In Speak Out!, Milo Miller curates a selection of writings by one of the first and most important Black radical organisations of the 1970s, the Brixton Black Women’s Group. This vital anthology spotlights the work of the group and the impact of their intersectional approach to resisting racism, sexism and colonialism on other feminist and racial justice movements, writes Shubhangi.

Read an excerpt from the introduction to the anthology by editor Milo Miller.

Speak Out!: The Brixton Black Women’s Group. Brixton Black Women’s Group (edited by Milo Miller). Verso Books. 2023.

Milo Miller’s edited anthology Speak Out! The Brixton Black Women’s Group is a groundbreaking work that shines a long-overdue light on the pioneering activism and writings of one of Britain’s first Black feminist organisations from the 1970s and 80s. In 2016, while working on his PhD thesis on squatting in Brixton, Miller was aware of Olive Morris, a prominent black feminist activist who actively led the squatter’s rights campaigns of the 1970s. However, as his research progressed, Miller uncovered a deeper narrative: Morris was not only a pivotal figure in these campaigns but also a part of the Brixton Black Women’s Group (BBWG), a collective she co-founded. What stood out to Miller was the collective voice used in BBWG’s writings, which refused any individual authorship. This non-hierarchical structure prompted Miller to compile and document their leaflets, out-of-print books, and journals. This compilation gradually evolved into a project of its own, culminating in the publication of this book released on BBWG’s 50th anniversary, “as the group’s visionary work speaks […] urgently to the conditions we face in the present” (Miller, 12).

The book excels in compiling and presenting the remarkable work of these women [Brixton Black Women’s Group] and highlighting the insidious epistemic violence of colonialism.

In his preface, Miller asks why the BBWG was “so absent from accounts of any number of key political issues, campaigns, and events in 1970s and 1980s Britain to which they were central? (Miller, 10). This realisation underscores the central premise of this book: the presence of epistemological inequalities. The book excels in compiling and presenting the remarkable work of these women and highlighting the insidious epistemic violence of colonialism. It sets out the BBWG’s liberatory frameworks that de-centre gender as the primary lens through which to understand the lives of racialised women. Instead, in my reading of the group’s work, they propose ways of knowing that uncover the intersections of class, gender, colonialism and race. During this period, figures such as Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem were widely celebrated as feminist cultural icons of second-wave feminism, despite the often questionable and narrow scope of their feminist agendas. Black British feminist figures like Beverley Bryan, Amina Mama, and Gail Lewis, Claudia Jones, Althea Jones-Lecointe, some of whom were early members of the BBWG, remain largely obscure, with their significant contributions often forgotten. At its core, Speak Out! centres on the lived experiences of working-class Black women in Britain through an intersectional lens grounded in Marxist-Leninist thought.

This pioneering group was driven by the desire to address the overlapping crises of anti-Black racism, economic deprivation, patriarchal violence, and the state’s systemic failures to support working-class Black women and children.

The BBWG emerged in the early 1970s in Britain as a collective of Black women dedicated to integrating their unique experiences into the broader struggle for Black liberation. This pioneering group was driven by the desire to address the overlapping crises of anti-Black racism, economic deprivation, patriarchal violence, and the state’s systemic failures to support working-class Black women and children. Their grassroots organising focused on the ordinary aspects of their lives, which were central to their work and political consciousness. Together, the women of the BBWG read and analysed Marxist, socialist, and anti-colonial literature, developing a radical feminist framework that articulated the relationship between imperialism, race, gender, and class long before such analyses became mainstream.

Despite their significant contributions, the narratives of the BBWG’s resistance have been largely overlooked. Their work laid the foundation for contemporary demands for the abolition of the police and the carceral state.

The BBWG was instrumental in campaigns such as Black People Against State Harassment (BASH), which protested against oppressive legislation like the Vagrancy Act. They disrupted police attempts to make arrests and demonstrated outside police stations and courts, providing care and legal support to Black communities bearing the brunt of state violence. Their organising efforts were crucial during the 1981 uprisings when Black people throughout Britain rose against the cycle of police brutality. The political climate of the period was characterised by intense racial tensions and the emergence of “political blackness,” which is not to be simply understood through, “race” or “skin colour” but as encompassing all racialised communities positioned outside the boundaries of the nation-state highlighting the state’s antagonism towards non-white life. This category of difference informs the political consciousness of the Brixton Black Women’s Group and is seen in their demands and their writing. Despite their significant contributions, the narratives of the BBWG’s resistance have been largely overlooked. Their work laid the foundation for contemporary demands for the abolition of the police and the carceral state. The BBWG’s vision and efforts remain a vital part of the history of the Black women’s movement in Britain, highlighting their insightful analyses of racism, sexism, and capitalism, and their relentless pursuit of justice and representation for Black women.

