Michael X
Encyclopedia
Michael X born Michael de Freitas in Trinidad and Tobago
to a Portuguese
father and a Bajan
-born mother, was a self-styled black revolutionary
and civil rights
activist
in 1960s London
. He was also known as Michael Abdul Malik and Abdul Malik. Convicted of murder
in 1972, Michael X was executed by hanging
in 1975 in Port of Spain
's Royal Gaol.
in 1957, where he settled in London. In the late 1950s he worked as an enforcer and frontman for the slum landlord Peter Rachman
. He later helped spread Rachman's influence by keeping him in the limelight as a friend of Britain's growing Black community.
By the mid 1960s he had renamed himself "Michael X" and became a well-known exponent of Black Power
in London. Writing in The Observer
in 1965, Colin McGlashan called him "the authentic voice of black bitterness."
In 1966 he was involved with the counterculture/hippie organisation the London Free School
through his contact with John 'Hoppy' Hopkins
which both helped widen the reach of the group, at least in the Notting Hill
area, and create problems with local police who disliked his involvement. Michael and the LFS were instrumental in organising the first outdoor Notting Hill Carnival
later that year.
In 1967, he became the first non-white person to be charged and imprisoned under the UK's Race Relations Act
, which was designed to protect Britain's Black and Asian
populations from discrimination
. He was sentenced to 12 months in jail for advocating the immediate killing of any white man seen "laying hands" on a black woman. He also said "white men have no soul".
In 1969, under the name Abdul Malik, he founded the Racial Adjustment Action Society, and became the self-appointed leader of a Black Power commune
on Holloway Road
, North London
called the "Black House." The commune was financed by a young millionaire benefactor named Nigel Samuel. Michael X said, "They've made me the archbishop of violence in this country. But that 'get a gun' rhetoric is over. We're talking of really building things in the community needed by people in the community. We're keeping a sane approach." John Lennon
and Yoko Ono
donated a bag of their hair to be auctioned for the benefit of the Black House.
In what the media called "the slave collar affair," Jewish businessman Marvin Brown was enticed to The Black House, viciously attacked, and made to wear a spiked 'slave' collar around his neck as Michael X and others threatened him with extortion
. The Black House, underfinanced and undertaken with volunteer labour, closed in the autumn of 1970. The two men found guilty of assaulting Marvin Brown were imprisoned for eighteen months.
The Black House burned down in mysterious circumstances, and soon Michael X and four colleagues were arrested for extortion. His bail was paid by John Lennon in January 1971.
In February 1971, he fled to his native Trinidad, where he started an agricultural commune devoted to Black empowerment
16 miles east of the capital, Port of Spain. "The only politics I ever understand is the politics of revolution," he told the Trinidad Express. "The politics of change, the politics of a completely new system." He began another commune, also called the Black House, which, in February 1972, also burned down in a fire.
, members of the commune. They had been hacked to death and separately buried in shallow graves. Benson, who had been going under the name Hale Kimga, was the daughter of Conservative
MP
Leonard F. Plugge
. She had met Michael X through her relationship with Malcolm X's cousin Hakim Jamal
.
Michael X fled to Guyana
a few days later and was captured there. He was charged with the murder of Skerritt and Benson, but was never tried for the latter crime. A witness at his trial claimed that Skerritt was a member of Malik's "Black Liberation Army
" and had been killed by him because he refused to obey orders to attack a local police station. Malik was found guilty and sentenced to death. The Save Malik Committee, whose members included Angela Davis
, Dick Gregory
, Kate Millet and others, including the well known "radical lawyer" William Kunstler
, who was paid by John Lennon, pleaded for clemency, but he was hanged in 1975.
Other members of the group were tried for Benson's murder. It was asserted that Benson had been shown an open grave and was then pushed in it and hacked at by Michael X with a machete
on her neck.
