Black History Month

Caroline Nokes Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Ms Polly Billington (East Thanet) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree with me on the importance of that changing narrative, and the importance of the organisations in our communities that change it? In mine we have People Dem Collective, Everyday Racism and Margate Black Pride, which are putting the stories of black people in our constituencies on the map. They tell me that in the modern curriculum review, we need to make sure that black history is not just about black people; it is everyone’s history, and it should be part of the curriculum.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I remind the hon. Lady that interventions need to be short. She will have an opportunity to make a speech in due course.

[Mr Bailey]

I thank my hon. Friend for her powerful intervention about the important and necessary allyship of those organisations. It is of fundamental importance that we empower them and help them to lift others up, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme made clear earlier.

The stories of ethnic minority communities are not footnotes; they are integral chapters in our national history. From Claudia Jones, pioneer of the West Indian Gazette and the Notting Hill carnival, to Paul Stephenson and Roy Hackett, who led the Bristol bus boycott in 1963, to Laurie Cunningham, the first black capped England football player from our very own Leyton Orient, British history is enriched by the lives and contributions of people of colour. To overlook these contributions is to erase a vital part of our collective history. As the author Zadie Smith has said, when you erase people’s history, you erase their humanity. Recognising black British history is essential for building a truly inclusive society. It is in this spirit of inclusivity that I will carry on.

Black History Month is an opportunity to recognise the diversity and interconnectedness of the people and cultures that shaped modern Britain. One of the most important aspects of that is remembering the long and proud tradition of black and Asian servicemen and women who have defended this nation with valour and distinction. As we know, soldiers from Africa, the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent made significant contributions to Britain’s efforts in both world wars. I want to remember in particular the contributions of our aviators, such as squadron leader Mohinder Singh Pujji, an Indian RAF pilot who flew Hurricanes and Spitfires during the Battle of Britain. I would also like to share the stories of the Jamaican squadrons—the pilots of the Caribbean, as we like to remember them. There were so many brave men and women like Mohinder and the pilots of the Caribbean who played a vital role in securing our freedom. Their contributions were crucial, but are often overlooked. We will remember them next month on Remembrance Sunday.

In recent years, many of our reflections on Black History Month have centred on the story of the Windrush generation, but their intrinsic link with the history of the Royal Air Force is not always recognised. Many of those who arrived on the Empire Windrush and subsequent ships were not strangers to Britain in any sense. In fact, they were former RAF service personnel returning to our country—the country they had defended just a few years before. I wish to share with the House some of the stories of these remarkable individuals, so that they are captured in our history.

John Henry Smythe MBE, known as Johnny, was originally from Sierra Leone. He volunteered for the Royal Air Force in 1939 and served as a navigator in 623 or Jamaica Squadron. Shot down over Germany in 1943, he spent 18 months in a Nazi prisoner of war camp before being liberated in 1945. After the war, Smythe worked at the Colonial Office, caring for demobilised Caribbean and African airmen. In a twist of fate, he was the senior officer on the Empire Windrush in 1948 when it was being used to take former personnel back to the Caribbean. Recognising the lack of job opportunities there, Smythe recommended that the men be allowed to return to the UK. That decision marked the beginning of the Windrush generation. He later became a barrister, a Queen’s counsel and Sierra Leone’s Attorney General. He died in 1992 at the age of 82.

Sam King MBE was originally from Jamaica. He had served in the RAF during world war two. Joining in 1944, after responding to an advertisement in Jamaica’s Daily Gleaner newspaper, King arrived in Greenock, Scotland in November 1944, experiencing a shocking temperature drop from 23ºC in Jamaica to 4ºC on his arrival. After three months of training at RAF Hunmanby Moor in Filey, Yorkshire, he was posted to RAF Hawkinge, near Folkestone in Kent, where he served as an aircraft engineer. King was later promoted and received further training at RAF Locking in Somerset. He had several more postings, finishing his wartime service at Dishforth, in Ripon, Yorkshire. After returning to the UK in 1948, Sam re-enlisted in the RAF, serving until 1953. Later in life, Sam became a driving force in the British Caribbean community. He co-founded the Windrush Foundation and became the first black mayor of Southwark in 1983. Sam died in 2016 at the wonderful age of 90. Having checked through Hansard, I can see that his contributions have rightly been recognised before by several parliamentarians, both in this place and the other, who had the honour of being his best friends.

