Guerrilla History - African & Caribbean People in Britain - A History w/ Hakim Adi

Episode Date: February 23, 2024

In this fantastic episode of Guerrilla History, we bring back our esteemed friend and guest, Prof. Hakim Adi, to discuss his eminently important new book African and Caribbean People in Britain: A History, which has just been shortlisted for the prestigious Wolfson History Prize!  In this conversation, we trace this history back thousands of years and come up to the present, but you MUST get this book in order to truly appreciate the work that Prof. Adi has done here.  We also get an update on the previous conversation we had with Hakim about the eminent closure of the MRes in the History of Africa and the African Diaspora program.  For more updates on the legal challenges and ways to get involved, follow this link. Hakim Adi is a Professor of the History of Africa and the African Diaspora, and the founder of History Matters and its affiliated journal.  He has authored numerous books, and has written many articles which can be found on his website hakimadi.org.  You can follow him on twitter @hakimadi1 Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory 

You don't remember den, Ben, boo? The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare, but they put some guerrilla action on. Hello, and welcome to Good. Gorilla History, the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of a global proletarian history and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present.

I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Huckmanke, joined as usual by one of my other two usual co-hosts. We are joined by Professor Adnan-Husain, historian director of the School of Religion at Queens University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today? I'm doing well, Henry. It's good to be with you.

That's great to see you as well. We're not joined by our other usual co-host, Brett O'Shea, who, of course, is host of Revolutionary Left Radio, but we will be back on the show again very soon. We're joined by an excellent returning guest, but before I introduce that guest, I just want to remind the listeners that you can help support the show and allow us to continue making episodes like this by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history, that's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history, and you can keep up to date with the show, what the show is putting out, as well as what each of the co-host is putting out individually by following us at at Gorilla underscore Pod. Again, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A-U-A-U-R-A-U-L-A-U-Score Pod. So we're joined by, as I said, a returning guest, distinguished professor, excellent scholar, Hakeem Adi, who is a professor of history, Africa, and the African Diaspora.

He is the founder of the History Matters, of History Matters and its affiliated journal, author of numerous books, including the book that we're going to be talking about today, African and Caribbean people in Britain, a history. Hello, Professor. It's great to have you on the show again. Hi, it's great to be invited back. Thanks for inviting me. Of course, I was very pleased that we were able to have you on last time where, of course, listeners, we talked about the M-RES program at the University of Chichester. which we do have an update on, but we'll save that for the end, along with the legal challenges surrounding that. So make sure to stay tuned until the very end of this episode, because there are ways that you can get involved with that. But as soon as we had you on in that last episode, and we saw that you were going to be having this book be released shortly after that last

conversation, we knew that we were going to bring you back on to talk about this, this really important and, you know, voluminous work. So I guess the best place to start this conversation of the book, again, African and Caribbean people in Britain, a history is a couple of points that were raised in the preface of the book, which are one, why are you using the term African and Caribbean people rather than the more conventional black people? And also, what was the state of the research within this field at the time that you were writing the book and why did you decide to write the book in the way that you did and at the time that you did? Okay, well, to answer the first question first, the book started off without necessarily

a title. It obviously had a focus, so we had to think a little bit about the title. I think there were two main considerations. I have written books or certainly edited books that have the term black in the title I'm never

completely happy about it I have to say any more than I'd be happy to write a book that had the expression white in the title so the idea of

being white history and black history is a little bit problematic we use it you know in every day language is a kind of shorthand term and so on and we kind of think we know what we mean but it is a little bit problematic and so that was one reason not necessarily being entirely happy with that and thought thought that in addition people should really be referred to on the basis of their national origins or national heritage

broadly expressed and that African and Caribbean was a better way of expressing that that identity, if you like, that national origin or geographical origin. And so that was one reason why we used that term. The second reason was that what is presented as black, British history to use that expression in this country is often, it often is presented through a particular lens and that is very often a Caribbean lens. The most obvious example of that is the wind rushization of history. The wind rushization of history is the kind idea that people of African or Caribbean heritage only started coming to Britain in the

1940, what is in 1948, they mainly came from the Caribbean and so on. And it presents everything through that lens. Can I pause you just briefly? Because I know everybody from the UK is going to be familiar with the story of the windrush, but many of our listeners are not from the UK. So can you briefly explain what the windrush was and why? conceptions of the history of quote unquote black people in Britain usually starts with that particular moment. Yeah, well, that is,

the wind rush was a ship. A, actually had a kind of almost semi-abandoned troop carrying ship which was used in the 1940s to return ex-servicemen of Caribbean heritage to the Caribbean and then

was empty and so then offered very cheap passage for people to return to Britain and many people from the Caribbean from actually from

different islands mainly mainly from Jamaica but also from other places secured their passages on this boat as well as other people not even from the Caribbean and returned to Britain in June

1948 that landing or that arrival was captured on film on I think Pathay newsreel of the time and so it's become a kind of it was immortalised in that way as it were and has since then and particularly in probably the last 50 years in particular has become as a kind of symbol of post-war migration from what in Britain is often called the New Commonwealth, which means the Caribbean, South Asia and Africa. So it's become a symbol of what is often seen as a radical shift and radical change in the composition of the population of Britain. And so the argument is that all starting with wind rush.

And wind rush has now become a sort of a term which is applied to people. So in Britain people talk about the wind rush generation, meaning people who migrated to Britain during that whole post-war period, not just in 1948, but the whole period up to 1962. Of course, recently there was, there was, been what's called the Windrush scandal, which refers to people who are of that generation, mainly from the Caribbean,

but also from other places, who have subsequently been denied British passports and British citizenship. And there's a big scandal about why that happened. And that happened very, very relatively recently. And then most recently, we have a railway line in London, which is now being called the Windrush line. that's literally in the last week.

