50 Years of New Beacon Books

50 Years of New Beacon Books 
A Cause for Celebration for All 



Sharmilla Beezmohun writes: 

In these times of doom and gloom, it’s rare to find positive things to celebrate. Recent elections and swings in public mood seem to be suggesting a move away from tolerance and inclusion. Reflecting society, the microcosmic world of publishing has been looking – yet again – at its own performance in this area, and finds itself woefully lacking. Indeed, reports such as 2015’s Writing the Future: Black and Asian Writers and Publishers in the UK Market Place by Spread the Word would bear such pessimism out. 

There are, however, reasons to be cheerful, despite the general picture of negativity around. Trailblazers still exist, showing how things might be different, influencing others with new ideas and ways of doing. One small example of this is New Beacon Books, the UK’s first black publisher and bookshop, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2016. Despite being a tiny publisher with a catalogue of under 70 titles, New Beacon and the circle of activism it facilitated since the late 1960s have made an essential difference to British society, forcing it to take note of all its inhabitants, whatever their ethnic or geographic origin. 

New Beacon Books was founded as a publishing house in August 1966 by John La Rose, with the active support and assistance of Sarah White. La Rose, who was born in Trinidad in 1927 and who died in February 2006, was a poet, essayist, publisher, filmmaker, trade unionist and cultural and political activist. By the time he arrived in Britain in 1961, he had already been engaged for nearly 20 years in anti-colonial and workers’ struggles in the Caribbean. That engagement taught him that colonial policy was based on a deliberate withholding of information from the population, leading to a discontinuity of information from one generation to the next. Publishing, therefore, was a way of establishing an independent validation of one’s own culture, history and politics; and it could also act as a vehicle between generations to build on what had gone before. This is the concept that has been at the very heart of the work of New Beacon since it began. 


Around the same time as the founding of New Beacon Books, John La Rose, the Jamaican writer and broadcaster Andrew Salkey and the Barbadian poet and historian Kamau Brathwaite founded the Caribbean Artists Movement in London — which is also celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. In March 1967 Kamau Brathwaite’s poetry reading of ‘Rights of Passage’ (the first part of his seminal trilogy of poems The Arrivants) was organised by New Beacon Books at the Jeanetta Cochrane Theatre in London. The event was the public launch of the Caribbean Artists Movement and also publicised the first two New Beacon publications, a book of poetry called Foundations by John La Rose and a book on Marcus Garvey by Adolph Edwards. 

From this time, stimulated by the demand for books after the formation of the Caribbean Artists Movement, New Beacon also went into bookselling. Demand for black literature increased further as the black consciousness and black activist movements from various parts of the world impacted on the UK. From 1967 New Beacon began producing specialist catalogues of Caribbean materials, which combined works in English, French and Spanish. Later catalogues also included work from Black British, African and African-American writers. The bookshop, which started as a bag of books in a bed-sitter, then moved to the bottom floor of the home of John La Rose and Sarah White, arrived at its present location in Stroud Green Road in 1973. It has always been run as a family affair, with assistance from a group of dedicated volunteers. 

Now, in 2016, celebrating its 50th anniversary, New Beacon is assessing how and if it will continue bookselling and publishing in this modern age of technology, e-books and the like. Whatever it decides, the impact New Beacon has had on British publishing cannot be denied. It is often those outside the mainstream connecting and work together who then effect a change in the wider population. Despite the generally woeful record of the UK’s big publishers taking on black, Asian and minority ethnic writers, there’s no doubt that small independents have bucked the trend in terms of representation of such authors. It should come as no surprise that lauded Carcanet poets Mervyn Morris and Lorna Goodison, both of whom hail from Jamaica and who have collections out in 2017, were first published by New Beacon Books in 1973 and 1986 respectively — small 
independents have a way of learning from each other. And when Media Diversified held its first festival for British black, Asian and minority ethnic writers in 2016, it was good to see this building on the 12 groundbreaking International Book Fairs of Radical Black and Third World Books co-organised by New Beacon, Bogle L’Ouverture and Race Today Publications from 1982 to 1995 — small independents have a way of recognising the gaps that exist and filling that need. These are indeed reasons to be cheerful. 


So, even if the investigation is piecemeal and slow, it is heartening that the big publishers and associations have started to look at the issues facing the industry’s lack of inclusivity. Now, they also need to recognise that they should be learning from the small independents who had led the way in this field – winning mainstream national awards and selling books in the process. Then we’d all have a permanent cause for celebration. 

Lorna Goodison appears at the British Library at ‘A Meeting of the Continents – An International Poetry Night’ celebrating 50 Years of New Beacon Books on Saturday 3 December from 7pm. Tickets available at www.bl.uk