“The Rise and Fall of Michael X” front page story in FREEDOM NEWS published by Black Panther Movement Vol. 3, #2 Np. London : March 4, 1972

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“The Rise and Fall of Michael X” front page story in FREEDOM NEWS published by Black Panther Movement Vol. 3, #2 (Np. [London]: March 4, 1972).

Single broadside sheet, folded to make 4pp. Photo-illustrated.

The article takes a critical line on Michael X, by then a victim of his own hubris whose self-proclaimed leadership had become increasingly demagogic, and whose capture in Guyana and return to Trinidad had occurred two days before the paper’s publication date. The anonymous author of the piece argues that “Contrary to Michael being a leader of black people in Britain - or anywhere else - his actions have always been against our interests”, and concludes that “The fact that the British Government never sought his extradition from Trinidad and that he was an honoured guest of both the Trinidad and Guyanese governments, reveals that Michael X was an agent of those who seek to suppress and exploit black people rather than the ‘leader’ of black people they try to make him out to be” (Michael’s divided personality elicited equally divided opinion, and this position, one also held by Darcus Howe, was contrary to the view held by most of the white liberals he cultivated).

Other contents include a lead story on police violence in Brixton; news of the trial of Angela Davis; the recent election in Jamaica; various workers’ struggles; announcements of a meeting in Coldharbour Lane to demand a public inquiry into police oppression in Brixton, and a “Sisters’ Forum on the History of the Oppression of Black Women” in nearby Herne Hill (after the decline of the Black Panther Party in 1973, a number of women, including Beverley Bryan, Olive Morris and Liz Obi, organised to form the Brixton Black Women’s Group).

Newsprint paper slightly age-toned, with light creasing to upper right corner of first page; old central and horizontal creases; o/w Very Good. The British Black Panther Party was founded in September 1968, inspired by - though unaffilated to - the American Black Panther Party (whose newspaper inspired the launch of Freedom News).

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