British African-Caribbean community
Encyclopedia
The British African Caribbean (or Afro-Caribbean) communities are residents of the United Kingdom
who are of West Indian
background and whose ancestors were primarily indigenous
to Africa
. As immigration to the United Kingdom from Africa increased in the 1990s, the term has sometimes been used to include UK residents solely of African origin, or as a term to define all Black British
residents, though the phrase "African and Caribbean" has more often been used to cover such a broader grouping. The most common and traditional use of the term African-Caribbean community is in reference to groups of residents' continuing aspects of Caribbean
culture, customs and traditions in the United Kingdom.
The largest proportion of the African-Caribbean population in the UK are of Jamaica
n origin; others trace origins to nations such as Trinidad and Tobago
, Saint Kitts and Nevis
, Barbados
, Grenada
, Antigua and Barbuda
, Saint Lucia
, Dominica
, Montserrat
, Anguilla
, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
, Guyana
, which though located on the South America
n mainland, is very culturally similar to the Caribbean, and was historically considered to be part of the British West Indies, and Belize
(formerly British Honduras
), in Central America
, which culturally is more akin to the English-speaking Caribbean than to Latin America
, due to its colonial and still-extant economic ties to the UK.
African-Caribbean communities exist throughout the United Kingdom, though by far the largest concentrations are in London
and Birmingham
. Significant communities also exist in other population centres, notably Manchester
, Bradford
, Nottingham
, Coventry
, Luton
, Leicester
, Bristol
, Leeds
, Huddersfield
, Sheffield
, Liverpool
and Cardiff
. In these cities, the community is traditionally associated with a particular area, such as, Brixton
, Harlesden
, Stonebridge
, Tottenham
, Dalston
, Lewisham
, Peckham
in London, West Bowling
and Heaton
in Bradford, Chapeltown
in Leeds, St. Pauls
in Bristol, or Handsworth
and Aston
in Birmingham or Moss Side
in Manchester. According to the 2001 census, the largest number of African-Caribbeans are found in Lewisham, South east London; with 9%.
British African-Caribbeans have an extremely high rate of mixed-race relationships, and could in effect become the first UK ethnic group to 'disappear'. Half of all British African-Caribbean men in a relationship have partners of a different ethnic background, as do one-third of all British African-Caribbean women. 2007 estimates for England alone roughly put the full African-Caribbean to partial African-Caribbean heritage ratio at 2:1.
The presence of British African-Caribbean people stems originally from the English involvement in the slave trade. From the 16th century to the 19th century enslaved Africans were shipped
by European slave traders
to British
colonies in the Caribbean and British North America
, as well as French
, Dutch
, Danish
, Spanish
, and Portuguese
colonies. New World
slavery was originally focused on the extraction of gold and other precious raw materials. Africans were then later set to work on the vast cotton, tobacco and sugar plantation
s in the Americas for the economic benefit of these colonial powers and their plantocracy
. One impact of the American Revolution
was the differing historical development of African American
and African-Caribbean people. There are records of small communities in the ports of Cardiff
, Liverpool
, London
and South Shields
dating back to the mid-18th century. These communities were formed by freed slaves following the abolition
of slavery. Typical occupations of the early migrants were footmen
or coachmen
.
led to approximately 15,000 migrants arriving in the North-West of England around the time of the First World War
to work in munitions factories.
The Jamaican poet
and communist
activist
, Claude McKay
came to England
following the First World War and became the first Black British
journalist, writing for the Workers Dreadnought.
. They were generally better skilled than the local Black British
. There was also some tension between them and West Africans who had settled in the area.
many African-Caribbean people migrated to North America and Europe, especially to the United States
, Canada
, the UK, France
, and the Netherlands
. As a result of the losses during the war, the British government
began to encourage mass immigration from the countries of the British Empire
and Commonwealth
to fill shortages in the labour market. The 1948 British Nationality Act
gave British citizenship
to all people living in Commonwealth countries, and full rights of entry and settlement in Britain. Many West Indians were attracted by better prospects in what was often referred to as the mother country
.
The ship MV Empire Windrush
brought the first group of 492 immigrants to Tilbury
near London
on 22 June 1948. The Windrush was en route from Australia
to England via the Atlantic
, docking in Kingston, Jamaica
. An advertisement had appeared in a Jamaican newspaper offering cheap transport on the ship for anybody who wanted to come and work in the UK. The arrivals were temporarily housed in the Clapham South deep shelter
in southwest London less than a mile away from Coldharbour Lane
in Brixton
. Many only intended to stay in Britain for a few years, and although a number returned to the Caribbean to rejoin the RAF
, the majority remained to settle permanently. The arrival of the passengers has become an important landmark in the history of modern Britain, and the image of West Indians filing off its gangplank has come to symbolise the beginning of modern British multicultural
society. See Windrush image .
There was plenty of work in post-war Britain and industries such as British Rail
, the National Health Service
and public transport recruited almost exclusively from Jamaica and Barbados. Though Afro-Caribbeans were encouraged to journey to Britain via immigration campaigns created by successive British governments, many new arrivals were to endure prejudice, intolerance and extreme racism
from sectors of indigenous British society. This experience was to mark African-Caribbeans' relations with the wider community over a long period. Early African-Caribbean immigrants found private employment and housing denied to them on the basis of race. Trade unions would often not help African-Caribbean workers and some pubs, clubs, dance halls and churches would bar black people from entering. Housing was in short supply following the wartime bombing, and the shortage led to some of the first clashes with the established white community
. Clashes continued and worsened into the 1950s, and riots erupted in cities including London, Birmingham
and Nottingham
. In 1958, attacks in the London area of Notting Hill
by white youths marred relations with West Indian residents, leading to the creation of the annual Notting Hill Carnival
, which was initiated in 1959 as a positive response by the Caribbean community. Some of the racism and intolerance was stoked by explicitly fascist or anti-immigration movements including Oswald Mosley
's Union Movement
, the League of Empire Loyalists
, the White Defence League
, the National Labour Party
and others. Influenced by this kind of propaganda, gangs of Teddy Boy
s would often attack blacks in London.
In 1962, Britain passed the Commonwealth Immigrants Act
restricting the entry of immigrants, and by 1972 only holders of work permits, or people with parents or grandparents born in the UK could gain entry - effectively stemming most Caribbean immigration. Despite the restrictive measures, an entire generation of Britons with African-Caribbean heritage now existed, contributing to British society in virtually every field. The number of British persons born in the West Indies had increased from 15,000 in 1951 to 172,000 in 1961 to 304,000 in 1981. The total population of persons of West Indian heritage by 1981 was between 500,000 and 550,000, depending upon the official source used.
The 1970s and 1980s were decades of comparative turbulence in wider British society; industrial disputes preceded a period of deep recession
and widespread unemployment
which seriously affected the economically less prosperous African-Caribbean community. Societal racism, discrimination, poverty
, powerlessness and oppressive policing sparked a series of riots in areas with substantial African-Caribbean populations. These "uprisings" (as they were described by some in the community) took place in St Pauls
in 1980, Brixton, Toxteth
and Moss Side
in 1981, St Pauls again in 1982, Notting Hill Gate
in 1982, Toxteth in 1982, and Handsworth
, Brixton
and Tottenham
in 1985.
The riots had a profoundly unsettling effect on local residents, and led the then Home Secretary
William Whitelaw
to commission the Scarman report
to address the root causes of the disturbances. The report identified both "racial discrimination" and a "racial disadvantage" in Britain, concluding that urgent action was needed to prevent these issues becoming an "endemic, ineradicable disease threatening the very survival of our society". The era saw an increase in attacks on Black people by white people. The Joint Campaign Against Racism committee reported that there had been more than 20,000 attacks on non-indigenous Britons including Britons of Asian origin
during 1985.
, by assailants that have yet to be convicted, led to an outcry from the community and calls to investigate police conduct. The subsequent government inquiry, the Macpherson Report, was vigorously sought by Stephen's Jamaican-born parents and revealed evidence of institutional racism
in the London Metropolitan Police Service
, confirming the beliefs of many Black Britons.
The community has suffered from an increasing association with gun-crime, heightened by high profile murders, such as that of two young women shot outside a Birmingham hair salon in 2003. Several media outlets blamed a “gangster rap culture” in the community, though Assistant Chief Constable Nick Tofiluk of the West Midlands Police
believed that the use of firearms is not an Afro-Caribbean issue alone, and has been on the rise throughout British society. Tensions between African-Caribbean residents and British Asian
s in a number of regions have led to confrontations, notably violent disturbances in Birmingham in 2005
where groups from both communities fought and rioted over two nights. There is also evidence of tensions between the African-Caribbean community and the growing number of African immigrants.
Some African-Caribbean people have left the UK, seeking a better life abroad, either back in the Caribbean or America. However, the Caribbean community in Britain is also becoming increasingly integrated. In 2009, 1.2 per cent of British children under 16 were Black Caribbean but nearly as many – 1.1 per cent – were Mixed White and Black Caribbean. Among those children who were living with at least one Caribbean parent, only one in five were living with two Caribbean parents.
In the UK Census of 2001
, 565,876 people classified themselves in the category 'Black Caribbean', amounting to around 1 per cent of the total population. Of the 'minority ethnic' population, which amounted to 7.9 per cent of the total UK population, Black Caribbeans accounted for 12.2 per cent. In addition, 14.6 per cent of the minority ethnic population (equivalent to 1.2 per cent of the total population) identified as mixed race, of whom one third stated that they were of mixed white and Black Caribbean descent. In 2001, 61 per cent of the Black Caribbean group lived in London.
The Census also records respondents' countries of birth and the 2001 Census recorded 146,401 people born in Jamaica, 21,601 from Barbados, 21,283 from Trinidad and Tobago, 20,872 from Guyana, 9,783 from Grenada, 8,265 from Saint Lucia, 7,983 from Montserrat, 7,091 from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, 6,739 from Dominica, 6,519 from Saint Kitts and Nevis, 3,891 from Antigua and Barbuda, and 498 from Anguilla.
In many parts of Britain, African-Caribbean people have been recognised as being part of a distinct community. In the 1950s and 1960s community centre
s and associations sprung up in some British towns and cities with an aim to serve African-Caribbean populations. One such example was the African Caribbean Self Help Organisation (ACSHO) which was formed in 1964 in the district of Handsworth
in Birmingham. These centres have often addressed issues that rise within the community, including perceived problems of police harassment
and concerns about the housing of Black people, which was viewed as discriminatory during the early decades of mass immigration. The centres also allowed African-Caribbean peoples to socialise without risking the potential racial discrimination and aggression of "unfriendly pubs
". Many of these associations appointed a Community Relations Officer whose role was to liaise between the community and wider British society including the establishment
. Other responsibilities included arranging social events, such as festival
s, carnivals and coach trips, which helped bring the communities together. Typical of present day centres is The Afro Caribbean Millennium Centre in Birmingham which was established with National Lottery
funding to support principally Caribbean people in areas like employment, housing, education, immigration, and cultural issues.
Although the community does not face any official or informal restrictions on political participation
, Britons of Caribbean origin are nonetheless under-represented in local and national politics
. However there have been some successes with Diane Abbott being the first black person elected to Parliament under Labour and Linda C Douglas being the first black person to be part of the Labour party National Executive Committee
representing the now expelled Militant tendency
. British African-West Indians have long asserted that they encounter discriminatory barriers to most middle and higher status occupations, as well as discrimination in hiring practices at all levels of employment
. There is also considerable evidence that African-Caribbean people experience differential treatment at the hands of public officials, the British courts
and penal system, and the police
. Studies have proposed that the isolation of certain regional urban areas by financial institutions such as insurance
brokers disproportionately affects the community to its detriment.
Britain's school system
, despite efforts to address issues of discrimination, has often been accused of racism through undermining the self-confidence of all Black children and maligning the culture of their parents. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, a disproportionate number of Caribbean migrant children were classified as 'educationally subnormal' and placed in special schools and units. By the end of the 1980s, the chances of white school leavers finding employment were four times better than those of Black pupils. In 2000–01, Black pupils were three times more likely than white pupils and ten times more likely than Indian
pupils to be officially excluded from school for disciplinary reasons. These chronic problems have contributed to the group being disproportionately at the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum and thus have continued to face challenging social problems into the 21st century.
, attracting up to 1.5 million people from Britain and around the world, making it the largest street festival in Europe. This is Local London. The carnival began in 1964 as a small procession of Trinidadians in memory of festivals in their home country.
Leeds West Indian Carnival
is Europe's oldest West Indian carnival and now attracts around 130,000 people.
Other carnivals include the Leicester Caribbean Carnival and the Birmingham International Carnival.
The earliest Caribbean immigrants to post-war Britain found differences in diet and availability of food an uncomfortable challenge. In later years, as the community developed and food imports became more accessible to all, grocer
s specialising in Caribbean produce opened in British high streets
. Caribbean restaurants can now also be found in most areas of Britain where West Indian communities reside, serving traditional Caribbean dishes
such as curried goat, fried dumpling
s, ackee
and salt fish
(the national dish of Jamaica), Pelau (the national dish of Trinidad and Tobago), (Cou-Cou and Flying Fish the national dish of Barbados), Pudding and Souse, as well as another tasty delicacy known as Fish Cakes from Barbados. The spices known as "jerk
" and the traditional Sunday West Indian meal of rice and peas
The best known Caribbean food brands in the UK are Dunn's River, Jamaican Sunpride, Walkerswood and Grace Foods. Grace Foods is originally from Jamaica but is now a multi national conglomerate. In March 2007 Grace Foods bought ENCO Products, owners of the Dunn's River Brand, as well as "Nurishment", a flavoured, sweetened enriched milk drink, and the iconic Encona Sauce Range. Jamaican Sunpride products and ingredients have been widely available in the UK for over 10 years and has a sister brand of Jamaica Supreme with products mainly sourced from the Caribbean. Walkerswood is a Jamaican co-operative which has a range of sauces and marinades product. Jonathan Perry Bowens has added numerous ranges to this sector through his enviable ability in R & D. His most well known product range being Jamaican Sun.
with an Evangelical
influence such as Pentecostalism
and Seventh Day Baptism
. African-Caribbeans have supported new churches in many areas of the country, which have grown to act as social centres for the community. The manner of worship in some of these churches is more akin to that of African American
practices, than to traditional English Catholic
or Anglican
liturgy. Gospel music
also came to play a part in British cultural life. African-Caribbeans played a central role establishing British gospel choirs, most notably the London Community Gospel Choir
.
Some British African-Caribbeans continue to practice other religious beliefs such as the Rastafari movement
, which developed in Jamaica. The Rastafarian belief system, associated personal symbols such as dreadlocks
and cultural practices concerning cannabis
have influenced British society far beyond the African-Caribbean community, being adopted by both indigenous Britons and others.
There are around 40,000 African-Caribbean Muslims in the United Kingdom
, 30,000 of those reside in London. Muslims of African-Caribbean origins are found in British major cities and town. Some of them, especially those from African countries like Nigeria, Uganda and Sierra Leone are more likely to be born to Muslim families while many, particularly the Caribbean Muslims converted to Islam
in various circumstances including marriage and in prison.
is the official language
of the former British West Indies, therefore African-Caribbean immigrants had few communication difficulties upon arrival in Britain compared to immigrants from other regions. Nevertheless, indigenous Britons were generally unused to the distinct Caribbean dialects
, creoles
and patois
(patwah) spoken by many African-Caribbean immigrants and their descendants, which would be particularly problematic in the field of education. In a study by language and education specialist Viv Edwards, The West Indian language issue in British schools, language – the Creole spoken by the students – was singled out as an important factor disadvantaging Caribbean children in British schools. The study cites negative attitudes of teachers towards any non-standard variety noting that;
As integration continued, African-West Indians born in Britain instinctively adopted hybrid dialects combining Caribbean and local British dialects. These dialects and accents gradually entered mainstream British vernacular, and shades of Caribbean dialects can be heard amongst Britons regardless of cultural origin. A Lancaster University
study identified an emergence in certain areas of Britain of a distinctive accent which borrows heavily from Jamaican creole, lifting some words unchanged. This phenomenon, disparagingly named "Jafaican" meaning 'fake Jamaican', was famously parodied by comedian Sacha Baron Cohen
through his character Ali G
.
, the director of Pressure, among others. London's Talawa Theatre Company
was founded in the 1985 by Jamaican-born Yvonne Brewster
, their first production being based on C.L.R. James's historical account of the Haitian Revolution
, The Black Jacobins
. Since the 1980s, the Blue Mountain Theatre
's productions have offered a more earthy style of populist comedy, often bringing over Jamaican artists such as Oliver Samuels
.
While Guyanese
actor Robert Adams
became the first African-Caribbean dramatic actor to appear on British television on 11 May 1938 (in a production of Eugene O'Neill
's play The Emperor Jones
), African-Caribbean entertainers were first widely popularised on British television broadcasts with the postwar resumption of BBC
television in 1946 (pre-war black entertainers on the BBC - the first in the world - had primarily been African-American stars).
The profile of African-Caribbean actors on television
, such as Lennie James
, Judith Jacob
and Diane Parish
, has widened substantially since 1970s shows such as Love Thy Neighbour
(Rudolph Walker
) and Rising Damp
(Don Warrington
) when their role was often to act simply as either the butt of, or foil to, racist jokes by 'white' characters. The most influential programme in moving away from this formula was the 1989–1994 Channel Four barbershop sitcom Desmond's
, starring Norman Beaton
and Carmen Munroe
.
One of the biggest African-Caribbean names in comedy
is Lenny Henry
, who began his career as a stand-up comedian but whose television sketch shows, where he often caricatured Caribbean émigré
s, made him popular enough to headline numerous primetime comedy shows from, for instance, Lenny Henry in 1984 to The Lenny Henry Show in 2004. The highest professional achievement by a British African-Caribbean actor to date (2006) was Marianne Jean-Baptiste
's 1996 nominations for an Academy Award
(Oscar), Golden Globe
and British Academy Award
(bafta) for her feature-film debut role in Secrets & Lies.
Jamaican poet
James Berry was one of the first Caribbean writers to come to Britain after the 1948 British Nationality Act. He was followed by writers including Barbadians George Lamming
and Edward Kamau Brathwaite
, Trinidadians Samuel Selvon
, CLR James
, Jamaican Andrew Salkey
and the Guyanese writer Wilson Harris
. These writers viewed London as the centre of the English literary scene, and took advantage of the BBC Radio
show Caribbean voices to gain attention and be published. By relocating to Britain, these writers also gave Caribbean literature an international readership for the first time and established Caribbean writing as an important perspective within English literature
. Some Caribbean writers also began writing about the hardships faced by settlers in post-war Britain. George Lamming addressed these issues with his 1954 novel
The Emigrants, which traced the journey of migrants from Barbados as they struggled to integrate into British life. By the mid-1980s, a more radical
wave of writers and poets were addressing the African-Caribbean experience in Britain, promoted by a group of new publishing houses such as Akira, Karia, Dangaroo, and Karnak House.
In 1984, the poet Fred D'Aguiar
(born in London to Guyanese parents) won the T. S. Eliot Prize
, and in 1994 won the Whitbread First Novel Award
for The Longest Memory. Linton Kwesi Johnson
's rhyming and socio-political commentary over dub
beats made him the unofficial poet laureate of the British African-Caribbean community. Another dub poet
, Benjamin Zephaniah
, born in Birmingham
to Jamaican parents, overcame a spell in prison to become a well-known writer and public figure. In 2003 he declined an OBE
, stating that it reminded him of 'thousands of years of brutality, it reminds me of how my foremothers were raped and my forefathers brutalised'.
African-Caribbean British writers have achieved recent literary acclaim. In 2004, Andrea Levy
's novel Small Island was the winner of the 2004 Orange Prize for Fiction
, one of Britain's highest literary honours. Levy, born in London to Jamaican parents, is the author of four novels, each exploring the problems faced by Black British-born children of Jamaican emigrants. In 2006 Zadie Smith
won the Orange Prize for On Beauty
. Smith's acclaimed first novel White Teeth
was a portrait of contemporary multicultural London, drawing from her own upbringing with an English father and a Jamaican mother.
