At the time, the movement had branches in north, south and west London with each branch having around 100 members. The BBP would also move their headquarters to Brixton, a poorer Black community in London. By 1970, Jones had started “grass-roots organizing of local Black communities in England around each community’s issues of racial discrimination in jobs, housing, education, and medical and legal services,” according to BlackPast. student at the University of London, became the leader of BBP. While Ebguna was in prison, Althea Jones, a Trinidad-born Ph.D. The document, which urged collective self-defense, stated: “The moment the cops lay their hands on a Black brother, it is the duty of Black crowd surge forward like one big Black steam roller to catch up with the cop … till the brother is rescued, freed and made to flee at once.” In July 1968, Egbuna was arrested for allegedly inciting the murder of policemen in his pamphlet entitled “What to Do If Cops Lay Their Hands On A Black Man At The Speaker’s Corner”. Soon, it was targeted by the police as its members were portrayed by the media as violent extremists. Adopting the Panther’s symbols of berets, military jackets, and raised fists, the BBP under Egbuna organized demonstrations, produced Black Power literature and fought racism and police brutality in Britain. Even though it was not an official chapter of the Black Panthers, it was the first Panther organization outside the U.S. The BBP was in its early years a male-dominated group, largely consisting of West Indians, Black Africans and South Asians. This followed a networking visit to the U.S. But in April 1968 when Egbuna was re-elected chairman, he turned it down and disclosed that he was forming the British Black Panthers (BBP). Not too long after Carmichael’s speech at the congress, Egbuna was elected chairman of the UCPA, which published a manifesto titled “Black Power in Britain”. At the congress, Carmichael called for the creation of militant Black Power in the UK to fight against the racist politics of the White British establishment, as one account stated.įollowing that congress, the Black Power movement in the UK started taking shape and anti-racist organizations such as the Universal Coloured People’s Association (UCPA) and the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination (CARD) adopted Black Power ideology. The congress, whose main speaker was Carmichael, had in attendance political activists, freedom fighters and radical academics. Amid these concerns and demonstrations against the Vietnam War, a radical congress titled the “Dialectics of Liberation” was organized in north London in July 1967.