Obi Egbuna

Obi Egbuna, (Born July 1938) is a novelist, play writer and political activist, most famous for leading the United Coloured People’s Association (UCPA) and being a member of the British Black Panther Movement (1968–1972). Egbuna also published several texts on Marxist– Black Power, including Destroy this Temple (1971) and The ABC of Black Power Thought (1973).

Political Thought

Being heavily influenced by Marxism, Egbuna stressed the importance of an international struggle against capitalism, as a part of the global struggle against racial oppression. In a speech from 1967 at Trafalgar Square, London, Egbuna stated: “Black Power means simply that the black of this world are to liquidate capitalist oppression of black people wherever it exists by any means necessary”^[1]. However, Egbuna also saw the socialist and communist student movements of the 1960s as problematic to the Black Power Cause. Although ideologically rooted in a similar Marxist intellectual tradition, he saw the student organisations as “socialist snobs” who decree from “the premise that only they have read and can understand Marx”.^[2] This intellectual snobbery was, according to Egbuna, “doing a great harm to the cause they claim to be upholding” by ignoring race as a key reason for oppression of black workers:

“Nobody in his right mind disputes that the fact hat the White worker is a pretty to capitalist exploitation, as well as the Black Worker. But equally indisputable is the fact hat the White worker is exploited only because he is a worker, not because he is white, while in contrast, the Black Worker is oppressed, not only because he is a worker, but also because he is Black”^[3]

During the 1960s, many sympathisers of Black Power left their socialist and communist student organisations and subsequently started their own Marxist orientated Black Power organisations such as Black Socialist Alliance.

Controversy

As a consequence of the 1965 Race Relations Act, incitement of racial violence had become explicitly illegal in the United Kingdom (in fact, any incitement of violence was already illegal under the 1936 Public Order Act. The 1965 Race Relations Act was rather a way for the government to appease public fears of race riots and Black Militancy). Several members of Egbuna’s UCPA were fined under this act. Perhaps most noticeable was Roy Sawah, who in a speech 1968 at Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park urged ‘coloured nurses to give wrong injections to patients, coloured bus crews not to take the fare of black people and Indian restaurant owners to “put something in the curry”^[4]. ’Egbuna himself was later that year sentenced to prison for threatening to kill police and certain politicians^[5].

This provocative language must however be seen in context of the political climate of 1968. Only a few months earlier, the then shadow cabinet Defence Secretary Enoch Powel held his infamous ‘Rivers of Blood Speech’ in Birmingham, essentially laying out a highly prejudice account of black immigrants.^[6] On the international level, the South African Apartheid regime was practically unchallenged, leading to the emergence of a militant struggle. Also the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. that year is lightly to have influenced and radicalised several Black Power thinkers.

Bibliography

The Anthill (Play), Oford, London, (1965).

Destroy this Temple, MacGibbon & Kee, New York (1971).

The ABC of Black Power Thought – A Nigro Book (1973).

See also

Black Power

Marxism

References

1. ^ A. Sivanandan, A Different Hunger – Writings on Black Resistance, Pluto Press, (1982), p. 21.
2. ^ Ebduna O., The ABC of Black Power Thought – A Nigro Book (1973).
3. ^ Egbuna O., The ABC of Black Power – A Nigro Book, (1968), p. 19.
4. ^ A. Sivanandan, A Different Hunger – Writings on Black Resistance, Pluto Press, (1982), p. 21.
5. ^ A. Sivanandan, A Different Hunger – Writings on Black Resistance, Pluto Press, (1982), p. 21.
6. ^ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/3643823/Enoch-Powells-Rivers-of-Blood-speech.html

Ebduna O., The ABC of Black Power Thought – A Nigro Book (1973).

Sivanadan A., A Different Hunger – Writings on Black Resitance, Pluto Press (1982)

Comment: Enoch Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech, Daily Telegraph, 6 Nov 2007