The UK also has a modest output of African-Caribbean popular fiction. The most widely known example may be Yardie, a work of Urban fiction
written by Victor Headley
in 1992. It described the life of a Jamaican courier carrying cocaine from Jamaica to London. The book was published by Steve Pope and Dotun Adebayo
of Xpress books.
newspaper was the primary African-Caribbean print media outlet in Britain, and was founded in the early 1980s by Val McCalla
. Other publications have included the Gleaner
, Black Voice, Pride Magazine
and The Caribbean Times
. The growth of such media is aimed to offset the perceived imbalances of 'mainstream' media. In 2006, Sir Ian Blair
, the Chief Commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police, joined a long list of commentators in branding the mainstream British media as 'institutionally racist'
for its alleged failure to offer a proper balance in reporting affairs related to the community.
Trinidad-born Sir Trevor McDonald
is one of the community's best-known journalists, having been the main presenter (newscaster) for the national ITV
network for over twenty years. Other notable media figures include Gary Younge
, The Guardian
columnist, and Moira Stuart
, the veteran BBC news presenter. Trinidadian-born Darcus Howe
has written in New Statesman
and fronted a number of documentary series including the Channel 4
current affairs programme Devil's Advocate. Much of Howe's work is related to the experiences of British African-Caribbeans and racism in wider British society. Other notable producer/directors are Terry Jervis (Jervis Media) and Pogus Caesar
(Windrush Productions); both have made multicultural, entertainment and sports programmes for Carlton TV, BBC TV and Channel 4
.
The community has a strong tradition of 'underground' 'pirate radio
' broadcasters, the most established being London's Lightning Radio, Genesis Radio and Galaxy Radio which play a mix of ragga
, reggae
, bashment
, hip hop
and R&B
. 'pirate radio
' stations like Supreme, Galaxy and Genesis Radio are particularly highly regarded in the Afro Caribbean community for not only playing a variety of music such as Soca, Soul, dancehall, Jazz, Hip Hop, Reveail and Funky House, but also for dedicating time to have talk shows and information shows often taking an uncompromising stance in view. Thus giving the community the opportunity to phone in and participate in an array of subjects that mainstream radio and media refuse to address.
In 1996, Choice FM
received a licence to broadcast in London and Birmingham with a remit to serve the musical tastes of the African-Caribbean community. Sadly, after being bought by PLC (which owns pop station Capital Radio) and more recently Global taking the ownership of the station, many feel that Choice FM has sold out and no longer reflects the community. This is demonstrated by the sacking of talk show host Geoff Schumann. In an article Geoff Schumann said "When I was on Choice, my show– a talk show– had an audience that was higher than any of the station’s other shows, and yet I was told, by a white man, that my style wouldn’t fit in with the station’s future plans. Generally speaking, a radio show with high ratings is usually the show that a station will keep. But when you want to create the impression that all black people want to do is listen to music, you sack the host that does the talking!” http://www.voice-online.co.uk/content.php?show=13728
The people from the Afro-Caribbean community with a sense of identity, dignity and pride have abandoned Choice FM, often criticizing the misrepresentation of the music and the general undermining of not only Afro-Caribbean people, but all black people of African ancestry. http://www.voice-online.co.uk/content.php?show=17687
As a result, many black activists have campaigned tirelessly for the state to stop attacking black 'pirate radio
' stations like Power Jam(now deceased) Galaxy Radio and Genesis Radio, as they are the only voice many of the Afro-Caribbean community feel they have to discus issues that concern them; other than just promoting Urban music like what Choice FM has become.
"The thing with me is that I’m not afraid to call myself black. I’m black— I’m not urban.” - Geoff Schumann. Presently Geoff Schumann now hosts a talk show on a popular west London 'pirate radio
' station with the same format that he had on Choice FM, before the only black owned legal station was sold.
In 2002, the BBC established its digital broadcasting strand 'BBC Radio 1Xtra
' to focus on new Black music - which in effect means catering to the tastes of the country's African-Caribbean youth. The Internet has afforded the community the opportunity to publish en-masse, and there are now thousands of websites and blogs produced by or for African-Caribbeans in the UK such as the BBC's Family History page, and The African-Caribbean Network, Blacknet UK, launched in 1996.
One of the most influential African-Caribbeans in the British art world has been Dr. Eddie Chambers
. Chambers, along with Donald Rodney
, Marlene Smith
and curator, artist, critic and academic Keith Piper
, founded the BLK Art Group
in 1982, when they were initially based in the West Midlands
. According to Chambers, significant artists such as the Guyanese-born painters Aubrey Williams
and Frank Bowling
and the Jamaican sculptor Ronald Moody
initially found that, despite achieving worldwide renown, it was difficult to find acceptance in the highest echelons of the art establishment. Chambers worked with Donald Rodney
and Sonia Boyce
, both of whose work is represented in the permanent collections of the London's Tate Britain
museum. In 1986 the Hayward Gallery
presented the exhibition 'The Other Story' that provided a survey of African-Caribbean, African and Asian artists working in the UK.
Other African-Caribbean artists of note include Faisal Abdu'allah
of Jamaican heritage, Guyanan-born Ingrid Pollard
, British-based Jamaican painter Eugene Palmer
, the sculptor George 'Fowokan' Kelly
and Tam Joseph
, whose 1983 work Spirit of Carnival was a vivid depiction of the Notting Hill Carnival. The movement was also part of the impetus that led to the founding of the Association of Black Photographers
by Mark Sealy. In 1999 the filmmaker Steve McQueen
(not to be confused with the Hollywood filmstar) won Britain's most prestigious art prize, the Turner Prize
, for his video "Deadpan". The artist and producer Pogus Caesar
was commissioned by Artangel to direct a film based on McQueen's work. Forward Ever - Backward Never was premiered at Lumiere in London 2002. Caesar has also established the OOM Gallery Archives, based in Birmingham, which has in excess of 14,000 images including photographs of contemporary Black British
culture.
, of Guyanese/English heritage, is one of Britain's leading academics, having taught sociology
at Harvard
as well as Goldsmiths College
and the London School of Economics
. The Jamaican-born cultural theorist Professor Stuart Hall
has also been a highly influential British intellectual
since the 1960s. Dr. Robert Beckford
has presented several national television and radio documentaries exploring African-Caribbean history, culture and religion. Other prominent academics include Guyanese born Professor Gus John, who has been active in education, schooling and political radicalism in Britain’s inner cities such as Manchester, Birmingham and London since the 1960s. He was involved in the organising the 'Black people's day of action' a response to the 1981 New Cross Fire
. In 1989 he was appointed Director of Education in Hackney and was the first black person to hold such a position. He has also worked as an education consultant in Europe, the Caribbean and Africa. Gus John was the co-ordinator of the Black Parents Movement in Manchester, founded the Education for Liberation book service and helped to organise the International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books in Manchester, London and Bradford. He has worked in a number of University settings, including a visiting Faculty Professor of Education at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow and is currently an associate professor of the Institute of Education at the University of London
. Dr 'William' Lez Henry works with young people, particularly black boys. He is the founder of Black Liberation Afrikan Knowledge (BLK Friday) a platform for people to give presentations to the community. In 2005, he received an Excellence In Education Award at the Challenging The Genius: Excellent Education for Children: “Our Future is Not a dream”, Conference in Chicago, USA. He is one of the foundering members of the National Independent Education Coalition (NIEC). Currently he hosts a fortnightly Talk show on a popular London 'Pirate Radio
' station Galaxy 99.5 FM or http://www.galaxyafiwe.com/ and who is also a former lecturer of Goldsmiths College
, and Prof. Harry Goldbourne, a former member of the radical group the Black Unity and Freedom Party
, who went on to teach at the University of the South Bank
. Although there are hundreds of African-Caribbean teachers in the UK, it has been suggested that their under-representation in inner-city schools is a major factor in the failure, particularly of secondary-level schools, to achieve a satisfactory average of achievement for the community's children (see Bernard Coard
and the Swann Report of 1985). Though research by the Longitudinal Survey of Young People in England in 2011 showed that 66 per cent of those from Black African backgrounds went on to university, compared to an average of 59 per cent of British Asian
(Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi) students. Which therefore suggests that as an average, more people from Black African backgrounds are now progressing to university than those of a South Asian background.
The period of large-scale immigration brought many new musical styles to the United Kingdom. These styles gained popularity amongst Britons of all cultural origins, and aided Caribbean music in gaining international recognition. The earliest of these exponents was the calypso
artist Lord Kitchener
, who arrived in Britain on the Windrush in 1948 accompanied by fellow musician Lord Beginner
. Already a star in his native Trinidad, Lord Kitchener got an immediate booking at the only West Indian club in London. Six months later, he was appearing in three clubs nightly, and his popularity extended beyond the West Indian and African nightclub
audiences, to include music hall
and variety show
audiences. Kitchener's recording "London is the place for me" exemplified the experience of the Windrush generation. Other calypso musicians began to collaborate with African Kwela
musicians and British jazz
players in London clubs.
Jamaican music styles reached Britain in the 1960s, becoming the staple music for young British African-Caribbeans. Tours by ska
artists such as Prince Buster
and the Skatalites fed the growing British-Caribbean music scene, and the success of Jamaican artists Millie Small
, Desmond Dekker
and Bob and Marcia
propelled Caribbean music and people into mainstream cultural life. British African-Caribbeans followed the changing styles of Jamaican music and began to produce homegrown music appealing to both Black and White communities. In 1969, the British African-Caribbean ska band Symarip
recorded "Skinhead Moonstomp" which had a huge effect on the British ska scene. The ska sound and rude boy
imagery inspired a generation of white working-class
youths (especially mods and skinhead
s), and later helped spawn Britain's multi-cultural
2 Tone
movement in the late 1970s.
As Jamaican ska gave way to the slower styles of rocksteady
and the more politicised reggae
, British African-Caribbeans followed suit. Sound systems to rival those in Jamaica sprung up throughout communities, and 'Blues parties' - parties in private houses, where one paid at the door - became an institution. The arrival of Bob Marley
to London in 1971 helped spawn a Black British music industry based on reggae. His association with the Rastafarian
movement influenced waves of young people, reared in Britain, to discover their Caribbean roots. British Barbadian Dennis Bovell
became Britain's prominent reggae band leader and producer, working with many international reggae stars, and introducing a reggae flavour to the British pop charts with non-reggae acts such as Dexys Midnight Runners
and Bananarama
. Bovell also worked extensively with London-based dub poet
Linton Kwesi Johnson
.
British music with reggae roots prospered in the 1980s and early 1990s. British African-Caribbean artists Musical Youth
, Aswad, Maxi Priest
and Eddy Grant
had major commercial successes, and the multicultural band UB40
helped promote reggae to an international audience. Birmingham-based Steel Pulse
became one of the world's foremost exponents of roots reggae
and accompanying black consciousness
, their debut 1978 album Handsworth Revolution
becoming a seminal release.
British African-Caribbean music had been generally synonymous with Caribbean styles until the 1990s, although some artists had been drawing on British and American musical forms for several decades. In the 1970s and 1980s, British African-Caribbean artists such as Hot Chocolate and Imagination
became leaders of the British disco
, soul
and R&B scenes. By the mid-1980s British African-Caribbeans were also incorporating American hip hop
and House
styles, becoming leading figures in Britain's developing dance music culture. This led to an explosion of musical forms. British artists created musical hybrids combining many elements including European techno, Jamaican dancehall
, dub, breakbeat
s and contemporary American R'n'B. These unique blends began to gain international acclaim through the success of Soul II Soul
and the multi-racial Massive Attack
.
British African-Caribbeans were at the leading edge of the jungle
and drum and bass
movements of the 1990s. Although the fast-tempo drums and loud intricate bass lines sounded fresh, Caribbean roots could still be detected. Two successful exponents of these new styles were DJs Goldie
and Roni Size
, both of Jamaican heritage. Later, British African-Caribbean musicians and DJs were at the forefront of the UK garage
and Grime
scenes.
and rugby
, and have also represented the nation at the highest level in sports where Caribbeans typically excel in the home countries such as cricket
and athletics
. Some British African-Caribbeans have gone on to become international sports stars and top global earners in their chosen sporting field.
sprint medals came from Harry Edward, born in Guyana, who won two individual bronze medals at the 1920 games in Antwerp
. Many years later, sprinter Linford Christie
, born in Saint Andrew Parish, Jamaica
, won 23 major championship medals, more than any other British male athlete to date. Christie's career highlight was winning a gold medal
in the immensely competitive 100 metres
event in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics
. Welsh
Hurdler Colin Jackson
, who went to considerable lengths to explore his Jamaican heritage in a BBC documentary, held the 110 metres hurdles
world record for 11 years between 1993 and 2004.
Ethel Scott
(1907–1984) had a Jamaican father and an English mother was the first black woman to represent Great Britain in an international athletics competition. She was a sprinter active in international competitions for a brief period in the 1930s. In general, Scott's achievements are only thinly documented, and she is largely unknown to the British public and historians of sport. Jamaican-born Tessa Sanderson
became the first British African-Caribbean woman to win Olympic gold, receiving the medal for her javelin
performance in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics
. Denise Lewis
, of Jamaican heritage, won heptathlon
gold in the 2000 Sydney Olympics
, a games where 13 of Britain's 18 track and field representatives had Afro-Caribbean roots. Four years later in the Athens Olympics
, Kelly Holmes
, the daughter of a Jamaican-born car mechanic, achieved the rare feat of taking gold in both the 800
and 1500 metres
races. In the same games, Britain's men's 4 x 100 metre relay team
of Marlon Devonish
, Darren Campbell
, Mark Lewis-Francis
and Jason Gardener
, all of African-Caribbean heritage, beat the favoured United States quartet to claim Olympic gold.
of a Caribbean background have played a prominent role in the national boxing scene since the early 1980s. In 1995 Frank Bruno
, whose mother was a Pentecostal
laypreacher from Jamaica, became Britain's first world heavyweight boxing champion in the 20th century. Bruno's reign was shortly followed by British-born Jamaican Lennox Lewis
, who defeated Evander Holyfield
and Mike Tyson
to become the world's premier heavyweight during the late 1990s. Middleweights Chris Eubank
, who spent his early years in Jamaica, and Nigel Benn
, of Barbadian descent, both claimed world titles and fought a series of brutal battles in the early 1990s. In the Sydney Olympics
of 2000, Audley Harrison
(who has Jamaican heritage) became Britain's first heavyweight gold medalist
. Other boxing champions from the British African-Caribbean community include the welterweight Lloyd Honeyghan
, nicknamed 'Ragamuffin
Man' by boxing super-star Donald Curry
in 1986, in reference to his (in comparison to Curry's extravagance) normal appearance; Honeyghan subsequently spectacularly defeated Curry.
has long been a popular pastime amongst African-Caribbeans in both the West Indies and the United Kingdom, though this has waned somewhat since its peak during the 1960s-1980s. After the period of widespread immigration, tours of England by the combined West Indian cricket team
became cultural celebrations of Caribbean culture in Britain, particularly at cricket grounds such as The Oval
in South London
. Almost all the great West Indian cricketers became regular features of the domestic county game
, including Garfield Sobers
, Vivian Richards and Michael Holding
. In turn, British cricketers of Caribbean origin also began to make an impact in English cricket. In the 1980s-1990s, players including Gladstone Small
(born in Barbados), Devon Malcolm
(born in Jamaica) and Phillip DeFreitas
(born in Dominica
) represented England
, making significant contributions to the side.
whose paternal grandparents immigrated from Grenada
achieved the highest honour in Motorsport, winning the FIA Formula One World Championship in 2008, only his second season in the sport, after narrowly finishing second in the championship in his debut season.
The first West Indian-born footballer
to play football at a high level in Britain was Andrew Watson, who played for Queens Park
(Glasgow
) and went on to play for Scotland
. Born in May 1857 in British Guyana, Watson lived and worked in Scotland and came to be known as one of the best players of his generation. He played in 36 games for Queens Park and also appeared for the London Swifts in the English FA Cup
championship of 1882, making him the first Black player in English Cup history. Watson earned 2 Scottish Cup
medals and 4 Charity Cup medals during his career; Who's Who also acknowledged his performances in international matches. Watson's place in football history included a spell in management as Club Secretary for Queens Park - making Watson the first Afro-Caribbean man to reach the boardroom.
Other early Caribbean footballers included Walter Tull, of Barbadian descent, who played for the north London club Tottenham Hotspur in the early 20th century. Some years later, Jamaican-born Lloyd 'Lindy' Delapenha
made an impact playing for Middlesbrough between 1950–57, becoming a leading goal scorer and the first Black player to win a championship medal. However, it was not until the 1970s that African-Caribbean players began to make a major impact on the game. Clyde Best
(West Ham
1969–1976), born in Bermuda
, paved the way for players such as Cyrille Regis
(born in French Guyana), and Luther Blissett
(born in Jamaica). Blissett and Regis joined Viv Anderson
to form the first wave of Black footballers to play for the England national team
. Although the number of players of African-Caribbean origin in the English league was increasing far beyond proportions in wider society, when Black players represented the English national team, they still had to endure racism from a section of England supporters. When selected to play for England, Cyril Regis received a bullet through the mail with the threat, "You'll get one of these through your knees if you step on our Wembley
turf."
By the 1980s the British African-Caribbean community was well represented at all playing levels of the game. John Barnes
, born in Jamaica, was one of the most talented players of his generation and one of the few footballers to win every honour in the domestic English game including the PFA Players' Player of the Year
. Although Barnes played for England on 78 occasions between 1983 and 1991, his performances rarely matched his club standard. Subsequently, Barnes identified a culture of racism in football during his era as a player. Players of African-Caribbean origin continued to excel in English football, in the 1990s Paul Ince
- whose parents were from Trinidad
- went on to captain Manchester United
, Liverpool F.C.
and the English national team. The contribution was reciprocated when a number of British born footballers including Robbie Earle
, Frank Sinclair
and Darryl Powell
represented the Jamaica national football team
in the 1998 World Cup
finals.
At the turn of the millennium, British-born Black footballers constituted about 13% of the English league
, and a number of groups including "Kick It Out" were highlighting issues of racism still in the game. In the 2006 World Cup finals
, Theo Walcott
, a striker of English and Jamaican parents, became the youngest ever player to join an England world cup squad - a side which included African-Caribbean players in every department, goal-keeping, defence, midfield and attack.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
who are of West Indian
British West Indies
The British West Indies was a term used to describe the islands in and around the Caribbean that were part of the British Empire The term was sometimes used to include British Honduras and British Guiana, even though these territories are not geographically part of the Caribbean...
background and whose ancestors were primarily indigenous
Indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples are ethnic groups that are defined as indigenous according to one of the various definitions of the term, there is no universally accepted definition but most of which carry connotations of being the "original inhabitants" of a territory....
to Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
. As immigration to the United Kingdom from Africa increased in the 1990s, the term has sometimes been used to include UK residents solely of African origin, or as a term to define all Black British
Black British
Black British is a term used to describe British people of Black African descent, especially those of Afro-Caribbean background. The term has been used from the 1950s to refer to Black people from former British colonies in the West Indies and Africa, who are residents of the United Kingdom and...
residents, though the phrase "African and Caribbean" has more often been used to cover such a broader grouping. The most common and traditional use of the term African-Caribbean community is in reference to groups of residents' continuing aspects of Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
culture, customs and traditions in the United Kingdom.
The largest proportion of the African-Caribbean population in the UK are of Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
n origin; others trace origins to nations such as Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago officially the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago is an archipelagic state in the southern Caribbean, lying just off the coast of northeastern Venezuela and south of Grenada in the Lesser Antilles...
, Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Kitts and Nevis
The Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis , located in the Leeward Islands, is a federal two-island nation in the West Indies. It is the smallest sovereign state in the Americas, in both area and population....
, Barbados
Barbados
Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles. It is in length and as much as in width, amounting to . It is situated in the western area of the North Atlantic and 100 kilometres east of the Windward Islands and the Caribbean Sea; therein, it is about east of the islands of Saint...
, Grenada
Grenada
Grenada is an island country and Commonwealth Realm consisting of the island of Grenada and six smaller islands at the southern end of the Grenadines in the southeastern Caribbean Sea...
, Antigua and Barbuda
Antigua and Barbuda
Antigua and Barbuda is a twin-island nation lying between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. It consists of two major inhabited islands, Antigua and Barbuda, and a number of smaller islands...
, Saint Lucia
Saint Lucia
Saint Lucia is an island country in the eastern Caribbean Sea on the boundary with the Atlantic Ocean. Part of the Lesser Antilles, it is located north/northeast of the island of Saint Vincent, northwest of Barbados and south of Martinique. It covers a land area of 620 km2 and has an...
, Dominica
Dominica
Dominica , officially the Commonwealth of Dominica, is an island nation in the Lesser Antilles region of the Caribbean Sea, south-southeast of Guadeloupe and northwest of Martinique. Its size is and the highest point in the country is Morne Diablotins, which has an elevation of . The Commonwealth...
, Montserrat
Montserrat
Montserrat is a British overseas territory located in the Leeward Islands, part of the chain of islands called the Lesser Antilles in the West Indies. This island measures approximately long and wide, giving of coastline...
, Anguilla
Anguilla
Anguilla is a British overseas territory and overseas territory of the European Union in the Caribbean. It is one of the most northerly of the Leeward Islands in the Lesser Antilles, lying east of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and directly north of Saint Martin...
, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is an island country in the Lesser Antilles chain, namely in the southern portion of the Windward Islands, which lie at the southern end of the eastern border of the Caribbean Sea where the latter meets the Atlantic Ocean....
, Guyana
Guyana
Guyana , officially the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, previously the colony of British Guiana, is a sovereign state on the northern coast of South America that is culturally part of the Anglophone Caribbean. Guyana was a former colony of the Dutch and of the British...
, which though located on the South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
n mainland, is very culturally similar to the Caribbean, and was historically considered to be part of the British West Indies, and Belize
Belize
Belize is a constitutional monarchy and the northernmost country in Central America. Belize has a diverse society, comprising many cultures and languages. Even though Kriol and Spanish are spoken among the population, Belize is the only country in Central America where English is the official...
(formerly British Honduras
British Honduras
British Honduras was a British colony that is now the independent nation of Belize.First colonised by Spaniards in the 17th century, the territory on the east coast of Central America, south of Mexico, became a British crown colony from 1862 until 1964, when it became self-governing. Belize became...
), in Central America
Central America
Central America is the central geographic region of the Americas. It is the southernmost, isthmian portion of the North American continent, which connects with South America on the southeast. When considered part of the unified continental model, it is considered a subcontinent...
, which culturally is more akin to the English-speaking Caribbean than to Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
, due to its colonial and still-extant economic ties to the UK.
African-Caribbean communities exist throughout the United Kingdom, though by far the largest concentrations are in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
. Significant communities also exist in other population centres, notably Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
, Bradford
Bradford
Bradford lies at the heart of the City of Bradford, a metropolitan borough of West Yorkshire, in Northern England. It is situated in the foothills of the Pennines, west of Leeds, and northwest of Wakefield. Bradford became a municipal borough in 1847, and received its charter as a city in 1897...
, Nottingham
Nottingham
Nottingham is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England. It is located in the ceremonial county of Nottinghamshire and represents one of eight members of the English Core Cities Group...
, Coventry
Coventry
Coventry is a city and metropolitan borough in the county of West Midlands in England. Coventry is the 9th largest city in England and the 11th largest in the United Kingdom. It is also the second largest city in the English Midlands, after Birmingham, with a population of 300,848, although...
, Luton
Luton
Luton is a large town and unitary authority of Bedfordshire, England, 30 miles north of London. Luton and its near neighbours, Dunstable and Houghton Regis, form the Luton/Dunstable Urban Area with a population of about 250,000....
, Leicester
Leicester
Leicester is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England, and the county town of Leicestershire. The city lies on the River Soar and at the edge of the National Forest...
, Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
, Leeds
Leeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...
, Huddersfield
Huddersfield
Huddersfield is a large market town within the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees, in West Yorkshire, England, situated halfway between Leeds and Manchester. It lies north of London, and south of Bradford, the nearest city....
, Sheffield
Sheffield
Sheffield is a city and metropolitan borough of South Yorkshire, England. Its name derives from the River Sheaf, which runs through the city. Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and with some of its southern suburbs annexed from Derbyshire, the city has grown from its largely...
, Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
and Cardiff
Cardiff
Cardiff is the capital, largest city and most populous county of Wales and the 10th largest city in the United Kingdom. The city is Wales' chief commercial centre, the base for most national cultural and sporting institutions, the Welsh national media, and the seat of the National Assembly for...
. In these cities, the community is traditionally associated with a particular area, such as, Brixton
Brixton
Brixton is a district in the London Borough of Lambeth in south London, England. It is south south-east of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London....
, Harlesden
Harlesden
Harlesden is an area in the London Borough of Brent, northwest London, UK. Its main focal point is the Jubilee Clock which commemorates Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee....
, Stonebridge
Stonebridge, London
-See also:* Harlesden* Harlesden station* The nearby Dudding Hill Line in Craven Park...
, Tottenham
Tottenham
Tottenham is an area of the London Borough of Haringey, England, situated north north east of Charing Cross.-Toponymy:Tottenham is believed to have been named after Tota, a farmer, whose hamlet was mentioned in the Domesday Book; hence Tota's hamlet became Tottenham...
, Dalston
Dalston
Dalston is a district of north-east London, England, located in the London Borough of Hackney. It is situated northeast of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London...
, Lewisham
Lewisham
Lewisham is a district in South London, England, located in the London Borough of Lewisham. It is situated south-east of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London.-History:...
, Peckham
Peckham
Peckham is a district in south London, England, located in the London Borough of Southwark. It is situated south-east of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London...
in London, West Bowling
West Bowling
West Bowling are an amateur rugby league club situated in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. They currently compete in the National Conference League.West Bowling play their home games at Bankfoot Cricket Club, next to Odsal stadium...
and Heaton
Heaton, West Yorkshire
Heaton is a Ward of the City of Bradford, a metropolitan borough of West Yorkshire, England. It includes the villages of Frizinghall, Heaton and Daisy Hill, extending to Chellow Heights reservoir on the western edge and the Bradford-Shipley railway line on the eastern edge...
in Bradford, Chapeltown
Chapeltown, West Yorkshire
Chapeltown is a suburb of north-east Leeds, in West Yorkshire, England, and is the centre of the city's British African-Caribbean community. It is approximately one mile north of Leeds city centre...
in Leeds, St. Pauls
St Pauls, Bristol
St Pauls is an inner suburb of Bristol, England, situated just north east of the city centre and west of the M32. It is bounded by the A38, the B4051 and the A4032 roads...
in Bristol, or Handsworth
Handsworth, West Midlands
Handsworth is an inner city area of Birmingham in the West Midlands, England. The Local Government Act 1894 divided the ancient Staffordshire parish of Handsworth into two urban districts: Handsworth and Perry Barr. Handsworth was annexed to the county borough of Birmingham in Warwickshire in 1911...
and Aston
Aston
Aston is an area of the City of Birmingham, in the West Midlands of England. Lying to the north-east of the Birmingham city centre, Aston constitutes an electoral ward within the council constituency of Ladywood.-History:...
in Birmingham or Moss Side
Moss Side
Moss Side is an inner-city area and electoral ward of Manchester, England. It lies south of Manchester city centre and has a population of around 17,537...
in Manchester. According to the 2001 census, the largest number of African-Caribbeans are found in Lewisham, South east London; with 9%.
British African-Caribbeans have an extremely high rate of mixed-race relationships, and could in effect become the first UK ethnic group to 'disappear'. Half of all British African-Caribbean men in a relationship have partners of a different ethnic background, as do one-third of all British African-Caribbean women. 2007 estimates for England alone roughly put the full African-Caribbean to partial African-Caribbean heritage ratio at 2:1.
Early pioneers
Slavery in the British and French Caribbean
Slavery in the British and French Caribbean refers to slavery in the parts of the Caribbean dominated by France or the British Empire.-Conditions:The Lesser Antilles islands of Barbados, St...
by European slave traders
African slave trade
Systems of servitude and slavery were common in many parts of Africa, as they were in much of the ancient world. In some African societies, the enslaved people were also indentured servants and fully integrated; in others, they were treated much worse...
to British
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
colonies in the Caribbean and British North America
British North America
British North America is a historical term. It consisted of the colonies and territories of the British Empire in continental North America after the end of the American Revolutionary War and the recognition of American independence in 1783.At the start of the Revolutionary War in 1775 the British...
, as well as French
French colonial empires
The French colonial empire was the set of territories outside Europe that were under French rule primarily from the 17th century to the late 1960s. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the colonial empire of France was the second-largest in the world behind the British Empire. The French colonial empire...
, Dutch
Dutch West India Company
Dutch West India Company was a chartered company of Dutch merchants. Among its founding fathers was Willem Usselincx...
, Danish
Danish West India Company
The Danish West India Company or Danish West India-Guinea Company was a Danish chartered company that exploited colonies in the Danish West Indies. It was founded as the Danish Africa Company in 1659 in Glückstadt by a German Hendrik Carloff and two Dutchmen Isaac Coymans and Nicolaes Pancras....
, Spanish
Spanish Empire
The Spanish Empire comprised territories and colonies administered directly by Spain in Europe, in America, Africa, Asia and Oceania. It originated during the Age of Exploration and was therefore one of the first global empires. At the time of Habsburgs, Spain reached the peak of its world power....
, and Portuguese
Portuguese Empire
The Portuguese Empire , also known as the Portuguese Overseas Empire or the Portuguese Colonial Empire , was the first global empire in history...
colonies. New World
New World
The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...
slavery was originally focused on the extraction of gold and other precious raw materials. Africans were then later set to work on the vast cotton, tobacco and sugar plantation
Plantation
A plantation is a long artificially established forest, farm or estate, where crops are grown for sale, often in distant markets rather than for local on-site consumption...
s in the Americas for the economic benefit of these colonial powers and their plantocracy
Plantocracy
A plantocracy, also known as a slavocracy, is a ruling class, political order or government composed of plantation owners....
. One impact of the American Revolution
American Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
was the differing historical development of African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
and African-Caribbean people. There are records of small communities in the ports of Cardiff
Cardiff
Cardiff is the capital, largest city and most populous county of Wales and the 10th largest city in the United Kingdom. The city is Wales' chief commercial centre, the base for most national cultural and sporting institutions, the Welsh national media, and the seat of the National Assembly for...
, Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and South Shields
South Shields
South Shields is a coastal town in Tyne and Wear, England, located at the mouth of the River Tyne to Tyne Dock, and about downstream from Newcastle upon Tyne...
dating back to the mid-18th century. These communities were formed by freed slaves following the abolition
Slavery Abolition Act
The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 was an 1833 Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom abolishing slavery throughout the British Empire...
of slavery. Typical occupations of the early migrants were footmen
Footman
A footman is a male servant, notably as domestic staff.-Word history:The name derives from the attendants who ran beside or behind the carriages of aristocrats, many of whom were chosen for their physical attributes. They ran alongside the coach to make sure it was not overturned by such obstacles...
or coachmen
Coachman
A coachman is a man whose business it is to drive a coach, a horse-drawn vehicle designed for the conveyance of more than one passenger — and of mail — and covered for protection from the elements...
.
Nineteenth Century
Prominent African-Caribbean people in Britain during the nineteenth century include:- Robert Wedderburn, (1762-1835/6?), Spencean revolutionary
- William DavidsonWilliam Davidson (conspirator)William Davidson was an African-Caribbean radical executed by the British government-Early years:Davidson was the illegitimate son of the Jamaican Attorney General and a local black woman. At age fourteen he travelled to Glasgow to study law. In Scotland he became involved in the movement for...
, (1781–1820), Cato Street ConspiratorCato Street ConspiracyThe Cato Street Conspiracy was an attempt to murder all the British cabinet ministers and Prime Minister Lord Liverpool in 1820. The name comes from the meeting place near Edgware Road in London. The Cato Street Conspiracy is notable due to dissenting public opinions regarding the punishment of the... - Rev. George Cousens, a Jamaican who became minister of Cradley Heath Baptist Church in 1837
- Mary SeacoleMary SeacoleMary Jane Seacole , sometimes known as Mother Seacole or Mary Grant, was a Jamaican nurse best known for her involvement in the Crimean War. She set up and operated boarding houses in Panama and the Crimea to assist in her desire to treat the sick...
(1805–1881) the nurse. - Andrew Watson Footballer
- Walter TullWalter TullWalter Daniel John Tull was an English professional footballer who played as an inside forward for Tottenham Hotspur and Northampton Town...
Footballer and soldier
Early Twentieth Century
The growing Caribbean presence in the British militaryBritish military history
The Military history of Britain, including the military history of the United Kingdom and the military history of the island of Great Britain, is discussed in the following articles:...
led to approximately 15,000 migrants arriving in the North-West of England around the time of the First World War
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
to work in munitions factories.
The Jamaican poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
and communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
activist
Activism
Activism consists of intentional efforts to bring about social, political, economic, or environmental change. Activism can take a wide range of forms from writing letters to newspapers or politicians, political campaigning, economic activism such as boycotts or preferentially patronizing...
, Claude McKay
Claude McKay
Claude McKay was a Jamaican-American writer and poet. He was a seminal figure in the Harlem Renaissance and wrote three novels: Home to Harlem , a best-seller which won the Harmon Gold Award for Literature, Banjo , and Banana Bottom...
came to England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
following the First World War and became the first Black British
Black British
Black British is a term used to describe British people of Black African descent, especially those of Afro-Caribbean background. The term has been used from the 1950s to refer to Black people from former British colonies in the West Indies and Africa, who are residents of the United Kingdom and...
journalist, writing for the Workers Dreadnought.
Second World War
In February 1941 345 West Indian workers were brought to work in and around LiverpoolLiverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
. They were generally better skilled than the local Black British
Black British
Black British is a term used to describe British people of Black African descent, especially those of Afro-Caribbean background. The term has been used from the 1950s to refer to Black people from former British colonies in the West Indies and Africa, who are residents of the United Kingdom and...
. There was also some tension between them and West Africans who had settled in the area.
The "Windrush generation"
Since World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
many African-Caribbean people migrated to North America and Europe, especially to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, the UK, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, and the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
. As a result of the losses during the war, the British government
Politics of the United Kingdom
The politics of the United Kingdom takes place within the framework of a constitutional monarchy, in which the Monarch is the head of state and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is the head of government...
began to encourage mass immigration from the countries of the British Empire
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
and Commonwealth
Commonwealth of Nations
The Commonwealth of Nations, normally referred to as the Commonwealth and formerly known as the British Commonwealth, is an intergovernmental organisation of fifty-four independent member states...
to fill shortages in the labour market. The 1948 British Nationality Act
History of British nationality law
- Early English and British nationality law :British nationality law has its origins in medieval England. There has always been a distinction in English law between the subjects of the monarch and aliens: the monarch's subjects owed him allegiance, and included those born in his dominions and...
gave British citizenship
British nationality law
British nationality law is the law of the United Kingdom that concerns citizenship and other categories of British nationality. The law is complex because of the United Kingdom's former status as an imperial power.-History:...
to all people living in Commonwealth countries, and full rights of entry and settlement in Britain. Many West Indians were attracted by better prospects in what was often referred to as the mother country
Metropole
The metropole, from the Greek Metropolis 'mother city' was the name given to the British metropolitan centre of the British Empire, i.e. the United Kingdom itself...
.
MV Empire Windrush
The Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury on 22 June 1948, carrying 493 passengers from Jamaica wishing to start a new life in the United Kingdom. The passengers were the first large group of West Indian immigrants to the UK after the Second World War.Before 1948, the ship, under the name of Monte...
brought the first group of 492 immigrants to Tilbury
Tilbury
Tilbury is a town in the borough of Thurrock, Essex, England. As a settlement it is of relatively recent existence, although it has important historical connections, being the location of a 16th century fort and an ancient cross-river ferry...
near London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
on 22 June 1948. The Windrush was en route from Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
to England via the Atlantic
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...
, docking in Kingston, Jamaica
Kingston, Jamaica
Kingston is the capital and largest city of Jamaica, located on the southeastern coast of the island. It faces a natural harbour protected by the Palisadoes, a long sand spit which connects the town of Port Royal and the Norman Manley International Airport to the rest of the island...
. An advertisement had appeared in a Jamaican newspaper offering cheap transport on the ship for anybody who wanted to come and work in the UK. The arrivals were temporarily housed in the Clapham South deep shelter
London deep-level shelters
The London deep-level shelters are eight deep-level air-raid shelters that were built under London Underground stations during World War II.-Background:...
in southwest London less than a mile away from Coldharbour Lane
Coldharbour Lane
Coldharbour Lane is a road in South London that leads south-westwards from Camberwell to Brixton. In total the road is over 1 mile long with a mixture of residential, business and retail buildings - the stretch of Coldharbour Lane near Brixton Market contains shops, bars and restaurants...
in Brixton
Brixton
Brixton is a district in the London Borough of Lambeth in south London, England. It is south south-east of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London....
. Many only intended to stay in Britain for a few years, and although a number returned to the Caribbean to rejoin the RAF
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...
, the majority remained to settle permanently. The arrival of the passengers has become an important landmark in the history of modern Britain, and the image of West Indians filing off its gangplank has come to symbolise the beginning of modern British multicultural
Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism is the appreciation, acceptance or promotion of multiple cultures, applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the organizational level, e.g...
society. See Windrush image .
There was plenty of work in post-war Britain and industries such as British Rail
British Rail
British Railways , which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was the operator of most of the rail transport in Great Britain between 1948 and 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the "Big Four" British railway companies and lasted until the gradual privatisation of British Rail, in stages...
, the National Health Service
National Health Service
The National Health Service is the shared name of three of the four publicly funded healthcare systems in the United Kingdom. They provide a comprehensive range of health services, the vast majority of which are free at the point of use to residents of the United Kingdom...
and public transport recruited almost exclusively from Jamaica and Barbados. Though Afro-Caribbeans were encouraged to journey to Britain via immigration campaigns created by successive British governments, many new arrivals were to endure prejudice, intolerance and extreme racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
from sectors of indigenous British society. This experience was to mark African-Caribbeans' relations with the wider community over a long period. Early African-Caribbean immigrants found private employment and housing denied to them on the basis of race. Trade unions would often not help African-Caribbean workers and some pubs, clubs, dance halls and churches would bar black people from entering. Housing was in short supply following the wartime bombing, and the shortage led to some of the first clashes with the established white community
White people
White people is a term which usually refers to human beings characterized, at least in part, by the light pigmentation of their skin...
. Clashes continued and worsened into the 1950s, and riots erupted in cities including London, Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
and Nottingham
Nottingham
Nottingham is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England. It is located in the ceremonial county of Nottinghamshire and represents one of eight members of the English Core Cities Group...
. In 1958, attacks in the London area of Notting Hill
Notting Hill
Notting Hill is an area in London, England, close to the north-western corner of Kensington Gardens, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea...
by white youths marred relations with West Indian residents, leading to the creation of the annual Notting Hill Carnival
Notting Hill Carnival
The Notting Hill Carnival is an annual event which since 1964 has taken place on the streets of Notting Hill, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea , London, UK each August, over two days...
, which was initiated in 1959 as a positive response by the Caribbean community. Some of the racism and intolerance was stoked by explicitly fascist or anti-immigration movements including Oswald Mosley
Oswald Mosley
Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet, of Ancoats, was an English politician, known principally as the founder of the British Union of Fascists...
