Review of Black Britain  

Black Britain
Chris Mullard
London: George Allen and Unwin, 1973

Black Britain, published in 1973, is the memoir of a Black man born in Britain in 1944, when Black people were a rarity here. It contains much evidence that as a boy Chris Mullard was encouraged by all around him, but he could not accept that they did not despise him. Out of his racial self-hatred, projected onto others, he forged an identity and career as an anti-racist. He has a violent disposition. All the time he was writing the book, he says, he felt “a disturbing desire to break, smash and riot, to bellow: ‘Whitey! One day you’ll have to pay!’”[1]

The book’s main interest lies in the light it throws on what happened after it was published, when many other anti-racists took Mullard as a model. All with the same aim of destroying White society, they built on his success in promoting the anti-racist programme, which eventually became public policy.

Mullard clearly had hang-ups about his race from an early age. He writes that as a child he was taught that the colour of his skin was ugly, but, he says, the message was conveyed in an extremely subtle way. No one mentioned it.[2] Instead, references were made to Britain’s role in civilising Black people in far-off lands. The only reason the British Empire appeared in the curriculum, Mullard thought, was to put him down.

He claims to have been paraded for all to see because he was Black but also to have been hidden away for this reason: “I found myself in school plays because I was black; I took a back row seat whenever dignitaries visited the school because I was not white”.[3]

He was told that if he did well at school he would get the same chances as anybody else and be respected. He took this to mean that, being Black, he was inadequate.[4] The worst thing he could do, his headmaster told him, was develop a chip on his shoulder about his race. Mullard writes: “I had truly learned the school’s lesson — my skin colour was ugly and to be despised”. We see that we are dealing with a fantasist when we read that Mullard was repeatedly told that “wicked black people … were responsible for all the troubles in the world”.[5]

As a young man Mullard was a social climber. “I courted the daughters of reactionary conservatives. I dined at distinguished places”. As he also puts it: “I associated with bigots”.[6] Just as freely as he calls people bigots, he talks about “oppression”, “exploitation” and “racism” without ever saying what for him makes something qualify for such descriptions. But if he deplores oppression, exploitation and racism, what does he desire? Freedom, justice and equality, of course!

He had a letter published in the Times. “Get out of our country, black rubbish!” someone wrote back. “Blacks are lazy, immoral, savage, drug-taking, stinking bastards.”[7] At last, Mullard had encountered someone who hated Black people. “If I could not find and accept myself I would always have to depend upon the mercy of racists like the author of the note”, he decided, and so began his journey of self-discovery.

Once, he went into a café and ordered some chips. The atmosphere seemed pleasant enough until he noticed a “group of neatly dressed men [who] wore large boots which began a few steel inches beyond their toes and ended abruptly buckled below their knees”.[8] One of them whispered something, then “Abuse electrified the room, punctuated with indelicate commas such as ‘nigger’, ‘ape’, ‘wog’ and ‘Black bastard’”. By the time Mullard had finished his chips, the men were ready to leave. “They pointed at me, laughed and then kicked me as hard as they could. Any objection I made was met with blows to my knees as they violently pushed their chairs under the table”. “Frustrated”, Mullard watched them go to the counter and get their bill.

Did this really happen? If the men were at their table when they pointed to Mullard, didn’t they have to walk over to his before commencing to kick him? How could their chairs, pushed in under one table, have dealt blows to Mullard’s knees as he sat at another? If anything like what he describes occurred, how could Mullard have found it merely frustrating? Shouldn’t he have been doubled up in pain? More likely, as the men left, one of them pushed Mullard’s shoulder to make him spill his tea. Offended that he wasn’t attacked, he made the story up. Although he has said that he had finished his chips, he writes that after the men left, he finished his chips.

But this was another crux: “From that day onwards I knew I could not go on as before”. He entered a period of prolonged thought, which led him to himself: a “new self which was cynical, bitter, full of hate for whites”.

