Marc Wadsworth

Marc Wadsworth is a British black rights campaigner, broadcast and print journalist and BBC filmmaker and radio producer.

His book, Comrade Sak, a political biography of British Indian Labour and Communist MP Shapurji Saklatvala (1874–1936), was published in 1998 by Peepal Tree Press.

Wadsworth's father, George "Busha" Rowe, travelled to Britain from Jamaica in 1944 to serve as ground crew in the Royal Air Force (RAF) in World War II, first at RAF Hunmanby Moor training base, at Filey, North Yorkshire, as part of a contingent of 2,000 volunteers from the Caribbean.

Rowe went back to Jamaica in 1946, returning to Britain as a barber on the SS Empire Windrush two years later to answer the call from Britain to help rebuild it after the devastation of war.

With four other Jamaicans who had also been passengers on the ship, Rowe, aged 24, went to Birmingham, where they got a place to live and factory jobs.

Rowe told the Birmingham Gazette newspaper the city had a "colour bar" and was "unfriendly".

Wadsworth's mother is Finnish.

A hairdresser in Finland, at the age of 20, she emigrated to England to first work as an au pair for a Jewish dentist in the West Midlands city of Birmingham.

Born in Birmingham, England, Wadsworth spent his first six years in a children's home at Hagley where his mother worked as a domestic helper, and was then in foster care at Balsall Heath, Birmingham, for a further year.

He recalls being the only black student at Ottershaw School, a boys' boarding school in Surrey.

Initially bullied, he took up amateur boxing at 13, inspired by Muhammad Ali, whose politics he would later describe as Black Pride and Black Power.

Wadsworth helped to secure Black Sections (caucuses) within the Labour Party, first tabled in 1983, to further the cause of greater African, Caribbean and Asian political representation.

All four of Britain's first minority African, Caribbean and Asian members of parliament of modern times were members.

He founded the Anti-Racist Alliance in 1991 and two years later, also helped set up the justice campaign for murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence.

Wadsworth launched an early citizen-journalism news portal, The-Latest.com.

He then founded the Anti-Racist Alliance (ARA) in 1991, to campaign for justice after the 1993 murder of Stephen Lawrence, introducing Lawrence's parents to South African Nobel Peace Prize winners Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

The ARA succeeded in getting human rights lawyer Geoffrey Bindman to draft a bill to make racial harassment and racial violence specific criminal offences, which proposals became law years later.

Wadsworth lost his position as ARA leader in 1994, following disputes with Socialist Action and Ken Livingstone.

From 2001 to 2012, Wadsworth was a lecturer in journalism at City University London.

He resigned from the Labour Party in 2003 in protest against the Iraq War.

In January 2006, Wadsworth became founding editor of The-Latest.com, "Britain's first dedicated citizen journalism news portal".

In 2008, Wadsworth's reporting triggered the resignation of Mayor of London Boris Johnson's spokesman.

In 2008, an article by Wadsworth on The-Latest.com sparked a controversy involving newly elected London mayor Boris Johnson.

Johnson's Australian spin doctor James McGrath said to Wadsworth in an interview that he would be fine if many elderly British African-Caribbean Londoners left the country due to Johnson's policies.

Wadsworth published the interview with McGrath on The-Latest.com.

McGrath then resigned when Johnson, who was facing criticism for previously referring to black people as "piccaninnies", said it was impossible for McGrath to continue as his political adviser because doubt could be raised about what he meant.

Wadsworth said he had he had given McGrath a month to privately clarify his comments prior to publishing the interview.

The Press Gazette reported on the controversy under the headline "Citizen journalism takes first UK scalp".

As a journalist, Wadsworth has written for a range of publications, including national newspapers, and has also been involved with community journalism training courses.

He twice served on the National Executive Council of the National Union of Journalists.

In 2012, he was awarded an M.A. in Contemporary British History from King's College London, passing with distinction.

Wadsworth made a documentary film, Divided by Race, United in War and Peace, about his late father's fellow Caribbean World War II veterans and their struggles against colour prejudice and racism.

It was a project of The-Latest.com.

The BBC remade the film, with Wadsworth as a producer, and, in May 2015, Fighting for King and Empire: Britain’s Caribbean Heroes was broadcast.

The film was shown at the Frontline Club in September 2015.

This decision related to a confrontation on 30 June 2016 between him and Labour MP Ruth Smeeth at the launch of the Chakrabarti Inquiry report into allegations of antisemitism and other forms of racism in the Labour Party.

In 2018, Wadsworth was expelled from the Labour Party for bringing the party into disrepute.

A new edition of the book was published in 2020.

It was reviewed in a number of news outlets in the UK and India, including The Independent.

Wadsworth has been a reporter and presenter for BBC radio and television and for ITV's Thames News (London), at one point interviewing Margaret Thatcher, whom he recalls walked out when he asked about the vote by her colleagues to effectively oust her from power.