, who wrote, "The RAAS (Radical Adjustment Action Society) black power group which Malik led was largely a paper creation, with the membership figures being massively exaggerated for the benefit of the press. Malik as a 'scare' figure provided good copy, stories about him sold newspapers and as a result exposing the fact that his organised following was in reality minuscule was not on the agenda of those journalists giving him column inches."
Under the name Michael Abdul Malik, Michael X was the author of From Michael Freitas to Michael X (André Deutsch
, 1968). Michael X also left behind fragments of a novel about a romantic black hero who wins the abject admiration of the narrator, a young English woman named Lena Boyd-Richardson. Inspecting the hero's bookshelf, Lena Boyd-Richardson is impressed at finding Salammbô
: "I discover that he not only have (sic) the books but actually reads and understands them I was absolutely bowld (sic), litterally. I took a seat, and gazed upon this marvel, Mike."
Guerrillas.
Michael X is a secondary character in The Bank Job
(2008), a dramatisation of a real-life bank robbery
in 1971. The film claims Michael X was in possession of indecent photographs of Princess Margaret
and used them to avoid criminal prosecution by threatening to publish them. He was played by Peter de Jersey
.
Michael X and his trial are the subject of a chapter in Geoffrey Robertson
's legal memoir The Justice Game.
Michael X plays a part in Make Believe: A True Story, a memoir by Diana Athill
.
Michael X is the eponymous title of a play by the writer Vanessa Walters
. The play takes the form of a 1960s black power rally and was performed at The Tabernacle Theatre, Powis Square, London W11 (Notting Hill) in November 2008.
Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago officially the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago is an archipelagic state in the southern Caribbean, lying just off the coast of northeastern Venezuela and south of Grenada in the Lesser Antilles...
to a Portuguese
Portuguese people
The Portuguese are a nation and ethnic group native to the country of Portugal, in the west of the Iberian peninsula of south-west Europe. Their language is Portuguese, and Roman Catholicism is the predominant religion....
father and a Bajan
Barbados
Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles. It is in length and as much as in width, amounting to . It is situated in the western area of the North Atlantic and 100 kilometres east of the Windward Islands and the Caribbean Sea; therein, it is about east of the islands of Saint...
-born mother, was a self-styled black revolutionary
Revolutionary
A revolutionary is a person who either actively participates in, or advocates revolution. Also, when used as an adjective, the term revolutionary refers to something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavor.-Definition:...
and civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
activist
Activism
Activism consists of intentional efforts to bring about social, political, economic, or environmental change. Activism can take a wide range of forms from writing letters to newspapers or politicians, political campaigning, economic activism such as boycotts or preferentially patronizing...
in 1960s London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. He was also known as Michael Abdul Malik and Abdul Malik. Convicted of murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
in 1972, Michael X was executed by hanging
Hanging
Hanging is the lethal suspension of a person by a ligature. The Oxford English Dictionary states that hanging in this sense is "specifically to put to death by suspension by the neck", though it formerly also referred to crucifixion and death by impalement in which the body would remain...
in 1975 in Port of Spain
Port of Spain
Port of Spain, also written as Port-of-Spain, is the capital of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago and the country's third-largest municipality, after San Fernando and Chaguanas. The city has a municipal population of 49,031 , a metropolitan population of 128,026 and a transient daily population...
's Royal Gaol.
Biography
Michael de Freitas immigrated to the United KingdomUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
in 1957, where he settled in London. In the late 1950s he worked as an enforcer and frontman for the slum landlord Peter Rachman
Peter Rachman
Peter Rachman was a London landlord in the Notting Hill area in the 1950s and 1960s. He became so notorious for his exploitation of tenants that the word "Rachmanism" entered the OED as a synonym for any greedy, unscrupulous landlord.-Career:Rachman was born Perec Rachman in Lvov, Poland in 1919,...
. He later helped spread Rachman's influence by keeping him in the limelight as a friend of Britain's growing Black community.