At length, his “longing to hate and destroy” started to abate when he began to associate with other Blacks, which gave him a sense of security — “spiritual rather than intellectual” — unlike anything he had known. Now he could build his identity. But his destructive urge did not entirely disappear. He resolved not to be “turned into garbage like so many black people” but to “fight, hate or even kill”.[9]

He joined an international friendship group, but it showed friendship to Whites. An Indian praised the British, who had given India roads, introduced a system of government and improved the nation’s health before withdrawing. No, they hadn’t, Mullard thought; they had plundered villages, exploited the natives and forced them to accept Western values.[10]

In 1966 he set up his own group to “try and foster a realistic approach towards racial harmony”.[11] The media saw it as revolutionary, but he saw it as concerned with civil rights. It helped him to find himself, giving him a “reason for living”. It also showed him that it was his “duty to organize black rebellion against exploitation and oppression”. His cry was: “I am black, I am proud of it, I pledge my life to killing white racism!”[12]

In 1967, unemployed, he volunteered as a race advisor, having come highly recommended by the person who had put him forward for the role, namely himself: “I thought myself pre-eminently suited for my new advisory job”.[13] Statutory and voluntary bodies started sending people to him, but he saw a problem. He was “working within the system”.

Mullard believes that when West Indian immigration to Britain began, it was because the country had invited West Indians to come and join the workforce. He thinks that people were required who would “accept bad conditions, heavy dirty work, low wages, and long or unattractive hours”.[14] In fact, the immigrants were responding to advertisements put up in the West Indies by companies wanting passengers for their eastbound voyages.

Mullard insists that mass immigration to Britain was nothing new. He thinks the country’s history was one of successive waves of immigration. But although he says that immigrants were habitually abused, sometimes to the point of death, he opposes any restriction on immigration.[15] Let them come and meet their fate!

He feels that White people misunderstand Black people. They think of them as uncivilised and unintelligent when they are just the opposite. Nor are they in any way parasitic; it is just that White people don’t give them enough money.[16] Also, Whites should understand that the right people to determine race policy in a place like Britain are Blacks.[17]

Relativism was already current in 1973, for Mullard thinks that truth comes in different colours. Throughout the book, he says, he insists on “Black truth as opposed to white truth”.[18]

If there is one thing an anti-racist cannot stand it is the races receiving equal treatment. If a Black person joins a queue, nothing could be more unjust than expecting him to stay in it until he reaches the front; he must be placed at the front immediately. In Britain, many Black people, like many White people, found it hard to obtain accommodation. Getting a council house took years. “This was no good for a black with nowhere to live on arrival”, Mullard says,[19] appearing to think that a system was needed whereby as soon as a Black person set foot in the country, everyone else would understand that they would have to wait a little longer for a house.

But what if a Black person got a house that he didn’t entirely like? Mullard cites the case of a Black man who was given a house that was run down.[20] No doubt he was aware that most of Britain’s housing stock was run down, but come on! This man was Black!

It was the same with jobs. Black people could get them but they weren’t necessarily good jobs. They might have to drive buses, sweep factories or do other menial tasks.[21] Menial tasks, for Black people? A scandal!

There were also problems with the schools. Indian children did well, seeing school as a place in which to work, but Black children found it difficult to settle.[22] Moreover, many books were out of date, which made them feel inferior. They might have to sing songs mentioning little brown children, brothers and sisters dear, who hadn’t heard of the Lord in Heaven or been told that God was near.[23] How could they cope? Some sought “solace in aggressive activity” aimed at the “bigoted reluctance” of Whites to accept them as equals.

Mullard opposes the research put out by the “race relations industry”, which concentrated on the “immigrant problem”.[24] Was someone suggesting that immigrants were a problem? Moreover, all the industry preached was brotherly love and equal opportunities.[25] Mullard opposes racial integration, seeing it as liable to “produce more hostility”.[26] He regrets that universities have “jumped on to the bandwagon of promoting good race relations”.[27] Too much time was spent seeking facts, he feels, which he doubts can be presented in an objective fashion.[28] How could people see brotherly love and equal opportunities as desirable, Mullard seems to wonder. Why don’t they realise that the way forward is to incite racial conflict and subvert the dissemination of facts? Above all, why don’t they realise that Blacks must “play an active, if not a majority role in the formation of race policy”?[29]

He opposes the Community Relations Commission and with it the whole concept of community relations. At least, he did until someone made him a community relations officer, at which point he decided that community relations officers were an excellent idea. The only problem was that not everyone wanted to see him in the role. One commissioner wrote that a militant like Mullard was “hardly the kind of person to make a good community relations officer”. The Dean of Manchester thought him immature and lacking in moral sincerity.[30] Filled with “indescribable rage”, Mullard realised that he was involved in “a black versus white battle”.

