{"id":18673,"date":"2022-09-29T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-09-28T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistoryrevealed\/?post_type=purple_issue&p=18673"},"modified":"2022-10-03T15:45:50","modified_gmt":"2022-10-03T13:45:50","slug":"multicultural-britain-is-born","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistoryrevealed\/2022\/09\/29\/multicultural-britain-is-born\/","title":{"rendered":"Multicultural Britain is born"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

20TH-CENTURY BRITAIN<\/h4>\n\n

Multicultural Britain is born<\/h2>\n\n

Sonia Grant <\/strong>charts black Britain in the 20th century, through the early settlers, war, the arrival of the Windrush<\/em>, and beyond <\/p>\n\n

\"\"
Butetown in Cardiff has been home to a diverse community since the early 1900s <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

Featured on the same page of the edition of The <\/em>Sphere <\/em>dated 3 July 1948 were two striking but juxtaposing images: the first showed the arrival of hundreds of West Indian migrants to Britain aboard HMT Empire <\/em>Windrush; <\/em>the other was of the P&O liner Ranchi <\/em>as it set sail with English emigrants bound for a new life in Australia. In the aftermath of World War II, Britain haemorrhaged more than 2 million people as they escaped the bleakness of austerity and the hardships of rationing. <\/p>\n\n

The unprecedented scale of the exodus caused Winston Churchill to plea: \u201cI say to those that wish to leave our country… Do not desert the old land. We cannot spare you.\u201d Yet people still left in droves, and soon, labour shortages were being filled by those arriving on ships such as the Windrush <\/em>\u2013 whether they had come with the specific intention of finding new work opportunities, or simply wanted a chance to travel to the \u201cmother country\u201d. <\/p>\n\n

\"\"
ABC Merriman-Labor, a barrister from Sierra Leone, wrote a satire in 1909, Britons through Negro Spectacles<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n

But although Windrush <\/em>is regarded as signalling the advent of mass immigration \u2013 with its arrival at Tilbury Docks on 22 June 1948 \u2013 that does not tell the whole story. Around half a century earlier, there was a visible black presence already to be found in Britain, mainly around the port cities of London, Liverpool and Cardiff. The latter, for instance, was known to have at least 50 different nationalities overcrowded around the dock area of Butetown (also known as Tiger Bay). <\/p>\n\n

Although merchant seamen represented the largest contingent of black British subjects, there were also pockets of students, businesspeople and professionals joining these well-established communities. They were not welcomed with open arms but faced discrimination through unofficial \u2018colour bars\u2019, which led to political mobilisation in 1900 with Trinidadian lawyer Henry Sylvester organising the First Pan-African Conference in London. Invariably, there were different expressions of dissatisfaction, such as by fellow barrister Augustus Boyle Chamberlayne (ABC) Merriman-Labor. Arriving from Sierra Leone in 1904, he grew disenchanted by the discrimination he experienced and, in 1909, <\/span>published <\/span>Britons through Negro Spectacles<\/em>, a satirical critique of life in Britain from the eyes of an outsider.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

\"\"
A World War I recruitment poster encourages men from the Bahamas to enlist in the British West Indies Regiment <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n
Mobilised and mobbed <\/strong><\/h5>\n\n

Yet with the outbreak of World War I, black British subjects and men from across the empire rallied to the cause. Nearly 16,000 volunteers enlisted with the British West Indies Regiment (BWIR), which served in supporting roles on the Western Front and saw combat in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq, Kuwait and parts of Iran, Syria and Turkey). By the end of the war, soldiers of the BWIR were awarded 81 medals for bravery. <\/p>\n\n

Postwar Britain, however, turned out not to be the promised \u201cland fit for heroes\u201d for returning troops, and high unemployment and housing shortages were blamed on \u201ccoloured foreigners\u201d. Tensions erupted in a series of race riots from January to August 1919, breaking out in Glasgow, South Shields, Salford, London, Hull, Newport, Barry, Liverpool and Cardiff \u2013 where black communities were concentrated. Racial violence and mob rule was rife. Some 700 black residents in Liverpool had to be held in police stations for their safety, while in Whitechapel, London, Reverend Thomas Jackson of the Working Lads\u2019 Institute sheltered some 600 former soldiers, many of them demobbed from the BWIR. <\/p>\n\n

\"\"
Reverend Thomas Jackson offered shelter to former West Indian soldiers in London after World War I <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n
\"\"
A memorial plaque for Charles Wotten, a victim of the 1919 race riots <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n

Earnest Marke, a Sierra Leonean seaman, later wrote in his biography Old Man Trouble <\/em>how he escaped injury \u201cby the skin of his teeth\u201d, but a friend, Charles Wotten from Bermuda, was not as fortunate. Chased by a mob to the docks in Liverpool, he either fell or was pushed into the water and, after being pelted with stones, drowned.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

Part of the government response to the riots was to escalate its repatriation scheme for subjects of colour; on offer was a small sum of money and passage on the first available ship, if they chose to leave voluntarily. Nevertheless, once order had been restored many chose to remain \u2013 having built their own lives in Britain \u2013 and, over the following decades, the black population increased. Organisations were established to meet their needs. In the 1930s, for instance, Barbadian activist Arnold Ward founded the Negro Welfare Association, which campaigned on both domestic and international issues. <\/p>\n\n

