To close off this entry, here is the rest.
And so on to David Olusoga’s rendition of the history of blacks in Victorian Britain.
Note: This part of the narrative was preceded by an extended ‘dialogue’ with ‘Kim’, perhaps one of her last appearances on PFUK, Although it’s amusing as all such exchanges were, I’ve removed it for now. It can be retrieved if there is sufficient public demand.]
Actually this part of the discussion takes us through the Edwardian period too, up to the eve of the First World War. In this part of the narrative Olusoga focuses largely on external events that shaped the black experience in general and not just in Britain. Examples include the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade and British efforts to suppress it globally, the ending of slavery throughout the Empire – which coincided with the start of Victoria’s reign – and the dramatic increase in colonial possessions, especially in Africa. He also deals at some length with the US Civil War and its economic effects in Britain, leading to efforts to diversify sources of cotton away from the slave-economy of the Southern states.
Curiously though, Olusoga has little to say about the actual history of the settlement of blacks in Victorian Britain, offering no statistics as to numbers or even much evidence for identifiable black settlements in the country. Instead he resorts to the pop-historian’s device of focusing on personalities, what the popular press calls ‘human interest' stories, including accounts of military service and above all, the fields of entertainment and public spectacle.
One of the problems facing Olusoga in sustaining the narrative in this period is that there is hard evidence that the black population had declined considerably since its high-point in the later Georgian period. Abolition played an important role in this population decline since it interrupted the migrant flow from the West Indies and the existing, primarily male population (80% prior to abolition [p95]) lacked readily-available marriage partners. For Olusoga, the emphasis necessarily then becomes one of focusing on the ‘firsts in field’, black pioneers in particular occupations or social environments, and on the handful of blacks who achieved celebrity status, either as individuals or members of a group.
Early in the book Olusoga draws attention to the bronze panels on the base of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square. The south-facing relief – entitled The Death of Nelson - is of particular interest since it includes a black seaman holding a musket, and his presence not merely acknowledged, it is ‘celebrated’ [p31]. Olusoga goes to relate that Nelson’s fleet included 18 Africans and 123 West Indians; one African and six West Indians served on the Victory [p32]. Other ‘firsts’ noted by Olusoga include the first black commissioned officer in the Royal Navy, Lieutenant James Labuto Davies, who was present on HMS Bloodhound at the annexation of Lagos in 1861 [p275], the Rev. Simon Ajayi Crowther, the first black Anglican bishop [p276], JA Horton who was commissioned as a medical officer in the British Army in the 1850s and John Alexander from Trinidad and Harold Moody (Jamaica) who were ‘among the first blacks to qualify as doctors in England' [pp351-2]. Towards the end of the period, John Richard Archer (Barbadian father, Irish mother) became the first black elected official as councillor for Battersea in 1906 and later appointed mayor [p352].
In 1851 a seven-year old slave girl who had been reluctantly accepted by a naval officer as a gift from the King of Dahomey arrived in London and over the course of the next years attained considerable celebrity as a ward of Queen Victoria [p280]. The royal household took responsibility for her upbringing and education and, from all accounts, she became a favourite of the Queen. As Sarah Forbes Bonetta she married a (black) Sierra Leonean administrator, James Davies. In 1867 the Queen became godmother to Sarah’s own daughter, also named Victoria [p285].
The Victorian black whose name and reputation has perhaps best survived the passage of time is the classical composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. A contemporary of Vaughan Williams, Delius and Holst, Coleridge-Taylor was exceptionally prolific and quite well-regarded by Victorian audiences although, in comparison to other composers of that period, his works are rarely performed today except as ‘diversity exhibits’. An example would be his Symphony in A minor which was performed at the 2021 BBC Proms by the all-BAME Chineke! Orchestra.
A curious omission from Olusoga’s pantheon of black Victorians is the nurse Mary Seacole who has gained wide renown for her efforts in ministering to sick and wounded soldiers in the Crimean War. She was voted ‘Greatest Black Briton’ in a 2004 poll. Perhaps Olusoga was wary of stepping into what has become a contested and controversial area of black British history now that, after vigorous and extensive lobbying by ‘special interest groups’, her public reputation threatens to eclipse that of Florence Nightingale (see Seacole’s Wiki entry).