's Union Movement
Union Movement
The Union Movement was a right-wing political party founded in Britain by Oswald Mosley. Where Mosley had previously been associated with a peculiarly British form of fascism, the Union Movement attempted to redefine the concept by stressing the importance of developing a European nationalism...
, the League of Empire Loyalists
League of Empire Loyalists
The League of Empire Loyalists was a British pressure group , established in 1954, which campaigned against the dissolution of the British Empire. The League was a small group of current or former members of the Conservative Party led by Arthur K...
, the White Defence League
White Defence League
The White Defence League was a British far-right political group. Using the provocative marching techniques popularised by Oswald Mosley, its members included a young John Tyndall.-Formation:...
, the National Labour Party
National Labour Party (UK, 1957)
The National Labour Party was a far right political party founded in 1957 by John Bean. The party campaigned on a platform of white nationalism, opposition to non-white immigration and anti-Semitism.-Formation:...
and others. Influenced by this kind of propaganda, gangs of Teddy Boy
Teddy Boy
The British Teddy Boy subculture is typified by young men wearing clothes that were partly inspired by the styles worn by dandies in the Edwardian period, styles which Savile Row tailors had attempted to re-introduce in Britain after World War II...
s would often attack blacks in London.
In 1962, Britain passed the Commonwealth Immigrants Act
Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962
The Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.Before the Act was passed, citizens of British commonwealth countries had extensive rights to migrate to the UK...
restricting the entry of immigrants, and by 1972 only holders of work permits, or people with parents or grandparents born in the UK could gain entry - effectively stemming most Caribbean immigration. Despite the restrictive measures, an entire generation of Britons with African-Caribbean heritage now existed, contributing to British society in virtually every field. The number of British persons born in the West Indies had increased from 15,000 in 1951 to 172,000 in 1961 to 304,000 in 1981. The total population of persons of West Indian heritage by 1981 was between 500,000 and 550,000, depending upon the official source used.
Recession and turbulence, 1970s and 1980s
Recession
In economics, a recession is a business cycle contraction, a general slowdown in economic activity. During recessions, many macroeconomic indicators vary in a similar way...
and widespread unemployment
Unemployment
Unemployment , as defined by the International Labour Organization, occurs when people are without jobs and they have actively sought work within the past four weeks...
which seriously affected the economically less prosperous African-Caribbean community. Societal racism, discrimination, poverty
Poverty
Poverty is the lack of a certain amount of material possessions or money. Absolute poverty or destitution is inability to afford basic human needs, which commonly includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter. About 1.7 billion people are estimated to live...
, powerlessness and oppressive policing sparked a series of riots in areas with substantial African-Caribbean populations. These "uprisings" (as they were described by some in the community) took place in St Pauls
St Pauls, Bristol
St Pauls is an inner suburb of Bristol, England, situated just north east of the city centre and west of the M32. It is bounded by the A38, the B4051 and the A4032 roads...
in 1980, Brixton, Toxteth
Toxteth riots
The Toxteth riots of July 1981 were a civil disturbance in Toxteth, inner-city Liverpool, which arose in part from long-standing tensions between the local police and the black community...
and Moss Side
Moss Side
Moss Side is an inner-city area and electoral ward of Manchester, England. It lies south of Manchester city centre and has a population of around 17,537...
in 1981, St Pauls again in 1982, Notting Hill Gate
Notting Hill Gate
Notting Hill Gate is one of the main thoroughfares of Notting Hill, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Historically the street was a location for toll gates, from which it derives its modern name.- Location :...
in 1982, Toxteth in 1982, and Handsworth
Handsworth riots
The Handsworth riots may refer to:* 1981 Handsworth riots* 1985 Handsworth riots* 1991 Handsworth riots...
, Brixton
Brixton riot (1985)
The Brixton riot of 1985 started on 28 September in Lambeth in South London.It was the second major riot that the area had witnessed in the space of four years....
and Tottenham
Broadwater Farm riot
The Broadwater Farm riot occurred around the Broadwater Farm area of Tottenham, North London, on 6 October 1985.The events of the day were dominated by two deaths. The first was that of Cynthia Jarrett, an African-Caribbean woman who died the previous day from a stroke during a police search of her...
in 1985.
The riots had a profoundly unsettling effect on local residents, and led the then Home Secretary
Home Secretary
The Secretary of State for the Home Department, commonly known as the Home Secretary, is the minister in charge of the Home Office of the United Kingdom, and one of the country's four Great Offices of State...
William Whitelaw
William Whitelaw, 1st Viscount Whitelaw
William Stephen Ian Whitelaw, 1st Viscount Whitelaw, KT, CH, MC, PC, DL , often known as Willie Whitelaw, was a British Conservative Party politician who served in a wide number of Cabinet positions, most notably as Home Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister.-Early life:Whitelaw was born in Nairn, in...
to commission the Scarman report
Scarman report
The Scarman report was commissioned by the UK Government following the 1981 Brixton riots. Lord Scarman was appointed by then Home Secretary William Whitelaw on 14 April 1981 to hold the enquiry into the riots...
to address the root causes of the disturbances. The report identified both "racial discrimination" and a "racial disadvantage" in Britain, concluding that urgent action was needed to prevent these issues becoming an "endemic, ineradicable disease threatening the very survival of our society". The era saw an increase in attacks on Black people by white people. The Joint Campaign Against Racism committee reported that there had been more than 20,000 attacks on non-indigenous Britons including Britons of Asian origin
British Asian
British Asian is a term used to describe British citizens who descended from mainly South Asia, also known as South Asians in the United Kingdom...
during 1985.
Recent history
While individuals with Caribbean heritage excelled in a variety of fields in British society during the 1990s and 2000s, many recurring issues continued to impact the African-Caribbean community as a whole. The police response to the 1993 murder of Black teenager Stephen LawrenceStephen Lawrence
Stephen Lawrence was a black British teenager from Eltham, southeast London, who was stabbed to death while waiting for a bus on the evening of 22 April 1993....
, by assailants that have yet to be convicted, led to an outcry from the community and calls to investigate police conduct. The subsequent government inquiry, the Macpherson Report, was vigorously sought by Stephen's Jamaican-born parents and revealed evidence of institutional racism
Institutional racism
Institutional racism describes any kind of system of inequality based on race. It can occur in institutions such as public government bodies, private business corporations , and universities . The term was coined by Black Power activist Stokely Carmichael in the late 1960s...
in the London Metropolitan Police Service
Metropolitan Police Service
The Metropolitan Police Service is the territorial police force responsible for Greater London, excluding the "square mile" of the City of London which is the responsibility of the City of London Police...
, confirming the beliefs of many Black Britons.
The community has suffered from an increasing association with gun-crime, heightened by high profile murders, such as that of two young women shot outside a Birmingham hair salon in 2003. Several media outlets blamed a “gangster rap culture” in the community, though Assistant Chief Constable Nick Tofiluk of the West Midlands Police
West Midlands Police
West Midlands Police is the territorial police force responsible for policing the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England.Covering an area with nearly 2.6 million inhabitants, which includes the cities of Birmingham, Coventry, Wolverhampton and also the Black Country; the force is made up...
believed that the use of firearms is not an Afro-Caribbean issue alone, and has been on the rise throughout British society. Tensions between African-Caribbean residents and British Asian
British Asian
British Asian is a term used to describe British citizens who descended from mainly South Asia, also known as South Asians in the United Kingdom...
s in a number of regions have led to confrontations, notably violent disturbances in Birmingham in 2005
2005 Birmingham riots
The Birmingham riots of 2005 occurred on two consecutive nights on Saturday 22 October and Sunday 23 October 2005 in the Lozells area of Birmingham, England. The riots were derived from racial tensions between the Black British and British Asian communities, with the spark for the riot being an...
where groups from both communities fought and rioted over two nights. There is also evidence of tensions between the African-Caribbean community and the growing number of African immigrants.
Some African-Caribbean people have left the UK, seeking a better life abroad, either back in the Caribbean or America. However, the Caribbean community in Britain is also becoming increasingly integrated. In 2009, 1.2 per cent of British children under 16 were Black Caribbean but nearly as many – 1.1 per cent – were Mixed White and Black Caribbean. Among those children who were living with at least one Caribbean parent, only one in five were living with two Caribbean parents.
Statistics
United Kingdom Census 2001
A nationwide census, known as Census 2001, was conducted in the United Kingdom on Sunday, 29 April 2001. This was the 20th UK Census and recorded a resident population of 58,789,194....
, 565,876 people classified themselves in the category 'Black Caribbean', amounting to around 1 per cent of the total population. Of the 'minority ethnic' population, which amounted to 7.9 per cent of the total UK population, Black Caribbeans accounted for 12.2 per cent. In addition, 14.6 per cent of the minority ethnic population (equivalent to 1.2 per cent of the total population) identified as mixed race, of whom one third stated that they were of mixed white and Black Caribbean descent. In 2001, 61 per cent of the Black Caribbean group lived in London.
The Census also records respondents' countries of birth and the 2001 Census recorded 146,401 people born in Jamaica, 21,601 from Barbados, 21,283 from Trinidad and Tobago, 20,872 from Guyana, 9,783 from Grenada, 8,265 from Saint Lucia, 7,983 from Montserrat, 7,091 from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, 6,739 from Dominica, 6,519 from Saint Kitts and Nevis, 3,891 from Antigua and Barbuda, and 498 from Anguilla.
GCSEs
In 2007, 49% of black Caribbean pupils achieved five or more GCSEs at grades A* to C. Compared to just 44% in 2006. 56% of girls achieved five or more GCSEs at A*-C, with 42% of boys doing the same.The community
Community centre
Community centres or community centers or jumping recreation centers are public locations where members of a community tend to gather for group activities, social support, public information, and other purposes. They may sometimes be open for the whole community or for a specialised group within...
s and associations sprung up in some British towns and cities with an aim to serve African-Caribbean populations. One such example was the African Caribbean Self Help Organisation (ACSHO) which was formed in 1964 in the district of Handsworth
Handsworth, West Midlands
Handsworth is an inner city area of Birmingham in the West Midlands, England. The Local Government Act 1894 divided the ancient Staffordshire parish of Handsworth into two urban districts: Handsworth and Perry Barr. Handsworth was annexed to the county borough of Birmingham in Warwickshire in 1911...
in Birmingham. These centres have often addressed issues that rise within the community, including perceived problems of police harassment
Sus law
In England and Wales, the sus law was the informal name for a stop and search law that permitted a police officer to stop, search and potentially arrest people on suspicion of them being in breach of section 4 of the Vagrancy Act 1824.-1824 legislation:The power to act on "sus" was found in part...
and concerns about the housing of Black people, which was viewed as discriminatory during the early decades of mass immigration. The centres also allowed African-Caribbean peoples to socialise without risking the potential racial discrimination and aggression of "unfriendly pubs
Public house
A public house, informally known as a pub, is a drinking establishment fundamental to the culture of Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. There are approximately 53,500 public houses in the United Kingdom. This number has been declining every year, so that nearly half of the smaller...
". Many of these associations appointed a Community Relations Officer whose role was to liaise between the community and wider British society including the establishment
The Establishment
The Establishment is a term used to refer to a visible dominant group or elite that holds power or authority in a nation. The term suggests a closed social group which selects its own members...
. Other responsibilities included arranging social events, such as festival
Festival
A festival or gala is an event, usually and ordinarily staged by a local community, which centers on and celebrates some unique aspect of that community and the Festival....
s, carnivals and coach trips, which helped bring the communities together. Typical of present day centres is The Afro Caribbean Millennium Centre in Birmingham which was established with National Lottery
National Lottery (United Kingdom)
The National Lottery is the state-franchised national lottery in the United Kingdom and the Isle of Man.It is operated by Camelot Group, to whom the licence was granted in 1994, 2001 and again in 2007. The lottery is regulated by the National Lottery Commission, and was established by the then...
funding to support principally Caribbean people in areas like employment, housing, education, immigration, and cultural issues.
Although the community does not face any official or informal restrictions on political participation
Participation (decision making)
Participation in social science refers to different mechanisms for the public to express opinions - and ideally exert influence - regarding political, economic, management or other social decisions. Participatory decision making can take place along any realm of human social activity, including...
, Britons of Caribbean origin are nonetheless under-represented in local and national politics
Politics of the United Kingdom
The politics of the United Kingdom takes place within the framework of a constitutional monarchy, in which the Monarch is the head of state and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is the head of government...
. However there have been some successes with Diane Abbott being the first black person elected to Parliament under Labour and Linda C Douglas being the first black person to be part of the Labour party National Executive Committee
National Executive Committee
The National Executive Committee or NEC is the chief administrative body of the UK Labour Party. Its composition has changed over the years, and includes representatives of affiliated trade unions, the Parliamentary Labour Party and European Parliamentary Labour Party, Constituency Labour Parties,...
representing the now expelled Militant tendency
Militant Tendency
The Militant tendency was an entrist group within the British Labour Party based around the Militant newspaper that was first published in 1964...
. British African-West Indians have long asserted that they encounter discriminatory barriers to most middle and higher status occupations, as well as discrimination in hiring practices at all levels of employment
Employment
Employment is a contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee. An employee may be defined as:- Employee :...
. There is also considerable evidence that African-Caribbean people experience differential treatment at the hands of public officials, the British courts
Courts of the United Kingdom
The Courts of the United Kingdom are separated into three separate jurisidictions, the Courts of England and Wales, Courts of Scotland and the Courts of Northern Ireland, as the United Kingdom does not have a single unified judicial system....
and penal system, and the police
Policing in the United Kingdom
Law enforcement in the United Kingdom is organised separately in each of the legal systems of the United Kingdom: England & Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland ....
. Studies have proposed that the isolation of certain regional urban areas by financial institutions such as insurance
Insurance
In law and economics, insurance is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent, uncertain loss. Insurance is defined as the equitable transfer of the risk of a loss, from one entity to another, in exchange for payment. An insurer is a company selling the...
brokers disproportionately affects the community to its detriment.
Britain's school system
Education in the United Kingdom
Education in the United Kingdom is a devolved matter with each of the countries of the United Kingdom having separate systems under separate governments: the UK Government is responsible for England, and the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Executive are...
, despite efforts to address issues of discrimination, has often been accused of racism through undermining the self-confidence of all Black children and maligning the culture of their parents. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, a disproportionate number of Caribbean migrant children were classified as 'educationally subnormal' and placed in special schools and units. By the end of the 1980s, the chances of white school leavers finding employment were four times better than those of Black pupils. In 2000–01, Black pupils were three times more likely than white pupils and ten times more likely than Indian
British Asian
British Asian is a term used to describe British citizens who descended from mainly South Asia, also known as South Asians in the United Kingdom...
pupils to be officially excluded from school for disciplinary reasons. These chronic problems have contributed to the group being disproportionately at the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum and thus have continued to face challenging social problems into the 21st century.
Carnivals
African-Caribbean communities organise and participate in Caribbean Carnivals (Caribbean style carnivals) throughout the UK. The best known of these is the annual Notting Hill CarnivalNotting Hill Carnival
The Notting Hill Carnival is an annual event which since 1964 has taken place on the streets of Notting Hill, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea , London, UK each August, over two days...
, attracting up to 1.5 million people from Britain and around the world, making it the largest street festival in Europe. This is Local London. The carnival began in 1964 as a small procession of Trinidadians in memory of festivals in their home country.
Leeds West Indian Carnival
Leeds West Indian Carnival
The Leeds Carnival, also called the Leeds West Indian Carnival or the Chapeltown Carnival, is the longest running West Indian carnival in Europe, having been going since 1967. The carnival is held in the Chapeltown and Harehills parts of Leeds every August bank holiday weekend...
is Europe's oldest West Indian carnival and now attracts around 130,000 people.
Other carnivals include the Leicester Caribbean Carnival and the Birmingham International Carnival.
Food
Grocer
A grocer is a bulk seller of food. Beginning as early as the 14th century, a grocer was a dealer in comestible dry goods such as spices, pepper, sugar, and cocoa, tea and coffee...
s specialising in Caribbean produce opened in British high streets
High Street
High Street, or the High Street, is a metonym for the generic name of the primary business street of towns or cities, especially in the United Kingdom. It is usually a focal point for shops and retailers in city centres, and is most often used in reference to retailing...
. Caribbean restaurants can now also be found in most areas of Britain where West Indian communities reside, serving traditional Caribbean dishes
Caribbean cuisine
Caribbean cuisine is a fusion of African, Amerindian, British, Spanish, French, Dutch, Indian, and Chinese cuisine. These traditions were brought from the many homelands of this region's population...
such as curried goat, fried dumpling
Dumpling
Dumplings are cooked balls of dough. They are based on flour, potatoes or bread, and may include meat, fish, vegetables, or sweets. They may be cooked by boiling, steaming, simmering, frying, or baking. They may have a filling, or there may be other ingredients mixed into the dough. Dumplings may...
s, ackee
Ackee
The ackee, also known as the vegetable brain, achee, akee apple or akee is a member of the Sapindaceae , native to tropical West Africa in Cameroon, Gabon, São Tomé and Príncipe, Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo.It is...
and salt fish
Dried and salted cod
Dried and salted cod, often called salt cod or clipfish , is cod which has been preserved by drying after salting. Cod which has been dried without the addition of salt is called stockfish....
(the national dish of Jamaica), Pelau (the national dish of Trinidad and Tobago), (Cou-Cou and Flying Fish the national dish of Barbados), Pudding and Souse, as well as another tasty delicacy known as Fish Cakes from Barbados. The spices known as "jerk
Jamaican jerk spice
Jerk is a style of cooking native to Jamaica in which meat is dry-rubbed or wet marinated with a very hot spice mixture called Jamaican jerk spice. Jerk seasoning is traditionally applied to pork and chicken. Modern recipes also apply jerk spice mixes to fish, shrimp, shellfish, beef, sausage,...
" and the traditional Sunday West Indian meal of rice and peas
Rice and peas
Rice and Peas also called Moros de guandules con coco in the Dominican Republic.-Dominican Republic:Moros de guandules con coco is a traditional coconut rice and pigeon pea dish served on Christmas. Moros in Dominican cuisine is very similar to Jamaican rice and peas...
The best known Caribbean food brands in the UK are Dunn's River, Jamaican Sunpride, Walkerswood and Grace Foods. Grace Foods is originally from Jamaica but is now a multi national conglomerate. In March 2007 Grace Foods bought ENCO Products, owners of the Dunn's River Brand, as well as "Nurishment", a flavoured, sweetened enriched milk drink, and the iconic Encona Sauce Range. Jamaican Sunpride products and ingredients have been widely available in the UK for over 10 years and has a sister brand of Jamaica Supreme with products mainly sourced from the Caribbean. Walkerswood is a Jamaican co-operative which has a range of sauces and marinades product. Jonathan Perry Bowens has added numerous ranges to this sector through his enviable ability in R & D. His most well known product range being Jamaican Sun.
Religion
The influx of African-Caribbeans to the United Kingdom was accompanied by religious practices more common to the North American continent. In Britain, many African-Caribbeans continued to practice Non-conformist Protestant denominationsProtestantism
Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...
with an Evangelical
Evangelicalism
Evangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s and gained popularity in the United States during the series of Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th century.Its key commitments are:...
influence such as Pentecostalism
Pentecostalism
Pentecostalism is a diverse and complex movement within Christianity that places special emphasis on a direct personal experience of God through the baptism in the Holy Spirit, has an eschatological focus, and is an experiential religion. The term Pentecostal is derived from Pentecost, the Greek...
and Seventh Day Baptism
Seventh Day Baptist
Seventh Day Baptists are Christian Baptists who observe Sabbath on the seventh-day of the week in accord with their understanding of the Biblical Sabbath for the Judeo-Christian tradition...
