Black History Month

Bell Ribeiro-Addy Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Streatham) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare) on securing this important debate, and I echo the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler): it is not enough for someone not to be racist, they have to be an anti-racist, because if they are not part of the solution, they are just another part of the problem.

I have been pleased to listen to the contributions today, or at least most of them, because every time I hear about black history, I learn more and more. Like most people in this House, I never learnt black history at school. The majority of my learning came from my love of reading and my frequent visits to the Brixton library. I love learning about Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, and those international perspectives are so important, but the UK has its own rich civil rights struggle, and I want British children also to learn about that. I want them to learn about the Bristol bus boycotts, Mary Seacole, Claudia Jones, Olive Morris, CLR James, the first black Members to enter this House and much more.

Those who do not think it necessary to learn black history in schools, or that it should be confined to certain lessons, have to acknowledge how damaging it is not to see yourself reflected in your history. Black history is British history, and how can we possibly learn about this country in its fullness and how it came to be if we do not learn about slavery and colonialism, and the impacts they have directly had on how our country is today?

This debate is extremely timely because, as Members will have just heard, we found recently that no subject has received more signatories for parliamentary petitions than getting black history taught as part of our national curriculum, yet the Government have refused requests from campaigning organisations such as the Black Curriculum to change our curriculum. Given that this is coupled with the new guidance about anti-capitalist texts in schools, I am a bit suspicious, because I also did not learn about the miners’ strikes, the poll tax riots or the achievements of trade unions at school.

Decolonising our education is every bit as much about class as it is about race. Heaven forbid that working-class kids are taught about movements for change—they might start to get ideas that they have power as citizens, that when they see injustice they should challenge it and that if they persevere they might just win.

I remember that the first thing I wrote in my year 7 history book, in Mr Smart’s class, was, “We study the past to live the present with an eye on the future.” I believe we need to address our shameful past and shameful present and look to a future of racial equality. We have to be willing to do that to inform and inspire the next generation, because nobody is born racist. Racism is ignorance, and what is education if not the absence of ignorance?

This history is not something that we need just to be added on at the end of a lesson, one day a week, one day of the year, in one single section of our curriculum or even in this one month. Too often, the burden is left to our teachers to move things around and find time. Recently, I was proud to go to Streatham Wells Primary School and find nine and 10-year-olds learning about unconscious bias. I applaud our teachers who make this special effort and ask the Government to follow their lead.

When we learn about black history, it has to be done properly. Yes, we must learn about our allies, such as William Wilberforce, and what they did to help the struggle, but, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) pointed out, slavery ended because of the slave revolts. It ended because of those people who were willing to risk their lives. Colonialism ended because people were no longer willing to have this country rule over them.

We need to applaud those sheroes and heroes in history. We need to look at people such as Toussaint Louverture, Nanny of the Maroons and Yaa Asantewaa, who shares the same heritage as me and my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead. We need to look this again as a form of reparations. In my maiden speech, I spoke about reparations, how they do not have to be about just giving large sums away and how instead they are about looking about how we address things such as giving certain artefacts back and offering an apology. I would add educational reparations to that: decolonising our education.

Too often, when we challenge racism in this House, we are told that we do not recognise progress and that we do not like our country. I would like to say: we are the progress. When we look at the Benches on both sides of the House, we are shown the progress that we have made. But I came to this House to change things, not just to clap my hands for the mediocre things that have gone in the past. To quote a modern-day philosopher—naturally, a Streatham native—the rapper Santan Dave:

“least racist is still racist”.

We have a long way to go. So when I challenge in racism in my country, I do not want anyone to tell me that I do not love my country and I should go back to somewhere else, because what more love could you have for your country than to make it the very best place in the world for all people to live, no matter the colour of their skin?