About The Podcast

The Oral Tradition podcast explores the themes of celebration, education, loss, migration and resistance. Our special guests will be in conversation with research team members Tania Nwachukwu and Rudy Loewe.

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Episodes

An illustration about resistance and Black people. The image includes protestors and activists from different movements in the UK. This includes an illustration of a person from the British Black Panthers who has their fist in the air, students in school uniforms from Pimlico Academy, banners that says "Carnival was born of resistance” and “Solidarity with all asylum seekers & migrants”. As well as a person with a megaphone shouting "Shut down all detention centres!"

The Guests

Eric Huntley

Eric Huntley is an activist, publisher and author, who was born in 1929 in British Guiana and emigrated to Britain in the late 1950s. Together with his late wife Jessica, he founded and led many of the most significant grassroots campaigns of 1960s-80s, including the Caribbean Education and Community Workers Association, the Black Parents’ Movement, the Joint Bookshop Action Committee, the 1981 Black People’s Day of Action March, and the Supplementary School Movement. The Huntleys’ efforts were integral to political resistance movements among Black communities, the preservation of Black history, and the diversity of education available in UK schools today.
© Photo Credit Sharron Wallace Photography 2019. Courtesy of The Museum of Colour.

Together with his wife, Jessica, the Huntleys not only participated in, but also led many of the most significant grassroots campaigns of 1960s-80s, including becoming founder members of the Caribbean Education and Community Workers Association, the Black Parents Movement, set up the Joint Bookshop Action Committee (‘We will not be Terrorised Out of Existence’ campaign against racist attacks on Black Bookshops), the organisers of the 1981 Black People’s Day of Action March and the Supplementary School Movement, created to supplement the shortcomings of an education system that was failing Black children. They established and ran n Peter Moses School in Ealing. The Huntleys, together with John La Rose of New Beacon Books and the Race Today Collective, were responsible for launch of the first and wildly successful International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books in 1982.