Black History Month

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady for bringing forward this debate on a really important issue. I am here to support her for that purpose. History should be rich and we should ensure that British history is taught in schools. Does she agree that the curriculum should have time factored in each year for local history, to help children to learn the history of local communities—she has just referred to that—across the whole of the United Kingdom and the immense contribution of black history, heritage and culture to this nation?

[Abena Oppong-Asare]

I thank the hon. Member for mentioning that point. I completely support that and I will talk about it in detail later in my speech. It is important to know about local history.

I want to celebrate constituents such as Melrose, a nurse at Greenwich and Bexley community hospice, who said:

“Every day we”—

as black nurses—

“go to work. We take our roles seriously. However, we are confronted on a regular basis by people who don’t appreciate us because of who we are: our cultural identity is either mocked or discarded rather than accepted. We strive through hundreds of hurdles, we skip, we jump, we swim and we keep smiling. We learn, we grow and we move forward a few steps down the line and we bounce back. We are resilient.”

Melrose’s testimony reminds me of the great sacrifices many black people have made over the past years in response to the covid pandemic.

Another constituent, Florence Emakpose, part of the World of Hope organisation in Abbey Wood, worked throughout the lockdown to reach out to vulnerable families with their own food bank service.