led by Hattersley (the others were Robin Corbett, Terry Davis and Denis Howell), signed a letter, which they issued to the media beforehand, saying the meeting should not take place.
[21] The legitimate calls for fair representation made by black communities – whose electoral support was given overwhelmingly to Labour – were resisted by the party leadership of Kinnock and Hattersley, who wanted to defeat a rising left-wing rank and file that the right-wing Conservative Party–supporting tabloid national newspapers denounced as the loony left.
In the face of the party's NEC backing a resolution authored by the right-wing MP Gwyneth Dunwoody, which threatened disciplinary action against future "separatist" activity, after the Black Sections arguably most successful conference, held in Nottingham, where its vice-chair Hassan Ahmed ran the largest Black Section outside London, the organisation was forced to go on the defensive.
Clare Short, the left-wing Birmingham Ladywood MP, was one of the few white politicians, along with Tony Benn and Ken Livingstone, to stand by Black Sections throughout its almost decade-long campaign.
[13] In 1989, Martha Osamor, deputy leader of Haringey council in north London, and a Black Sections vice-chair, was chosen as the prospective parliamentary candidate by the Vauxhall CLP.
[27] The Black Socialist Society was supported by trade unions and Labour's Walworth Road headquarters,[27] which ran its annual conferences.
[28] The organisation was defunct for more than a decade after the connivance with the antagonistic Labour headquarters of its trade union chair Gloria Mills and treasurer Bob Purkiss.
The organisation had a parliamentary launch the following year attended by Labour Party MPs including Clive Lewis, Naz Shah, Mohammad Yasin and Chris Williamson.