Masculinities and images of Political becoming: the British Black Panthers and the London gay Liberation Front

This study focuses on the British Black Panthers’ (BBP) and the London Gay Liberation Front’s (GLF) performances of masculinities in the 1970s. It argues that these performances became strategies for political empowerment but also rendered its performing subjects vulnerable to harassment and violence. Furthermore, I argue that the BBP’s and the London GLF’s activities were interrelated and that despite their differing political focus, they shared experiences of marginalisation and defined themselves by using counter-cultural practices, among them reshaping public performances of masculinity. Photographs by Neil Kenlock, the official BBP photographer, and photos found in London GLF publications and press of Black hyper-masculinity (by men and women) and radical uses of drag performances in which gay men wear women’s clothes form the basis for the analysis. These images are analysed using masculinity, gender, and fashion theories and historically contextualised in relation to American cultural-political influences, processes of post-war immigration to Britain, and the development of a squatting area in Brixton South London as a revolutionary hub.