The name Windrush has become synonymous with scandal since the government detained, deported and ruined the lives of countless immigrants living legally in the UK. The British historian and scholar Professor Hakim Adi has spent decades trying to correct what he calls the Windrush myth – the idea that Black migration to the UK began in 1948, when the famous ship landed with several hundred Jamaicans at Tilbury docks.
His latest book, African and Caribbean People in Britain, is his crowning achievement; a meticulously researched tour de force that charts black presence on the British Isles from Cheddar Man through the African Roman legions and Black Tudors and into the present day. In the age of Black Lives Matter, and following books such as David Olusoga’s Black and British, the Windrush story has been under increasing strain. Adi’s work should represent the final nail in the coffin for those who think that Britain was ever truly white and should be kept that way.
He places Black people as protagonists, contributing to the growth of the nation and fighting for their rights. We hear about African abolitionists such as Ottobah Cugoano and Mary Prince, who were born into slavery and brought to Britain, where they earned their freedom and fought against the plantation system. The book’s most powerful sections depict the rebellions by enslaved colonies such as Demerara and Jamaica as central events that led to Britain abandoning its lucrative business, resulting in the abolition of trafficking African people in 1807 and of the horrific system of slavery itself in 1838. Adi also presents an unmatched account of Black activism in this country, encompassing the 19th and 20th centuries and focusing on the Pan-African Congress movement, which launched in London in 1900 and held its most influential meeting in Manchester in 1945. He sheds light on lesser-known organisations such as the African Progress Union and West African Students’ Union, both of which were established before the second world war.
The unbroken line of Black organising, long before the Windrush docked, is vital knowledge for those continuing the struggle. It is particularly refreshing to read about the British Black power movement that took shape in the early 60s and was active in areas such as housing, education and campaigning, representing a radical challenge to the state. Groups such as the African Caribbean Self-Help Organisation (ACHSO), Harambee, the Black Unity and Freedom party and many others were part of a coalition that forced Britain to offer some breathing space for its Black subjects. I even came across the work of my father who, along with other Birmingham activists, including the indomitable Bini Butwaka, AKA Bini Brown (who has recently had a stroke), built Harambee and ACHSO, which remain in place today.
The project is limited in scope, though. This is very much a book about Black people who made it on to British soil, which is interesting but obscures the wider point about empire. We do not need to prove we were here pre-Windrush to have a stake in this country. When my family was enslaved in Jamaica they may as well have been in Britain, contributing as they did as much (if not more) to building the nation as any white person. My father’s endeavours in the 60s and 70s were no more or less important than his grandmother’s who never left the Caribbean. Any true picture of the Black contribution to Britain must focus on what happened in the colonies as much as what happened within the imagined nation state.
One jarring example that limits the reader’s understanding of Black politics in Britain is the case of Marcus Garvey, who was born in Jamaica in 1887, rose to global prominence in the US in the early 1920s and died in London in 1940. As the book’s focus is on the British Isles, we only hear about him once he is exiled to the UK in 1935. There is nothing about Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), the largest and most influential Black political organisation, which had at least 2 million members, many of them active in the British empire. The real scandal of the Windrush victims is that they have centuries of deep connections to this nation. In highlighting the history of the African and Caribbean presence in Britain, Adi reveals a fascinating story that should be a starting point for understanding a wider and more important one.
Kehinde Andrews is the author of The New Age of Empire: How Racism and Colonialism Still Rule the World
• African and Caribbean People in Britain by Hakim Adi is published by Allen Lane (£30). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