By the mid 1960s he had renamed himself "Michael X" and became a well-known exponent of Black Power
Black Power
Black Power is a political slogan and a name for various associated ideologies. It is used in the movement among people of Black African descent throughout the world, though primarily by African Americans in the United States...
in London. Writing in The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
in 1965, Colin McGlashan called him "the authentic voice of black bitterness."
In 1966 he was involved with the counterculture/hippie organisation the London Free School
London Free School
The London Free School was founded 8 March 1966 principally by John 'Hoppy' Hopkins and Rhaune Laslett.The London Free School was a community action adult education project inspired by American free universities...
through his contact with John 'Hoppy' Hopkins
John Hopkins (political activist)
John "Hoppy" Hopkins is a British photographer, journalist, researcher and political activist, and "one of the best-known underground figures of Swinging London" in the late 1960s.-Life:...
which both helped widen the reach of the group, at least in the Notting Hill
Notting Hill
Notting Hill is an area in London, England, close to the north-western corner of Kensington Gardens, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea...
area, and create problems with local police who disliked his involvement. Michael and the LFS were instrumental in organising the first outdoor Notting Hill Carnival
Notting Hill Carnival
The Notting Hill Carnival is an annual event which since 1964 has taken place on the streets of Notting Hill, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea , London, UK each August, over two days...
later that year.
In 1967, he became the first non-white person to be charged and imprisoned under the UK's Race Relations Act
Race Relations Act
The Race Relations Acts are a series of statutes by the United Kingdom parliament to address racial discrimination.They are:* The Race Relations Act 1965* The Race Relations Act 1968* The Race Relations Act 1976* The Race Relations Amendment Act 2000...
, which was designed to protect Britain's Black and Asian
Asian people
Asian people or Asiatic people is a term with multiple meanings that refers to people who descend from a portion of Asia's population.- Central Asia :...
populations from discrimination
Discrimination
Discrimination is the prejudicial treatment of an individual based on their membership in a certain group or category. It involves the actual behaviors towards groups such as excluding or restricting members of one group from opportunities that are available to another group. The term began to be...
. He was sentenced to 12 months in jail for advocating the immediate killing of any white man seen "laying hands" on a black woman. He also said "white men have no soul".
In 1969, under the name Abdul Malik, he founded the Racial Adjustment Action Society, and became the self-appointed leader of a Black Power commune
Commune (intentional community)
A commune is an intentional community of people living together, sharing common interests, property, possessions, resources, and, in some communes, work and income. In addition to the communal economy, consensus decision-making, non-hierarchical structures and ecological living have become...
on Holloway Road
Holloway Road
Holloway Road is a road in London. It is one of the main shopping streets in North London, and carries the A1 road as it passes through Holloway, in the London Borough of Islington...
, North London
North London
North London is the northern part of London, England. It is an imprecise description and the area it covers is defined differently for a range of purposes. Common to these definitions is that it includes districts located north of the River Thames and is used in comparison with South...
called the "Black House." The commune was financed by a young millionaire benefactor named Nigel Samuel. Michael X said, "They've made me the archbishop of violence in this country. But that 'get a gun' rhetoric is over. We're talking of really building things in the community needed by people in the community. We're keeping a sane approach." John Lennon
John Lennon
John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...
and Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono
is a Japanese artist, musician, author and peace activist, known for her work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking as well as her marriage to John Lennon...
donated a bag of their hair to be auctioned for the benefit of the Black House.
In what the media called "the slave collar affair," Jewish businessman Marvin Brown was enticed to The Black House, viciously attacked, and made to wear a spiked 'slave' collar around his neck as Michael X and others threatened him with extortion
Extortion
Extortion is a criminal offence which occurs when a person unlawfully obtains either money, property or services from a person, entity, or institution, through coercion. Refraining from doing harm is sometimes euphemistically called protection. Extortion is commonly practiced by organized crime...
. The Black House, underfinanced and undertaken with volunteer labour, closed in the autumn of 1970. The two men found guilty of assaulting Marvin Brown were imprisoned for eighteen months.