So the term wind rush is, as I say, has become this catchall term connected with this ship and particularly connected with Caribbean migration. So in a sense, migration of people from the Caribbean

is used as a way of understanding this whole phenomenon of post war. Sometimes people call it mass migration. The problem with that is that, of course, people didn't just come from the Caribbean. And if you look at what we might euphemistically call the black population of Britain today, most people actually trace

their heritage from the African continent. The population of direct continental African heritage is larger than the population of Caribbean, direct Caribbean heritage. And so for that reason also, And so Africans, continental Africans are the descendants and often kind of omitted from this conception and this history of Britain. And so for that reason as well, I wanted to emphasize the African continental African nature of the history that I was going to present, which of course predated 1948 by about, you know, several thousand years. And so it was important to flag that up and sort of make a point of it, or I thought it was important. So that is the brief explanation of why we used that term. The second question about, I think was a question about the state of the historiography,

of the subject. The key thing there is that the standard book on the subject was written in 1984 by a man called Peter Frye. It's entitled Stangpa. It's a very well-known book. There have been other surveys since, but that is certainly the most well-known one. And of course, 1984,

always whatever it is, 40 years ago. A lot has happened since then. A lot of research has been undertaken by historians, including myself. And so I thought it was an important moment to be able to kind of present something which was not a critique of staying power in any way,

was an elaboration, if you like, which kind of brought things up to date. tried to synthesize and include all the latest thinking on the subject tried to bring also the coverage up to the present day so the book takes us up to 2020 and Black Lives Matter and so on so that was the aim as well as trying to

you know kind of summarise my own experience of teaching the subject over you know some 25 30 years and so on so on so that was the kind of aim of it and yeah i mean whether the aim was achieved is for others to say but that was that was the intention well certainly many readers have recognized the value of the project and of course it was nominated for the very prestigious Wilson prize so i think we can say you you know achieved the aim to a great extent But I wanted to pick up on something that you mentioned earlier in the previous answer about the title and the kind of conception behind the who constituted the history or the geography of origin that constituted the history. You mentioned that because you also wanted to go much earlier than this windrush post-war, you know, immigration period.

And, you know, the book starts in, you know, the archaeological age before, you know, the common era. We learn about fascinating figure Cheddar Man and other unknown, often unnamed people, but people who are attested either in the sources or through archaeological evidence. Some of this is fragmentary and has to be kind of put into some context. And maybe there's a certain amount where we have to allow ourselves to speculate what the possible explanations for how they came to Britain, where they were from, and what they did while they were here or after, you know, living in Britain. So I wanted to ask you, what was at stake for you in starting your history of African people, African and African and Caribbean peoples so early, what did you want to accomplish by insisting that there is a history there that needs to be acknowledged and put into the same narrative frame as, you know, the more common focus of either, you know, people who had come in the post-World War II era

or migrants who had come, you know, from Africa in that period. Why go back that far? What was your aim there? Well, there are a number of, I mean, issues. Again, one could go on a great length about these things. But the history of Britain is often, as our most history, is a history that's contested, highly political, as all kinds of aspects of it.

so one is what it means to be British is one issue what does that what does that mean and just to give you an example there are people who attack my book not only this book but even the books I write for children

because I say the things that you're encouraging me to say about the fact that people from Africa you know have been in the British Isles for literally thousands of years. So this is still controversial.

There's not. Some people find it deeply upsetting that anyone should even suggest that this is the case, even though archaeological and other evidence shows very evidently that it was. And so, cheddar man is an interesting, very interesting

example of one of those figures that she should make us reconsider the history of Britain or British history, and that's really the reason for introducing him. He came neither from Africa or Caribbean as it happens, although his distant ancestors would have come from Africa, as everybody would have done. But he lived about 10,000 years ago.

He's often seen as one of the first Britons. or the first Britons, of whom there is archaeological evidence. And his skeleton was found near Cheddar Gorge in the west, southwest of England, I think about 100 years ago from memory. And he was always assumed and reconstructed as a person of, shall we say, of Anglo-Saxon type, whatever, Anglo-Saxons itself, a problematic term. But anyway, people would generally know what that means. You know, he had blonde hair.

He was seen as being blonde-haired and blue-eyed and so on and so forth. And so the idea being this is how people in Britain had always been. So the skeleton of Cheddar Man was re-analyzed relatively recently a few years ago. And with the latest DNA techniques. And the scientific evidence showed that he didn't look. anything like the way that people had traditionally presented it. He had dark hair, he had dark

skin, but he did have blue eyes. And when this reconstruction of Cheddar Man was first announced to the press, I mean, many of the major papers had headlines, you know, the first Britons were black

was the kind of headline that and so on. So Cheddar Man wasn't unusual. Everybody in Britain 10,000 years ago would look like Cheddar Man. Everybody in Europe 10,000 years ago would also look like Cheddar Man.

So it's a kind of useful reminder to us that the concept of Britishness is a very sort of fluid concept. It's subject to historical change and that

Cheddar Man, like all Britain's you can say, was a migrant. He came from somewhere else to Britain. The whole history of Britain is a history of migrants, and people coming and so on and so forth, including those who come from Africa, from Asia, and other parts of the world. And so it's quite a good place to remind people of that, and then to look at some of the evidence for early African presence. And some of that is from written sources, particularly if we go a couple of thousand years ago,

back to Roman times, there's some written evidence, and a lot of it is archaeological evidence, including reconstructions on the basis of DLA analysis of people like the ivory bangle lady, for example, there was a young African woman who died in the city of York, 70, 100 years ago and so on. There are many of these archaeological discoveries. Again, there's some contestation. People, you know, query, well, does DNA evidence really show this? But I think generally there are pretty well-established cases of Africans coming to Britain from Roman times and even before Roman times. Throughout the Middle Ages, not probably an enormous numbers, but the difficulty is still for people to accept that this was the case. DNA evidence shows this.

