Keywords

Welcome, says the Headteacher. “As you are new to this country, we’ll just give you the lowest streams to teach. All you will have to do is keep them quiet.” I’m not sure what ‘streams’ are and what he means by ‘keep them quiet’. So I ask a fellow teacher, in this North London Comprehensive High School. “The ones that can’t learn are put into lower streams. Too stupid.” I’m confused. “Can’t learn?” “You’ll soon understand”. All those with a different accent, nor from North London postcodes, with dark skin. Just keep them quiet. Stupid, all of them.

And that is what I find in my classroom—girls and boys not with a North London accent and many with dark skins.Footnote 1 Do not expect to be taught. Of course, I do teach. Get to know my pupils. Ask the dark-skinned ones about their origins, their families. ‘I was born in Jamaica.’ ‘My Mum is from Barbados; my Dad is English.’ ‘My family is from Trinidad.’ I went to the school library, searching for books on these islands as I had never heard of them. Nothing. I searched in the local library. Nothing. So I visited many at home, as I needed to learn. Not only about the islands, but about England, often referred to as the ‘Mother Country’. About their experiences. About the attitudes of English people. After all, I am White, but not English…

That was in 1966. Have things changed? How long have Africans and people of African descent lived in the UK? And from India? How have they been treated? How are they treated now? How much of their history has been researched and published, not only for academia? What are schools teaching about this history? Just who are the ‘Brits’?

Let us at least glance at some aspects of this history and the relevant situation in Britain today.

Africans in Britain up to c.1900: A Glance at some Issues

Let us begin by looking at the presence of Africans on this small island—Britain. As far as we know, the first Africans here were the African troops/regiment in the conquering Roman armies almost 2000 years ago. The Romans, as the British did millennia later, used troops form their whole Empire—and their huge empire included North Africa. An African unit was stationed with the Roman military garrison at Burgh-by-Sands at the western end of Hadrian’s Wall. We know from tombstones that some African soldiers when discharged settled here, and married local women. Archaeological scrutinies of skeletons in the past few years have found African men and women buried 1500+ years ago in East Sussex, in Fairford (Glos.), in Stratford-upon-Avon, in London; and in York, a woman with a vast amount of expensive jewellery.Footnote 2What we now need is for all skeletons to be searched for African DNA. How many others might be found? And can anything more be discovered about their lives?

Of course, there must have been troops from the rest of this vast empire who settled here. And not only troops, as we know of a Syrian, Barates Palmyrenus—from Palmyra—a trader, who died in South Shields.Footnote 3

Thus, the Roman conquest added to the multi-ethnicity of the islanders. As some of the Africans married local women, it would appear that they were accepted. Did Africans continue to arrive after the Romans departed? There is a skeleton of young Black girl in a tenth-century Anglo-Saxon burial at North Elmham in Norfolk!Footnote 4 But books on that era never refer to Africans. What does that indicate about our universities? I once suggested to the Institute of Historical Research (IHR) that much research should be carried out about contacts between Britannia/Anglia and Al-Andalus (Spain and Portugal). Ruled by North and then West Africans from 711 till their final expulsion in 1492, Al-Andalus was a Muslim country, and Córdoba became the largest city in Europe. Christians and Jews were not ostracised and could retain and practice their religion. It became the major centre of learning in Europe: people from everywhere flocked there to study mathematics, astronomy, anatomy, surgery, pharmacology, agronomy and much else. A ‘translation institution’ was established to help interaction between scholars, and tens of thousands of manuscripts were copied/translated. How many Brits went to study there? How many scholars from Al-Andalus visited Britannia? Did any Brits try to employ experts from Al-Andalus?Footnote 5Was there trade with Al-Andalus? The IHR was interested, but could not get any funding!

