In the early nineteenth century there were an
estimated 20,000 black people living in London. Individually they
rarely appear in public records although you will often find them
mentioned in parish registers. Samson Battyn was one of three black
adults baptised at Warfield in 1760. Another infant was buried at
Midgham and yet another burial took place at Pangbourne. In the main
our understanding of the black presence in England during the
eighteenth century comes from black authors like Equiano and Ignatius
Sancho and the many artistic images found in our public galleries.
Black images were often used as a startling contrast to white women.
Gainsborough, Hogarth and Sir Joshua Reynolds often included black
people in their art. Here John Siblon, Head of History at St. Andrew’s
International High School, Blantyre, Malawi, examines the reasons why
public monuments are rarely found to black people in Britain.
Among the few things I remember about my time at school
were my history lessons. In particular, I remember a trip to the
British Museum. This was the first time I had travelled to the centre
of London. My memories of the trip were of grand buildings, colonnaded
facades, statues and monuments. Suddenly the history lessons about
Britain’s majesty and imperial dominance seemed to come alive and make
sense. I had seen with my own eyes the evidence of Britain’s greatness
through the vast number of statues and monuments to the great and good
scattered around the capital. From Lord Nelson to Winston Churchill,
Oliver Cromwell and Boudicca, around me stood the historical figures
that made up the vast patchwork of British history, their monuments
signalling as much a notion of Britishness as the deeds for which these
people were celebrated.
It is no surprise, therefore, to relate that I grew up
with the notion that British history, or for that matter English
history, was made exclusively by English men and women of a particular
sort. That sort was predominantiy a white Anglo-Saxon male. Our history
lessons at school contained no alternative to the endless procession of
heroic men and sometimes women, usually royal or titled, who
contributed to Britain’s greatness. Absent were the working men and
women who surely must have made contributions, apart, from the General
Strike of 1926, and leaving aside the Welsh, the Scots and the Irish.
More glaringly absent although I didn’t apply much thought to it at the
time, was the black and Asian presence in Britain.
Perhaps the
most striking portrait, attributed to Zoffany, is of Dido Elizabeth
Lindsay or Dido Belle. She was the daughter of Sir John Lindsay and
brought up by her uncle Lord Mansfield.
Over the years, I have come to realise that the histories
made by men and women of minority ethnic groups have not been fairly
represented in the mainstream of the British education system at any
sector, whether that is primary, secondary, tertiary or higher. That is
not to say that there have not been attempts over recent years. If this
situation is to change then two things have to happen. Firstly, the
government must make firm changes to the National Curriculum and
secondly, historians must make further contributions in researching and
informing the public at large of Britain’s settled black presence going
back some 500 years and the contribution this community has made to
Britain’s wealth and development.
A neglected area of this ongoing research is the lack of
public space given to monuments to black Britons or their achievements.
There have been recent acknowledgements to the black post-war presence
such as the Windrush celebrations of 19981. However, the
primary focus here was the arrival of Caribbean immigrants and
returnees in 1948. The article here aims to focus on the lack of public
monuments to those Africans, Asians and Chinese who have lived on these
shores as visitors, servants or slaves over the last 500 years and so
make up part of Britain’s history and heritage.
The black presence in Britain can be traced back over 500
years, indeed in the period of the Roman occupation almost 2000 years
ago, African soldiers and indeed an African emperor, Septimus Severus,
were stationed in Britain. One of the first visible records of a black
person is from a Westminster tournament roll of 1511, which clearly and
colourfully shows a black trumpeter on a horse.2
Henceforward, as Britain’s role and involvement in the slave trade
assumed greater prominence, so do the amount of records and documents
charting the black presence in Britain. One of the most prominent of
these shows that, as early as 1596, Queen Elizabeth I wrote to the
mayors of various cities requesting them to deport Africans from her
territory.3
Since the 1980s, a few historians and educationalists have
produced a number of excellent articles, books and educational packs on
the subject of the black presence in Britain.4 Sadly, the
basis of these books has still to ifiter through into the mainstream of
the National Curriculum in British schools.5 Museums and
galleries have made attempts recently to incorporate the black presence
into their exhibits. The Merseyside Maritime Museum opened in 1994 a
Transatlantic Slavery Gallery. One of the themes of the exhibits is
that Liverpool’s involvement in the slave trade left a lasting legacy
in terms of wealth, landscape and population. There is also a guided
tour and virtual Internet tour of places in Liverpool that had
connections with slavery. In 2001, the museum commemorated August 23 as
International Day for Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition
with a programme of events. Similarly, in Bristol, another city which
grew on the back of the profits of slavery, the Industrial Museum has a
small but important permanent exhibition on Bristol’s role in the slave
trade. It too has a slavery heritage trail and has published guides for
public use. In 1997, a plaque dedicated to those who suffered as a
result of the slave trade was unveiled outside the museum. More
significantly, in 1999 a bridge in the redeveloped dock area of Bristol
was named after a black servant of the Pinney family. ‘Perot’s Bridge’
is one of the only public monuments in Britain to reflect Britain’s
inglorious role in the slave trade and the fact that a settled
community of black people in Britain was a consequence of this
involvement. This public monument was indeed a step forward but only
after decades of denial. But what of the metropolis, London, the other
major port to have grown rich on the profits of slavery and the first
port of call for immigrants and settlers from distant shores? How many
public monuments are there to the black presence in the capital?
