Black rights campaigner Darcus Howe dies aged 74

RADICAL activist Darcus Howe, once a central figure in London race protests, died on the weekend, his family said yesterday.

Trinidad-born Howe, 74, made his greatest mark in 1981 by organising a march of 20,000 over the police handling of the New Cross fire in which 13 teenagers died.

A leading figure in Brixton, which was disfigured by racial divide, he denied taking part in riots that provoked a political crisis in Margaret Thatcher’s first term as Prime Minister.

A left- wing broadcaster and writer, pictured, he came to the fore in the 1960s as a member of the British Black Panthers.

He was one of the ‘Mangrove Nine’ accused of riot and affray in Notting Hill at a trial in 1970. Howe successfully defended himself in an age of police racism and corruption and all were acquitted.

Eight years ago he revealed he had been having treatment for prostate cancer for two years.

His wife Leila Hassan said yesterday: ‘Darcus died quietly and unexpectedly in his sleep on the evening of Saturday April 1. Our private grief is inseparable from our public pride.’

His biographer Robin Bunce said Howe was a ‘powerful voice’ and an ‘outstanding black activist’ who was able to ‘force the first official acknowledgement of institutional racism in the United Kingdom’.