Why did these people come? Well, we don't know why they came. Where did they come from? We know generally the areas they would have come from. Sometimes we've got some ideas, but why did Ivory Bangal Lady, who was a Roman woman, we can say, of African heritage,

relatively wealthy, buried with her jewellery. People still find this amazing. How is this possible that you could have an African person quite wealthy, evidently free-born and so on and so forth or free in the time of her death in Britain, 1700 years ago. And these kind of issues were even debated in Parliament quite recently with people claiming that, you know, this is kind of what they called woke ideology and all this kind of nonsense. But the evidence is there. The problems that we have is not enough analysis is done on many of these early remains of human beings. But what is being found is that

people traveled around. People moved around for various reasons. We don't know exactly why or why they moved or exactly. We can make some suppositions. But that evidence is there. So let's just present the evidence as it exists and people can speculate and so on. But let's have a speculation which is not based on 18th or 19th century racist but if you find that Africa they have to be a slave but this is a kind of there was a for example analysis of a burial in the 7th century

of a young child not very far from where I live in the south of England and they found that this child was of West African origin I said probably Yoraba origin from the DNA and some of the archaeologists who, not that she herself came from West Africa

but probably her father or grandfather and the archaeologists who did the investigation or did said something about and she was buried in the same way as all the local people why is that surprised how should she be buried if she lived if she was a local person

she would be buried. So you have these ideas, people bring some strange ideas, which would undoubtedly have been completely out of place in the 7th century. So the idea is to open people's minds to the evidence. Let's just have the evidence, present it,

and then people can hopefully carry out more investigations. People can be aware that, yes, people did travel around. Yes, there were, migrants who came from different parts of the world and then so on. So it's, you know, as simple as that. But as I say, it's contested and some people get very upset when you present that evidence. Yes. Well, it seems that a lot is clearly at stake for some people because of how much controversy or when, you know, assumptions are exposed, they're, they're quite revealing and people don't always take kind of. to being shown how much their assumptions actually distort the genuine evidence that's there.

So, you know, to have this book come after the 2010s, the refugee crisis, the, you know, Brexit, the idea that, you know, England, the British Isles have to be considered something separate from other regions of the world and that they're not part of it. that migration isn't just a normal part of history or the idea that racism is something normal and natural. That seems also partly this idea that, okay, why was she treat, why was she, you know, that is remarkable that she was buried like anybody else is the suggestion that because she wasn't from, you know, what is regarded as must have been the dominant group,

surely this person must have been ostracized or marginalized. And so I think that's another very important part. of having this longer duet perspective that the book participates in. You mentioned something also about how this continues, you know, through the medieval period. And of course, that's an area I'm very interested in, so I do have to dwell just for a moment there. To ask you a little bit about how you would characterize what I think is one of the reasons why, perhaps, you know, just as racism in the way we understand it today has to basically be a social invention, historically occurring for various reasons in certain contexts. Likewise, religious boundaries are very important

for the medieval period where maybe, you know, what we think of as ethno-national, well, what we think of as racial boundaries may not have been so significant or important. So a lot of the cases that you mention for the medieval period talk about Saracens, which is a very common term used to differentiate between Christians and Muslim others. That was the term that was used. And so I wonder, you know, how much do you find? And this is also, of course, the era of a lot of interaction that's starting to expand when it comes to commercial trade in the Mediterranean, and the Crusades. And so a lot of contact with West Asia, the eastern part of the Mediterranean, as well as the coast of North Africa, as part of this old world that's being

reintegrated with this European war and commerce and so on in the Mediterranean world. And so I'm just wondering how you would kind of think about when, in your view, does the transition seem to take place for Britain between primarily thinking of these people as having some African origin and maybe some kind of ethnic identity and religious difference versus the start of a racial kind of, consciousness, it seems maybe that takes a longer time than a lot of people might expect to crystallize. Yeah, I would say so. I'm not sure that I can put a kind of specific data on it, but probably

we're talking really of in British terms probably beyond the medieval period, probably 17th century, I would think. That late. If you look at even Tudor times, you know, there's no necessary, I mean, if you look at the population in Tudor times, for example, and people have tried to make out that some of the letters that were drafted during the time of Elizabeth Tudor, which refer to Africans in Britain, Africans in England in particular, suggests that the, you know, the, the monarchy or those around it were concerned about the country being inundated with African migrants and so on. It's very unlikely that was the case.

And all the evidence is that those who came who more than likely came here, mainly from Spain and Portugal, although more work stills needs to be done than that, came as largely as free people, very often a skilled craft people were readily accepted intermarried became property owners were

may have been a bit strange to people that looked a bit different but there was no racism as we would understand it in that period and you know all the evidence we have including the pictorial evidence and suggest that. It's not really until,

and of course, during Tudor times is also the beginnings of the connection with the coast of Africa. But again, it's more or less a relationship you would think of some equality.

You know, the old phrase different but equal, probably applies to that period. And so it's not really until you get into the onset of human trafficking in particular in as far as Britain's concern

which is really although it starts in the 16th century is not really become a major concern till the 17th mid and late 17th century I think it's then that you begin to get discussion about

ideas of inferiority superiority these kinds of things becoming more entrenched although in the book I'd make some pains to say that these were contested notions because again we shouldn't think that racism is just kind of natural

people kind of breathe the air and suddenly racism takes over everybody's heads you know it was contested and quite vigorously contested by obviously not only by Africans themselves but also by those who were their supporters and allies and so who questioned the whole notion of racism

on the basis that it was, you know, blasphemy and so on and God had created all these human beings. They might look a bit different. And to claim that somewhere inferior to others was contrary to, anyway, to God's will and to be Christian and so on. So I think these ideas take a long time to develop. And even when they do, they contest it. And even in the 18th century,

which is like the height of England, for Britain as it was then, which is the height of human trafficking, you still find that contestation, not only contestation, but complaint that by the traffickers and slave owners and their friends, that bringing people,

bringing Africans to Britain is a dangerous, business because they're going to become even more infected by ideas of liberty and so on because people in England are going to befriend them, are going to encourage them to flee, are going to look after them, are going to hide them, and so on and so forth. So this contestation, this struggle between the, we can say the white men of property, if we wish, and though everybody else are kind of theme I try and bring out in the book because one of the problems we have is that often racism is presented as if it you know well either it's always around or it kind of drops on the sky and infects everybody or whatever and obviously it's that's not

the case and then just to finish the point in the 18th century you have the biggest probably the biggest political movement ever in Britain's history which is the anti-human trafficking movement of the 18 1780s 1790s millions of people in Britain signing petitions boycotting sugar taking action so big and so important is never mentioned in Britain but demonstrating because it was mainly a movement of working people of women of Africans and so on so again it demonstrates that when we're we look at history, we find evidence for not the narrative, which is often being presented, but a rather different version of history, which is extremely important for us to draw the appropriate conclusions for. Absolutely. And I think Henry will want to talk more about abolition of slavery, but that reminds me that your book shows, it's a bit ambiguous. I mean, there's not a very clear