Like Bristol and Liverpool, London museums and galleries
have made efforts to signal the black presence in the capital through
exhibitions, displays and conferences. The Museum of London runs
courses for teachers on black British history, runs a programme of
events for Black History Month and has a London Voices project to
engage communities under-represented amongst its visitors. It also
hosted the Peopling of London exhibition in 1993. In 1995, the Tate
Gallery held an exhibition entitled ‘Picturing Blackness in British
Art, 1700—1990’. The National Portrait Gallery had an exhibition on
Ignatius Sancho in 1997 and the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich
staged commemorative events on slavery and its abolition on 23 August
2002.
But, what of permanent monuments to the black presence?
Here the picture is somewhat different. For many tourists coming to
London, the initial attraction is the capital’s long and public
history. For others, London’s appeal is its diversity and its explicit
multicultural and cosmopolitan outlook; but if you seek monuments
reflecting that diversity do not look around you. There are statues to
renowned black and Asian figures such as Nelson Mandela and Mahatma
Gandhi but they were visitors from other shores as was Jimi Hendrix,
who has a welcome blue plaque.
There are many blacks who took up residence in Britain or
were native-born, who could quite easily have statues commemorating
them. The most celebrated are Olaudah Equiano, Mary Seacole, Ignatius
Sancho, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Dadabhai Naoroji. It would be
instructive to confine any search to these five figures and to see if
they have been permanently commemorated in any way.
Olaudah Equiano
published his autobiography in 1789. It was the most realistic account
of a black person’s life that the world had yet seen. He was invited to
dinner parties and soirees across the country to talk about his life.
Olaudah Equiano was a former slave in the late eighteenth
century, who bought his own freedom and wrote a book about his life as
a slave. By committing his experiences to print and actively
campaigning for the abolition of the slave trade, he surely played a
major part in the downfall of the iniquitous trade and its eventual
abolition. However, whereas William Wilberforce, Granville Sharpe and
Thomas Clarkson are rightly commemorated (many times in the case of
Wilberforce) there is only one permanent monument to Equiano. This is a
green plaque in Riding House Street in Westminster, which was erected
in 2000. The green plaque signifies it was the local council, not
English Heritage, who erected the plaque. Similarly, there is no plaque
or statue to another famous eighteenth century blackman, Ignatius
Sancho. There is a picture of him with a small caption and on an
information board on a small green in Broadway, Westminster where there
was formerly a burial site.
The most glaring absence is the lack of a plaque or
monument to Mary Seacole, surely one of the most celebrated of
nineteenth century black women. There used to be a plaque in London but
that was removed in a dispute about its siting on private property.
This example demonstrates that where there is no visible monument then
a person can be written out of the history books. Mary’s loyal service
and bravery in attending to the health of British troops in the Crimean
war is an amazing piece of history but most people would have only
heard about Florence Nightingale. Florence’s contribution to the
development of nursing is well documented. She has a blue plaque, a
statue and a museum next to St Thomas’ hospital in the heart of London.
The only monument to Mary is her gravestone.
Mary made her
own way to the Crimean War front and set up her 'British Hotel’. She
provided hot meals and looked after the sick and wounded. Hailed as a
national heroine back home, she received a commendation from Queen
Victoria.
Britain’s most celebrated composer at the turn of the
century was black. He was Samuel Coleridge-Taylor but the only monument
to him is a blue plaque hidden behind a large hedge in South Norwood,
near Croydon. Britain’s first black MP was elected to Parliament in
1892: he was Dadabhai Naoroji, originally from India. In Islington
there is a road named after him but he has no permanent monument or
plaque.
A cursory glance at the statues and monuments of the
metropolis and other cities shows them trying to affect a pomp and
majesty from a bygone age of Empire and colonialism when Britain’s
black and Asian subjects were at the receiving end of endemic racist
attitudes. In the twenty-first century, Britain’s ethnic make-up is
fast changing, as is its national identity. The truth, though, is that
this diversity is not new; it has always been there. However, this is
not reflected in statues or public monuments. In London there are at
least 500 statues and monuments but not a single one to the black and
Asian presence. 15 out of 750 blue plaques are dedicated to blacks and
Asians. This simply isn’t trying hard enough and is feeding a false
perception of a ‘white’ British history.
There needs to be an effort of will by those in English
Heritage and other bodies to ensure that this diversity is reflected in
the visible landscape. An excellent example of this is the monument to
Walter Tull, outside Northampton FC’s football ground. Here, one of
Britain’s first black footballers is permanently commemorated in stone
of black, white and grey, representing Britain’s diverse community. Who
designed and paid for the monument? The fans, of course.
1 Phillips, M and Phillips, T. Windrush: The Irresistible
Rise of Multi-Racial Britain. Harper Collins 1998
2 Merriman, N. The Peopling of London: Fifteen Thousand Years of
Settlement from Overseas. Museum of London 1993
3 Edwards, P. The History of Blacks in Britain. History Today. Volume
31 September 1981
4 See for example File, N and Power, C. Black Settlers in Britain
1555-1958. Heinemann 1981; Fryer, P. Staying Power: The history of
Black People in Britain. Pluto Press 1984; Vizram, R Ayahs, Lascars and
Princes: The Story of Indians in 1700-1947. Pluto Press 1986
5Ali, L The case for Including Black History in the National
Curriculum. Improving Schools, Volume 3, Number 1.2000.
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