Finally a few words on the ‘spectacular’ aspect of the black presence in Victorian Britain. The 1830s saw the introduction of ‘minstelry’ into British popular culture [p355] and Olusoga cites the many ‘now forgotten black entertainers’ not all of whom were black Britons. He mentions particularly the European tours of the US Nashville Fisk Jubilee Singers which, while clearly highly popular and doing much to popularise black gospel and traditional music, might not actually merit Olusoga’s somewhat overblown description as being “one of the greatest musical events of the century” [p354].
But perhaps the most spectacular of the spectacular were the exhibits portraying black Africans and African life before a paying audience. These involved the temporary importation of dozens if not hundreds of black people who would populate specially constructed villages and whose depictions of African 'daily life' the public would be invited to view. Some even staged pageants of colonial warfare in which scantily-clad natives would do mock battle with imperial troops amidst loud bangs and other warlike effects. The first such ‘native village’ was included in the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace but they became more or less a standard feature across Europe at major ‘international exhibitions’, especially as one country after another joined in on the ‘Scramble for Africa’ [p340ff].
World War I and the Interwar period
For Olusoga, wartime exigencies ‘led to the temporary lowering of the physical, cultural and legal barriers that had been erected between the races and between the subject peoples of the Empire [p359]. Not that there were very many blacks in Britain who could take advantage of this ‘liberalisation’, at least to begin with. The number of blacks in Britain at the outbreak of the Great War was ‘very small, a few thousand or a mere fraction of the 18th century when the population was being continually refreshed from the West Indies’ [p372].
One of the underlying cultural conflicts that persisted almost throughout the war centred around the dispute about whether black or coloured troops should be integrated into ‘white’ units. The Colonial Office was in favour, while the War Office (and most politicians) were against. As it happened the generals and politicians won this particular battle, ensuring that on the Western Front at least, it would remain a ‘white man’s war’ [p365].
Elsewhere in the Empire, in Africa and the Middle East, coloured troops played an important part albeit in segregated units overseen by white British officers. The colonial wars against the Germans in East and West Africa, as well as in what is now Namibia, were fought almost entirely by African and West Indian regiments. West Indian troops also served in Egypt during the Palestinian campaign [p359].
But it is the official exclusion of black units from combat on the Western Front that grates most with Olusoga, especially since, as he points out, the French army had deployed over 100,000 African troops albeit in segregated units. If the French can do it, he says, why not the British? He then explains how public sentiment in the Caribbean led to the formation of the British West Indies Regiment (BWIR) in 1915, and how this unit eventually expanded to a division-sized force of 15,000 men in twelve battalions by 1917. All except two of these battalions served overseas, in Africa as already noted, but also from 1916 also on the Western Front. The unfortunate truth, however, is that black units were only ever deployed as labour battalions in the rear echelons [pp364-5]. No member of the BWIR ever fired a bullet at a German.
Although the embargo on blacks engaging in the ‘white man’s war’ in Europe extended to West Indians and other colonials, who were barred from enlisting in ‘white’ British units, this restriction was occasionally surmounted. Olusoga cites several West Indians who successfully enlisted in British units and fought with them on the Western Front. The ‘most celebrated’ is Walter Tull, whose story is too well-known to need repeating here [p372]. Another notable case is Norman Manley, in later life the Premier of an independent Jamaica, who served in the Royal Field Artillery, reaching the rank of sergeant. Manley was decorated with the Military Medal (now the MC) for bravery in combat. [p370]. However Tull and Manley were very much the exception to the rule.
For Olusoga the conflict ended on a very sour note. In 1919 an official Victory Parade of Celebration was conducted in London with a commemorative ceremony at the Cenotaph in Whitehall, attended by King George V and Queen Mary. Although troops from across the Empire participated in the event, as well as contingents from various allies, no African or West Indian troops were invited to attend [p375]. Adding insult to injury, in Olusoga’s view, was the treatment of BWIR troops awaiting demobilisation in Italy, and who were ordered to do the laundry and clean the latrines of white British troops. The ensuing mutiny was quickly suppressed and the leaders court-martialled and jailed (one was executed) but, according to Olusoga, the mistreatment of the men of BWIR ‘starkly demonstrated … the reality of their place in the Empire, and exactly where they stood in the racial hierarchy’ [p375].