Prince Albert Jacob, known as Jake, was born in Trinidad in 1925 and volunteered for the Royal Air Force at 17 years of age in 1943. During world war two, Jake repaired planes in America and in England, serving at bases in Kirkham, Burtonwood and Carlisle. In 1948 he married his wife Mary, an English woman, despite facing racial prejudice from her family. Jake settled in the Black Country and later in Knowle, building a life in post-war Britain. Although promised medals for his wartime service, Jake only received his war medal, defence medal and veterans badge in February 2023, at the age of 97. That is a stark reminder of the often overlooked contributions of servicemen of colour. I had the pleasure of meeting Jake at the RAF’s 75th anniversary celebrations for Windrush at Edgbaston in June 2003. There is rightly a growing recognition of the Windrush generation’s significance in British history, but there is more we can do to permanently fuse that into our common understanding of who we are and where we come from.

I thank Micah, the RAF’s ethnic minority network and the air historical branch for sharing and preserving these stories. I also thank the RAF for lifting the black bar, allowing these people to serve our country. These men and women made a conscious choice to return to Britain. They saw opportunities to use their skills to forge a better life for themselves and their families. Their decision was an act of agency—a deliberate choice to improve their circumstances while contributing to Britain’s post-war recovery.

That story of service, migration and contribution resonates deeply with many of us. That was the conscious decision that my mother made: to come to this country and build a life for her family. I stand here 47 years later as a proud Zambian and Londoner with a decorated RAF career, representing my constituency as its first black MP. I aim to stand as a shining example of agency and opportunity for all the young people in Leyton and Wanstead, contributing to our shared history alongside those from the Windrush generation who had RAF ties.

I want to finish by reflecting on what it means to have people who reflect so many strands of our national story here in this place. From the pioneering Indian parliamentarian Dadabhai Naoroji, who was elected as the Liberal MP for Finsbury Central in 1892, to the groundbreaking election of my right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) as our first black woman MP in 1987, we have seen significant progress. In 2010 there were 27 ethnic minority MPs; by 2019 that number had risen to 66, 10% of all MPs. As of July 2024, we stand at 90 MPs from ethnic minority backgrounds and, critically, 50 of that number are women. Representation is about ensuring that the diverse voices and experiences of our nation are heard in the Chambers where decisions affecting all our lives are made. As we all celebrate Black History Month, let us recommit to ensuring that the diversity we see in our streets, our workplaces and all our constituencies is reflected in these halls of power.

Recognising this shared history makes it all the more crucial to address the Windrush scandal, which continues to demand redress, and I welcome my hon. Friend the Minister’s recognition of that and movement towards doing so. As we know, people with stories like Jake’s, Sam’s and John’s were devastated just a few short years ago due to policies and failure originating from this place. They lost their jobs, their homes, their access to healthcare and, in some cases, their right to remain in the country they had called home. The Windrush compensation scheme was alarmingly slow and complex, and the compensation meagre. The Home Office’s failure under the previous Government to fully implement all the recommendations of Wendy Williams’ Windrush lessons learned review further compounds this injustice. As we stand here in 2024, it is clear that the Windrush scandal is not a closed chapter in our history but an ongoing struggle for justice and recognition, and I welcome our renewed commitment to right these wrongs.

As we reflect on the Windrush generation’s contributions and struggles, we have an opportunity to recognise the ongoing value of migration to our country. In communities such as Leyton and Wanstead, and Plumstead and Woolwich, where I grew up, we see the positive impact of immigration every day in our local buses, schools and GP services. From our family-run shops to dedicated new NHS staff and the entrepreneurial people-to-people links we have to fast-growing countries, our openness and interconnection with the world continues to enrich and strengthen our local areas and the nation as a whole.