“Not Just an American Problem”: Malcolm X in Britain

Malcolm X was received as a merchant of racial hatred by a British mainstream press already anxious in its framing of post-war British identity since the arrival of the troopship SS Empire Windrush initiated a wave of black immigration to Britain in 1948. Nevertheless, Malcolm X, inspired during his 1964 trips to Africa and the Middle East by anti-imperialist movements such as the Organization of African Unity, arrived in Britain eager to explore and publicize the social and political barriers faced by black people living in Britain and to foster transatlantic political relationships under the banner of his Organization of Afro-American Unity. The historical spectre of empire would prove crucial to his characterization of Britain. It is only appropriate that Malcolm X chose Oxford (in December 1964) and London (in February 1965), those traditional intellectual and commercial centres of empire, to underline his evolving diasporic politics with the practical politics of African decolonization. His theoretical grasp of what he termed in a late speech “the science of imagery” enabled him both to analyze the role of representation in ideological (and, indeed, psychological) control as well as to exploit his own image in the interests of black empowerment. What became evident too late was that Malcolm X offered his own life in overturning the orthodoxy of such stereotyping. In the historical confluence of American and British radicalism, Malcolm X's visits (and their ongoing resonance) are among the most significant. In addition to detailing Malcolm X's attitudes towards and experiences in Britain, this essay is concerned with the circulation in Britain of the iconography of Malcolm X. Indeed, as much as racial analysis, Malcolm X's genius was for the contrivance of images of himself. Malcolm X's legendary transformations, marked also by renaming, were abundantly illustrated.