Darcus Howe has a talent for turning conventional wisdom on its head. The most recent example was Howe’s return to the headlines in the summer of 2011. On 9 August Howe began trending on Twitter and YouTube due to a poorly handled BBC interview. 9 August was no slow news day, it was the climax of the “England Riots”.
Fiona Armstrong, who conducted the interview, invited Howe to condemn the “rioters”. Condemnation had been the knee-jerk reaction of Britain’s political class. Howe bucked the trend, saving his condemnation for the police: the institution that had killed Mark Duggan. The interview provoked controversy and eventually went viral, largely, due to Armstrong’s apparently high-handed tone and perverse attempt to brand Howe “a rioter” himself. Armstrong seemed to have no time for Howe’s claim that the police were subjecting young black men to a rampant campaign of stop and search.
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