WE WOULD be doing ourselves a disservice if we only examine the black British experience from the post-war 1945 period onwards. 

There are over 10,000 years of black history in Britain, including during the Tudor, Stuart, Georgian and Victorian era’s, which have been whitewashed from history.

In recent years there has been growing awareness of the ‘African Emperor’ Septimus Severus, who ruled the Roman empire from York and called himself king of England.

But there are other Africans who have ruled Britain from 139 to 142 CE, including Quintus Lollius Urbicus, who came from what is now Algeria.

Occasional archaeological discoveries, like the African ‘Ivory Bangle Lady’ and ‘Cheddar Man’ have drawn the public’s attention to early black presence on this island but these stories have yet to make a dent on overall perceptions of British history.

Professor Hakim Adi aims to set the record straight with his new book African and Caribbean People in Britain: A History, which builds upon the works of Edward Scobie, Peter Fryer, Folarin Shyllon, Rom Ramdin and David Olusoga. 

Adi is an acclaimed author and activist, most notably known for his work on black political involvement, his canon Pan-Africanism: A History is lauded as one of the most comprehensive texts upon the subject.

He told The Voice: “The problem is that history is generally presented from the perspective of we could say the rich and powerful, that is to say, the white men of property. It’s their vision of history, which is largely presented in schools and universities on TV. 

“They do that because it’s a history that glorifies them and their ancestors. Because they want to prevent people from having a real understanding of the world in which we live. Because history is not just about the past. It’s also about the present, it’s about how we understand the world around us and how we understand our place in the world. 

“If you are written out of history, that has an impact on you. If somebody tells you Africa has no history, that has an impact. If we are told that black people in Britain never did anything, we are being given a distorted view of the world.”

Adi was particularly interested in finding out more about the 1,000 years of black history after the Romans left, a period when some assumed the black communities that arrived during the multicultural empire simply vanished.

This was far from the case. He writes about Gormund, ‘King of the Africans’, who ruled Ireland and invaded England with thousands of African troops in alliance with the Saxons.

The early medieval period has many such figures, from the north African Hadrian – of Hadrian’s Wall fame – who was described as ‘vir natione Afir’, translating as ‘man of African race’, to the Moors of the 12th Century whose presence in Britain is a lot further north than maps in history books showing them stopping at south of France.

Black life has been present and continuous for the past over 500 years. What was it like to be black in Tudor times? “They married English people, they worked in a number of different occupations, they owned property. So some would have had relatively good lives, others perhaps not so good, depending on their particular position in life. 

“I think one of the things which struck me a lot was that kind of racism we have experienced in the 20^th century and after is something that is not necessarily something that is particularly prevalent in previous centuries.”

The transatlantic slave trade remains an horrific period in British history, but Adi looks back further to reveal that every monarch from Elizabeth I to Victoria Saxe Coburg (Queen Victoria) was involved in human trafficking.

In fact, the first monopolies in human trafficking were royal monopolies, the Royal Africa Company.  

Adi said: “All of the monarchs and their families were involved in this great crime of human trafficking. In fact, if you look at the movement for abolition in this country, it was the monarchy that was the most determined opponent of abolition.”

The widespread manipulation of racism in this country has eradicated a lot of these stories and episodes of black Britain. 

It was the government who established the ‘colour bar’ which openly discriminated against non-whites, and segregation of the armed forces in the First and Second World Wars along with seafarers in London, Liverpool, and Cardiff, leading to the riots of 1919. 

This government-manufactured racism has influenced the general populace at times.

With the recent police killing of Chris Kaba, Adi laments how history continues to repeat itself. 

His documentation of black political activism against the police shows how this history of resistance against the police manifests itself throughout every generation.