Black Women, Politics, Nationalism and Community in London

Particular historical moments often enable us to understand contemporary movements and issues. Specifically, they are critical in understanding constructions of race, nation, class, and gender and how these constructions change over time. The construction of the nation, national identities and national discourses involves including and excluding individuals as well as ranking people based on race, gender, ethnicity, class and culture. Interrelated constructions of the nation and of national identity are crucial in understanding acts of dispossession and dislocation, progress and expansion, and political solidarity and community-based mobilization.

While constructions of the nation are entrenched in assumptions of national identity, and conceptions of national identity—based on the conflation of biology and culture—are rooted in notions of who does and does not belong in the nation, both often rely on the contradictions and ambiguities of these constructions for effect. The constructions result in a dual practice of marginalization and domination, differentiation and incorporation. The state's practice of solidifying these boundaries, however, often serves as the basis for collective action in order to bring about progressive social change—in other words, grassroots mobilization.

Grassroots mobilization is critical in drawing people into both global and local processes of economic and social transformation, particularly as it intersects with race, class, gender, and nation. Grassroots collective activism challenges power structures and social institutions, and aids in the search for meaning, voice, and identity. Community-based mobilization sheds light on the ways people attempt to transform social, political and economic conditions.

In this essay, I analyze the significance of black women's grassroots organizing in London during the post-Thatcher era. Attention to this case raises the following questions: How are black women responding to the devolution of state welfare in Britain? To what extent has Britain's state policies and its construction of the nation shaped black women's social and political mobilization and identification? And what are some of the complexities of black women's community-based mobilization?

These questions have emerged from recent fieldwork on black women's grassroots organizations in London. My paper explores how black women's grassroots organizations such as Southwark Black Women's Centre (SBWC, whose membership is made up of predominantly Caribbean women), ¹ are building a more politically aware community. In this essay, I show that through their participation and membership in SBWC, these women see themselves simultaneously as a part of an African diasporic community and as a part of a political community at-large not bounded by race or ethnicity but shaped significantly by gender and nation. ² I discuss the political mobilization of such organizations within the context of changing state policy and of conservative discourses of the nation.

I argue that in Britain there is a syncretic relationship between grassroots organizations and the state. ³ Alongside shifts in Britain's political economy, grassroots organizations have transformed from highly mobilized entities to service providers—espousing a more diminished form of politics. ⁴ Using the case of the SBWC, I examine the complex yet valuable role of state-funded grassroots groups functioning as service providers. Such organizations provide services to the community within a political-economic context that continues to suffer cutbacks in state welfare.

In Britain, despite the return of a Labour government during the post-Thatcher years, resources allocated to grassroots groups continue to erode. Today, organizations in Britain struggle to exist in the aftermath of Thatcherism. Community-based organizations in particular try to survive within the context of Thatcherite-like policies and a waning welfare state.

The concerns of this paper are threefold. First, I begin with a discussion of what I call a "continuous shift to the Right." Thus, I briefly examine the ideological underpinnings of two of Britain's prime ministers, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair. In so doing, I discuss two different historical periods that provide the climate in which black women's organizations simultaneously become part of and strive to build a more politically...