The Tudor period—so over-taught, over-researched, over-filmed! All those superb queens and kings! What about the workers? In 1581, the Levant Company received its charter from Queen Elizabeth to further trade with the ‘East’.Footnote 6How did the Brits exploring this world new to them report on it? [Company morphed into the East India Company (EIC) some 20 years later]. And what about the presence of Africans? Almost totally ignored until very recently. We now have two important books: Onyeka Nubia’s England’s Other Countrymen: Blackness in Tudor Society and Miranda Kaufmann’s Black Tudors: The Untold Story.Footnote 7 These books are very long: 350 pages, so probably not appropriate for school use or even for most non-academic readers. Local libraries have some interest: I checked libraries in Kent and found ten copies of Kaufmann’s book, scattered around the county. Local universities? There is a copy of Kaufmann’s book at both the University of Kent and Canterbury Christ Church University. The University of London’s Senate House Library website states a copy of Nubia’s book has been ordered. Will the two Kent universities order copies of the book by this non-English author? These two books could be used as a source for TV programmes, for plays and books for children. Africa prior to the arrival of Europeans must also be publicised and taught. I wish the books excited further research, both by universities and by local history associations!

Was it in 1660 that fiefdom was ended? Did attitudes to fiefs/villeins/serfs affect attitudes to Africans? How did they relate to each other? No research. However, recent explorers found 800 advertisements for runaway slaves in English and Scottish newspapers for 1700–1780. Does this indicate that the Africans hoped/expected help/support from White fellow workers?Footnote 8 This research leads to other questions: just how many Africans were here in the eighteenth century; what work did they do; how were they treated? How/why did they arrive here? There are a few books telling the long history of African presence; some focus on particular times/places.Footnote 9 Some written by academic historians, some by non-academics. There is no space here to recount the presence of Indians in Britain: they began to arrive in the seventeenth century, some as household servants, some as discharged seamen usually called ‘lascars’.Footnote 10

Britain’s Empire in India and Africa

Britain now began to explore and exploit the wider world. It followed Portugal and the Netherlands to trade with India. Trading posts were established and the rulers of the many states were contacted/manipulated/supported/defeated/overthrown. By the later eighteenth century, Great Britain and France struggled for dominance, partly through proxy Indian rulers but also by direct military intervention. For example, Napoleon Bonaparte helped Tipu Sultan’s army in its struggles for power with its neighbours. In the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War, the imperial forces of the British East India Company supported the Nizam of Hyderabad and defeated Tipu, who was killed on 4 May 1799.

Britain now gained direct or indirect control over almost all of India. The most populous and valuable part of the British Empire, India became known as ‘the jewel’ in the British crown. The ‘jewel’ was never peaceful: struggles between peoples continued as did opposition to the rule of the EIC. In 1858, the British government took over control from the EIC. Do we know what the EIC members did with the fortunes they accumulated? How did this help Britain’s ‘development’?

Both the EIC and then the colonial government enlisted tens of thousands of Indians into its military to ensure ‘peace’. And into the various companies’ workforce. For example, to grow opium. The drug was exchanged in China for tea, silk, porcelain and other luxury goods for sale in Europe.Footnote 11 The wide-spread weaving of cotton cloth was almost destroyed, as it was necessary to reduce competition with Britain’s growing cotton industry.

The effect of British control over India’s economy is much disputed by historians.

Is the influence/manipulation of culture perhaps as, or even more, important than influence on the economy? Lord Macaulay, a Member of Parliament, was appointed to the Supreme Council of India in 1834 and served there till 1838. In his Minute on Indian Education in 1835, he argued that schools should teach in English as:

Sanskrit and Persian texts were of little use for useful learning… A single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia... We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, – a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.Footnote 12

So Indians were inferior to the superior Brits. How was this communicated to ‘ordinary’, illiterate Brits? And to the upper classes?

