Black History Month

Alexander Stafford Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), whose constituency is very close to my heart. My father-in-law, Huw Thomas, was at the steel mills at Port Talbot. It is a place I care passionately about. I thank the hon. Gentleman for mentioning the steel mills.

We are here to talk about history. I would like to declare an interest: I studied history at university. I am passionate about history—all history, but especially the history of this country and this great nation. School teacher Robin Nonhebel is one of the reasons I am here in this place and studied history at university. I just wish everyone had been taught by him. He opened up history to generations. I wish he had taught more pupils at the school—he was well-known and well-loved. For instance, he taught me that the first King of all England was King Athelstan in 927 AD. It is important that we all know our history.

That love of history is incredibly important. Only by knowing our past—our complete past—can we know the future. There is no problem that we face or are going to face that has not already been faced in the past and been answered. Whether that is racism, as has been talked about already, or other issues, all those issues have been addressed in the past. Only by knowing our past can we know our future.

Black History Month is a very important issue, but I say black history is British history. We have one shared history, black and white. Black people have been present throughout the history of this great nation—at our highs and at our lows, when we have done well and when we have done badly. It is a shared collective history and that needs to continue to be taught. I do not believe that we should separate black history from white history. We should have one history, because we have one history.

When I think about that point, I think of some great British moments. I encourage everyone next time they are walking up to Trafalgar Square to look at Nelson’s Column—not just to look at Nelson, but at the relief along the bottom of the column. One of the key pictures on the relief shows a black African who was there at the battle of Trafalgar. According to the records, there were 18 people born in Africa fighting with the British Navy on that day in 1805 when we defeated the perfidious French and Spanish and saved our country from invasion. There were black people standing shoulder to shoulder with British people, fighting at one of the most pivotal moments in our history, when we could have been invaded.

There are more records in the other place. The picture “The Death of Nelson” shows when Nelson has been shot by a sniper and there is a sailor pointing out the sniper. That sailor is black and is pointing out the person who shot one of our great national heroes, Nelson. That is just one example of where black people, British people and white people—we are one British people—are working together.

It goes on. In 1857, a black British sailor, Able Seaman William Hall, won the Victoria Cross. In 1855, in the Crimean War, Mary Seacole was a great nurse, standing with us in some of our darkest hours. The list goes on. Ignatius Sancho was the first black person to vote in a general election—not a general election in this century, or even in the last century. The first general election he voted in was in 1774, before the vast majority of people in this country got a vote. Black people were having a positive impact on our democracy even back then. I also read that he was an ardent monarchist and that he was against the Americans and their call to revolution, so we like him even more for that.

We must mention the darker days. I look back to Henry VIII—as we all know, the dissolution of the monasteries was one of the greatest travesties of our history. However, apparently, his musician, a trumpeter, was John Blanke, who again was black. Throughout our British history, we have so many integral black people taking part and involved. Our schools should be teaching about this history, but they should not be teaching about black history in isolation. They should teach about British history and make sure that black people’s roles are justifiably encountered in it, for good and for bad.

However, this is not just about British history. If we go back further, black people have shaped world history. We have talked about the pharaohs, and the Kush dynasty was mentioned. The 25th pharaonic dynasty was a black dynasty from Nubia. They decided that the Egyptians had become so decadent in their ways that they overthrew the Egyptian pharaohs and replaced them with black pharaohs. When was the last time, when we learnt about the Egyptians, that we talked about the black pharaohs? We should talk about that more in our history. Even if we look at Christianity and the Christian faith, which is imbued throughout our history across Europe, the story—the great message—is that, when the three kings came to Jesus, one of them, by tradition called Balthazar, was from Africa. Even throughout our thousands of years of Christian history, black people have had an integral part in it.

For me, black history is British history. We need to learn all about it because we are one people. We are one British people. We should celebrate what everyone has achieved, black or white, rich or poor. We should not necessarily divide the two, but we should make sure that when we teach our British history, we talk about the integral part that black people have played in our great British history.