Mullard finds crime a natural reaction for Blacks to the White denial to them of decent jobs and equal opportunities, although he admits that it has an allure for them. “It is a way of getting our own back on society [and] forging an identity for ourselves”.[31]

But if Blacks are prone to crime, other negative descriptions of them are calumnies: “we are not lazy; we do not live off the dole … we are not the cause of this country’s social and political problems … we are not maladjusted; we are not educationally subnormal”.[32] Rather: “Our habits, customs and cultures are just as civilised as anybody else’s. … We are just as intelligent as others. We are industrious. We possess a sense of morality”. Then again, maybe not, for it isn’t quite clear whether Mullard is talking about what Black people are like here or about their self-conception. This might be a “Black truth”.

He quotes a race official describing exponents of Black Power as “working towards destroying our society. … They’re the cause of bad relations between the coloured community and the host community”; they must be stopped before they ruin race relations beyond repair.[33] But according to Mullard, only “bigoted whites” criticise Black Power. When they refer to Black people committing murder or burning or smashing White property, they fail to see that Black people are fighting for their lives. Blacks “feel that white society is knifing us in the back”.[34]

As Black people resisted race relations policy, causing communication increasingly to break down, Mullard sees passive resistance possibly giving way to more violent forms of behaviour.[35] He expects riots within ten years.

In the meantime, he advocates a massive programme of social change. Every industry “should be given a minimum quota of Black employees”.[36] He denies that this will involve preferential treatment for Blacks, for if there is discrimination against them, then they are underprivileged, and “in order to bring this underprivileged group to the same level as whites it becomes necessary to discriminate positively.” In other words, yes, his programme will involve preferential treatment for Blacks, but this is just what society needs.

He wants such policies to be promoted by the media, the churches and the trades unions so that a “new climate of opinion towards race” is created.[37] It must be accepted that to treat all the same without regard to race is no longer good but bad. To achieve this “complete reversal in attitude and policy”, existing expenditure must be increased by at least twenty times, “with provisions for further increases to possibly five times even this figure”. Thus no limit must be placed on the potential cost to the taxpayer of funding his own demise. Should the White man’s “pathological desire to hold on to the reins of power” persist, it must be contested.[38]

This would all occur under the direction of Black people, with Whites in an assisting role, doing “any job however menial … without expecting gratitude”.[39] This “fight against all forms of racism” would “foster a black British identity” and “destroy once and for all the dubious concept of community relations by using conflict as a tool”.[40]

The media must cease to give publicity to Black violence under the “pretence of only informing their audience”.[41] They must attack society’s “racist framework”, not support it. Films must cast Black actors in all kinds of roles, not just as bus-drivers, entertainers or sportsmen. All institutions must improve race relations, which “can only be done, ultimately, by giving support to the demands of black Britain”.

Mullard sees a bloody battle coming. It will start with Blacks using pressure, demonstrations and scorching resentment, and then, when peaceful means fail, it will “explode into street fighting, urban guerrilla warfare, looting, burning and rioting”.[42] To those who think this can never happen, Mullard says: “Watch out, whitey, nigger goin’ to get you!”[43]

In Chris Mullard we therefore have an aggressive, race-obsessed megalomaniac full of paranoid delusions. Everything he imagines to be true of Whites with regard to Blacks, he wishes to make true of Blacks with regard to Whites.

But for an insight into the character of Britain, consider this. In the 1970s Mullard was put in charge of a unit at the London Institute of Education, England’s premier teacher-training establishment, and in 2004 he was made a Companion of the British Empire for his work in race relations.[44]

It is therefore unsurprising that his programme, whether espoused by him or those who came after him, was implemented almost to the letter. It is now decades since Britain last tolerated fair competition. Rather, in the name of “diversity”, “inclusion” and “equity”, it is decided before a competition starts what proportion of the rewards will go to members of which races regardless of their performance.

