African and Caribbean People in Britain: A History

"This one is taking a subject that we thought we knew a little bit about and giving it the full treatment. The classic work on this subject was written by Peter Fryer in the 1980s. It was called Staying Power , and it was a very good book. It was the first book that tried to tell the story of Black—Adi prefers to say African and Caribbean—people in Britain. Since then, a lot more material has emerged, and Adi brings all of this new material together and also gives this panoptic view of the—I’ll say Black, just for shorthand—presence in the British Isles. It’s 10,000 years from Cheddar Man to Black Lives Matter. It’s remarkable. You see Black people here in Roman times: the Black emperor, and the Black legionaries. You see African explorers alongside Francis Drake. You see Black people here in Tudor times. This is all pre-slavery. The Black presence before slavery is one of the many huge contributions of this book. Adi is a specialist of Pan-Africanism and he also has fascinating things to say about that story in the 20th century and the numerous contributions that Black people have made to British institutions like the NHS. It’s a book that is sweeping and comprehensive and, quite apart from anything else, destroys the myth, insofar as it needed to be destroyed, of white Britain—the idea that there was a point back in time when these islands were inhabited only by white people. You just can’t hold onto that view anymore, once you’ve read this book. Absolutely, and he has some really good and important things to say—even though it isn’t his subject—about race. You can’t write a book like this without talking about the history of racism in Britain. He shows two things. One is that racism—you’d be surprised if it wasn’t there—turns out to have been there from the time of slavery onwards. He connects it very much to the institution of slavery. He also shows, very effectively, that racism and beliefs in racial inequality were always part of the argument used by the powerful and those elites who depended on enslavement for their success. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . Once you get into the 18th century, however, you also start to see people mobilising against slavery. He shows that this is something that is done not only by Black people. A lot of other social groups are part of these campaigns. When you look at the late 18th and early 19th century, all the social protests that led to abolition happen partly because slaves are in revolt in the colonies (that isn’t part of his story, although he mentions it) but crucially, because of ordinary men and women. Women in particular pushed really hard, particularly in the 1820s, to get Wilberforce to embrace the immediate abolition of slavery. Wilberforce believed in gradual abolition: he thought it was something that would happen spontaneously and in the fullness of time. It’s this campaign of Black and other working men and women that makes the abolitionists in Britain finally embrace immediate abolition. That’s an important part of the story and just one example of how Black people contribute to the promotion of greater equality in Britain."