decisive moment where there are affirmations about when it's legal to have an enslaved person or whether your status, if you have been a slave legally in some other jurisdiction but come to Britain, still have to inhabit that status. So that's also something that your book wrestles with. Maybe there's no clear answer, but it seems something starting to happen in the late 17th into the early 18th century about what had been apparently the practice before where people who may have come enslaved under conditions of captivity or enslavement to Britain nonetheless were able to assert independence and have their freedom be recognized in some fashion. That's kind of an interesting point. Like what

does it take for slavery to really become legal and common as a practice in British society? And of course, there seems to be a difference between what is allowable in an overseas colonial kind of condition versus in England, which reminds me extremely closely of what happens, you know, that, you know, in, for example, the Crusader states, where conversion to Christianity, you know, typically meant manumission. But in the Crusader states an exception was made because this was the predominant form in which these new plantations that were being established, oddly enough, for sugar, were attempted in Cyprus and also in the Levant by the colonizers

that new arrivals from Latin Europe they received permission people special permission not to have to manumit converts to Christianity who were enslaved which you know it was not allowable

in kind of the heartlands of medieval Latin Christian Europe so there's clearly some tension between this jurisdiction of these offshore colonize, this is the beginnings of these colonial processes,

and when and how slavery actually becomes legal and common inside Britain? Well, that's exactly the ambiguity that the book reflects, because that was a situation. And so the book tries to present that contestation, that struggle, and the tension that exists between the law and obviously the law in Britain was the kind of basis of colonial law

although colonial law was had different and varied and so on but that is the issue that the legal authorities the judges and so on were dealing with in Britain do you admit that slavery exists in Britain

and one of the problems with that of course was that slavery didn't exist or the majority of population, the majority of the population, and it was very, very difficult to actually legislate on the basis that, yes, slavery as an institution exists in the country. So it looks very much as though this was something which the law didn't wish to make a definitive view on in that period. And of course, the other aspect of it is, the political as well as other reasons,

But the other aspect of it is, as far as Africans were concerned, which is the focus of the book, it was contested that Africans themselves tested the law. I mean, from, yes, from the late 17th century, particularly throughout the 18th century. And in addition to that, there were all sorts of other related beliefs that, you know, when you set foot in Britain, you know, the air is to pure, you know, slavery to exist. and therefore you step foot on Britain, you immediately become free. So this is a kind of political conception which is given some legal backing by some of the courts,

some of the judges and so on. Then there are those who would say, well, no, if you're a heathen, of course you can be enslaved and so on. So people say, okay, well then I'll convert to Christianity. And so you have throughout that period people getting baptized and so. And so, well, that must be free and so on.

And then the law makes some adjustment. And all the time it's having to deal with these opposing tendencies. One of, particularly of the human traffickers and the slave owners who are bringing enslaved people to this country, who are buying and selling enslaved people in this country. But where slavery as an economic institution is not fundamentally a requirement of the economy, for example. So these are the contesting

contending pressures. And as I say, Africans are key in that because they're continually testing the law. And not only they're testing the law, they're testing the kind of reality of things because they're just running away. They're

liberating themselves. They're aided in their liberation by British people. Some of them are run away and then demand wages. and so on. So this is a whole struggle that's going on and the legal ramifications of it are reflected in various judgments throughout the 18th century. And in the book I explained some of these and the pressure on the judges

to give one sort of judgment or one other sort of judgment and so on. And that culminated in the famous case of James Somerset in the late 18th century. where there was a ruling by the Lord Chief Justice that essentially if you freed yourself you could not then be kidnapped and taken overseas and that was an important judgment but in a way it gave legal sanction

to runaways and to those who self-liberated but it didn't end the actual status of being enslaved and even after that period even into the 19th century there were people, a few people who were held in that enslaved status. So it is ambiguous, but it reflects struggle. It reflects a struggle. And I think that struggle and the role of Africans in,

we can say, the abolitionist movement in its widest sense, is important to bring out. Because if we look at some of the key abolitionists, people like Granville Sharp, you know, he came to abolitionist through the struggles of Africans in Britain by seeing what was going on and taking a stand and so on and many others would have done

would have been similarly influenced. So that's important and the book tries to reflect that struggle and to show how in subsequent period Africans played an important part as if you like, the kind of conscience of the abolitionist movement that they gave, you know, they personalized it. They brought first-hand accounts of what

it meant to be enslaved. And that was also a very important contribution that they made to this enormous political movement of the late 18th century. So between Adnan and you, Professor, you hit a lot of actually what I was planning on asking, but that's a good thing. So I guess I'll just ask a couple of things that are related here that have already been touched on and perhaps We can have you get a little bit deeper into them. One of the things that I want to bring up that you do in all of your work, actually, is that you always reframe what we typically just here referred to as the transatlantic slave trade as human trafficking of human beings.

I think that that's a very important point, you know, to just lay out there for the listeners that just the term slave trade normalizes this relation in many ways. whereas the way that you typically construct it throughout much of your work in human trafficking really speaks to the types of relations that are at play much more accurately than what is typically portrayed to us as. But with regard to abolition, another thing that you had mentioned in your previous answer was that Africans were at, in many cases, the forefront of struggle. And this is another narrative that is typically hidden from us

when we're thinking about marginalized and oppressed people is that when it's presented in popular history, we typically hear changes happening from the role of the people in power that are deciding that, okay, well, now we are going to change the structures and we're going to change the oppressive system to be more equitable, to be more fair, to be less cruel towards oppressed people. But what that does is it completely wipes away the agency of the oppressed people to stand up for themselves and fight for the betterment of their own conditions and against the oppression of the society that is being enforced upon them. And something that's really important about your work, and in this book in particular,

is that you really do a great job of highlighting that, well, no, the African population was being oppressed brutally, but they did not surrender their agency in this. they, you know, stood up with their agency and they were able to have resistance to this oppressive system despite the overwhelming repression that was placed upon them. And so in this way, I know that you had mentioned the sugar boycotts. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the scope and the scale of these sugar boycotts, the, because I think that I had never heard of them before, you know, going into your work and in this book in particular.