By the late seventeenth century, Britain had followed Portugal also to Africa and had become a major participant in the trade in enslaved Africans. The Royal African Company received its Royal Charter in 1672. This incursion of Europeans, very similar to that in India, was even more destructive. Africans, collaborating with the Europeans setting up forts along the West African coast, fought wars with each other for about 300+ years to obtain prisoners of war (POW), to sell as slaves. Historians searching all available records, found 12,521,336 men, women and children were placed on board ships 1501–1866; 1.8 million died prior to disembarkation.Footnote 13 There is no data/information on the millions who died in the process of enslavement, the march to the coast and while imprisoned there awaiting shipment. And, of course, not all ships’ records have been preserved. Britain was the main exporter.

We do not know nearly enough about the devastation caused by these wars and kidnappings. And, however, painful for Africans, we need research on the role/position of these collaborators, during and after the colonial era. We also need to know what information/mis-information on Africa was propagated in Britain and this trade, for both the illiterates and literates. Who were the informants/teachers? The missionaries were the earliest temporary settlers—did they all report on ‘the raw savage negro and his evil life’? Footnote 14 What was taught when free schooling was introduced in the 1880s? What is being taught now in our schools, universities and by ‘popular culture’?

Britain’s Parliament passed an Act in 1807, making the slave trade illegal. Little was done to enforce the Act for about 40 years. Most other European governments eventually agreed but the ‘nefarious trade’ did not really stop until Brazil made slavery illegal in 1888.Footnote 15

Britain decided to make slavery illegal in all its colonies (except India) in 1833. The owners of slaves, mostly in the colonies in the West Indies, had to be compensated for losing their unpaid labourers. 20 million pounds was needed for this; the Rothschilds loaned £15 million to the government. What the terms of the loans were and what the relationship was/is between the Rothschilds and the government has not been possible to discover. As the loan was not repaid until 2015, surely, we should know just what was going on behind the scene, so to speak.

The Compensation Records have now been digitised, but we have no such records for the participants in the trade and for those who sold their plantations prior to the ending of slavery. This should be researched by area, for example, and for banks, insurance companies and ship-builders.

Some of the raw materials which were needed for the industrial revolution developing in Europe could be obtained from Africa. The European powers met in Berlin in 1884–1885 to ensure that access to these minerals (including gold and industrial diamonds) were ‘fairly’ distributed, as they did not want to have to fight each other. So they agreed and drew borders, ignoring Africans’ history, ethnicity, languages, traditions and others. Colonial rule was imposed. Manufacturing in the colonies was not permitted.

Peopling the Empire

We now need a very brief glance at emigration from the UK. From about the mid-seventeenth century, though not all were counted, it is reported that at least 11 million emigrated—to North America, to Australia, to New Zealand and then to South Africa and also to Kenya. Some paid their way, and some received financial assistance from charities and at times even the government. Some went as indentured servants—were sold on arrival for seven years. Some were convicts/prisoners, also sold on arrival.Footnote 16 And about 150,000 were children, some just rounded up from the streets, others sent by the charities supporting them.Footnote 17

The settlers’ guns and diseases, to which native peoples had no resistance, resulted in the extermination of most indigenous peoples. The survivors were pushed away from the productive lands to ensure that the settlers could cultivate enough land to feed themselves, and then to export produce—and then also minerals. Effect: for example, no indigenous people survived in Tasmania and very few in what came to be known as the West Indies.

There is now a claim for some form of compensation by people from the Kericho County in Kenya. They are among the 115,000 people forcefully removed to enable the British settlers to make fortunes from growing tea. In March 2019, Kenya’s National Land Commission ruled that they did suffer injustices and their land had been unlawfully seized, recommending that the UK should apologise. Their lawyer reported that the multinational tea companies had been unapologetic and failed to engage in talks. As had the British government. They reported this ‘gross violation of human rights’ to the UN special rapporteur on the promotion of justice.Footnote 18 Should the tea companies be required to make compensation payments? How many more people from all these ex-colonies should be seeking some form of compensation? What is important here is:

  1. (a)

    that this emigration, including the reasons for it, is very seldom if ever included in ‘popular’ history,

  2. (b)

    that the effects on the native populations are also ignored and

  3. (c)

    that it was the need for more and more labourers in the Americas that led to the massive increase in the trade in enslaved Africans.