Grassroots activism <\/strong><\/h5>\n\n

The need to organise only intensified in the years after the arrival of the Windrush <\/em>in 1948. The new arrivals faced many challenges and, despite being granted citizenship by the recent British Nationality Act and holding British passports, were not made to feel welcome by all. Many experienced widespread prejudices: when Mary McLachlan visited her local church and was asked not to return the following Sunday as her presence might upset parishioners, she took it upon herself to start what became the Church of God in Christ in her living room. Accommodation was also difficult to obtain and when faced with banks refusing to grant loans for mortgages or exploitative slum landlords, most notoriously the Notting Hill-based Peter Rachman, informal community banking systems \u2013 known as pardners, or susu \u2013 sprouted up to raise funds so people could buy homes.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

Such examples of grassroots activism and participation were common among black communities. In 1959, however, Dr David Pitt took the leap into electoral politics, becoming a pioneering candidate of African descent when he ran for parliament. Standing for Labour in Hampstead in London, he later recalled how a man approached him during his unsuccessful bid saying that if he did not withdraw, \u201cWe will get you and your family\u201d. The intimidation went beyond threats: violent disturbances broke out at a hustings when members of the White Defence League gate-crashed and shouted chants of \u201cKeep Britain white\u201d. <\/p>\n\n

\"\"
Dr David Pitt, from Grenada, became the first person with two black parents to run for parliament. Although he never became an MP, he was appointed a life peer in the House of Lords in 1975 <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

As for the children of the \u2018Windrush generation\u2019, they faced their own unique challenges growing up in Britain. In his 1971 work, How <\/em>the <\/em>West <\/em>Indian <\/em>Child <\/em>Is <\/em>Made <\/em>Educationally <\/em>Sub-normal <\/em>in <\/em>the <\/em>British <\/em>School <\/em>System: <\/em>The <\/em>Scandal <\/em>of <\/em>the <\/em>Black <\/em>Child <\/em>in <\/em>Schools <\/em>in <\/em>Britain, <\/em>Grenadian teacher Bernard Coard criticised the disproportionate number of black children being \u201cdumped\u201d in Educationally Subnormal Schools (ESN) \u2013 a term derived from the 1944 Education Act to characterise young people deemed to have limited intellectual ability. He argued some of the reasons given were spurious, such as the teachers\u2019 inability to understand West Indian accents. <\/p>\n\n

Coard\u2019s book was met by outrage by the establishment, but inspired black communities and galvanised in the Black Education Movement, a collective which fought for equality and mitigated against injustices by organising supplementary or Saturday schools across the country. <\/p>\n\n

\"\"
Black boys play with a white schoolmate, 1975 <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n
Place in society <\/strong><\/h5>\n\n

From the 1980s onwards, black Britons forged their own identity and place in society. The first Black History Month took place in 1987; the achievement of Akyaaba Addai-Sebo, a special projects officer at the Greater London Council. Black entrepreneurs also came to the forefront, epitomised by the likes of Dounne Alexander. With no business training, she brought her homemade remedy \u2018Gramma\u2019s Herbal Pepper Sauces\u2019 to market; got her products on the shelves of Fortnum & Mason and Harrods; and, in 1990, opened her first factory. <\/p>\n\n

In countless ways, people who came to Britain from Africa or the Caribbean, or were born to immigrant parents, changed and defined British multicultural society, and still do so. Dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson \u2013 described as \u201cthe pulse of black British activism\u201d \u2013 has chronicled black British history over five decades with his work. His million-selling albums of spoken word mixed with dub and reggae music have charted everything from sus laws (a precursor to \u2018stop and search\u2019) and the 1981 uprisings (clashes between black youths and police) in Toxteth and Brixton.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

Throughout it all, Jamaican-born Johnson remained an optimist, saying at the end of the 20th century: \u201cIt\u2019s absolutely critical that we have a historical perspective. There\u2019s an entire generation of young blacks who have no understanding of how we got to where we are now, so no idea of how to move forward into the 21st century.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

<\/p>\n\n

<\/div>
\n

Bristol\u2019s bus boycott<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Inspired by Dr Martin Luther King Jr\u2019s protest in Montgomery, Alabama, black Britons fought racism on public transport <\/strong><\/h6>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
On a wall in Bristol is this mural honouring Roy Hackett, a leading figure in the 1963 bus boycott <\/strong><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
British-born youth worker Paul Stephenson, son of a west African, was the WIDC\u2019s charismatic spokesperson <\/strong><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In 1955, the Bristol Omnibus Company unofficially agreed to uphold a resolution by the local branch of the Transport and General Workers Union that no \u201ccoloured\u201d workers should work on their buses. Even amid staff shortages, it refused to employ people of colour as drivers or conductors. By the 1960s, the West Indian Development Council (WIDC) had formed to fight this discrimination. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Led by Jamaicans Owen Henry, Roy Hackett, Audley Evans and Prince Brown \u2013 and with 26-yearold Paul Stephenson as its spokesperson \u2013 the WIDC organised a bus boycott, announced in April 1963. It gathered widespread backing: marches were held, bus depots picketed, and figures such as local MP Tony Benn and cricketer Sir Learie Constantine (by then the high commissioner for Trinidad and Tobago) voiced their support. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After four months, the Bristol Omnibus Company agreed to employ its first non-white conductor: Raghbir Singh. In 1965, the first Race Relations Act was passed, banning racial discrimination in public places, with a further Act in 1968 banning racial discrimination in housing and employment. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>\n\n

\n\n

Sonia Grant <\/strong>is a historian, writer, researcher and photographic exhibition curator, specialising in black history <\/p>\n\n

<\/p>\n\n

GETTY IMAGES X2, ALAMY X4, WHITECHAPEL MISSION X1, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS X1, PHIL NASH FROM WIKIMEDIA COMMONS CC BY-SA 4.0 & GFDL X1<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sonia Grant charts black Britain in the 20th century: through the world wars, to the Windrush and 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