16 Key Events In The History Of Anti-Black Racism In The UK
The killing of George Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of a white US police officer, has sparked demonstrations across the US and the rest of the world.
People are demanding that the police officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes be brought to justice. But they are also calling for an end to all police brutality and anti-Black racism.
As more protests are slated to happen in the UK, it serves as a sobering reminder that this country has its own problems with systemic racism.
The Lammy Review (2017), a probe into the outcomes for Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) people in the justice system, laid bare some truths that Black people have known for decades: the system is rigged.
Black people are more likely to be arrested and sent to prison than their white counterparts in Britain – and twice as likely to die in police custody.
In this piece, HuffPost UK looks at some historic, prominent cases of racism and racial tension that have occurred on our doorstep, and the effect they have had on race relations over the years.
1. Slavery
Contrary to what many people think, Britain’s Black community didn’t start in 1948 with the arrival of 802 Caribbean passengers on the Empire Windrush.
In fact, history shows there has been a Black presence in the UK from as early as the 15th century.
The UK played a pivotal role in the barbaric acts of slavery and the slave trade. Africans were stolen from their homeland and systematically dehumanised – ripped from their families, raped, beaten into submission and reduced to “property”.
Because many abolitionists were English, Britain likes to pride itself on the notion that an African was a free person in the UK, unlike in the US. History tells a different story.
Britain’s plantation records reveal the extent of the inhumane treatment Africans were subjected to by plantation owners and more importantly how the slave trade made them and the UK very wealthy.
British slavery was thriving some 3,000 miles...