From Olusoga’s perspective a positive outcome of the War would be that the black population expanded considerably from its pre-war low to ‘probably around’ 20,000. Much of this increase occurred in the port cities of Glasgow, Liverpool and Cardiff reflecting the number of black seamen who had helped to man the convoys that sustained Britain throughout the war. For the first time, the black population outside London exceeded that within it [p377].
At the same time, soldiers were being demobilised in their millions and returning home looking to take up jobs and the ‘homes for heroes’ they had been promised. But those returning to cities that had experienced large growth in the black population soon came to regard their new neighbours as competition for resources they felt entitled to consider their own. Olusoga cites ‘race theorists’ Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard as ‘speaking for many in 1919’ who found disturbing the sight of blacks in well-paid industrial jobs and who found the mixed relationships and marriages ‘the most outrageous of all’ [p376].
All this came to the boil in June 1919 when ‘race riots’ broke out in Liverpool as well as other port cities including Glasgow and South Shields, the latter being home to a long-settled community of Somali seafarers [p379]. Within weeks racial tensions erupted in London, Hull, Newport, Barry and Cardiff. The riots in Cardiff lasted a week and required the intervention of troops to quell, with three men left dead [p380].
In the immediate aftermath of the riots plans were drawn up for the repatriation of coloured males, with Liverpool, the most seriously affected city, taking the lead. The Liverpool scheme was sanctioned by the Colonial Secretary, Lord Milner, and received the approval of the Lord Mayor and the Chief Constable [p385]. The first phase would have entailed the evacuation of ‘the entire black population’ to disused Army camps, pending their removal to Africa and the West Indies. However, somewhat inevitably given the sizeable numbers of white women and mixed-race children who would have been affected, the ensuing backlash caused the plans to be abandoned as ‘impractical’ and ‘incendiary’ [p386].
One longer term consequence of the riots was the introduction of legislation, first in 1920 and again in 1925, that would serve to more closely monitor the movements of blacks and in particular, that of seamen in the port cities where the trouble had originated [p388]. Olusoga clearly views the inter-war period as a low point in black British history. He concludes that the activities of ‘racist white mobs’ as well as the spreading ‘colour bar’ had served to strip black people of their status as full British citizens [p389].
Certainly, from a demographic perspective the period was not an auspicious one for the black population. Although colonial subjects were ostensibly still entitled to free entry, their numbers remained very low; Iain Spencer cites cabinet reports that put the permanently settled non-white population at around 7,000 (not all black) in 1939, the majority of these having been present since the First World War, or even earlier. (Spencer. I.R.G.,
British Immigration Policy since 1939, 1997, Routledge, London p7).
WWII and the Empire Windrush
In the summer of 1944 the black population reached 150,000 which included 130,000 US military personnel. The black population would not reach that level again until the late 50s, following ten years of Afro-Caribbean immigration [p390]. The presence of so many black US troops and their segregated units presented a dilemma for the British authorities. Extensive lobbying at the highest levels of government had failed to persuade the Americans to send only white units to Britain. Domestic political considerations as well as pressure from black civil rights groups ruled the day, although the Americans did agree to limit the number of black troops to the proportion of blacks in the US general population i.e. 10% [p391].
Black GIs started to arrive in the autumn of 1942 and, according to Olusoga, the local populations in the places where they were stationed were ‘extraordinarily welcoming’ although he tempers his praise with the observation that ‘… of course they weren’t coming to stay so wouldn’t be about to stake claims on British jobs or housing’ [p392]. The narrative then continues with close to ten pages of discussion on the differences between the US and the UK with regard to inter-racial relations, both in the military and in civil society. This is of only tangential relevance to the history of blacks in Britain so will be passed over here.
As far as the British conduct of the war is concerned the status of blacks in the military underwent something a reversal compared to the previous war. Although the War Office still maintained that black men from the West Indies ‘would be of doubtful military value for combat service especially against German troops in Europe’, the earlier policy of allowing only those of ‘pure European descent’ to serve in the British military was rescinded. From 1943 around ten thousand West Indians enlisted in the British forces, many of them in the RAF where a handful even succeeded in selection for aircrew. Additionally several thousand black colonial subjects were recruited for ‘essential war work’ [pp404-5].
