ABSTRACT
If it is true that men and women make their own history, they do so through organised action and the formulation of common, culturally constituted, objectives. In attempting to rescue the multitude of nameless British black and ethnic leaders from collective obscurity, this book looks beyond social movements to their incipient formative bases. Castells (1983:319-20) has argued, it will be recalled, that urban movements have three major goals-mobilisation for improved collective consumption; a search for cultural identity and autonomy, either ethnically based or historically originated; and a struggle for increasing local and neighbourhood power. Seen processually, such movements often lose their impetus, he argues, once they achieve some of their aims: they are destroyed by internal dissent or contradiction, or their leaders are continually incorporated by the political apparatus, and the initial drive is lost (Castells 1983:325).
