Barbara Beese


Barbara Beese is a British activist, writer, and former member of the British Black Panthers. She is most notable as one of the Black activists known as the Mangrove Nine, charged in 1970 with inciting a riot protesting against the police targeting of the Mangrove Restaurant in Notting Hill, west London, and ultimately acquitted.

Black Panthers and activism

Beese came to public attention in 1970 as one of the Mangrove Nine, who on 9 August that year marched to the police station in Notting Hill, London, to protest against police raids of the Mangrove restaurant. Violent clashes between the police and the Black Panther marchers led to charges and an important trial that is said to have "changed racial justice in the UK forever". Beese was one of those arrested and charged on a number of accounts, and she was found not guilty on all.
She contributed to the journal Race Today on a number of topics, including education,

Personal life

Beese had a relationship with fellow Black Panther Darcus Howe, with whom she had a son, Darcus Beese.