but just reading about them both in your work and then looking up more outside, the scope and scale is enormous. And I think that that's something that I want to make sure that the listeners come away from this with before we turn towards some other movements that there was Africans in Britain involved with in very pivotal roles. Yeah, I mean, that's very important. I think trying to understand the role of Africans and the role of people more generally, because the narrative of the traditional narrative we consider the narrative of the white men of property is to remove the agency of the people that history is made by the great and the good

and history is not made by the grey and the good in that sense I mean you know history is mainly made by the struggles of the people against the great and the good we could say anyway so that's very important And as far as abolition in Britain is concerned, or what is referred to as abolition,

it's very often, or traditionally been seen as the work of the saints, as they were often called the Wilber Fulses and others, and largely as like a parliamentary action, which culminates in the 1807 Act, which effectively outlaws human trafficking for British citizens. And that's never explained why seven years into the 19th century, the world's leading human trafficker, which Britain was in the 18th century, should suddenly change his mind and say, oh, no, how terrible it all is,

and how wonderful we all are, and we're going to stop it. That's never explained. And the role of the people in making that change is very, very important. Of course, the movement, know, 1780s, 1790s, was, as I've said, a movement of literally of millions of people who largely working people, and is one of the first main manifestations of, we can say, working class political action in Britain. People boycotted the consumption of sugar in the tea, coffee, and so on. That was widespread.

and often women were at the forefront of that. They also signed petitions, those who could sign, and very often in the main manufacturing towns, people like places like Sheffield, Manchester, Birmingham and so on. These were the places where you'd find these mass petitions. And these were the times when most people in Britain didn't have the votes.

But that was one of the ways of affecting political action of lobbying parliaments, through petitioning and so on. So that is one aspect of the pressure that was brought to bear on the powers of being the country. That was one of them. And it's important because it shows kind of sentiment of people of workers, in particular women and others, and also the agency of Africans.

And the Africans were the, as I said, those who lectured up and down the country who wrote autobiographers like Alado Equiano, who wrote, you know, polemics against human trafficking, like Altabal Coguano and others. So their voices were heard and influential and amongst ordinary people. They're also connected, and they had their own organisations, like the Sons of Africa, in which Equiano and Coguano were militated.

In addition, they were allied to the radicals of the periods. So those who were demanding the rights of working people in Britain also demanded the rights of Africa. And this is a very important connection. And you have organisations like the London Corresponding Society, which is one of the radical, we can even say revolutionary organisations at the time. So radically it was banned by the government. Now, Equiano was a member of the London Correspondent Society.

It actually lived in the house of the secretary Thomas Hardy. You can't get much closer than that. And what's very interesting is the politics of that organisation. And we know that from numerous things. But Thomas Hardy actually writes to somebody who has been recommended to him by Equiano. and he says to this person I understand that you are a supporter of the rights of Africans

and I deduce some of that you must also be for the rights of man generally because if you're for the rights of one section of the people you must be for the rights of all I'm paraphrasing but that's the essence of it so this 18th century politics is so advanced

that some people in the 21st century still haven't got to that stage that you have to be for the right rights of all. If you're for the rights of African, for the whites, you're right for the rights of black people. If the rights of black people, you must be for rights of white. So this is very, very important because it actually sort of transforms our understanding of the

consciousness of people, of maybe the most advanced developed sections of the working people at that time. But those sections were connected also with the Africans who were most organized and so. So that struggle is very, very important, largely suppressed by the government under the pretext that it's revolutionary and in support of the revolution in France and all this kind of thing. But then we have the other sort of wing of the movement, which is a movement of enslaved Africans themselves in the Caribbean and principally in the French island of Saint-Doming, which is today Haiti. And that

revolutionary struggle dating from 1791 to 1803 is absolutely an enormous blow to the whole slave system because you have half a million revolutionary Africans overthrowing the most wealthiest slave colony in the Caribbean, threatening to explore revolution everywhere. It has a tremendous effect on the British Parliament and they take action on the ground. that we need to stop importing revolutionaries into the Caribbean. We have to stop that because it's dangerous.

But we have more enslaved Africans than we have our rivals do. And in fact, not only do we have more, we export more to our rivals. And so if we limit this trafficking, we will have an economic advantage and

our rivals will be at a disadvantage. So let's do it. That's it So once you see things in these terms, then you have some explanations as to what's going on. Of course, there are other factors to do with the political struggles in Britain between different sections of the rulers and all that kind of thing. But the point in the book is to show the role of the people in general, Africans in particular, and how this fits into the general explanation as to how abolition in that sense, took place in that particular period. Yeah, and when you brought up the Haitian revolution,

that was, again, half of what I was planning on asking with my next question. So you are all over me with your answers. Just really, really great stuff. But I guess hit the other half. So we talked about how, of course, the Haitian revolution was a massive influence on abolition movements worldwide and no small part in Britain also. But then coming out of this period, out of, you know, the slave period, as you mentioned, the now free Africans were not, they didn't only fight for abolition. They were also involved with all of these other social movements throughout the country.

And I know that, you know, one of the examples that you used in the book was the Chartist movement. So I'm wondering if you can take us, I know, if we hit every single example of the book, because the book is very long listener. So, you know, we could be here all day and still be talking about things. So I guess I'll leave a very big question. 10,000 years, though. Yeah, yeah, right. Exactly. We could be here for a very, very long time.

But I guess to just kind of rush through a bigger chunk of history to get up towards the contemporary a little bit more. Can you talk about the role of Africans within these social movements in the 19th century? because you lay out, you know, throughout a lot of the book, some really major influences that they had. I guess I'll just leave it there. Yeah, I mean, obviously we don't know all of those who participated, and it's likely that, you know, many Africans, because the majority of people who were in Britain,

of African or Caribbean heritage in the 19th century, would have been poor people, working people in general. we don't know the lives of many or all of them but we do know about some key people in the book I mentioned some of those who were engaged in radical activity both in the Chartist period which is from the 1830s

mid-1830s onwards as well as those who came before that period and the key figure is I suppose William Cuffy William Cuffey was a charterist leader in London of Caribbean heritage was actually born in

in Kent, in southern England in the late 18th century, as I was a tailor by profession. But he became one of the leaders of the Chartist Movement in London. And throughout his life, really, was both very active and conscious about his class interests as a worker, but also very aware of his heritage that his grandfather had been enslaved and all this kind of thing. And in fact, he often introduced his speeches by, say, my fellow slaves and took into people with this way of addressing people. So he's a very good example.

