Donated item

Black Health Workers' and Patients' Group Newsletter

The artefact I am donating is the cover of a newsletter produced by the Black Health Workers and Patients Group which I was a member of in the early 1980s. 'Black' here meant people of African and Asian origin.

The group was small, with only six or seven members, but we were extremely active. We worked collectively to organise meetings and demonstrations. As the contents of the newsletter listed on the cover show, the issues we were campaigning about are still relevant today.

The last item, the 'racist conference' which 'collapsed' as a result of our protests, was an event planned by the Galton Foundation and Biosocial Society at University College London. It reeked of eugenics. Its main themes included, for example, the 'Origin and Nature of Ethnic Minorities' and 'Ethnic Inter-marriage'. Although we were taking on racism which affected us all deeply, we had a lot of fun producing our newsletter together.