Black and British: A Forgotten History by David Olusoga, A Review

 

Olusoga, David. Black and British: A Forgotten History. 2^nd edition.  London: Picador, 2021.

            Upon arrival in Britain, many new arrivals find themselves surprised at the multi-racial nature of the United Kingdom. The presence of Africans and West Indians adds to the country's multi-cultural environment. The arrival of West Indians on the passenger ship Empire Windrush in 1948 remains a marker for many Britons as the beginning of British black history. David Olusoga brings a corrective to this perception in his book, Black and British: A Forgotten History. The book is a companion to a 2016 BBC documentary on Black British history produced by Olusoga. The author maintains that the connection between Britain and Africa remains a vital part of British history, with the presence of Africans going as far back as black Roman soldiers stationed at Hadrian’s Wall at the height of the Roman Empire. Olugosa presents a chronological account of black British history, demonstrating that Black participation remains woven throughout every stage of British history. The author utilizes numerous sources, court records, diary accounts, legal documents, and newspaper articles, establishing the active participation of blacks within Britain. Olusoga claims that the continued denials of black British history despite the mounting historical evidence “is not just a consequence of racism but a feature of racism” (10). 

            As a son of a white English mother and Nigerian father, the history of black Britain remains a personal cause for Olusoga as he recounts in the Introduction the racism and persecution his family faced at the hands of the National Front in the 1980s. The Seventies and Eighties witnessed numerous racial conflicts, with every black or mixed-race person who lived during that time having “a story of racial violence to tell.” (xix) The author and his family fled their home after a relentless campaign of violent attacks. The author traces much of the racial hatred and resentment to the 1968 speech by the Conservative MP Enoch Powell when he predicted a dire future for Britain if the continued migration of blacks and Asians continued. Powell’s racist rhetoric permitted many British citizens to not only express hatred for racial minorities but also to engage in violence. Black Britons remained a constant reminder of the loss of empire that signaled Britain as a mighty world power. But the idea of Black and British was an oxymoron for Powell and his followers as the very definition of British assumed whiteness. Powell completely rejected the idea of assimilation and integration as an impossibility since being British and English implied a racial identity as white. Without an empire, Powell looked backward to a pastoral and homogenous period of Englishness. Olusoga contends that the picture of a white pastoral England is a fantasy as connections between England and Africa trace back to the beginning of Roman Britain. During each period of British history, “Africa and her people had been part of the British people and imagination” (16).

From Wikipedia

            Olusoga traces black residents within Stuart, Georgian, Victorian, and Edwardian Britain, but much of his work centers on the slave trade and the effect slavery had upon not only Britain but also the empire’s North American and Caribbean colonies. The British began their involvement in the triangular slave trade in the 17th century. As British colonies in the West Indies and North America prospered, the British began to dominate the transatlantic slave trade. Slavery and the work of abolitionists to end the slave trade and slavery lie at the heart of the book, and the author highlights black activists such as Olaudah Equiano, demonstrating the involvement of Africans in ending slavery. However, Africans were active participants in every stage of British history, making the idea of a homogenous Britain a fabricated daydream.

Black British history can be read in the crumbling stones of the forty slave fortresses that are peppered along the coast of West Africa and in the old plantations and former slave markets of the lost British empire of North America. Its imprint can be read in stately homes, street names, statues, and memorials across Britain and is intertwined with the cultural and economic histories of the nation (xxi).

 

However, the most significant influx of black migration began with the arrival of the Empire Windrush in 1948 and followed by a steady stream of West Indian and African immigrants. A severe post-war labor shortage gave migrants employment opportunities, and the British Nationality Act gave the subjects of the empire who possessed the status of British Subject the new status of Commonwealth Citizen, granting them the right to move and settle in Britain. Most members of Parliament looked to encourage a two-way movement between Britain and the dominions of Canada, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, never foreseeing the possibility of non-white migration. Desiring to hold the Commonwealth together, the government found itself in a quandary of encouraging migration of white people of British stock without appearing to be racist in the eyes of the black and Asian members of the Commonwealth (499).

HMT Empire Windrush from Wikipedia

Olusoga acknowledges the importance of the Windrush generation but warns against the idea that British black history began with the Empire Windrush. The author stresses that the history of black Britain is more than black settlement in the UK but rather is the global story of Britain’s interaction with Africans in North America, Africa, and Europe (524). In today’s Britain, the story of the black community is one of assimilation. London is one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the world today, and the black community demonstrates more evidence of mixing than any group. 48 percent of West Indian men and 34 percent of West Indian women have relationships with a partner of a different ethnic group. The mixing of races caused racial conflict and scandal years ago, but today is typical in twenty-first-century Britain (27). Today, the Caribbean community assimilates more in Britain than other ethnic groups. The black population has become a vital part of the British landscape and continues to contribute to defining what it means to be British.