There are others, but he's the most famous. and he the charters were the first national working class organisation in Britain established in the 1830s the charters because they had a chart of six demands and all those demands related to

suffrage essentially the right to vote the right for annual parliaments to be elected and the people of working people to be elected and so on and they again were savagely repressed William Coffey himself was arrested on trumped-up charges. They were often infiltrated by police agents.

And he was eventually transported to Tasmania, where he lived for the rest of his life. And it seems that even in Tasmania, where he was eventually pardoned, he maintained his politics. His politics never changed or wavered and so on. So he's a very good example. or an illustration of the necessity of all working people, including those of African Caribbean

heritage, to engage in the political life of the country and to try and transform it in their interest as well as in the interests of their compatriots as it were. Yeah, there's so much fascinating material in here. I'm tempted to talk with you about Edward Blyden and Al-LiDen and Al-Las. Deuss Muhammad, these are just fascinating figures. And they also connect with similar kinds of interesting figures in the North American context. But maybe I'll ask you a broader question and you can use whichever examples really connect with it. But, you know, one thing that your history does already by integrating the Caribbean and the African, you know,

origins of the peoples who are interested in Britain is because it was also this colonial metropole, people seem to have circulated across the Atlantic world and beyond, even beyond

the Atlantic world, who are part of your history and you do a wonderful job of talking about people and those connections. You even have a section on Malcolm X, who's of course seen very much as an African-American you know, figure, but he does come. He's part of this, you know, wave of people who do come

through London and England as part of their kind of global consciousness about resistance and anti-colonial activities. And London is a place that brings together dissidents, students who become radicalized, and start working for the liberation against British colonialism and the British Empire who have been educated in and have spent a lot of time in London and the UK. So I wonder if you could say something about that kind of geographic scope of how you tried to show a transatlantic or even a global, you might say, history of African and Caribbean peoples through the lens of their time and their presence and their effect and the effect upon them and the connections that they made with others in Britain.

Yeah, well, I guess that's particularly a feature of the 20th century, although it existed before that, even in the 19th century. And if we think about the Pan-African movement, for example, that's a very good example, because modern Pan-Afghanism really began in London. I mean, I love to explain that to people in Africa and the US. You think have some other idea about history. But Pan-Afghanism begins in London in the 19th century.

and then as a modern movement and so that we could even take you back to the 18th century but anyway it has a very strong British base that's important but of course these guys were in touch by the end of the 19th century with their comrades in North America in the Caribbean in Africa and in other places and in the one of the features of the 20th century is the emergence of organization like the African Association, which convened the first Pan-African conference, or like the West African Students' Union, which was formed in the 1920s, from or by students who originated from Britain's four colonies in West Africa.

And one of the characteristics of colonial rule was that it didn't provide higher education facilities for people. So if you were wealthy enough or lucky enough, you would need to come to Britain or somewhere else or US perhaps come to Britain to be educated. And of course, with the development of modern transatlantic shipping, even if you weren't wealthy enough, you could travel. You know, you could get a job on a ship, as many people did, or you could stow away on a ship and you could find you could come from Lagos to London or Lagos to Liverpool or Kingston to Liverpool, wherever.

So this was a feature also of the 19th century and the 18th century. But in the 20th century, in particular you have this kind of student population, as well as other, we can say, professional types who came. And the West African Students' Union, for example, originated from these largely young men, or those some women who came into Britain. and they came to the century of the empire with maybe all kinds of ideas

of getting an education as lawyers or doctors or whatever but their experience itself kind of radicalised and because of course by the 20th century racism of what was referred to in Britain as the colour bar was ubiquitous it was difficult for people to find accommodation

it was difficult to get a job there were all kinds of things that would appear in the press. The N-word was, you know, heard on the radio and all this kind of thing. And so students being educated in the, or should we say, the ideology, as it were, the colonial authorities would come expecting to be, you know, in a country which would, you know, treat them with a certain amount of equality and so on and find quite the opposite. would find their situation was probably just as bad

as if they were in Africa, sometimes worse in some way. So they became radicalised. They might protest about something, some article in the paper or some particular colonial abuse which affected their countries of origin. And in so doing, they became further radicalised because then they would come into contact with anti-colonial elements in Britain. the Communist Party being the most obvious one and the most anti-colonial.

And so they'd become influenced by those kinds of ideas, maybe not very thoroughly influenced, but they'd certainly become influenced by them. Then they'd be influenced by other people of African or Caribbean heritage they found here. So, for example, the West African Students Union, its first headquarters was kind of loaned to them by Marcus Garvey, who had a house in London and who they were connected with and so on. And so they began to be part of a kind of pan-African community, we can say, that existed first of all in Britain, but also in Africa, the Caribbean and so on. And people, West African Students' Union, even set up its own branches in West Africa.

It raised money in West Africa. It produced a newsletter which went around the world. world and so on. And so we have this community of activists in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. And it's not accidental that many of the key had African conferences are held in Britain, in London, culminating in the most famous of all the 1945 and African Congress, which was held in Manchester. And where you see, okay, what kind of people were here? Well, people like Army and Krula, people like Jomo Kenyatta, people like George Padmore, people like Amy Ashwood Garvey and others. And out of all the global African or pan-African struggles of the 1920s,

1930s, they fashion a new vision of an Africa, a free Africa, an Africa without colonial boundaries without the alien political institutions of colonial rule, without the capital-centered economic system and so on. So all of that developed within Britain, but with inputs from, you know, the US, from the Caribbean, from Africa, from Europe to some degree, but all based in Britain, which we have to remember had the world's largest, most oppressive empire. And so clearly drew people to the heart of that empire particularly from Africa and the Caribbean but also from Asia, from India

and these African students for example were in touch with people like a satellite of Valo was an Indian communist and with others Indians and others in fact from what is today Sri Lanka or anyway, a whole range of places and held meetings

alongside Asian anti-clonial activists as well as those from breath and other parts of the bond. So it was a real kind of quadrant of anti-colonial activity and exchange their experiences, one party influencing another party and so on. Because obviously we shouldn't just think of it as one way because those from Africa and the Caribbean, the Caribbean also influence

British politics, British anti-clonial organisations. and participated as as activists within them. One of the other things that I want to make sure that we hit in this conversation before we bring it to a close is black power. So I know that when the phrase black power is raised, it's typically thought of exclusively in the American context.