. African-Caribbeans have supported new churches in many areas of the country, which have grown to act as social centres for the community. The manner of worship in some of these churches is more akin to that of African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
practices, than to traditional English Catholic
Roman Catholicism in Great Britain
Roman Catholicism in the United Kingdom refers to the practice of Roman Catholicism in Great Britain and Ireland since the creation of the United Kingdom....
or Anglican
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
liturgy. Gospel music
Gospel music
Gospel music is music that is written to express either personal, spiritual or a communal belief regarding Christian life, as well as to give a Christian alternative to mainstream secular music....
also came to play a part in British cultural life. African-Caribbeans played a central role establishing British gospel choirs, most notably the London Community Gospel Choir
London Community Gospel Choir
The London Community Gospel Choir is a successful gospel choir located in the United Kingdom.-History:The London Community Gospel Choir was founded in 1982 by the Reverend Bazil Meade with the assistance of Lawrence Johnson, Delroy Powell and John Francis.Initially the idea was for a single concert...
.
Some British African-Caribbeans continue to practice other religious beliefs such as the Rastafari movement
Rastafari movement
The Rastafari movement or Rasta is a new religious movement that arose in the 1930s in Jamaica, which at the time was a country with a predominantly Christian culture where 98% of the people were the black descendants of slaves. Its adherents worship Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia , as God...
, which developed in Jamaica. The Rastafarian belief system, associated personal symbols such as dreadlocks
Dreadlocks
Dreadlocks, also called locks, a ras, dreads, "rasta" or Jata , are matted coils of hair. Dreadlocks are usually intentionally formed; because of the variety of different hair textures, various methods are used to encourage the formation of locks such as backcombing...
and cultural practices concerning cannabis
Cannabis
Cannabis is a genus of flowering plants that includes three putative species, Cannabis sativa, Cannabis indica, and Cannabis ruderalis. These three taxa are indigenous to Central Asia, and South Asia. Cannabis has long been used for fibre , for seed and seed oils, for medicinal purposes, and as a...
have influenced British society far beyond the African-Caribbean community, being adopted by both indigenous Britons and others.
There are around 40,000 African-Caribbean Muslims in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, 30,000 of those reside in London. Muslims of African-Caribbean origins are found in British major cities and town. Some of them, especially those from African countries like Nigeria, Uganda and Sierra Leone are more likely to be born to Muslim families while many, particularly the Caribbean Muslims converted to Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
in various circumstances including marriage and in prison.
Language and dialect
EnglishEnglish language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
is the official language
English-speaking world
The English-speaking world consists of those countries or regions that use the English language to one degree or another. For more information, please see:Lists:* List of countries by English-speaking population...
of the former British West Indies, therefore African-Caribbean immigrants had few communication difficulties upon arrival in Britain compared to immigrants from other regions. Nevertheless, indigenous Britons were generally unused to the distinct Caribbean dialects
Caribbean English
Caribbean English is a broad term for the dialects of the English language spoken in the Caribbean, most countries on the Caribbean coast of Central America, and Guyana. Caribbean English is influenced by the English-based Creole varieties spoken in the region, but they are not the same. In the...
, creoles
English-based creole languages
An English-based creole language is a creole language that was significantly influenced by the English language...
and patois
Patois
Patois is any language that is considered nonstandard, although the term is not formally defined in linguistics. It can refer to pidgins, creoles, dialects, and other forms of native or local speech, but not commonly to jargon or slang, which are vocabulary-based forms of cant...
(patwah) spoken by many African-Caribbean immigrants and their descendants, which would be particularly problematic in the field of education. In a study by language and education specialist Viv Edwards, The West Indian language issue in British schools, language – the Creole spoken by the students – was singled out as an important factor disadvantaging Caribbean children in British schools. The study cites negative attitudes of teachers towards any non-standard variety noting that;
As integration continued, African-West Indians born in Britain instinctively adopted hybrid dialects combining Caribbean and local British dialects. These dialects and accents gradually entered mainstream British vernacular, and shades of Caribbean dialects can be heard amongst Britons regardless of cultural origin. A Lancaster University
Lancaster University
Lancaster University, officially The University of Lancaster, is a leading research-intensive British university in Lancaster, Lancashire, England. The university was established by Royal Charter in 1964 and initially based in St Leonard's Gate until moving to a purpose-built 300 acre campus at...
study identified an emergence in certain areas of Britain of a distinctive accent which borrows heavily from Jamaican creole, lifting some words unchanged. This phenomenon, disparagingly named "Jafaican" meaning 'fake Jamaican', was famously parodied by comedian Sacha Baron Cohen
Sacha Baron Cohen
Sacha Noam Baron Cohen is an English stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and voice artist. He is most widely known for his portrayal of three unorthodox fictional characters: Ali G, Borat, and Brüno...
through his character Ali G
Ali G
Ali G is a satirical fictional character invented and performed by English comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. Originally appearing on Channel 4's Eleven O'Clock show, Ali G is the title character of Channel 4's Da Ali G Show, original episodes of which aired in 2000 and on HBO in 2003–2004, and is the...
.
Theatre, television and mainstream cinema
The 1970s saw the emergence of independent filmmakers such as Trinidadian-born Horace OveHorace Ove
Horace Ové Horace Ové Horace Ové (born 1939, Trinidad, is a British filmmaker, painter and writer and one of the leading black independent film-makers to emerge in Britain since the post-war period....
, the director of Pressure, among others. London's Talawa Theatre Company
Talawa Theatre Company
The Talawa Theatre Company was founded in London in 1985 by Jamaican born Yvonne Brewster, Mona Hammond, Carmen Munroe and Inigo Espejel, becoming the UK's most prominent black theatre company...
was founded in the 1985 by Jamaican-born Yvonne Brewster
Yvonne Brewster
Yvonne Brewster, O.B.E. is a stage director, teacher and writer.Born in Jamaica, Yvonne Brewster went to the UK to study drama in the mid-fifties at the Rose Bruford College and the Royal Academy of Music...
, their first production being based on C.L.R. James's historical account of the Haitian Revolution
Haitian Revolution
The Haitian Revolution was a period of conflict in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, which culminated in the elimination of slavery there and the founding of the Haitian republic...
, The Black Jacobins
The Black Jacobins
The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution , by Afro-Trinidadian writer C. L. R. James , is a history of the 1791-1804 Haitian Revolution...
. Since the 1980s, the Blue Mountain Theatre
Blue Mountain Theatre
Blue Mountain Theatre is a theatre company created in London in 1989 to provide theatre pieces for black British audiences.Influenced by the thriving theatrical community in Jamaica, the group attempted to perform pieces that would serves as a social event rather than what they viewed as...
's productions have offered a more earthy style of populist comedy, often bringing over Jamaican artists such as Oliver Samuels
Oliver Samuels
Oliver Adolphus Samuels is a Jamaican comedian and actor. He is often described as the Jamaican "King of Comedy" performing both stand up and comic theatre.-Career:...
.
While Guyanese
Guyana
Guyana , officially the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, previously the colony of British Guiana, is a sovereign state on the northern coast of South America that is culturally part of the Anglophone Caribbean. Guyana was a former colony of the Dutch and of the British...
actor Robert Adams
Robert Adams (actor)
Robert Adams was a British actor of stage and screen. He was the founder and director of the Negro Repertory Arts Theatre, one of the first professional black theatre companies in Britain.-Early years:...
became the first African-Caribbean dramatic actor to appear on British television on 11 May 1938 (in a production of Eugene O'Neill
Eugene O'Neill
Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish...
's play The Emperor Jones
The Emperor Jones
The Emperor Jones is a 1920 play by American dramatist Eugene O'Neill which tells the tale of Brutus Jones, an African-American man who kills a man, goes to prison, escapes to a Caribbean island, and sets himself up as emperor...
), African-Caribbean entertainers were first widely popularised on British television broadcasts with the postwar resumption of BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
television in 1946 (pre-war black entertainers on the BBC - the first in the world - had primarily been African-American stars).
The profile of African-Caribbean actors on television
British television
Public television broadcasting started in the United Kingdom in 1936, and now has a collection of free and subscription services over a variety of distribution media, through which there are over 480 channelsTaking the base Sky EPG TV Channels. A breakdown is impossible due to a) the number of...
, such as Lennie James
Lennie James
Lennie James is an English actor and playwright.-Career:James attended the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, graduating in 1988...
, Judith Jacob
Judith Jacob
Judith Jacob , is a British actress best known for her role as the health visitor Carmel Roberts in the BBC soap opera EastEnders, a role she played from 1986 to 1989. During her stint in Albert Square, her character suffered from severe marital abuse and her husband's attempted murder and eventual...
and Diane Parish
Diane Parish
Diane Parish is a British actress best known for her role as Denise Johnson in the BBC Soap EastEnders and DC Eva Sharpe in The Bill.-Career:...
, has widened substantially since 1970s shows such as Love Thy Neighbour
Love Thy Neighbour
Love Thy Neighbour was a popular British sitcom, which was aired from 13 April 1972, until 22 January 1976, spanning seven series. The sitcom was produced by Thames Television and broadcast by ITV. The main cast included Jack Smethurst, Rudolph Walker, Nina Baden-Semper and Kate Williams...
(Rudolph Walker
Rudolph Walker
Rudolph Walker, OBE is a British character actor. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, Walker came to the United Kingdom in 1960....
) and Rising Damp
Rising Damp
Rising Damp is a television sitcom produced by Yorkshire Television for ITV, first broadcast from 1974 to 1978. It was adapted for television by Eric Chappell from his well-received 1971 stage play, The Banana Box The series was the highest-ranking ITV sitcom on the 100 Best Sitcoms poll run in...
(Don Warrington
Don Warrington
Don Warrington, MBE is a Trinidadian British actor.-Personal life:Warrington was born in Trinidad and Tobago on 23 May 1951 and brought up in Newcastle upon Tyne, England from age five. His father was the Trinidadian politician, Basil Kydd, who died in 1958. He has two sons.His acting career...
) when their role was often to act simply as either the butt of, or foil to, racist jokes by 'white' characters. The most influential programme in moving away from this formula was the 1989–1994 Channel Four barbershop sitcom Desmond's
Desmond's
Desmond's is a British television situation comedy broadcast by Channel 4 from 1989 to 1994. The first series was shot in 1988, with the first episode broadcast in January 1989...
, starring Norman Beaton
Norman Beaton
Norman Lugard Beaton was a Guyanese actor long resident in the United Kingdom....
and Carmen Munroe
Carmen Munroe
Carmen Munroe OBE is a British actress, born in Berbice, Guyana. Since the early 1950s she has been a resident of the UK. She made her West End stage debut in 1962 and has since played an instrumental role in the development of black British theatre and representation on small screen...
.
One of the biggest African-Caribbean names in comedy
Comedy
Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...
is Lenny Henry
Lenny Henry
Lenworth George "Lenny" Henry, is a British actor, writer, comedian and occasional television presenter.- Early life :...
, who began his career as a stand-up comedian but whose television sketch shows, where he often caricatured Caribbean émigré
Émigré
Émigré is a French term that literally refers to a person who has "migrated out", but often carries a connotation of politico-social self-exile....
s, made him popular enough to headline numerous primetime comedy shows from, for instance, Lenny Henry in 1984 to The Lenny Henry Show in 2004. The highest professional achievement by a British African-Caribbean actor to date (2006) was Marianne Jean-Baptiste
Marianne Jean-Baptiste
Marianne Raigipcien Jean-Baptiste is a British actress and singer of Antiguan and St. Lucian heritage.-Early life:...
's 1996 nominations for an Academy Award
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
(Oscar), Golden Globe
Golden Globe Award
The Golden Globe Award is an accolade bestowed by the 93 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association recognizing excellence in film and television, both domestic and foreign...
and British Academy Award
British Academy of Film and Television Arts
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts is a charity in the United Kingdom that hosts annual awards shows for excellence in film, television, television craft, video games and forms of animation.-Introduction:...
(bafta) for her feature-film debut role in Secrets & Lies.
Literature
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
James Berry was one of the first Caribbean writers to come to Britain after the 1948 British Nationality Act. He was followed by writers including Barbadians George Lamming
George Lamming
George Lamming , is a novelist and poet. He was born in Barbados and teaches at Brown University.- Early life and education :George Lamming was born on June 8, 1927 in Carrington Village, Barbados, of mixed African and English parentage. After his mother married his stepfather, Lamming split his...
and Edward Kamau Brathwaite
Edward Kamau Brathwaite
Edward Kamau Brathwaite is widely considered one of the major voices in the Caribbean literary canon. A professor of Comparative Literature at New York University, Brathwaite is the 2006 International Winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize, for his volume of poetry, Born to Slow Horses.Brathwaite...
, Trinidadians Samuel Selvon
Samuel Selvon
Samuel Selvon was a Trinidad-born writer. Selvon was educated at Naparima College, San Fernando before moving to London, England in the 1950s, and later to Alberta, Canada. He is known for novels such as The Lonely Londoners and Moses Ascending...
, CLR James
C. L. R. James
Cyril Lionel Robert James , who sometimes wrote under the pen-name J.R. Johnson, was an Afro-Trinidadian historian, journalist, socialist theorist and essayist. His works are influential in various theoretical, social, and historiographical contexts...
, Jamaican Andrew Salkey
Andrew Salkey
Andrew Salkey was a novelist, poet, freelance writer and journalist of Jamaican and Haitian origin. Salkey was born in Panama but was raised in Jamaica...
and the Guyanese writer Wilson Harris
Wilson Harris
Sir Theodore Wilson Harris is a Guyanese writer. He initially wrote poetry, but has since become a well-known novelist and essayist. His writing style is often said to be abstract and densely metaphorical, and his subject matter wide-ranging.Wilson Harris was born in New Amsterdam in what was then...
. These writers viewed London as the centre of the English literary scene, and took advantage of the BBC Radio
BBC Radio
BBC Radio is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927. For a history of BBC radio prior to 1927 see British Broadcasting Company...
show Caribbean voices to gain attention and be published. By relocating to Britain, these writers also gave Caribbean literature an international readership for the first time and established Caribbean writing as an important perspective within English literature
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
. Some Caribbean writers also began writing about the hardships faced by settlers in post-war Britain. George Lamming addressed these issues with his 1954 novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
The Emigrants, which traced the journey of migrants from Barbados as they struggled to integrate into British life. By the mid-1980s, a more radical
Extremism
Extremism is any ideology or political act far outside the perceived political center of a society; or otherwise claimed to violate common moral standards...
wave of writers and poets were addressing the African-Caribbean experience in Britain, promoted by a group of new publishing houses such as Akira, Karia, Dangaroo, and Karnak House.
In 1984, the poet Fred D'Aguiar
Fred D'Aguiar
Fred D'Aguiar is an author of poetry, novels, and drama.D'Aguiar was born in London. His parents were Guyanese. He spent his childhood, from the age of two to twelve, in Guyana. His work has received much, and growing, acclaim. His Bill of Rights, about the Jonestown Massacre of 1978, was a...
(born in London to Guyanese parents) won the T. S. Eliot Prize
T. S. Eliot Prize
The T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry is awarded by the Poetry Book Society to "the best collection of new verse in English first published in the UK or the Republic of Ireland" in any particular year. The Prize was inaugurated in 1993 in celebration of the Poetry Book Society's 40th birthday and in...
, and in 1994 won the Whitbread First Novel Award
Costa Book Awards
The Costa Book Awards are a series of literary awards given to books by authors based in Great Britain and Ireland. They were known as the Whitbread Book Awards until 2005, after which Costa Coffee, a subsidiary of Whitbread, took over sponsorship....
for The Longest Memory. Linton Kwesi Johnson
Linton Kwesi Johnson
Linton Kwesi Johnson is a UK-based dub poet. He became the second living poet, and the only black poet, to be published in the Penguin Classics series. His poetry involves the recitation of his own verse in Jamaican Patois over dub-reggae, usually written in collaboration with renowned British...
's rhyming and socio-political commentary over dub
Dub music
Dub is a genre of music which grew out of reggae music in the 1960s, and is commonly considered a subgenre, though it has developed to extend beyond the scope of reggae...
beats made him the unofficial poet laureate of the British African-Caribbean community. Another dub poet
Dub poetry
Dub poetry is a form of performance poetry of West Indian origin, which evolved out of dub music consisting of spoken word over reggae rhythms in Jamaica in the 1970s....
, Benjamin Zephaniah
Benjamin Zephaniah
Benjamin Obadiah Iqbal Zephaniah is an English writer and dub poet. He is a well-known figure in contemporary English literature, and was included in The Times list of Britain's top 50 post-war writers in 2008....
, born in Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
to Jamaican parents, overcame a spell in prison to become a well-known writer and public figure. In 2003 he declined an OBE
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
, stating that it reminded him of 'thousands of years of brutality, it reminds me of how my foremothers were raped and my forefathers brutalised'.
African-Caribbean British writers have achieved recent literary acclaim. In 2004, Andrea Levy
Andrea Levy
Andrea Levy is a British author, born in London to Jamaican parents who sailed to England on the Empire Windrush in 1948.-Identity and writings:...
's novel Small Island was the winner of the 2004 Orange Prize for Fiction
Orange Prize for Fiction
The Orange Prize for Fiction is one of the United Kingdom's most prestigious literary prizes, annually awarded to a female author of any nationality for the best original full-length novel written in English, and published in the United Kingdom in the preceding year...
, one of Britain's highest literary honours. Levy, born in London to Jamaican parents, is the author of four novels, each exploring the problems faced by Black British-born children of Jamaican emigrants. In 2006 Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith is a British novelist. To date she has written three novels. In 2003, she was included on Granta's list of 20 best young authors...
won the Orange Prize for On Beauty
On Beauty
On Beauty is a 2005 novel by British author Zadie Smith. It takes its title from an essay by Elaine Scarry . The story follows the lives of a mixed-race British/American family living in the United States...
. Smith's acclaimed first novel White Teeth
White Teeth
White Teeth is a 2000 novel by the British author Zadie Smith. It focuses on the later lives of two wartime friends—the Bangladeshi Samad Iqbal and the Englishman Archie Jones, and their families in London...
was a portrait of contemporary multicultural London, drawing from her own upbringing with an English father and a Jamaican mother.
The UK also has a modest output of African-Caribbean popular fiction. The most widely known example may be Yardie, a work of Urban fiction
Urban fiction
Urban fiction, also known as Street lit, is a literary genre set, as the name implies, in a city landscape; however, the genre is as much defined by the race and culture of its characters as the urban setting. The tone for urban fiction is usually dark, focusing on the underside...
written by Victor Headley
Victor Headley
Victor Headley is a Jamaican born British author. He is the author of the bestselling Yardie , as well as Excess Yush , Fetish , Here comes the Bride , Off Duty and Seven Seals ....
in 1992. It described the life of a Jamaican courier carrying cocaine from Jamaica to London. The book was published by Steve Pope and Dotun Adebayo
Dotun Adebayo
Oludotun Adebayo MBE is a Nigerian-born, British-based radio presenter, writer and publisher. He is best known for his work on Up All Night on BBC Radio 5 Live, as well as the obituary programme Brief Lives.- Early life :...
of Xpress books.
Media
The VoiceThe Voice (newspaper)
The Voice is a British national weekly tabloid newspaper owned by the Jamaican publisher, GV Media Group, aimed at the British Afro-Caribbean community. The paper is based in the London Docklands and is published every Monday.-History:...
newspaper was the primary African-Caribbean print media outlet in Britain, and was founded in the early 1980s by Val McCalla
Val McCalla
Val McCalla is best known as the founder of The Voice, a British weekly newspaper aimed at the Britain's black community. He founded it in 1982 as a voice for the British African-Caribbean community and black Briton people...
. Other publications have included the Gleaner
Gleaner
Gleaner may refer to:*Gleaner Company, a newspaper publishing enterprise in Jamaica.*Gleaner Manufacturing Company, a manufacturer of combine harvesters.*Gleaning, the collection of crops left over after harvest....
