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Born 1943 (age 74)
Appears in 14 titles

Leighton Rhett Radford "Darcus" Howe (26 February 1943 – 1 April 2017) was a British broadcaster, writer and racial justice campaigner. Originally from Trinidad, Howe arrived in England as a teenager in 1961, intending to study law and settling in London. There he joined the British Black Panthers, a group named in sympathy with the US Black Panther Party. He came to public attention in 1970 as one of the nine protestors, known as the Mangrove Nine, arrested and tried on charges that included conspiracy to incite a riot, following a protest against repeated police raids of The Mangrove restaurant in Notting Hill, 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. In 1981, he organised a 20,000-strong "Black People's Day of Action" in protest at the handling of the investigation into the New Cross house fire, in which 13 black teenagers died. Howe was an editor of Race Today, and chairman of the Notting Hill Carnival. He was best known as a television broadcaster in the UK for his Black on Black series on Channel 4, his current affairs programme Devil's Advocate, and his work with Tariq Ali on Bandung File. His television work also included White Tribe (2000), a look at modern Britain and its loss of "Englishness"; Slave Nation (2001); Who You Callin' a Nigger? (2004); and Is This My Country? (2006), a search for his West Indian identity. He was a columnist for the New Statesman and The Voice.

Filmography

8.0
Who You Callin' a Nigger?
2004
as Self
The Mangrove Nine
10.0
The Mangrove Nine
1973
as Self
What Ron Said
10.0
What Ron Said
2004
Blacks Britannica
Blacks Britannica
1978
as Self
White Tribe
White Tribe
2000
as Presenter
Joan Rivers at the BBC
Joan Rivers at the BBC
2024
as Self (archive footage)
The Banana
The Banana
1997
as Self
Viv
1985
as Himself / Narrator