The BBWG’s critiques of state violence, discriminatory policies and the systemic coercion of Black women’s reproductive autonomy remain hauntingly relevant today, underscoring the urgency for sustained activism.

Speak Out! is a timely reclamation of erased histories that resonate profoundly with contemporary struggles for racial, gender, and reproductive justice. The BBWG’s critiques of state violence, discriminatory policies and the systemic coercion of Black women’s reproductive autonomy remain hauntingly relevant today, underscoring the urgency for sustained activism. By offering a robust Marxist analysis and a working-class perspective, the writings in this anthology facilitate a deeper understanding of contemporary imperatives such as prison and police abolition.

This book is structured into five parts spanning the BBWG’s active years from 1973 to 1989. The selected writings cover a diverse array of issues from Black women’s reproductive rights to the examination of the marginalisation experienced by Black lesbian members. An editorial relating to this latter issue stands out, where the authors acknowledge a contradiction in their approach, when they “rendered sexual preference to the realm of ‘private,’ even though our argument was that all aspects of life were social.” (Miller, 264).  This is one of the anthology’s greatest strengths: it acts as an archive of the groups’ candid exploration of intra-organisational conflicts and the group’s commitment to intersectionality, self-examination and growth, in this case by reevaluating their marginalisation of Black queer women’s voices.

Reading the book, I was struck by my own oversight as a feminist researcher regarding the profound contributions of working-class Black Marxist feminists. This realisation underscores the pervasive ontological and epistemic violence perpetuated by colonialism, emphasising the imperative to decolonise the curriculum. Current curricula often privileges the canonisation of specific ideas and people, thereby necessitating a critical re-evaluation and diversification of academic frameworks. Furthermore, in the contemporary landscape, neoliberal politics exacerbates this violence by actively suppressing radical resistance. This suppression often consigns transformative radical literature, such as that produced by groups like the BBWG, to obscurity or confines it within local contexts. The BBWG critiqued the imperialistic exploitation and plunder of developing countries and sharply criticised the White Left for a cherry-picked form of activism that ignored racism and aligned with the ruling class. Thinking through this assertion is important as Black women have often been accused of fragmentation on account of bringing race and gender and thus breaking the cohesiveness of demands even within Black liberatory projects. The BBWG starkly opposed such binary perspectives, offering the tools to comprehend and challenge these dichotomous hierarchical constructs and envision and implement practices of mutual aid, solidarity, and resistance crucial for dismantling the carceral state.

This text should serve as an essential inclusion in whitewashed, canonical curricula, where the historical achievements of coalitions formed by Black women in Britain have been overlooked and understudied.

Speak Out! is a revelatory and indispensable anthology that disrupts dominant liberatory discourses. Its inclusion in academic and activist spaces can broaden perspectives, deepen understanding, and encourage critical engagement with the intersections of race, gender, class and imperialism. Speak Out! is a revelatory and indispensable work that challenges the sidelining of Black feminist labour in historical narratives and archives and offers a decolonial approach to informing feminist discourse. This text should serve as an essential inclusion in whitewashed, canonical curricula, where the historical achievements of coalitions formed by Black women in Britain have been overlooked and understudied. BBWG’s newsletters and pamphlets are written in simple, straightforward language, to articulate actionable demands and effect real change. This makes the book accessible to a general readership and contrasts with so many academic texts that rely on jargon and are ultimately extractive and insular rather than reformative.

The writings of the BBWG presented here embody decolonisation in praxis and reclaim Black British feminist history. What began as a doctoral thesis project, is now a book that reads as a testament to the BBWG’s contribution to intersectional Black and feminist struggles in late 20^th-century Britain and an instant classic feminist text.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Image credit: Some members of the BBWG in 1979, courtesy of Milo Miller/Verso.