, Black Voice, Pride Magazine
Pride Magazine
Pride Magazine is the largest and most successful magazine targeting Afro-Caribbean women in the United Kingdom. The lifestyle magazine has been in publication since 1991...
and The Caribbean Times
The Caribbean Times
The Caribbean Times a British weekly newspaper that concentrates on news, sport and social developments in the Caribbean, providing a link for the UK's West Indian and African-Caribbean population. It is published by Ethnic Media Group Ltd and is also available online. -External links:*...
. The growth of such media is aimed to offset the perceived imbalances of 'mainstream' media. In 2006, Sir Ian Blair
Ian Blair
Ian Warwick Blair, Baron Blair of Boughton, QPM is a retired British Police officer who held the position of commissioner of police of the metropolis from 2005 to 2008 and was the highest ranking officer within the Metropolitan Police Service.On 2 October 2008 Blair announced that he would...
, the Chief Commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police, joined a long list of commentators in branding the mainstream British media as 'institutionally racist'
Institutional racism
Institutional racism describes any kind of system of inequality based on race. It can occur in institutions such as public government bodies, private business corporations , and universities . The term was coined by Black Power activist Stokely Carmichael in the late 1960s...
for its alleged failure to offer a proper balance in reporting affairs related to the community.
Trinidad-born Sir Trevor McDonald
Trevor McDonald
Sir Trevor McDonald OBE is a Trinidadian-British newsreader and journalist. He had a long career as a news presenter with ITN...
is one of the community's best-known journalists, having been the main presenter (newscaster) for the national ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
network for over twenty years. Other notable media figures include Gary Younge
Gary Younge
Gary Younge is a British journalist, author and broadcaster, born to immigrant parents from Barbados....
, The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
columnist, and Moira Stuart
Moira Stuart
Moira Clare Ruby Stuart OBE is a British journalist who was the first African-Caribbean female newsreader on British television...
, the veteran BBC news presenter. Trinidadian-born Darcus Howe
Darcus Howe
Darcus Howe is a British broadcaster, writer, and civil liberties campaigner. Originally from Trinidad, he moved to America in the 1960s, then arrived in England intending to study law, where he joined the British Black Panthers, the first such branch of the organization outside the United States...
has written in New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
and fronted a number of documentary series including the Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
current affairs programme Devil's Advocate. Much of Howe's work is related to the experiences of British African-Caribbeans and racism in wider British society. Other notable producer/directors are Terry Jervis (Jervis Media) and Pogus Caesar
Pogus Caesar
Pogus Caesar is a British artist, television producer and director. He was born in St Kitts, West Indies, and grew up in Birmingham, England.-History:...
(Windrush Productions); both have made multicultural, entertainment and sports programmes for Carlton TV, BBC TV and Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
.
The community has a strong tradition of 'underground' 'pirate radio
Pirate radio
Pirate radio is illegal or unregulated radio transmission. The term is most commonly used to describe illegal broadcasting for entertainment or political purposes, but is also sometimes used for illegal two-way radio operation...
' broadcasters, the most established being London's Lightning Radio, Genesis Radio and Galaxy Radio which play a mix of ragga
Ragga
-Origins:Ragga originated in Jamaica during the 1980s, at the same time that electronic dance music's popularity was increasing globally. One of the reasons for ragga's swift propagation is that it is generally easier and less expensive to produce than reggae performed on traditional musical...
, reggae
Reggae
Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...
, bashment
Dancehall
Dancehall is a genre of Jamaican popular music that originated in the late 1970s. Initially dancehall was a more sparse version of reggae than the roots style, which had dominated much of the 1970s. In the mid-1980s, digital instrumentation became more prevalent, changing the sound considerably,...
, hip hop
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...
and R&B
Rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...
. 'pirate radio
Pirate radio
Pirate radio is illegal or unregulated radio transmission. The term is most commonly used to describe illegal broadcasting for entertainment or political purposes, but is also sometimes used for illegal two-way radio operation...
' stations like Supreme, Galaxy and Genesis Radio are particularly highly regarded in the Afro Caribbean community for not only playing a variety of music such as Soca, Soul, dancehall, Jazz, Hip Hop, Reveail and Funky House, but also for dedicating time to have talk shows and information shows often taking an uncompromising stance in view. Thus giving the community the opportunity to phone in and participate in an array of subjects that mainstream radio and media refuse to address.
In 1996, Choice FM
Choice FM
Choice FM, branded on-air as London's Choice, is a brand used by the UK's biggest radio company, Global Radio for its network of black music radio stations...
received a licence to broadcast in London and Birmingham with a remit to serve the musical tastes of the African-Caribbean community. Sadly, after being bought by PLC (which owns pop station Capital Radio) and more recently Global taking the ownership of the station, many feel that Choice FM has sold out and no longer reflects the community. This is demonstrated by the sacking of talk show host Geoff Schumann. In an article Geoff Schumann said "When I was on Choice, my show– a talk show– had an audience that was higher than any of the station’s other shows, and yet I was told, by a white man, that my style wouldn’t fit in with the station’s future plans. Generally speaking, a radio show with high ratings is usually the show that a station will keep. But when you want to create the impression that all black people want to do is listen to music, you sack the host that does the talking!” http://www.voice-online.co.uk/content.php?show=13728
The people from the Afro-Caribbean community with a sense of identity, dignity and pride have abandoned Choice FM, often criticizing the misrepresentation of the music and the general undermining of not only Afro-Caribbean people, but all black people of African ancestry. http://www.voice-online.co.uk/content.php?show=17687
As a result, many black activists have campaigned tirelessly for the state to stop attacking black 'pirate radio
Pirate radio
Pirate radio is illegal or unregulated radio transmission. The term is most commonly used to describe illegal broadcasting for entertainment or political purposes, but is also sometimes used for illegal two-way radio operation...
' stations like Power Jam(now deceased) Galaxy Radio and Genesis Radio, as they are the only voice many of the Afro-Caribbean community feel they have to discus issues that concern them; other than just promoting Urban music like what Choice FM has become.
"The thing with me is that I’m not afraid to call myself black. I’m black— I’m not urban.” - Geoff Schumann. Presently Geoff Schumann now hosts a talk show on a popular west London 'pirate radio
Pirate radio
Pirate radio is illegal or unregulated radio transmission. The term is most commonly used to describe illegal broadcasting for entertainment or political purposes, but is also sometimes used for illegal two-way radio operation...
' station with the same format that he had on Choice FM, before the only black owned legal station was sold.
In 2002, the BBC established its digital broadcasting strand 'BBC Radio 1Xtra
BBC Radio 1Xtra
BBC Radio 1Xtra is a digital radio station in the United Kingdom from the BBC specialising in new black music, sometimes referred to as urban music. Launched at 18:00 on 16 August 2002, it had been codenamed Network X during the consulation period and is the sister station to BBC Radio 1...
' to focus on new Black music - which in effect means catering to the tastes of the country's African-Caribbean youth. The Internet has afforded the community the opportunity to publish en-masse, and there are now thousands of websites and blogs produced by or for African-Caribbeans in the UK such as the BBC's Family History page, and The African-Caribbean Network, Blacknet UK, launched in 1996.
Visual arts
Eddie Chambers
Edward "Eddie" Chambers is an American heavyweight boxer fighting out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.-Professional career:Eddie started boxing professionally in 2000 at the age of 18...
. Chambers, along with Donald Rodney
Donald Rodney
Donald Gladstone Rodney was a British artist. He was a leading figure in Britain's BLK Art Group of the 1980s and became recognised as "one of the most innovative and versatile artists of his generation." Rodney's work appropriated images from the mass media, art and popular culture to explore...
, Marlene Smith
Marlene Smith
Marlene Smith was a Canadian figure skater who competed in both pairs and ladies singles. In pairs, she won the gold medal at the Canadian Figure Skating Championships with partner Donald Gilchrist in 1949 and 1950...
and curator, artist, critic and academic Keith Piper
Keith Piper (artist)
Keith Piper is a British artist, curator, critic and academic. He was a founder member of the BLK Art Group, an association of black British art students, mostly based in the West Midlands region of the UK. His work explores multi-media elements such as tape/slide, sound and video within an...
, founded the BLK Art Group
BLK Art Group
The BLK Art Group was the name chosen in 1982 by a group of four influential conceptual artists, painters, sculptors and installation artists based in the United Kingdom...
in 1982, when they were initially based in the West Midlands
West Midlands conurbation
The West Midlands conurbation is the name given to the large conurbation that includes the cities of Birmingham and Wolverhampton and the large towns of Dudley, Walsall, West Bromwich, Solihull, Stourbridge, Halesowen in the English West Midlands....
. According to Chambers, significant artists such as the Guyanese-born painters Aubrey Williams
Aubrey Williams
Aubrey Williams was a prominent artist and art lecturer in the United Kingdom.Williams was educated and worked in the Civil Service...
and Frank Bowling
Frank Bowling
Richard Sheridan Franklin Bowling [Frank Bowling] OBE is a Guyana born British artist and is widely considered to be one of the most distinguished artists to emerge from post-war British art schools...
and the Jamaican sculptor Ronald Moody
Ronald Moody
Ronald Moody was a Jamaican born sculptor, specialising in wood carvings.Moody was born Ronald Clive Moody in 1900 in Kingston, Jamaica into a well-off professional family, moving to London in 1923 to study dentistry at King's College London. In London, he was inspired by the British Museum's...
initially found that, despite achieving worldwide renown, it was difficult to find acceptance in the highest echelons of the art establishment. Chambers worked with Donald Rodney
Donald Rodney
Donald Gladstone Rodney was a British artist. He was a leading figure in Britain's BLK Art Group of the 1980s and became recognised as "one of the most innovative and versatile artists of his generation." Rodney's work appropriated images from the mass media, art and popular culture to explore...
and Sonia Boyce
Sonia Boyce
Sonia Dawn Boyce,MBE born in London in 1962 is a British Afro-Caribbean artist, living and working in London. She studied at Stourbridge College in the West Midlands. She works across a range of media including photography, installation and text. She came to prominence as part of the Black British...
, both of whose work is represented in the permanent collections of the London's Tate Britain
Tate Britain
Tate Britain is an art gallery situated on Millbank in London, and part of the Tate gallery network in Britain, with Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is the oldest gallery in the network, opening in 1897. It houses a substantial collection of the works of J. M. W. Turner.-History:It...
museum. In 1986 the Hayward Gallery
Hayward Gallery
The Hayward Gallery is an art gallery within the Southbank Centre, part of an area of major arts venues on the South Bank of the River Thames, in central London, England. It is sited adjacent to the other Southbank Centre buildings and also the Royal National Theatre and British Film Institute...
presented the exhibition 'The Other Story' that provided a survey of African-Caribbean, African and Asian artists working in the UK.
Other African-Caribbean artists of note include Faisal Abdu'allah
Faisal Abdu'allah
Faisal Abdu'allah is a British artist and barber. His work includes photography, screen print and installations.-Life and work:...
of Jamaican heritage, Guyanan-born Ingrid Pollard
Ingrid Pollard
Ingrid Pollard is a British artist and photographer. Her work uses portraiture photography and traditional landscape imagery to explore social constructs such as Britishness or racial difference. Pollard is associated with Autograph, the Association of Black Photographers...
, British-based Jamaican painter Eugene Palmer
Eugene Palmer
Eugene Palmer is a Jamaican born British artist. His work uses archival records, photographs, and contemporary media imagery as basis for his paintings. Palmer has had a long association with art curators and exhibitors Eddie Chambers and Keith Piper and is recognised as one of the leading Black...
, the sculptor George 'Fowokan' Kelly
George 'Fowokan' Kelly
George 'Fowokan' Kelly is a visual artist who lives in Britain and exhibits using the name 'Fowokan' . Fowokan's work is full of the ambivalence he sees in the deep-rooted spiritual and mental conflict between the African and the European...
and Tam Joseph
Tam Joseph
Tam Joseph is a British painter, printmaker and sculptor. One of his best known paintings is his 1983 work "Spirit of the Carnival", a reference to the Notting Hill Carnival....
, whose 1983 work Spirit of Carnival was a vivid depiction of the Notting Hill Carnival. The movement was also part of the impetus that led to the founding of the Association of Black Photographers
Association of Black Photographers
The Association of Black Photographers is a British based, international, non-profit-making, photographic arts agency...
by Mark Sealy. In 1999 the filmmaker Steve McQueen
Steve McQueen (artist)
Steve Rodney McQueen CBE is a British artist and filmmaker. He is a winner of the Golden Camera at the Cannes Film Festival, a Turner Prize and BAFTA.-Early years:...
(not to be confused with the Hollywood filmstar) won Britain's most prestigious art prize, the Turner Prize
Turner Prize
The Turner Prize, named after the painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist under the age of 50. Awarding the prize is organised by the Tate gallery and staged at Tate Britain. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the United Kingdom's most publicised...
, for his video "Deadpan". The artist and producer Pogus Caesar
Pogus Caesar
Pogus Caesar is a British artist, television producer and director. He was born in St Kitts, West Indies, and grew up in Birmingham, England.-History:...
was commissioned by Artangel to direct a film based on McQueen's work. Forward Ever - Backward Never was premiered at Lumiere in London 2002. Caesar has also established the OOM Gallery Archives, based in Birmingham, which has in excess of 14,000 images including photographs of contemporary Black British
Black British
Black British is a term used to describe British people of Black African descent, especially those of Afro-Caribbean background. The term has been used from the 1950s to refer to Black people from former British colonies in the West Indies and Africa, who are residents of the United Kingdom and...
culture.
Academia
There are a number of African-Caribbean academics who are especially prominent in the arts and humanities. Professor Paul GilroyPaul Gilroy
-Biography:Born in the East End of London to Guyanese and English parents , he was educated at University College School and obtained his bachelor's degree at Sussex University in 1978. He moved from there to Birmingham University where he completed his Ph.D...
, of Guyanese/English heritage, is one of Britain's leading academics, having taught sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
at Harvard
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
as well as Goldsmiths College
Goldsmiths College
Goldsmiths, University of London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom which specialises in the arts, humanities and social sciences, and a constituent college of the federal University of London. It was founded in 1891 as Goldsmiths' Technical and Recreative Institute...
and the London School of Economics
London School of Economics
The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...
. The Jamaican-born cultural theorist Professor Stuart Hall
Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)
Stuart Hall is a cultural theorist and sociologist who has lived and worked in the United Kingdom since 1951. Hall, along with Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams, was one of the founding figures of the school of thought that is now known as British Cultural Studies or The Birmingham School of...
has also been a highly influential British intellectual
Intellectual
An intellectual is a person who uses intelligence and critical or analytical reasoning in either a professional or a personal capacity.- Terminology and endeavours :"Intellectual" can denote four types of persons:...
since the 1960s. Dr. Robert Beckford
Robert Beckford
Robert Beckford is a British academic theologian and a reader in black theology and popular culture at Oxford Brookes University, whose documentaries for both the BBC and Channel 4 have caused controversy and debate among the Christian and British religious community.-Biography:Beckford was born...
has presented several national television and radio documentaries exploring African-Caribbean history, culture and religion. Other prominent academics include Guyanese born Professor Gus John, who has been active in education, schooling and political radicalism in Britain’s inner cities such as Manchester, Birmingham and London since the 1960s. He was involved in the organising the 'Black people's day of action' a response to the 1981 New Cross Fire
New Cross Fire
The New Cross Fire was a devastating house fire which killed 13 young black people during a birthday party in New Cross, southeast London on Sunday 18 January 1981...
. In 1989 he was appointed Director of Education in Hackney and was the first black person to hold such a position. He has also worked as an education consultant in Europe, the Caribbean and Africa. Gus John was the co-ordinator of the Black Parents Movement in Manchester, founded the Education for Liberation book service and helped to organise the International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books in Manchester, London and Bradford. He has worked in a number of University settings, including a visiting Faculty Professor of Education at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow and is currently an associate professor of the Institute of Education at the University of London
University of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...
. Dr 'William' Lez Henry works with young people, particularly black boys. He is the founder of Black Liberation Afrikan Knowledge (BLK Friday) a platform for people to give presentations to the community. In 2005, he received an Excellence In Education Award at the Challenging The Genius: Excellent Education for Children: “Our Future is Not a dream”, Conference in Chicago, USA. He is one of the foundering members of the National Independent Education Coalition (NIEC). Currently he hosts a fortnightly Talk show on a popular London 'Pirate Radio
Pirate radio
Pirate radio is illegal or unregulated radio transmission. The term is most commonly used to describe illegal broadcasting for entertainment or political purposes, but is also sometimes used for illegal two-way radio operation...
' station Galaxy 99.5 FM or http://www.galaxyafiwe.com/ and who is also a former lecturer of Goldsmiths College
Goldsmiths College
Goldsmiths, University of London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom which specialises in the arts, humanities and social sciences, and a constituent college of the federal University of London. It was founded in 1891 as Goldsmiths' Technical and Recreative Institute...
, and Prof. Harry Goldbourne, a former member of the radical group the Black Unity and Freedom Party
Black Unity and Freedom Party
In politics and history the Black Unity and Freedom Party was a political organisation which was part of Britain's Black Power and Radical left movements.-Birth:...
, who went on to teach at the University of the South Bank
London South Bank University
London South Bank University is a university in south London. With over 25,000 students and 1,700 staff, it is based in the London Borough of Southwark, near the South Bank of the River Thames, from which it takes its name...
. Although there are hundreds of African-Caribbean teachers in the UK, it has been suggested that their under-representation in inner-city schools is a major factor in the failure, particularly of secondary-level schools, to achieve a satisfactory average of achievement for the community's children (see Bernard Coard
Bernard Coard
Winston Bernard Coard was Grenadian Deputy Prime Minister in the People's Revolutionary Government of the New Jewel Movement, who placed Maurice Bishop under house arrest and took control of the government on 14 October 1983....
and the Swann Report of 1985). Though research by the Longitudinal Survey of Young People in England in 2011 showed that 66 per cent of those from Black African backgrounds went on to university, compared to an average of 59 per cent of British Asian
British Asian
British Asian is a term used to describe British citizens who descended from mainly South Asia, also known as South Asians in the United Kingdom...
(Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi) students. Which therefore suggests that as an average, more people from Black African backgrounds are now progressing to university than those of a South Asian background.
Music
Calypso music
Calypso is a style of Afro-Caribbean music that originated in Trinidad and Tobago from African and European roots. The roots of the genre lay in the arrival of enslaved Africans, who, not being allowed to speak with each other, communicated through song...
artist Lord Kitchener
Lord Kitchener (calypsonian)
Aldwyn Roberts , better known by the stage name Lord Kitchener , was one of the most internationally famous calypsonians. He was the son of a blacksmith, Stephen, and homemaker, Albertha.-Life:...
, who arrived in Britain on the Windrush in 1948 accompanied by fellow musician Lord Beginner
Lord Beginner
Lord Beginner from Port-of-Spain in Trinidad was a popular exponent of the Caribbean musical form Calypso.-Person:...
. Already a star in his native Trinidad, Lord Kitchener got an immediate booking at the only West Indian club in London. Six months later, he was appearing in three clubs nightly, and his popularity extended beyond the West Indian and African nightclub
Nightclub
A nightclub is an entertainment venue which usually operates late into the night...
audiences, to include music hall
Music hall
Music Hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment which was popular between 1850 and 1960. The term can refer to:# A particular form of variety entertainment involving a mixture of popular song, comedy and speciality acts...
and variety show
Variety show
A variety show, also known as variety arts or variety entertainment, is an entertainment made up of a variety of acts, especially musical performances and sketch comedy, and normally introduced by a compère or host. Other types of acts include magic, animal and circus acts, acrobatics, juggling...
audiences. Kitchener's recording "London is the place for me" exemplified the experience of the Windrush generation. Other calypso musicians began to collaborate with African Kwela
Kwela
Kwela is a happy, often pennywhistle-based, street music from southern Africa with jazzy underpinnings and a distinctive, skiffle-like beat. It evolved from the marabi sound and brought South African music to international prominence in the 1950s....
musicians and British jazz
British jazz
British jazz is a form of music derived from American jazz. It reached Britain through recordings and performers who visited the country while it was a relatively new genre, soon after the end of World War I. Jazz began to be played by British musicians from the 1930s and on a widespread basis in...
players in London clubs.