How should Britain, the Commonwealth and the USA be reimbursing the remaining indigenous peoples? And the descendants of the enslaved?

After World War II (WWII) the government offered very cheap tickets on ships going to Australia—perhaps to ensure that the many immigrants from mainland Europe did not negatively affect Australia’s relationship with its ‘Mother Country’.

WWII and the Empire

Much is written about, and there are so many memorials of both WWI and WWII, but the colonies are almost always omitted.Footnote 19 So it is very important to at least outline the manifold contributions by Britain’s colonies.

Troops were raised in all the colonies. According to official statistics, about 372,000—or was it half a million?—Africans joined (some were conscripted) the military, including the Home Commands in the colonies. How much they were paid varied from colony to colony but was seldom, if ever, more that 25% of that which was paid to a White soldier of the same rank. Another inequality was that African troops could still be flogged for ‘misbehaviour’. Until the training/appointment of Seth Anthony of the Gold Coast in 1942, all officers were European.Footnote 20

The pay inequalities in the military became almost front-page news in 2019. The Guardian reported on 1 March 2019:

The former head of the British army has called on the government to pay compensation to African veterans of the second world war who were paid three times less than their white counterparts…. General Lord Dannatt described the discriminatory policy…, as ‘hugely inequitable and wrong’. He urged the defence secretary, Gavin Williamson, to meet surviving ex-servicemen in Africa and issue a retrospective apology.Footnote 21

Two and a half million served in the Indian Army and c.70,000 served in various Home Commands. India paid for them all and for any British troops and officers serving in India. About 82% of India’s budget was spent on the war in 1943–1944. As the records are incomplete, it is estimated that about 3 million Indians died in the famines of 1943–1944, caused mainly by the war. Prime Minister Churchill refused to allow food to be shipped to the devastated areas and continued to demand food for the troops.Footnote 22

Some West Indians were recruited for the Royal Air Force (RAF): a few with the much-needed qualifications as air crew, then about 5500 were imported as ground crew at air bases in Britain. Some were imported as forestry workers.Footnote 23 As they were not deemed a ‘robust race’, it was not until 1944 that 1200 men were recruited for a Caribbean Regiment—they served in Italy and Egypt. There were about 80 women, as light-skinned as possible, recruited for the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) in Britain. Thousands served in their Home Commands.Footnote 24

It was not only troops that were contributed by Africa, India and the West Indies in both WWI and WWII. Essential raw materials came from the colonies—for example, rubber, tin, manganese, coal, bauxite and palm/vegetable oils from Nigeria and the Gold Coast; sodium from Kenya; copper from Rhodesia; diamonds and cattle from Tanganyika; oils, bauxite and ‘spirits’ from the West Indies; manganese, fish, grain and clothing for the military from India. In many colonies, Compulsory Native Labour Recruitment Acts were passed to ensure there were sufficient labourers to grow, to dig, to carry for the private companies that owned everything. (Just one example: 53,000 forced labourers worked in the Jos coal mines in Nigeria in 1944.) The workers were paid next to nothing. Profits were huge: for example, the ‘cocoa sold to the USA yielded £2,700,000’ for the British companies in Nigeria.Footnote 25

Financial contributions were also huge. By the end of 1943, the colonial empire had given Britain £23.3 million in gifts £10.7 million in interest-free loans and £14 low-interest loans. Money was raised from the populations: for example, West Africans contributed over £1.5 million and Trinidadians about half a million.Footnote 26

Are these colonial contributions ever recognised? No, as argued by Cameron Duodo in his article ‘A Major Omission’, published in The Guardian on 19 November 2007:

It seems to me absolutely essential that everyone in the UK is asked whether Britain could have won the war without the manifold contributions from the colonies.

