What do you think of when you hear the words ‘Civil Rights Movement’? Probably Martin Luther King Jr’s civil rights marches? The Montgomery Bus Boycotts and Rosa Parks? I would guess that what you think of – and what you have learnt at school – took place in the United States. Robin Bunce and Paul Field’s biography of Darcus Howe argues that in the history we learn in the UK, the narrative is that “Britain is the utopia of fair play” and therefore the civil rights struggle in the UK are dismissed in the school curriculum as it does not fit into this vision.