Jamaican music styles reached Britain in the 1960s, becoming the staple music for young British African-Caribbeans. Tours by ska
Ska
Ska |Jamaican]] ) is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s, and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. Ska combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues...
artists such as Prince Buster
Prince Buster
Cecil Bustamente Campbell, O.D. , better known as Prince Buster, and also known by his Muslim name Muhammed Yusef Ali, is a musician from Kingston, Jamaica. He is regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of ska and rocksteady music...
and the Skatalites fed the growing British-Caribbean music scene, and the success of Jamaican artists Millie Small
Millie (singer)
Millie is a Jamaican singer-songwriter, often known as "Little Millie Small", and in the United States as "Millie Small", and is best known as the singer of the 1964 hit, "My Boy Lollipop".-Career:...
, Desmond Dekker
Desmond Dekker
Desmond Dekker was a Jamaican ska, rocksteady and reggae singer-songwriter and musician. Together with his backing group, The Aces , he had one of the first international Jamaican hits with "Israelites". Other hits include "007 " and "It Miek"...
and Bob and Marcia
Marcia Griffiths
Marcia Llyneth Griffiths is a successful female singer, also called the "Queen of Reggae". One reviewer described her noting "she is known primarily for her strong, smooth-as-mousse love songs and captivating live performances".Griffiths started her career in 1964...
propelled Caribbean music and people into mainstream cultural life. British African-Caribbeans followed the changing styles of Jamaican music and began to produce homegrown music appealing to both Black and White communities. In 1969, the British African-Caribbean ska band Symarip
Symarip
Symarip were a ska and reggae band from the United Kingdom, originating in the late 1960s, when Frank Pitter and Michael Thomas founded the band as The Bees. The band's name was originally spelled Simaryp, which is an approximate reversal of the word 'pyramids'...
recorded "Skinhead Moonstomp" which had a huge effect on the British ska scene. The ska sound and rude boy
Rude boy
Rude boy, rudeboy, rudie, rudi or rudy are common terms used in Jamaica. In the 1960s it was also used for juvenile delinquents and criminals in Jamaica, and has since been used in other contexts...
imagery inspired a generation of white working-class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
youths (especially mods and skinhead
Skinhead
A skinhead is a member of a subculture that originated among working class youths in the United Kingdom in the 1960s, and then spread to other parts of the world. Named for their close-cropped or shaven heads, the first skinheads were greatly influenced by West Indian rude boys and British mods,...
s), and later helped spawn Britain's multi-cultural
Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism is the appreciation, acceptance or promotion of multiple cultures, applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the organizational level, e.g...
2 Tone
2 Tone
2 Tone is a music genre created in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s by fusing elements of ska, punk rock, rocksteady, reggae, and New Wave. It was called 2 Tone because most of the bands were signed to 2 Tone Records at some point. Other labels associated with the 2 Tone sound were Stiff...
movement in the late 1970s.
As Jamaican ska gave way to the slower styles of rocksteady
Rocksteady
Rocksteady is a music genre that originated in Jamaica around 1966. A successor to ska and a precursor to reggae, rocksteady was performed by Jamaican vocal harmony groups such as The Gaylads, The Maytals and The Paragons. The term rocksteady comes from a dance style that was mentioned in the Alton...
and the more politicised reggae
Reggae
Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...
, British African-Caribbeans followed suit. Sound systems to rival those in Jamaica sprung up throughout communities, and 'Blues parties' - parties in private houses, where one paid at the door - became an institution. The arrival of Bob Marley
Bob Marley
Robert Nesta "Bob" Marley, OM was a Jamaican singer-songwriter and musician. He was the rhythm guitarist and lead singer for the ska, rocksteady and reggae band Bob Marley & The Wailers...
to London in 1971 helped spawn a Black British music industry based on reggae. His association with the Rastafarian
Rastafari movement
The Rastafari movement or Rasta is a new religious movement that arose in the 1930s in Jamaica, which at the time was a country with a predominantly Christian culture where 98% of the people were the black descendants of slaves. Its adherents worship Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia , as God...
movement influenced waves of young people, reared in Britain, to discover their Caribbean roots. British Barbadian Dennis Bovell
Dennis Bovell
Dennis Bovell is a reggae guitarist, bass player and record producer. He was a member of the British reggae band Matumbi, and released dub-reggae records under his own name as well as the pseudonym 'Blackbeard'....
became Britain's prominent reggae band leader and producer, working with many international reggae stars, and introducing a reggae flavour to the British pop charts with non-reggae acts such as Dexys Midnight Runners
Dexys Midnight Runners
Dexys Midnight Runners are a British pop group with soul influences, who achieved their major success in the early to mid 1980s. They are best known for their songs "Come On Eileen" and "Geno", both of which went No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart....
and Bananarama
Bananarama
Bananarama are an English female pop duo who have had success on the pop and dance charts since 1982. Rather than relying on a two part harmony, the duo generally sings in unison, as do their background vocalists. Although there have been line-up changes, the group enjoyed their most popular...
. Bovell also worked extensively with London-based dub poet
Dub poetry
Dub poetry is a form of performance poetry of West Indian origin, which evolved out of dub music consisting of spoken word over reggae rhythms in Jamaica in the 1970s....
Linton Kwesi Johnson
Linton Kwesi Johnson
Linton Kwesi Johnson is a UK-based dub poet. He became the second living poet, and the only black poet, to be published in the Penguin Classics series. His poetry involves the recitation of his own verse in Jamaican Patois over dub-reggae, usually written in collaboration with renowned British...
.
Musical Youth
Musical Youth are a British reggae band. The group originally formed in 1979 at Duddeston Manor School in Birmingham, UK. They are best remembered for their successful 1982 Grammy-nominated single, "Pass the Dutchie". The group featured two sets of brothers, Kelvin and Michael Grant, plus Junior...
, Aswad, Maxi Priest
Maxi Priest
Max Alfred "Maxi" Priest is a British reggae vocalist of Jamaican descent. He is best known for singing reggae music with a R&B influence, otherwise known as reggae fusion, and became one of the first international successes who regularly dabbled in the genre as well as being one of the most...
and Eddy Grant
Eddy Grant
Edmond Montague "Eddy" Grant is a musician, born in Plaisance, Guyana.- Life and career :When he was still a young boy, his parents emigrated to London, UK, where he settled. He lived in Kentish Town and went to school at the Acland Burghley Secondary Modern at Tufnell Park...
had major commercial successes, and the multicultural band UB40
UB40
UB40 are a British reggae/pop band formed in 1978 in Birmingham. The band has placed more than 50 singles in the UK Singles Chart, and has also achieved considerable international success. One of the world's best-selling music artists, UB40 have sold over 70 million records.Their hit singles...
helped promote reggae to an international audience. Birmingham-based Steel Pulse
Steel Pulse
Steel Pulse is a roots reggae musical band. They originally formed at Handsworth Wood Boys School, in Birmingham, England, composed of David Hinds , Basil Gabbidon , and Ronald McQueen .-History:...
became one of the world's foremost exponents of roots reggae
Roots reggae
Roots reggae is a subgenre of reggae that deals with the everyday lives and aspirations of the artists concerned, including the spiritual side of Rastafari and with the honoring of God, called Jah by rastafarians. It also is identified with the life of the ghetto sufferer, and the rural poor...
and accompanying black consciousness
Black Power
Black Power is a political slogan and a name for various associated ideologies. It is used in the movement among people of Black African descent throughout the world, though primarily by African Americans in the United States...
, their debut 1978 album Handsworth Revolution
Handsworth Revolution
Handsworth Revolution is a reggae album by Steel Pulse. It is named after the Handsworth district of Birmingham, England, the band's home....
becoming a seminal release.
British African-Caribbean music had been generally synonymous with Caribbean styles until the 1990s, although some artists had been drawing on British and American musical forms for several decades. In the 1970s and 1980s, British African-Caribbean artists such as Hot Chocolate and Imagination
Imagination (band)
Imagination were a three piece British soul and funk band, who came to prominence in the early 1980s. They had chart hits in 28 countries, earning four platinum discs, nine gold discs and more than a dozen silver discs around the world between 1981 and 1983....
became leaders of the British disco
Disco
Disco is a genre of dance music. Disco acts charted high during the mid-1970s, and the genre's popularity peaked during the late 1970s. It had its roots in clubs that catered to African American, gay, psychedelic, and other communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and...
, soul
Soul music
Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...
and R&B scenes. By the mid-1980s British African-Caribbeans were also incorporating American hip hop
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...
and House
House music
House music is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in Chicago, Illinois, United States in the early 1980s. It was initially popularized in mid-1980s discothèques catering to the African-American, Latino American, and gay communities; first in Chicago circa 1984, then in other...
styles, becoming leading figures in Britain's developing dance music culture. This led to an explosion of musical forms. British artists created musical hybrids combining many elements including European techno, Jamaican dancehall
Dancehall
Dancehall is a genre of Jamaican popular music that originated in the late 1970s. Initially dancehall was a more sparse version of reggae than the roots style, which had dominated much of the 1970s. In the mid-1980s, digital instrumentation became more prevalent, changing the sound considerably,...
, dub, breakbeat
Breakbeat
In 1992, a new style called "jungalistic hardcore" emerged, and for many ravers it was too funky to dance to. Josh Lawford of Ravescene prophesied that the breakbeat was "the death-knell of rave" because the ever changing drumbeat patterns of breakbeat music didn't allow for the same zoned out,...
s and contemporary American R'n'B. These unique blends began to gain international acclaim through the success of Soul II Soul
Soul II Soul
Soul II Soul are a British group that was created in London in 1988. They are best known for their 1989 UK chart-topper and U.S. Top 5 hit, "Back to Life ".-Career:...
and the multi-racial Massive Attack
Massive Attack
Massive Attack are an English DJ and trip hop duo from Bristol, England consisting of Robert "3D" Del Naja and Grant "Daddy G" Marshall. Working with co-producers, as well as various session musicians and guest vocalists, they make records and tour live. The duo are considered to be of the trip...
.
British African-Caribbeans were at the leading edge of the jungle
Oldschool jungle
Jungle is a genre of electronic music that incorporates influences from genres including breakbeat hardcore, and reggae/dub/dancehall. There is debate as to whether jungle is a separate genre from drum and bass as many use the terms interchangeably...
and drum and bass
Drum and bass
Drum and bass is a type of electronic music which emerged in the late 1980s. The genre is characterized by fast breakbeats , with heavy bass and sub-bass lines...
movements of the 1990s. Although the fast-tempo drums and loud intricate bass lines sounded fresh, Caribbean roots could still be detected. Two successful exponents of these new styles were DJs Goldie
Goldie
Clifford Joseph Price, better known as Goldie is an English electronic music artist, disc jockey, visual artist and actor. He is well known for his innovations in the jungle and drum and bass music genres, having previously gained exposure for his work as a graffiti artist...
and Roni Size
Roni Size
Roni Size is a British record producer and DJ, who came to prominence in 1997 as the founder and leader of Reprazent, a drum and bass collective...
, both of Jamaican heritage. Later, British African-Caribbean musicians and DJs were at the forefront of the UK garage
UK garage
UK garage is a genre of electronic dance music originating from the United Kingdom in the early-1990s. UK garage is a descendant of house music which originated in Chicago and New York, United States. UK garage usually features a distinctive syncopated 4/4 percussive rhythm with 'shuffling'...
and Grime
Grime (music)
Grime is a style of music that emerged from Bow, East London, England in the early 2000s, primarily as a development of UK garage, dancehall, and hip hop...
scenes.
African-Caribbeans in British sport
British African-Caribbeans are well represented in traditional British sporting pastimes such as footballFootball (soccer)
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball...
and rugby
Rugby football
Rugby football is a style of football named after Rugby School in the United Kingdom. It is seen most prominently in two current sports, rugby league and rugby union.-History:...
, and have also represented the nation at the highest level in sports where Caribbeans typically excel in the home countries such as cricket
Cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...
and athletics
Athletics (track and field)
Athletics is an exclusive collection of sporting events that involve competitive running, jumping, throwing, and walking. The most common types of athletics competitions are track and field, road running, cross country running, and race walking...
. Some British African-Caribbeans have gone on to become international sports stars and top global earners in their chosen sporting field.
Athletics
Britain's first OlympicOlympic Games
The Olympic Games is a major international event featuring summer and winter sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the world’s foremost sports competition where more than 200 nations participate...
sprint medals came from Harry Edward, born in Guyana, who won two individual bronze medals at the 1920 games in Antwerp
1920 Summer Olympics
The 1920 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the VII Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event in 1920 in Antwerp, Belgium....
. Many years later, sprinter Linford Christie
Linford Christie
Linford Cicero Christie OBE is a former sprinter from the United Kingdom. He is the only British man to have won gold medals in the 100 metres at all four major competitions open to British athletes: the Olympic Games, the World Championships, the European Championships and the Commonwealth Games...
, born in Saint Andrew Parish, Jamaica
Saint Andrew Parish, Jamaica
Saint Andrew is a parish, situated in the southeast of Jamaica in the county of Surrey. It lies north, west and east of Kingston, and stretches into the Blue Mountains and at the 2001 census had the highest population of all the parishes in Jamaica. The Right Excellent George William Gordon Saint...
, won 23 major championship medals, more than any other British male athlete to date. Christie's career highlight was winning a gold medal
Gold medal
A gold medal is typically the medal awarded for highest achievement in a non-military field. Its name derives from the use of at least a fraction of gold in form of plating or alloying in its manufacture...
in the immensely competitive 100 metres
100 metres
The 100 metres, or 100-metre dash, is a sprint race in track and field competitions. The shortest common outdoor running distance, it is one of the most popular and prestigious events in the sport of athletics. It has been contested at the Summer Olympics since 1896...
event in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics
1992 Summer Olympics
The 1992 Summer Olympic Games, officially known as the Games of the XXV Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event celebrated in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, in 1992. The International Olympic Committee voted in 1986 to separate the Summer and Winter Games, which had been held in the same...
. Welsh
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
Hurdler Colin Jackson
Colin Jackson
Colin Ray Jackson CBE is a British former sprint and hurdling athlete who specialised in the 110 metres hurdles. Over his career representing Great Britain and Wales he won an Olympic silver medal, became world champion three times, went undefeated at the European Championships for 12 years and...
, who went to considerable lengths to explore his Jamaican heritage in a BBC documentary, held the 110 metres hurdles
110 metres hurdles
The 110 metres hurdles is a hurdling track and field event for men. It is incuded in the athletics programme at the Summer Olympic Games. The female counterpart is the 100 metre hurdles. As part of a racing event, ten hurdles of 1.067 metres in height are evenly spaced along a straight...
world record for 11 years between 1993 and 2004.
Ethel Scott
Ethel Scott
Ethel Scott was the first black woman to represent Great Britain in an international athletics competition. She was a sprinter active in international competitions for a brief period in the 1930s...
(1907–1984) had a Jamaican father and an English mother was the first black woman to represent Great Britain in an international athletics competition. She was a sprinter active in international competitions for a brief period in the 1930s. In general, Scott's achievements are only thinly documented, and she is largely unknown to the British public and historians of sport. Jamaican-born Tessa Sanderson
Tessa Sanderson
Theresa Ione Sanderson CBE is a former British javelin thrower and heptathlete who competed in the javelin competition in every one of the six Olympics from 1976–1996 winning the Gold medal in 1984...
became the first British African-Caribbean woman to win Olympic gold, receiving the medal for her javelin
Javelin throw
The javelin throw is a track and field athletics throwing event where the object to be thrown is the javelin, a spear approximately 2.5 metres in length. Javelin is an event of both the men's decathlon and the women's heptathlon...
performance in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics
1984 Summer Olympics
The 1984 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXIII Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event held in Los Angeles, California, United States in 1984...
. Denise Lewis
Denise Lewis
Denise Lewis OBE is a retired British athlete who specialised in the heptathlon. She won the gold medal in the heptathlon at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.-2000 Olympics:...
, of Jamaican heritage, won heptathlon
Heptathlon
A heptathlon is a track and field athletics combined events contest made up of seven events. The name derives from the Greek hepta and athlon . A competitor in a heptathlon is referred to as a heptathlete.-Women's Heptathlon:...
gold in the 2000 Sydney Olympics
2000 Summer Olympics
The Sydney 2000 Summer Olympic Games or the Millennium Games/Games of the New Millennium, officially known as the Games of the XXVII Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event which was celebrated between 15 September and 1 October 2000 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia...
, a games where 13 of Britain's 18 track and field representatives had Afro-Caribbean roots. Four years later in the Athens Olympics
2004 Summer Olympics
The 2004 Summer Olympic Games, officially known as the Games of the XXVIII Olympiad, was a premier international multi-sport event held in Athens, Greece from August 13 to August 29, 2004 with the motto Welcome Home. 10,625 athletes competed, some 600 more than expected, accompanied by 5,501 team...
, Kelly Holmes
Kelly Holmes
Dame Kelly Holmes, DBE, MBE is a retired British middle distance athlete. She specialised in the 800 metres and 1500 metres events and won a gold medal for both distances at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens...
, the daughter of a Jamaican-born car mechanic, achieved the rare feat of taking gold in both the 800
800 metres
The 800 meter race is a common track running event. It is the shortest common middle distance track event. The 800 meter is run over two laps of the track and has always been an Olympic event. During indoor track season the event is usually run on a 200 meter track, therefore requiring four laps...
and 1500 metres
1500 metres
The 1,500-metre run is the premier middle distance track event.Aerobic endurance is the biggest factor contributing to success in the 1500 metres but the athlete also requires significant sprint speed.In modern times, the 1,500-metre run has been run at a pace faster than the average person could...
races. In the same games, Britain's men's 4 x 100 metre relay team
Athletics at the 2004 Summer Olympics - Men's 4 x 100 metres relay
The men's 4×100 metres relay was one of 23 track events of the athletics at the 2004 Summer Olympics, in Athens. It was contested at the Athens Olympic Stadium, from August 27 and August 28, by a total of sixteen national teams comprising 64 athletes....
of Marlon Devonish
Marlon Devonish
Marlon Ronald Devonish, MBE is an English sprint athlete.He is a member of the Coventry Godiva Harriers athletics club and is coached by Tony Lester. Early in his career he was successful at both 100 and 200 metre distances, winning English Schools and European Junior titles at both, but in recent...
, Darren Campbell
Darren Campbell
Darren Andrew Campbell MBE is a former English sprint athlete. He competed in the 100 metres and 200 metres, as well as the 4 × 100 metres relay...
, Mark Lewis-Francis
Mark Lewis-Francis
Mark Anthony Lewis-Francis is a British track and field athlete, specifically a sprinter, who specialises in the 100 metres. A renowned junior, his greatest sporting achievement at senior level has been to anchor the Great Britain and Northern Ireland 4 x 100 metres relay team to a shock gold...
and Jason Gardener
Jason Gardener
Jason Carl Gardener is a retired British sprint athlete, and former World Indoor Champion. Gardener was educated at Beechen Cliff School and the City of Bath College, and went on to graduate from Bath Spa University.-Athletics career:Gardener started his career at the World Junior Championships in...
, all of African-Caribbean heritage, beat the favoured United States quartet to claim Olympic gold.
Boxing
British boxersBoxing
Boxing, also called pugilism, is a combat sport in which two people fight each other using their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of between one to three minute intervals called rounds...
of a Caribbean background have played a prominent role in the national boxing scene since the early 1980s. In 1995 Frank Bruno
Frank Bruno
Franklin Roy Bruno MBE is an English former boxer whose career highlight was winning the WBC Heavyweight championship in 1995. Altogether, he won 40 of his 45 contests...
