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46.
What is RAAS.
London: RAAS, nd. (c. late 1965). Stapled wrps., 16pp. Printed in Blackpool.
The booklet’s opening page declares that “RAAS stands for the UNITY and SOLIDARITY of ALL coloured peoples and in particular the coloured minority of Britain. RAAS stands for the elimination of racial friction.” Subsequent sections identify “the problem” (racial discrimination), describe the organisation’s origins (“RAAS was created in January 1965 as a result of the amalgamation of three smaller bodies… Its founder is Michael De Freitas, better known to the Press as Michael X”), and outline some of its aims (“To unify all coloured people in the United Kingdom”). It also prints details of its four-part programme, its sources of finance, and reprints several extracts from the press about RAAS; a membership form is provided inside the lower wrapper (scored through in this copy in blue biro by three vertical lines).
While de Freitas was the central figure of RAAS and is credited as its founder, the booklet makes no mention of its other organisers, in particular the Guyana-born activist and pioneer of Black rights, Roy Sawh; writer and editor of the Black-oriented radical publication Magnet News, Jan Carew, also Guyana-born; and Abdullah Patel, organiser of a strike at the Courtaulds factory in Preston where he worked, referred to briefly as “the first ever strike of coloured workers in Britain.” Sawh ultimately left RAAS, lamenting its lack of political direction, and Patel later quit as vice president, calling Michael “a myth”, while de Freitas himself subsequently changed RAAS’s constitution to allow Colin MacInnes to join as the one and only white associate of what had previously been a Black-only organisation (at one stage Michael claimed that it had a membership of sixty thousand, though in reality it was no more than two hundred).
Later, during de Freitas’s nine month spell in various prisons, RAAS was headquartered in the house in Baring Street in Islington he had owned since 1963, and from 1969 it was housed in the Black House on Holloway Road, lasting until 1970.
Slight creasing and associated rubbing along spine, o/w Very Good plus.
A rare document from RAAS, an organisation which laid the foundations for the Black Power movement in Britain.
Together with: a small flyer published by C.A.R.I.B.A.R. (the committee against racialism in Britain and Rhodesia) announcing a protest against Conservative MP Duncan Sandys “holding a meeting in Trafalgar Square in support of Ian Smiths illegal regime in Rhodesia”, January 15, 1967, adding that “The press has reported that Mr. Colin Jordan and his Nazis will be at the meeting.” The Race Relations Act that Michael X was found to have contravened in Reading several months later was, ironically, designed with white racists such as Duncan Sandys and Colin Jordan in mind. 19.2x12.8cm. Printed in black on off-white thin paper stock. Old pinhole to upper edge, o/w Very Good plus.
(2 items).