But of course, as you talk about, there is certainly a black power consciousness and a black power movement within Britain, which in many ways is influenced by the American one, but it also has its own particularities. So if you can talk a little bit about how the black power movement in Britain related to the American black power movement and those particularities within the British context, that would be excellent. Yeah, I mean, it's a bit of a moot point where the influences came from because clearly, as I mentioned previously, those in Britain had their own experience of colonialism, of racism, of racism. and so on, and were beginning to harden their attitude.

I think as I, even in 1945, people were talking about, you know, using force if necessary to free themselves from colonial rule and so on. But there's no doubt that in the 1960s, the emergence of what's normally referred to as black power in the US had an influence on people in Britain. the event that's usually spoken about is the coming of Stokely Carmich or Kwame Tury as he became known to speak in Britain in the mid-1960s

and that certainly galvanised we should say many of the activists who were already browned in Britain to forming new organisations you tend to get a change of name but even before radical organisations would refer to themselves as the coloured, you know, coloured peoples or these kind of words. People started to use the word black more.

And so you had new organisations emerging in the 1960s, often influenced by and sometimes connected with organisations in the US, influenced by the visits of people like Kai Michael. Even earlier, Malcolm X came to Britain on several occasions and influenced. several of many of the activists Robert F. Williams also had some influence and others and that continued into the late 1960s

1970s where you had organisations like the Black Liberation Front the Black Unity and Freedom Party and others which developed in Britain and were often inspired by in particular by the

Panthers in the US. You also had a panther organisation in Britain, although there was no direct connection with the Panthers in the US. One thing about black power in Britain is that the use of the word black had a more inclusive, shall we say, meaning it often, particularly in this period, I'm talking about the late 60s, 1970s, also included people from South Asia, some of whom particularly activists referred to themselves. as black and in the British context it kind of replaced the previous term, previously used

term, coloured. So in other words, anyone who was referred to or referred to themselves as coloured in the early 60s, by the late 60s, early 1970s, more more people referred to themselves as black. But there was always a tension as to whether it really included people from South Asia that you find that sometimes some of the key activists in some of these organisations were of South Asian origin. So that movement was influential. In that period, of course, there was racism was very apparent, particularly the racism of the state,

the racist laws of the state, the various immigration acts of that period, but also the racism of the state forces, we can say the police and the courts, the racist campaigns of the press, the so-called mugging, campaigns of the press, which labelled all young black men as, you know, street robbers, as muggers and so on, and created the pretext for police harassment, police arrest and so on.

So those organisations were fought against that situation, but also in connection with other organisations globally. Some of them, for example, participated in the Sixth Pan-Afghan Congress, in Tanzania in 1974. So yes, that whole period of the late 60s and 70s, we can say, was a kind of period of black power organizations in this country. Well, that leads me, I think, well into at least my final question, which is to the present, which your book ends with looking at some of these later movements. And I guess what I had one question about was, since you were attempting

in this book to bridge the gap between thinking of African and Caribbean people's histories as very separate in Britain, I wondered how you thought African and Caribbean relations had been developing in the late 20th and early 21st centuries and whether movements like Black Lives Matter have forged new identities and solidities or express that there have been identities and solidities that have come together very much as a result of previous historical struggles. I'll, you know, defer to you and hope to hear about how that has developed, compared to reparations movement, which you have also a discussion of, because very often reparations is in response to, you know, some kind of repairing the harm of slavery,

enslavement, and so on, which has its own historical lineage. So whether that, that is whether there are differences in how that is being discussed today in Britain or whether there is a kind of movement to think of reparations also for things like colonialism and to integrate, you know, those histories that are actually, of course, actually quite closely connected ultimately, but often seem rather separate and different and in some ways reflect differences in the interests or orientations of political communities, whereas, you know, police brutality suffering, police brutality and racism, for example, is something that, you know, youth from both the Caribbean and African, you know, origins, you know, experience in a lot of

similar sorts of ways, has reparations been kind of folded into, or is that a bit of some, you know, of a dividing line where those who are most interested in it are, those who are descendants of slaves and are, you know, are organizing around justice, justice for that historical crime? I wouldn't say necessarily that their histories are separate. The books aim isn't to present them a separate history. They're often the same history. Absolutely. But the point is that

sometimes they differ depending on peculiarity of the period. But what is important in the book is to just make the point that if it would be like people come from different places or their families come from different places

they have differences. We shouldn't forget about in the current situation. He shouldn't forget about the majority of people and only talk about the minority. That's important. But yes, I think that, you know, many people would see themselves as, you know, they would see themselves as black in Britain of Caribbean heritage or of African heritage. You know, people work together, live together, marry together, have kids together, so on. So there's often an interconnection

and integration between people of different origins and that's traditionally been the case particularly in those places where communities are most settled for the longest periods of time

Liverpool, Cardiff London and other old cities and so on so I think that continues at the same time there are changes I would say

that you know, in terms of language or in terms of music, maybe that are different today than they were in the 70s. In the 70s, you know, Caribbean culture in a general sense, particularly Jamaican culture was, you know, a very, very strong cultural unifier. So the situation is a bit different today, whereas where, you know, probably African cultures, you know, things like Afrobeat and so on, have their influence and so on in terms of language. So there are differences and there are there are changes that have gone on during the period. I think that something that 2020 and Black Lives Matter showed was the the common experience of people, especially young people, as far as racism is concerned, there are difference in terms of statistics as to how well people are doing. You know, one can look at

these differences. But in general, there are similar experiences. I think as far as the, I mean, you'd see that in other parts of the world as well. I think as far as the reparations movement, reparations movement has also developed over many, many years, going back to the 70s or 80s in particular, I suppose, when it was first emerged here. I think today the reparations movement, which is, you know, It's developing here all the time and has a major manifestation demonstration of its strength and its demands, particularly in August, I think is a movement which is concerned with all aspects of reparations.