In 1973 Mullard’s idea that Whites are bad and Blacks are good seemed like something out of a sick cartoon. Now, question it and you will be shunned.

He wanted the media to keep quiet about Black crime. They had already started doing this by the time his book came out. When years later the Home Office stated that the media must do nothing to encourage feelings of racial antipathy (meaning antipathy to non-Whites), the decree was unnecessary.[45] As for attacking society’s “racist framework”, what else do the media do, and how long is it since a film has failed to show an astrophysicist or saviour of society as Black?

Reflecting Mullard’s view that forming racial policy should be kept out of the hands of Whites, Britain’s Home Secretaries are invariably non-White these days. Two recent commissions on matters concerning race were both chaired by Black men.[46] When the BBC reported on one of them, it invited only non-Whites to comment. We had already seen a special committee on race questions chaired by another Black man.[47] Today, the idea that a White person might have something to say about race or racial policy would be considered ludicrous.

As for Mullard’s prediction of riots within ten years, it came true in Bristol in 1980 and Brixton in 1981.

Mullard wanted no restrictions on immigration. Every year now, the numbers of immigrants to Britain set new records, apparently as a matter of government policy.

All told, we are living in pretty much the country Mullard dreamed of.

[1] Black Britain, p. 7

[2] Ibid., p. 14.

[3] Ibid.., p. 14.

[4] Ibid.., p. 15.

[5] Ibid.., p. 14.

[6] Ibid.., p. 16.

[7] Ibid.., p. 17.

[8] Ibid.., p. 20.

[9] Ibid.., p. 24.

[10] Ibid.., p. 29.

[11] Ibid.., p. 29-30.

[12] Ibid.., p. 34.

[13] Ibid.., p. 31.

[14] Ibid.., p. 38.

[15] Ibid.., p. 40. Mullard refers to Irish immigrants as slaves: “Many of Britain’s canals and roads were built by the navvy gangs of Irish slaves”.

[16] Black people suffer from “inadequate provision” (Ibid.., p. 159).

[17] “Throughout I have taken the view that race policies should be dictated by Blacks, not by Whites”, p. 7. See also p. 56.

[18] Ibid.., p. 7.

[19] Ibid.., p. 41.

[20] Ibid.., p. 42.

[21] Ibid.., p. 43.

[22] Ibid.., p. 45.

[23] Ibid.., p. 44.

[24] Ibid.., p. 66.

[25] Ibid.., p. 65.

[26] Ibid.., p. 52.

[27] Ibid.., p. 67.

[28] Ibid.., p. 69.

[29] Ibid.., p. 72.

[30] Ibid.., p. 107.

[31] Ibid.., p. 151.

[32] Ibid.., p. 152.

[33] Ibid.., pp. 153-54.

[34] Ibid.., p. 156.

[35] Ibid.., p. 156.

[36] Ibid.., p. 163.

[37] Ibid.., pp. 164-67.

[38] Ibid.., p. 155.

[39] Ibid.., p. 169.

[40] Ibid.., p. 168.

[41] Ibid.., pp. 171-73.

[42] Ibid.., p. 176.

[43] Ibid.., p. 176.

[44] ChronicleLive, June 12th 2015, “Race activist Chris Mullard talks of his time in North East”, https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/race-activist-chris-mullard-talks-9443844.

[45] A statement from 1989, quoted in The Response to Racial Attacks and Harassment: Guidance for the Statutory Agencies, a report of the Home Office Inter-Departmental Racial Attacks Group, quoted in Rae Sibbitt, 1997, The Perpetrators of Racial Harassment and Racial Violence, Home Office Research Study 176, http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs/Hors176.pdf, p. 85.

[46] I mean David Lammy’s report on racial disparities in the criminal justice system (2020) and Tony Sewell’s Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities (2021).

[47] This was Simon Woolley’s Race Disparity Audit Advisory Group (2018).