Britain's black power movement is being written out of recent cultural history because it does not fit into the "utopian" narrative of the UK being a nation of civilised fair play, a new book argues.

The authors of the work, the first detailed history of black power in Britain, argue that an important chapter of recent cultural history is in danger of being forgotten.

The Cambridge academic Robin Bunce said: "There is a fundamental danger of erasing the very notion of a struggle at all. I've been researching this for four and a half years and there have been so many occasions when people have said to me: 'There was no black struggle in Britain. You're thinking of South Africa or America.'

"The narrative that feeds it is the one that Britain is the utopia of fair play. We have such a commitment to individual rights, we have such a commitment to common sense and decency that there is no systematic racism in Britain."...