They would see reparations in a holistic manner relating to a whole range of things. Certainly the issue of repair rather than monetary compensation would be a key feature. of the movement. I think we see the movement here very closely allied with those who are engaged in environmental protests, for example. You know, the Green Party and other groups on the environmentally, on the struggle for environmental change and so on. So I think it's quite a broad movement, certainly in terms of its leadership and its age. and its interests. And, yeah, it's a kind of reflection of that whole history of struggle

and where things need to be at the present time and going forward. And it's often, I think, quite critical of aspects of the reparations movement from other parts of the world that are slightly more narrow in their focus. I'm thinking of maybe the movement, which is often developed by governments in the Caribbean, which seems to be rather narrow in its focus. I think the movement in Britain is much, much broader than that. So, yeah, that is flourishing and ongoing. And there have been recently some resolutions

and by local authorities, local government in this country, which are as a result of the activities of the reparations movement in this country. So it's becoming, we can say more mainstream, but it's developing its influence in certain arts of the country. Yeah, well, there's so many more things that I want to ask you about with this work. But like I said earlier, if I had the opportunity to ask everything I wanted to ask about, we'd be here for days talking about this work. But listen to me is when I say that this is one of those books that I wish that I was able to get an autographed copy of,

you know I don't say that very often, but this is truly the case for this work. It's really an excellent book, African and Caribbean people in Britain, a history by Professor Hakeem Adi. But we do have one final question for you, Professor, not related to the book. As the listeners will remember, and listeners, it will be linked in the show notes for the last conversation that we had with the professor. Our previous conversation was titled Save the M-RES program, and that came out in, I want to say June of last year, something like that, came out middle of last year. Yeah, probably would have been July or July. Sometime in the summer last year, obviously there has been many developments regarding the MRES program and current ongoing legal challenges surrounding it. So, Professor, if you can enlighten us as to what those updates are and the current status of everything that's going on

and what the listeners can do to stay up to date on all of those developments and how they can get involved. Well, the main development is I was fired. That's the M-RES was effectively closed down. I was fired. And the 15 or so students that I was supervising, either at master's level or PhD level, were left in a state of Limbaugh. Their studies completely disrupted

with no plans in place to supervise them and no specialist supervisors on hand. And so very quickly the students started a resistance movement, who we can go about a campaign. People can find out more by going to History Matters online. Anyway, you will put the link up. And we have a dedicated page, save the M-RES. You could just Google save the M-RES,

but the link will be there. The current situation is there are three separate legal cases against the university. One is contesting the right to even close down the course itself, which is being led by the Black Equity Organisation, and there is a crowd justice funding link, which you can go to and we need legal support for the financial support for the legal team, which is working on that case. there is another case which involves 14 of the students

which is a case against the university for discriminatory treatment and breach of contract effectively that case is led by one of the leading law firms here Lee Day and there will be a crowd justice link for that tomorrow morning and probably a press release too which we can supply everybody with And then I also have a case against the university for wrongful dismissal and discrimination, so on and so forth. So the university is now facing three major legal cases and they're all led by some of the leading lawyers in this country. And again, if people can go to the website and can contribute, that would be great or publicize what's going on.

that's also great. Of course, many people sign the petition. We had about 15,000 signatures, but now we need 15,000 pounds. So everybody who signed the petition can give a pound, that would be great. But some people won't be able to do that. So if everybody else can give more than that,

that would be great. And that will help us fight the case. I should explain that it's not just a case of me and 15 students. So that's kind of bad enough, but we see it as really a kind of thinly railed racist attack on this history and on the teaching of the history or the inclusion of the history because I taught more genuinely in the area of the history of Africa and the African diaspora. So just to close everything down to create such difficulties for one of the largest cohorts of black postgraduate history students in Britain. is a you know kind of vandalism of the worst order we're not prepared to let it rest

so any support people can give very much appreciated yeah and just to remind the listeners briefly again listeners if you haven't listened to that save the MREs program episode that we did you should do so but to remind you that Professor Adi is the first historian of African heritage to become a professor of history in Britain And he was terminated despite being a highly acclaimed scholar. I mean, we're talking about somebody who started institutions like History Matters

and the Young Historians Project is the author of numerous books and is Adnan mentioned at the beginning of this conversation, this newest book, African and Caribbean people in Britain history, the book that this episode was about, was nominated for the highly prestigious Wolves and History Prize. I mean, we're talking about a scholar that does. excellent scholarly work is leading and founded a program that was the first of its kind and one of the major programs for, you know, black budding historians in Britain. And that was shuttered. You know, it is a travesty. And I highly recommend that you listen back to that episode where we

talk for about an hour and a half about the impending closing of the program, which as the professor has said, has come to bear, and you should absolutely listeners get involved in any way that you can in trying to, you know, rectify this situation because it is an absolute travesty. So, Professor, is there anything else that you would like to direct the listeners to in order to find your work or other projects that you're involved with? In my work, they can find either website, acumaddy.org, and people can find more information about what I do or what I'm about to do. People, I'm giving some public lectures which will be advertised on the site.

People can come to those. It's always great to see people. So, yeah, we can check that out as well. Terrific. Adnan, how can the listeners find you in your other excellent podcast? No, you can follow me on Twitter at Adnan A. Hussein. Yes, I still call it Twitter. And my other podcast is about the Middle East Islamic World, Muslim diasporic communities and culture.

It's called the M-A-J-L-I-S, and it's available on all the usual platforms. Yeah, of course, highly recommend the listeners do that. As for me, listeners, you can follow me on Twitter at Huck, 1995, H-U-C-K-1-995. I will mention that I was just added to the editorial. board of Iskra Books, so is if you didn't already have a reason to check out Iskra Books's website, IskraBooks.org, now you have a reason to do so if you're not already tired of me, but if you're at this point in the conversation, clearly you're not. Or are you just stuck around for the professor, which, I mean, that's understandable. As for the show listeners, you can help support us and allow us to

continue making episodes like this by going to patreon.com forward slash gorilla history. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. And you can follow us as a show on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod, G-U-E-R-R-R-I-L-A-U-L-A-U-Score pod. And until next time, listeners, Solidarity. You know, I'm going to be able to be. Thank you.