The Black House burned down in mysterious circumstances, and soon Michael X and four colleagues were arrested for extortion. His bail was paid by John Lennon in January 1971.
In February 1971, he fled to his native Trinidad, where he started an agricultural commune devoted to Black empowerment
Black Power
Black Power is a political slogan and a name for various associated ideologies. It is used in the movement among people of Black African descent throughout the world, though primarily by African Americans in the United States...
16 miles east of the capital, Port of Spain. "The only politics I ever understand is the politics of revolution," he told the Trinidad Express. "The politics of change, the politics of a completely new system." He began another commune, also called the Black House, which, in February 1972, also burned down in a fire.
Murder trial
Police who had come to the commune to investigate the fire discovered the bodies of Joseph Skerritt and Gale BensonGale Benson
Gale Ann Benson was a British model, socialite and daughter of Conservative MP Leonard Plugge. She was buried alive and murdered in Trinidad by local men including Black Power activist Michael X....
, members of the commune. They had been hacked to death and separately buried in shallow graves. Benson, who had been going under the name Hale Kimga, was the daughter of Conservative
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
MP
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
Leonard F. Plugge
Leonard F. Plugge
Captain Leonard Frank Plugge was a British businessman and Conservative Party politician.Plugge was Member of Parliament for Chatham from 1935 to 1945....
. She had met Michael X through her relationship with Malcolm X's cousin Hakim Jamal
Hakim Jamal
Hakim Abdullah Jamal was the name adopted by African-American activist Allen Donaldson, who was a cousin of Malcolm X and later became an associate of Michael X. Jamal wrote From the Dead Level, a memoir of his life and memories of Malcolm X. He was romantically involved with several high profile...
.
Michael X fled to Guyana
Guyana
Guyana , officially the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, previously the colony of British Guiana, is a sovereign state on the northern coast of South America that is culturally part of the Anglophone Caribbean. Guyana was a former colony of the Dutch and of the British...
a few days later and was captured there. He was charged with the murder of Skerritt and Benson, but was never tried for the latter crime. A witness at his trial claimed that Skerritt was a member of Malik's "Black Liberation Army
Black Liberation Army
The Black Liberation Army was an underground, black nationalist-Marxist militant organization that operated in the United States from 1970 to 1981...
" and had been killed by him because he refused to obey orders to attack a local police station. Malik was found guilty and sentenced to death. The Save Malik Committee, whose members included Angela Davis
Angela Davis
Angela Davis is an American political activist, scholar, and author. Davis was most politically active during the late 1960s through the 1970s and was associated with the Communist Party USA, the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Panther Party...
, Dick Gregory
Dick Gregory
Richard Claxton "Dick" Gregory is an American comedian, social activist, social critic, writer, and entrepreneur....
, Kate Millet and others, including the well known "radical lawyer" William Kunstler
William Kunstler
William Moses Kunstler was an American self-described "radical lawyer" and civil rights activist, known for his controversial clients...
, who was paid by John Lennon, pleaded for clemency, but he was hanged in 1975.
Other members of the group were tried for Benson's murder. It was asserted that Benson had been shown an open grave and was then pushed in it and hacked at by Michael X with a machete
Machete
The machete is a large cleaver-like cutting tool. The blade is typically long and usually under thick. In the English language, an equivalent term is matchet, though it is less commonly known...
on her neck.
Legacy
Michael X's position in British politics was exaggerated, according to Stewart HomeStewart Home
Stewart Home is an English artist, filmmaker, writer, pamphleteer, art historian, and activist. He is best known for his novels such as the non-narrative 69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess , his re-imagining of the 1960s in Tainted Love , and earlier parodistic pulp fictions Pure Mania, Red...
, who wrote, "The RAAS (Radical Adjustment Action Society) black power group which Malik led was largely a paper creation, with the membership figures being massively exaggerated for the benefit of the press. Malik as a 'scare' figure provided good copy, stories about him sold newspapers and as a result exposing the fact that his organised following was in reality minuscule was not on the agenda of those journalists giving him column inches."