Africans and Indians in Britain from c.1900: And Today

In the past 50 or so years, more research has been carried out—but not nearly enough! Much of the research has been by local historians and ‘amateurs’ like me—not by academics in the academy. We now have one MA degree in this history but no undergraduate courses as far as I have been able to discover. How many teacher training courses include any of this history?

The struggles against racial discrimination have been ignored. We did manage to convince the Lawrence Enquiry about the necessity for the police to overcome their racial discriminations. Any success? No. Just to give one example, today’s figures highlight that nationally Black people are nine times more likely to be searched than those who are White. And, in a report to Parliament in 2017 ‘The proportion of BAME youth prisoners rose from 25% in 2006 to 41% last year… [David] Lammy [MP] says covert and unconscious or implicit bias are becoming more apparent’.Footnote 27

Though some local archives might have files on local Black organisations and activists, the government has not released its files on Black activists/organisations. As we now have a female Black bishop, perhaps the Church of England is overcoming its history of discrimination and profit-seeking from slave-worked plantations. The Church received £8823. 8 s. 9d (about £500,000 in today’s money) in compensation for the 411 slaves it owned on its Codrington Plantations in Barbados.

It seems that in most schools nothing is taught about the history of Africa (especially prior to the arrival of Europeans), about the horrors of the trade in enslaved Africans and its effects, about the vast profits that accrued from the work of slaves and about the colonial contributions to WWI and WWII. Are there any novels on the reading lists addressing these issues? I doubt it. Are there still racist descriptions in books for children? I don’t know of any research on this. But some older teachers would have read some of the many immensely popular novels about that pilot, Biggles. In the two books I glanced through, Biggles refers to ‘half-breeds’, to ‘savages’, to ‘niggers’ and to ‘nigger with flattened out bill-hook’; to ‘Chinks’, to ‘Chungs’.Footnote 28 I would guess that the influence of these, and other novels using similar terminology, would have sunk very deep into readers’ minds. Recent researchers explored age 9–15 kids’ books published in the UK last year (2017), just 391 featured BME characters.Footnote 29

Racism is everywhere—even among footballers, as reported by Sam Cunningham in the i newspaper on 15 December 2018. For example, in the mental health section of our NHS ‘detentions under the Mental Health Act: Black people are 4 times likely to be detained compared to White population’.Footnote 30

Given all this, to me it is hardly surprising that research on school attainment has shown that ‘in all subjects and at all key stages, Black Caribbean pupils’ attainment was below the average for England’.Footnote 31 How could you do well, if you don’t exist in the curriculum?Footnote 32 And if you do apply to go to university, you are ‘22 times more likely to have [your] application investigated for potential fraud or errors than a “White peer”’.Footnote 33 And that various forms of racism are alive and well at the academic levels.Footnote 34

So What Now?

Universities and schools must change their curricula and extend their research projects. The training of teachers, policemen, nurses and all public servants (including judges) should include some of this history and the history of racist attitudes. There must be in-service training for all the above on this history and on racist attitudes. We need many more TV programmes and other forms of ‘social education’ on these issues.

Listen to Daniel Defoe ‘speaking’ in 1701, and ask him to include Africans and Indians.Verse

Verse The Romans first with Julius Cæsar came, Including all the nations of that name, Gauls, Greeks, and Lombards, and, by computation, Auxiliaries or slaves of every nation. With Hengist, Saxons; Danes with Sueno came, In search of plunder, not in search of fame. Scots, Picts, and Irish from the Hibernian shore, And conquering William brought the Normans o’er. All these their barbarous offspring left behind, The dregs of armies, they of all mankind; Blended with Britons, who before were here, Of whom the Welsh ha’ blessed the character. From this amphibious ill-born mob began That vain ill-natured thing, an Englishman.