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Darcus Howe’s son Darcus Beese and his activist mother, Barbara: ‘He was imbued with the spirit of the struggle’

He was the first black boss of a UK record label. She was a British Black Panther and one of the Mangrove Nine. They reflect on the ‘madness’ of his childhood, and his memoir that records their groundbreaking legacies

In the expansive basement of his house in an exclusive neighbourhood of Chiswick in west London, Darcus Beese, 55, is sipping a cappuccino below a large framed press photograph, which provides an illuminating glimpse of his singular childhood. Around us, the walls are covered with ample evidence of his talent for spotting and developing precocious pop performers, including framed gold discs for Florence + the Machine, Drake, Hozier, Sugababes, Taio Cruz and Amy Winehouse, his most famous – and troubled – artist. Beese was just a year old in 1970, when his parents, along with seven others, were arrested and charged with “inciting a riot” at a march to protest against police racism and harassment against the proprietor and customers of the Mangrove restaurant, a hub of the black community on All Saints Road in west London.

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