Under the name Michael Abdul Malik, Michael X was the author of From Michael Freitas to Michael X (André Deutsch
André Deutsch
André Deutsch was a British publisher.After having learned the business of publishing working for Francis Aldor with whom he was interned in the Isle of Man during the Second World War and who had introduced him to the industry, André Deutsch left Aldor's employment after a few months to continue...
, 1968). Michael X also left behind fragments of a novel about a romantic black hero who wins the abject admiration of the narrator, a young English woman named Lena Boyd-Richardson. Inspecting the hero's bookshelf, Lena Boyd-Richardson is impressed at finding Salammbô
Salammbô (novel)
Salammbô is a historical novel by Gustave Flaubert. It is set in Carthage during the third century BCE, immediately before and during the Mercenary Revolt which took place shortly after the First Punic War. Flaubert's main source was Book I of Polybius's Histories...
: "I discover that he not only have (sic) the books but actually reads and understands them I was absolutely bowld (sic), litterally. I took a seat, and gazed upon this marvel, Mike."
Cultural references
Michael X is the subject of the essay Michael X and the Black Power Killings in Trinidad by V.S. Naipaul, collected in The Return of Eva Perón and the Killings in Trinidad (1980). He is also believed to be the fictional model for Jimmy Ahmed in Naipaul's 1975 novelNovel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
Guerrillas.
Michael X is a secondary character in The Bank Job
The Bank Job
The Bank Job is a 2008 British crime film written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, directed by Roger Donaldson, and starring Jason Statham, based on the 1971 Baker Street robbery in central London, from which the money and valuables stolen were never recovered...
(2008), a dramatisation of a real-life bank robbery
Baker Street robbery
The Baker Street robbery was a robbery of the safe deposit boxes at a branch of Lloyds Bank on the corner of Baker Street and Marylebone Road, London, on the night of 11 September 1971....
in 1971. The film claims Michael X was in possession of indecent photographs of Princess Margaret
Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon
Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon was the younger sister of Queen Elizabeth II and the younger daughter of King George VI....
and used them to avoid criminal prosecution by threatening to publish them. He was played by Peter de Jersey
Peter de Jersey
Peter de Jersey is a television and theatre actor. Perhaps best known for his longtime recurring role as Jerome Taylor in The Bill, he has acted in numerous British programmes. From 2000-2003 he played Steve Waring in Holby City until the character was involved in a car crash and later died in...
.
Michael X and his trial are the subject of a chapter in Geoffrey Robertson
Geoffrey Robertson
Geoffrey Ronald Robertson QC is an Australian-born human rights lawyer, academic, author and broadcaster. He holds dual Australian and British citizenship....
's legal memoir The Justice Game.
Michael X plays a part in Make Believe: A True Story, a memoir by Diana Athill
Diana Athill
Diana Athill OBE is a British literary editor, novelist and memoirist who worked with some of the most important writers of the 20th century.-Life and writings:...
.
Michael X is the eponymous title of a play by the writer Vanessa Walters
Vanessa Walters
Vanessa Walters, born in London, 1978 is an English novelist and playwright. She is also a commentator and critic. She is best known as the teenage novelist discovered to be writing a novel as a hobby to share with her school friends...
. The play takes the form of a 1960s black power rally and was performed at The Tabernacle Theatre, Powis Square, London W11 (Notting Hill) in November 2008.
Further reading
- Humphry, Derek. False Messiah - The Story of Michael X (Hart-Davis, MacGibbon Ltd., 1977).
- Malik, Michael Abdul. From Michael de Freitas to Michael X (André Deutsch, 1968).
- Naipaul, V.S. Michael X and the Black Power Killings in Trinidad, collected in: The Return of Eva Perón and the Killings in Trinidad (André Deutsch, 1980)
- Sharp, James. The Life and Death of Michael X (Uni Books, 1981).
- Athill, Diane "Make Believe: A True Story" (Granta UK, 1993)