Black History Month

Brendan O'Hara Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2021 Westminster Hall

[Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the chair for this important debate, Sir Graham. Like everyone else, I start by thanking the hon. Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) for securing this debate and all right hon. and hon. Members who have taken part and contributed thus far.

This is a hugely important topic, and today’s debate gives us the opportunity not only to celebrate the lives of so many black people, but to recognise the invaluable contribution they have made to society. It gives us a chance to acknowledge and reflect on those who, often at great personal cost, as we have heard, have put themselves in danger to expose and seek to end racial injustice and to make society better for themselves and for every single one of us. It is absolutely right that we should celebrate those people, because through their sacrifice they have laid a pathway for others to follow.

As the hon. Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) and the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) have said, many of those figures are well known to us, whether they be politicians, actors, sports figures, or academics such as Betty Campbell and her marvellous statue, but behind them are millions of people who, unrecognised and without fanfare, have devoted their lives to the betterment of their community. I believe today should be as much a celebration of their contribution as anyone else’s.

I sincerely thank the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) for her superb analysis of contemporary history, which showed clearly that Black History Month is not the celebration of the end of a journey—far from it. Black History Month exists to reflect on how far we have come, but also to shine a light on how far we as a society have still to go. Depressingly, as we have heard from the hon. Member for Battersea, the vile racist abuse that those three young England footballers had to suffer following the penalty shoot-out at Wembley shows just how far that is.

I am reluctant to inject a note of discord into the debate, but I must take issue with the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker), who quoted his friend the hon. Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson). The great Arthur Wharton was the first English black professional footballer, but the first pioneer on that front was Andrew Watson, a Scots Guyanese footballer who played for the phenomenally successful Queen’s Park football club, captaining Scotland to success over England and Wales on several occasions. I know so much about Andrew Watson because, in a previous life, I made a documentary on his outstanding success. I believe it is still available on YouTube, should anyone care to view it; I would appreciate it if the hon. Member for Wycombe could recommend it to his colleague the hon. Member for Darlington.

Where we can all agree, I am certain, is that racism is an evil that none in our societies can claim to be immune to. We have a huge amount of work to do if we are to advance racial equality across these islands. Let me be absolutely clear: racism, however it manifests, has no place in modern Scotland, but it is not enough simply not to be racist. Particularly in the positions we hold in this place, we must be actively anti-racist, be seen to actively support minority ethnic communities and be first in line to call out and condemn racism wherever it rears its ugly head.

The First Minister of Scotland has made it abundantly clear that she will not tolerate racism in Scotland, whether it is the recent disgraceful anti-Irish racism on the streets of Glasgow, or the discrimination against any of our ethnic minority communities. She has made it clear that her Government are determined to play their part in eradicating racism, inequality and injustice and in building a better, fairer Scotland for every single one of us. I am pleased, therefore, that the Scottish Government have opened a new fund accessible to all organisations with a focus on tackling inequality and prejudice, which is in line with the goals and outcomes of Black History Month.

We have heard from many speakers this afternoon that one of the best ways to tackle racism is through education. Only through education can young people in particular gain an understanding of their history. In the Scottish National party’s May manifesto, we committed to funding an online programme on Scotland’s colonial history and encourage local authorities to adopt that programme in all Scottish schools.

I understand that in last year’s debate, the Equalities Minister, the hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Kemi Badenoch), expressed the opinion that the education curriculum was not in need of decolonisation because, in her view, there was no colonialism present in the curriculum. She could not be more wrong. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin) was right when she said during last year’s debate that

“racism is rooted in untruthful or selective teaching about our past. People are not born racist. They learn it.”—[Official Report, 20 October 2020; Vol. 682, c. 1006.]

We need to recognise that there is a desperate need for the UK—I include Scotland in that—to face up to our colonial history and the role that we played in colonising great swathes of the planet, and how we as a society became phenomenally wealthy in no small part because of the enslavement of black African people.

I am from a generation of Scots children, particularly Glaswegians, who were educated in the late 1960s and early 1970s. From primary school age, we were taught about the Glasgow tobacco lords, that group of Scottish merchants who in the 18th century made huge fortunes trading tobacco from the Americas. They became so unimaginably wealthy that they redrew the city itself: vast sums were spent on houses and new roads, which they named after themselves. Indeed, to this day, there is an area of the city—one of its most beautiful—known as the Merchant City. We were taught that these guys were something to admire: that we should have an enormous sense of civic pride in what they did and how their wealth allowed the city of Glasgow to become that much-heralded second city of the empire.

The fact that those tobacco barons were slave traders who made their fortunes from that triangular trade between Glasgow, west Africa and the Americas was an inconvenient truth that was rarely, if ever, mentioned. The fact that they grew fabulously wealthy, and that Glasgow was transformed into a large and prosperous city, because of the slave trade and the enforced labour of the tobacco plantations of Virginia and sugar plantations of Jamaica was airbrushed from the narrative.

As children, we were told that the entrepreneurship of those men was to be admired and celebrated, and to this day, they are immortalised in the street names and place names of Glasgow, a city they effectively built. Any walking tour around Glasgow will include Glassford Street, Oswald Street, Buchanan Street, Cochrane Street, Dunlop Street, Ingram Street, Gordon Street and Robertson Street—all named after the Glasgow merchants whose fortunes were directly linked to the slave trade. If one did not recognise those family names, then Virginia Street, Tobago Street, Jamaica Street and even the Kingston Bridge would provide a clue as to where our city’s money came from. Unknowingly, the good people of Glasgow—like probably many of our constituents—literally walk in the shadows of slavery every single day.

While accepting that we cannot change our past, we should at least know what that past is, and understand the role that the enslavement of other human beings played in our success. We have to accept, because it is an undeniable fact, that our stories are told from one perspective: the perspective of the coloniser. However, there is another, equally important story that deserves to be heard and must be heard, which is the story of the colonised. Without that missing perspective—without being able to hear the stories of those victims—we will only ever have half of the story. For many years growing up, I was failing to completely understand what had been done, why it had been done and the consequences of it, because I only ever had half of the story.

Scotland’s links to the transatlantic slave trade are deep and complex, but they are also undeniable. I am therefore delighted that future generations of Scottish children will have a far more rounded and inclusive education—one that focuses on race equality. The Scottish Government recently announced their curriculum for excellence, which will provide opportunities for young people to learn about current and past attitudes, values and historical events, and their impact on our society. That can include learning about Scotland’s role in the transatlantic slave trade. Scotland’s role in that trade will now be an option in both our national 5 and our higher history qualifications, and Education Scotland will be publishing resources for teachers on slavery and human trafficking, including resources to support teaching and learning about the slave trade and Scotland’s role in it. The Scottish Government will fund the development of an online programme for teachers and encourage all local authorities to take it up. That is very welcome, and a far cry from how my generation was taught Scottish history. The sooner we get to an acceptance that black history is an integral and fundamental part of our history, the better for us all.

Again, I thank the hon. Member for Streatham for securing the debate. I share her belief that it should be an annual event marking Black History Month until such time as it is deemed no longer necessary, which unfortunately seems a long way off.