, whose mother was a Pentecostal
Pentecostalism
Pentecostalism is a diverse and complex movement within Christianity that places special emphasis on a direct personal experience of God through the baptism in the Holy Spirit, has an eschatological focus, and is an experiential religion. The term Pentecostal is derived from Pentecost, the Greek...
laypreacher from Jamaica, became Britain's first world heavyweight boxing champion in the 20th century. Bruno's reign was shortly followed by British-born Jamaican Lennox Lewis
Lennox Lewis
Lennox Claudius Lewis, CM, CBE is a retired boxer and the most recent British undisputed world heavyweight champion. He holds dual British and Canadian citizenship...
, who defeated Evander Holyfield
Evander Holyfield
Evander Holyfield is a professional boxer from the United States. He is a former undisputed world champion in both the cruiserweight and heavyweight divisions, earning him the nickname "The Real Deal"...
and Mike Tyson
Mike Tyson
Michael Gerard "Mike" Tyson is a retired American boxer. Tyson is a former undisputed heavyweight champion of the world and holds the record as the youngest boxer to win the WBC, WBA and IBF world heavyweight titles, he was 20 years, 4 months and 22 days old...
to become the world's premier heavyweight during the late 1990s. Middleweights Chris Eubank
Chris Eubank
Chris Eubank, Lord of the Manor of Brighton is a retired British boxer who held world titles at middleweight and super middleweight...
, who spent his early years in Jamaica, and Nigel Benn
Nigel Benn
Nigel Benn , known as "The Dark Destroyer", is a British former boxer who held world titles in the middleweight and super middleweight divisions....
, of Barbadian descent, both claimed world titles and fought a series of brutal battles in the early 1990s. In the Sydney Olympics
2000 Summer Olympics
The Sydney 2000 Summer Olympic Games or the Millennium Games/Games of the New Millennium, officially known as the Games of the XXVII Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event which was celebrated between 15 September and 1 October 2000 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia...
of 2000, Audley Harrison
Audley Harrison
Audley Harrison is a British professional boxer from Harlesden, England who fights in the heavyweight division. At the 2000 Olympics in Sydney he became the first British fighter to win an Olympic gold medal in the superheavyweight division. He stands and usually weighs around .Harrison turned...
(who has Jamaican heritage) became Britain's first heavyweight gold medalist
Boxing at the 2000 Summer Olympics
The boxing competition at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney was held over a period of sixteen days at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre in Darling Harbour...
. Other boxing champions from the British African-Caribbean community include the welterweight Lloyd Honeyghan
Lloyd Honeyghan
Lloyd Honeyghan is a retired British boxer. Born in Jamaica, he was WBC/WBA & IBF welterweight champion from 1986 to 1987. and WBC welterweight champion from 1988 to 1989....
, nicknamed 'Ragamuffin
Ragga
-Origins:Ragga originated in Jamaica during the 1980s, at the same time that electronic dance music's popularity was increasing globally. One of the reasons for ragga's swift propagation is that it is generally easier and less expensive to produce than reggae performed on traditional musical...
Man' by boxing super-star Donald Curry
Donald Curry
Donald Curry is a retired boxer from Fort Worth, Texas, United States. Nicknamed the "Lone Star Cobra," Curry was the Undisputed World Welterweight Champion and the WBC Super Welterweight Champion.-Amateur career:...
in 1986, in reference to his (in comparison to Curry's extravagance) normal appearance; Honeyghan subsequently spectacularly defeated Curry.
Cricket
CricketCricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...
has long been a popular pastime amongst African-Caribbeans in both the West Indies and the United Kingdom, though this has waned somewhat since its peak during the 1960s-1980s. After the period of widespread immigration, tours of England by the combined West Indian cricket team
West Indian cricket team
The West Indian cricket team, also known colloquially as the West Indies or the Windies, is a multi-national cricket team representing a sporting confederation of 15 mainly English-speaking Caribbean countries, British dependencies and non-British dependencies.From the mid 1970s to the early 1990s,...
became cultural celebrations of Caribbean culture in Britain, particularly at cricket grounds such as The Oval
The Oval
The Kia Oval, still commonly referred to by its original name of The Oval, is an international cricket ground in Kennington, in the London Borough of Lambeth. In the past it was also sometimes called the Kennington Oval...
in South London
South London
South London is the southern part of London, England, United Kingdom.According to the 2011 official Boundary Commission for England definition, South London includes the London boroughs of Bexley, Bromley, Croydon, Greenwich, Kingston, Lambeth, Lewisham, Merton, Southwark, Sutton and...
. Almost all the great West Indian cricketers became regular features of the domestic county game
County Championship
The County Championship is the domestic first-class cricket competition in England and Wales...
, including Garfield Sobers
Garfield Sobers
Sir Garfield St Aubrun Sobers AO, OCC is a former cricketer who captained West Indies. His first name of Garfield is variously abbreviated as Gary or Garry. He is widely regarded as one of cricket's greatest ever all-rounders, having excelled at all the essential skills of batting, bowling and...
, Vivian Richards and Michael Holding
Michael Holding
Michael Anthony Holding is a former West Indian cricketer. One of the fastest bowlers ever to play Test cricket, he was nicknamed 'Whispering Death' by umpires due to his quiet approach to the bowling crease...
. In turn, British cricketers of Caribbean origin also began to make an impact in English cricket. In the 1980s-1990s, players including Gladstone Small
Gladstone Small
Gladstone Cleophas Small is an English former cricketer, who played in seventeen Tests and fifty three ODIs for England....
(born in Barbados), Devon Malcolm
Devon Malcolm
Devon Malcolm is a former English cricketer.Malcolm was one of England's few genuinely fast bowlers of the 1990s. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, he settled in England, making his first-class debut for Derbyshire in 1984, and qualifying to play for England in 1987...
(born in Jamaica) and Phillip DeFreitas
Phillip DeFreitas
Phillip Anthony Jason "Daffy" DeFreitas is a retired English cricketer. He played county cricket for Leicestershire, Lancashire and Derbyshire, as well as appearing in forty four Test matches and 103 ODIs...
(born in Dominica
Dominica
Dominica , officially the Commonwealth of Dominica, is an island nation in the Lesser Antilles region of the Caribbean Sea, south-southeast of Guadeloupe and northwest of Martinique. Its size is and the highest point in the country is Morne Diablotins, which has an elevation of . The Commonwealth...
) represented England
English cricket team
The England and Wales cricket team is a cricket team which represents England and Wales. Until 1992 it also represented Scotland. Since 1 January 1997 it has been governed by the England and Wales Cricket Board , having been previously governed by Marylebone Cricket Club from 1903 until the end...
, making significant contributions to the side.
Motorsport
Lewis HamiltonLewis Hamilton
Lewis Carl Davidson Hamilton, MBE is a British Formula One racing driver from England, currently racing for the McLaren team. He was the Formula One World Champion.Hamilton was born in Stevenage, Hertfordshire...
whose paternal grandparents immigrated from Grenada
Grenada
Grenada is an island country and Commonwealth Realm consisting of the island of Grenada and six smaller islands at the southern end of the Grenadines in the southeastern Caribbean Sea...
achieved the highest honour in Motorsport, winning the FIA Formula One World Championship in 2008, only his second season in the sport, after narrowly finishing second in the championship in his debut season.
Football
Football (soccer)
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball...
to play football at a high level in Britain was Andrew Watson, who played for Queens Park
Queen's Park F.C.
Queen's Park Football Club are an association football club based in Glasgow, Scotland. The club are currently the only amateur club in the Scottish League; their amateur status is reflected by their motto, Ludere Causa Ludendi – to play for the sake of playing.Queen's Park are the oldest...
(Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
) and went on to play for Scotland
Scotland national football team
The Scotland national football team represents Scotland in international football and is controlled by the Scottish Football Association. Scotland are the joint oldest national football team in the world, alongside England, whom they played in the world's first international football match in 1872...
. Born in May 1857 in British Guyana, Watson lived and worked in Scotland and came to be known as one of the best players of his generation. He played in 36 games for Queens Park and also appeared for the London Swifts in the English FA Cup
FA Cup
The Football Association Challenge Cup, commonly known as the FA Cup, is a knockout cup competition in English football and is the oldest association football competition in the world. The "FA Cup" is run by and named after The Football Association and usually refers to the English men's...
championship of 1882, making him the first Black player in English Cup history. Watson earned 2 Scottish Cup
Scottish Cup
The Scottish Football Association Challenge Cup,, commonly known as the Scottish Cup or the William Hill Scottish Cup for sponsorship purposes, is the main national cup competition in Scottish football. It is a knockout cup competition run by and named after the Scottish Football Association.The...
medals and 4 Charity Cup medals during his career; Who's Who also acknowledged his performances in international matches. Watson's place in football history included a spell in management as Club Secretary for Queens Park - making Watson the first Afro-Caribbean man to reach the boardroom.
Lindy Delapenha
Lloyd Lindbergh "Lindy" Delapenha was a football player. He was the first Jamaican to play professional football in England.-Footballing career:...
made an impact playing for Middlesbrough between 1950–57, becoming a leading goal scorer and the first Black player to win a championship medal. However, it was not until the 1970s that African-Caribbean players began to make a major impact on the game. Clyde Best
Clyde Best
Clyde Cyril Best MBE is a Bermudian former football player who most notably played as a striker for West Ham United, and was one of the first black players in British football...
(West Ham
West Ham
West Ham is in the London Borough of Newham in London, England. In the west it is a post-industrial neighbourhood abutting the site of the London Olympic Park and in the east it is mostly residential, consisting of Victorian terraced housing interspersed with higher density post-War social housing...
1969–1976), born in Bermuda
Bermuda
Bermuda is a British overseas territory in the North Atlantic Ocean. Located off the east coast of the United States, its nearest landmass is Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, about to the west-northwest. It is about south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and northeast of Miami, Florida...
, paved the way for players such as Cyrille Regis
Cyrille Regis
Cyrille Regis, MBE is a French-born English former footballer. His professional playing career spanned 19 years, where he made 610 league appearances and scored 159 league goals, most prolifically at West Bromwich Albion and Coventry City.-Early life:Regis was born in Maripasoula, French Guiana,...
(born in French Guyana), and Luther Blissett
Luther Blissett (footballer)
Luther Loide Blissett is a former professional footballer and manager, who is currently a first-team coach at Hemel Hempstead Town. Blissett played as a striker, and is best known for his time at Watford, whom he helped win promotion from the Fourth Division to the First Division...
(born in Jamaica). Blissett and Regis joined Viv Anderson
Viv Anderson
Vivian Alexander "Viv" Anderson MBE is an English football player and coach, who played for clubs including Nottingham Forest, Arsenal, Manchester United and Sheffield Wednesday in the 1970s and 1980s...
to form the first wave of Black footballers to play for the England national team
England national football team
The England national football team represents England in association football and is controlled by the Football Association, the governing body for football in England. England is the joint oldest national football team in the world, alongside Scotland, whom they played in the world's first...
. Although the number of players of African-Caribbean origin in the English league was increasing far beyond proportions in wider society, when Black players represented the English national team, they still had to endure racism from a section of England supporters. When selected to play for England, Cyril Regis received a bullet through the mail with the threat, "You'll get one of these through your knees if you step on our Wembley
Wembley Stadium
The original Wembley Stadium, officially known as the Empire Stadium, was a football stadium in Wembley, a suburb of north-west London, standing on the site now occupied by the new Wembley Stadium that opened in 2007...
turf."
By the 1980s the British African-Caribbean community was well represented at all playing levels of the game. John Barnes
John Barnes (footballer)
John Charles Bryan Barnes MBE is an English football manager and former player.During his playing career, Barnes had successful periods at Watford and Liverpool in the 1980s and 1990s, winning the First Division twice, the FA Cup twice, and playing for England 79 times...
, born in Jamaica, was one of the most talented players of his generation and one of the few footballers to win every honour in the domestic English game including the PFA Players' Player of the Year
PFA Players' Player of the Year
The Professional Footballers' Association Players' Player of the Year is an annual award given to the player who is adjudged to have been the best of the year in English football...
. Although Barnes played for England on 78 occasions between 1983 and 1991, his performances rarely matched his club standard. Subsequently, Barnes identified a culture of racism in football during his era as a player. Players of African-Caribbean origin continued to excel in English football, in the 1990s Paul Ince
Paul Ince
Paul Emerson Carlyle Ince is an English football manager and a former professional player. He has managed Blackburn Rovers, Milton Keynes Dons and Macclesfield Town...
- whose parents were from Trinidad
Trinidad
Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands and numerous landforms which make up the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. It is the southernmost island in the Caribbean and lies just off the northeastern coast of Venezuela. With an area of it is also the fifth largest in...
- went on to captain Manchester United
Manchester United F.C.
Manchester United Football Club is an English professional football club, based in Old Trafford, Greater Manchester, that plays in the Premier League. Founded as Newton Heath LYR Football Club in 1878, the club changed its name to Manchester United in 1902 and moved to Old Trafford in 1910.The 1958...
, Liverpool F.C.
Liverpool F.C.
Liverpool Football Club is an English Premier League football club based in Liverpool, Merseyside. Liverpool has won eighteen League titles, second most in English football, seven FA Cups and a record seven League Cups...
and the English national team. The contribution was reciprocated when a number of British born footballers including Robbie Earle
Robbie Earle
Robert Fitzgerald "Robbie" Earle MBE is an English-born Jamaican former international footballer who played as a midfielder. He played 578 league games in senior club football, scoring 136 goals....
, Frank Sinclair
Frank Sinclair
Frank Mohammed Sinclair is an English-born Jamaican footballer who plays for Hendon in the Isthmian League Premier Division.-Chelsea:...
and Darryl Powell
Darryl Powell
Darryl Anthony Powell is an English-born former professional footballer who made more than 350 appearances in the Football League and Premier League and played international football for the Jamaican national team...
represented the Jamaica national football team
Jamaica national football team
The Jamaica national football team is the national team of Jamaica and is controlled by the Jamaica Football Federation. After decades in CONCACAF obscurity, they gained many fans throughout the world after they qualified for the 1998 FIFA World Cup...
in the 1998 World Cup
1998 FIFA World Cup
The 1998 FIFA World Cup, the 16th FIFA World Cup, was held in France from 10 June to 12 July 1998. France was chosen as host nation by FIFA on 2 July 1992. The tournament was won by France, who beat Brazil 3-0 in the final...
finals.
At the turn of the millennium, British-born Black footballers constituted about 13% of the English league
FA Premier League
The Premier League is an English professional league for association football clubs. At the top of the English football league system, it is the country's primary football competition. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with The Football League. The Premier...
, and a number of groups including "Kick It Out" were highlighting issues of racism still in the game. In the 2006 World Cup finals
2006 FIFA World Cup
The 2006 FIFA World Cup was the 18th FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial international football world championship tournament. It was held from 9 June to 9 July 2006 in Germany, which won the right to host the event in July 2000. Teams representing 198 national football associations from all six...
, Theo Walcott
Theo Walcott
Theo James Walcott is an English footballer of Jamaican descent who plays for Arsenal and the England national team. Walcott is a product of the Southampton F.C. Academy. He is a striker who is usually deployed on the right wing as a wide forward to exploit his speed...
, a striker of English and Jamaican parents, became the youngest ever player to join an England world cup squad - a side which included African-Caribbean players in every department, goal-keeping, defence, midfield and attack.
See also
- British Indo-Caribbean communityBritish Indo-Caribbean communityThe British Indo-Caribbean community consists of residents of the United Kingdom who are of Caribbean origin and whose ancestors were indigenous to India...
- Black BritishBlack BritishBlack British is a term used to describe British people of Black African descent, especially those of Afro-Caribbean background. The term has been used from the 1950s to refer to Black people from former British colonies in the West Indies and Africa, who are residents of the United Kingdom and...
- Antiguan BritishAntiguan BritishAntiguans and Barbudans in the United Kingdom are residents or citizens of the United Kingdom who can trace their roots to the Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda.-Population:...
- Jamaican British
- Guyanese BritishGuyanese BritishGuyanese in the United Kingdom are citizens or residents of the United Kingdom whose origins lie in the South American nation of Guyana.-Population:At the time of the 2001 UK Census there were 20,872 Guyanese-born people in the UK...
- Barbadian BritishBarbadian BritishBarbadian British people, or Bajan-Brits are citizens or residents of the United Kingdom whose ethnic origins lie fully or partially in the Caribbean island of Barbados...
- Saint Lucian British
- Saint Kitts and Nevisian British
- Grenadian British
- Montserratian BritishMontserratian BritishMontserratians in the United Kingdom including Montserratian born immigrants to the United Kingdom and their British-born descendants constitute the second largest number of overseas British citizens living in the UK ....
- Trinidadian BritishTrinidadian BritishTrinidadian and Tobagonian British people are citizens or residents of the United Kingdom whose ethnic origins lie fully or partially in the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago.-History and settlement:...
- Vincentian British
- Dominican British
- African British
- African American British
- Sus lawSus lawIn England and Wales, the sus law was the informal name for a stop and search law that permitted a police officer to stop, search and potentially arrest people on suspicion of them being in breach of section 4 of the Vagrancy Act 1824.-1824 legislation:The power to act on "sus" was found in part...
- Immigration to the United KingdomImmigration to the United KingdomImmigration to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland since 1922 has been substantial, in particular from Ireland and the former colonies and other territories of the British Empire - such as India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Caribbean, South Africa, Kenya and Hong Kong - under...
- British national identity card#Ethnic minorities
- Immigration to the United Kingdom
- Afro-Caribbean newspapers
- New NationNew NationThis article is about the British newspaper, which is not to be confused with the Apartheid-era New Nation published in Johannesburg, South Africa or the satirical publication in Singapore....
- The Voice (newspaper)The Voice (newspaper)The Voice is a British national weekly tabloid newspaper owned by the Jamaican publisher, GV Media Group, aimed at the British Afro-Caribbean community. The paper is based in the London Docklands and is published every Monday.-History:...
- New Nation
Further reading
- A Land of Dreams : A Study of Jewish and Afro-Caribbean Migrant Communities in England, by Simon Taylor, Routledge; 1 edition (April 1993). ISBN 0-415-08447-4
- Black and British (Paperback), by David Bygott, Oxford University Press (18 April 1996). ISBN 0-19-913305-0
- In Search of a Better Life: Perspectives on Migration from the Caribbean, by Ransford W. Palmer, Praeger Publishers (21 May 1990). ISBN 0-275-93409-8
- The History of African and Caribbean Communities in Britain, by Hakim Adi, Wayland London 1995. ISBN 0-7502-1517-8
- Windrush: The Irresistible Rise of Multi-Racial Britain, by Mike Phillips & Trevor PhillipsTrevor PhillipsTrevor Phillips OBE chairs the Equality and Human Rights Commission and is a former television executive and presenter...
, HarperCollins Publishers, Incorporated 1998. ISBN 0-00-255909-9 - Young Blacks, Political Groups and the Police in Handsworth An examination of police attempts to isolate young Blacks and attempts by leftist political groups to attract Black youth into their political orbit that preceded the Handsworth protests of 1985.
External links
- The Black Presence in Britain
- The Voice Newspaper
- OOM Gallery
- Digital Handsworth
- Black Youth Empowerment UK
- Reassessing what we collect website - The Caribbean Community in London History of Caribbean London with objects and images
- Windrush settlers arrive in Britain, 1948 - treasures of The National Archives (UK).
- Windrush settlers arrive in Britain, 1948 – Transcript
Carnivals
Community sites
- UK Black Community website
- African Caribbean Coventry website
- itzcaribbean.com
- Afro Caribbean Millennium CentreCaribbean Website for the Birmingham based community centre
- Community Action Project Sandwel based community centre website
- African and Caribbean Black Community Network