Black and British: A Forgotten History Part 3

Black and British: A Forgotten History (BBC 2016) is an ambitious four part series, written and presented by historian David Olusoga. It reveals how this often forgotten story has been an integral part of Britain’s national narrative. During the series specially-commissioned BBC Black History Plaques commemorating pivotal people and events were unveiled at locations across Britain and the Commonwealth.

This is the third of four online exhibitions and explores the surprising stories behind five plaques from the series.

Getting to Abolition itself had been a series of steps. First, in 1807, Britain made the capture and trade of new slaves illegal.

With competitors' businesses still booming, the Royal Navy made an extraordinary transition – from an enforcer of slavery to a liberator. A special task force was set up, the West Africa Squadron, to intercept slave ships and free the Africans on board.

The mission was undermined by being poorly resourced and plagued by corruption. The Squadron only managed to capture around 6% of the slave ships heading across the Atlantic.

Nevertheless, over 50 years of patrolling three thousand miles of African Coast, between 1808 and 1860, it liberated 150,000 Africans.

These liberated slaves were taken to King's Yard, in Freetown, Sierra Leone, to be counted and their names recorded.

Their shackles were cut off, their wounds dressed. Each received a piece of cotton clothing and a ladle of rice. Then, nearly 200 years ago, they walked through this gate to freedom.

Shown in the picture are ribbons, inscribed with the names of liberated slaves, tied to the gates in an act of remembrance by the people of Freetown.

The names are taken from the records of the Freetown archives, where the identities of some of the 150,000 men, women and children who were liberated are recorded.

It wasn’t a happy ending for all – some were apprenticed to exploitative employers, others were press-ganged into the navy. But it is evidence of a change that was sweeping across Britain and its empire

This plaque, mounted in King's Yard, Freetown, commemorates the 150,000 enslaved Africans who were liberated by the West Africa Squadron.

On her arrival in Britain, Sarah was presented to Queen Victoria.

She was six years old.

Present at the ceremony for the plaque unveiling at Palm Cottage was Sarah Forbes Bonetta’s great, great grandson, Arnold Gordon.

For years he didn’t believe his grandmother’s tales of their ancestor’s Royal connections. But then he had them confirmed by the librarian at Windsor Castle.

While Sarah was in many ways very fortunate and lucky, her story is also a tale of a rather patronising social experiment. She was used to demonstrate that under British guidance an African could become educated, Christianised, and – in a key word for the 19th century – civilised.

This plaque commemorates the occasion, on the 30th January 1846, when Fredrick Douglass spoke at the chapel.

He embodied the sentiment that if one of us is not free, none of us is free.

The contradiction between British morality and Britain’s economic interests came into stark relief in 1861 with the American Civil War.

The Northern states and the Southern states went into battle over the issue of slavery.

The North established a Naval blockade on the Southern cotton trade and the free flow of cotton from the Mississippi valley came to an abrupt halt.

For the previously productive workers of Britain’s cotton industry this was a social and economic disaster. Lancashire was soon in the grip of what became known as ‘the cotton famine’.

By the end of 1862, a total of 485,444 were receiving some form of poverty relief. The Northern states even sent food aid.

The British government remained officially neutral. And some in Britain even found ways to break the northern blockade on cotton.

But not everyone put their own interests first. One mill town was determined to do what was right. Rochdale.

The spark that ignited the flame was a case held in this courthouse in 1865 over the eviction of a man who had been farming on an abandoned estate.

A crowd of about 500-600 local people headed by rebellion leader Paul Bogle gathered outside.

In front of the courthouse the demonstrators were met by the local militia, and the local magistrate began to read the riot act.

People in the crowd responded by throwing stones and then the militia opened fire, killing seven of them. By the end of the day, the crowd had killed 18 people, including militia men and other officials.

Then the riot fizzled out.

This was a serious local incident. But in the grand scheme of things it was a riot in a backwater town, in a part of the empire that didn’t matter very much anymore.

The reason that every Jamaican has heard of Morant Bay is because of what happened next.

On the orders of the governor of Jamaica, Edward Eyre, a brutal act of vengeance began, with the killing, beating and terrorising of men, women and children, singled out because of the colour of their skin.

This plaque was unveiled in Morant Bay in memory of over 1,000 Jamaicans brutalised or killed, following the rebellion.

Paul Bogle was hanged on October 23 1865 for his part in the rebellion. He is now a national hero in Jamaica, and has been featured on one of their banknotes.

As well as it’s devastating effect in Jamaica, Morant Bay also delivered a fatal blow to the 'moral mission' in Britain.

Political opinion divided over the actions of the governor, drawing in some of the most high profile thinkers of the period.

For some, like philosopher John Stewart Mill, the brutality of the response demanded an enquiry. Others, like writer Charles Dickens (pictured), deemed it entirely appropriate.

Racist arguments claiming black people were innately savage, came to the fore and were now given a terrifying new slant from pseudo-scientific racist ideas.

A sister plaque to the one unveiled in Morant Bay was installed at the Black Cultural Archives as part of a remembrance event in September 2016.

Black and British: Part 4

In the next and final exhibition, The Homecoming: the three African kings who stood up to Empire; an irresistible crooner; race riots in Liverpool, and the shaping of black British identity in the 20th century.