Don’t Blame the Blacks

Find Cara's poem 'Island Screams' in Don't Blame the Blacks by George Powe, here.

Don't Blame the Blacks was written by George Powe in 1958, at a time of race riots in Nottingham, and Notting Hill in London. At the time there were 2,000-3,000 Caribbean immigrants in Nottingham, but this pamphlet was targeted at the white community locally and nationally, aiming to persuade them that immigration was not the root problem of social and economic ills in the UK. Rather, it was due to untenable conditions in the immigrants’ countries of origin, and was in fact of benefit to the UK.

The pamphlet accused the ‘ruling classes’ of spreading misinformation to divide the workforce and maintain their control. This was an important anti-racism pamphlet which also noted the then prevalent anti-Semitism.