Per Olusoga, one of the most significant outcomes of WWII was that, in dismissing the Nazi worldview of a ‘hierarchy of pure racial groups’, it made racism less acceptable generally’ [p408]. However the revelations that there was no scientific basis for beliefs that considered people of African descent as genetically inferior was not easily assimilated into everyday (i.e. white) thinking. Olusoga goes on to say that ‘For many in Britain, the ideologies of imperialism and racial supremacy, along with the visual landscape of racist cartoons, Boy’s Own adventure stories, gollywogs, ‘Little Black Sambo’ [etc] … remained far more potent than reports from the frontiers of the human sciences’ [p409].
As the war wound down, official attention turned to the question of post-war recovery. By 1946 a government study revealed that, despite the wide-scale demobilisations, Britain faced a labour shortage of 1.3 million workers. To the chagrin of colonial administrators (and the Colonial Office in London) the Labour government ignored the presence of a ‘reserve army of labour’ in the colonies and opted instead to call on demobilised Poles, displaced Eastern Europeans and the traditional source of labour, Ireland. The importation of colonial labour was actively discouraged by the government [p409].
However, the ongoing and chronic labour shortage and the post-war economic crisis in the West Indies became the ‘pull and push factors’ that stimulated the post-war wave of immigration from the West Indies which the British government proved unable to prevent ‘if not for want of trying’ [p411]. The arrival of the Empire Windrush in June 1948 with its complement of 400-odd would-be migrants is perhaps the most potent symbol of this ‘new wave’, although it was by no means the first. It's not known how many of the wartime colonial recruits stayed on after the war, but it is likely to have been several thousand. Suffice to say that in late 1949 the Home Office estimated the coloured population of Britain to be between 20,000 and 30,000, consisting of the pre-war population, plus those wartime workers who had stayed on, and the early post-war Caribbean migrants who accounted for around 5,000 or so of the total.
Within ten years that coloured population would have grown twenty- or thirty-fold, but that's another story and forms part of a completely separate volume of the story of 'black British history'.
[Note: At this point I switch focus from the book to the TV programme]
The Television programme
If anything the TV show poses even more of a problem than the book if only because its slickness as a prestige BBC production and its focus on 'human interest stories' render it both more accessible for the easily-led and emotionally more digestible for those who can't be bothered with proper history. One innovative feature of the programme is that the BBC commissioned a series of ‘Black History Plaques’ that were installed at ceremonies orchestrated by Olusoga at various places around the country as well as in several overseas locations.
According to the advance blurb, there were supposed to be ‘more than twenty’ such plaques although just 18 figure in one or another of the four episodes. Leaving aside the plaques installed overseas, and also those commemorating foreign personalities like Frederick Douglass and King Khama of Bechuanaland who made fleeting visits to Britain, the black people who Olusoga elected to commemorate with a ‘BBC Black History’ plaque are as follows (in order of appearance).
1. The Aurelian Moors – Northern African soldiers who are said to have guarded a Roman fort on Hadrian’s Wall in the 3rd century AD.
2. ‘Beachy Head Woman’ – supposedly a woman of sub-Saharan origin dating from ca 250 AD (origins now disputed)
3. John Blanke – the black trumpeter at Henry VII’s court
4. Francis Barber – Jamaican-born ex-slave who became a servant and adopted son of Dr Samuel Johnson
5. Jonathan Strong – enslaved youth whose mistreatment inspired Granville Sharp to campaign for abolition
6. Bill Richmond – Freed slave who took up bare-knuckle fighting in his 40s. Said to be ‘Britain’s first black sporting personality’.
7. Sarah Forbes Bonetta – enslaved as a child in Africa, she was brought to England and became a ward of Queen Victoria.
8. Charles Wooten – victim of the 1919 race riots in Liverpool.
9. Lesley ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson – Grenadian cabaret artist, popular in the 1930s and notorious for an alleged affair with Lady Mountbatten.
10. The Windrush Generation - the 279,000 immigrants from the Caribbean who settled in Britain between 1947 and 1962.
With the exception of the last it’s difficult to see how the presence of any of these individuals, or their achievements, has had any discernible impact on the course of British history. Well, maybe No. 5 as well, sort of.
As a reminder, then, from the OP of the challenge Olusoga set himself:
"Olusoga states that he seeks to he seeks to "illuminate the parts of British history in which black people were active participants” [p22]. He claims that “Black people were not only continually present from the 16th century onwards [they also] played a role in many of the pivotal moments of British history” [p30-31]". Furthermore, “The black history of Britain and the biographies of black Britons run through mainstream British history” [p31]."
