Black History Month

Olivia Blake Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare) on securing this debate. It is vital that we celebrate black history and the struggle for racial justice in the UK. This has been such an important debate at such an important time, and it is certainly of much importance for my constituents and my constituency, because Sheffield was one of the engine rooms of the industrial revolution. Sheffield, Hallam was where many of the business magnates of the age made their homes. They invested in the machinery and the mills that would earn Sheffield its reputation as a steel city, but those factories were not used only to produce steel or Sheffield cutlery, which we celebrate often. They were also used, unfortunately—as in many cities—for a more sinister objective: they made the tools that were used on the plantations by people sold into slavery on the other side of the Atlantic. We can see the design of those tools in Joseph Smith’s book published in 1816, called “Explanation Or Key, to the Various Manufactories of Sheffield”.

We also have our fair share of people who have sought to dismantle that legacy. In 1790, Sheffield hosted the author and anti-slavery activist, Olaudah Equiano. It also has an international connection to the great American abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, through the letters of Mary Anne Rawson, who led the Sheffield Female Anti-Slavery Society, the first society in Britain to argue for an immediate end to slavery. Ever since Equiano, Sheffield has had a tradition of campaigning for racial justice. It has played host to Malcolm X, declared itself a city of sanctuary and united in the face of far-right hatred of the Muslim community.

I know about the city’s role in making plantation tools because of the Sheffield Black Atlantic Project at the University of Sheffield. We need more work such as that at our universities and in our schools and colleges, so we do not have ignorance about our cities’ roles in globalisation and our legacy. We also need to do much more to dismantle institutional racism in our education system. According to recent figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency, only 1% of our professors are black. It is not just history written in the past that is over-represented by white academics; it is happening now and we need to challenge that.

Black History Month should be about more than looking to the past; it is about struggling for a better future, too. Today, campaigners in my constituency fight for justice for Simba Mujakachi. Simba’s family moved to Sheffield when he was 14. His father applied for asylum due to persecution in Zimbabwe, but was refused. As a refused asylum seeker, he was denied work and denied access to the NHS. Last year, Simba suffered a stroke, and he now owes £93,000 to the health service, which was established to provide care free at the point of use to all those who need it. I am proud to stand with him as he campaigns for justice for himself and for all those denied medical treatment as a result of the Government’s “hostile environment” policy.

It is the same policy that led to the Windrush scandal and the deportation of black British people, a generation that contributed so much to Sheffield’s history, including our steel industry. Like Simba, those people had spent their entire adult lives in the UK and lacked only the paperwork to prove their nationality. The fact that we live in a society that demands papers from black British people to prove their citizenship or to access public services should shame us all. Black History Month is an opportunity to celebrate the contribution of black communities to our culture, society and politics, but we must also remember that history is a living thing. Just as we recall the injustices of the past and those who have fought against them, we should also stand with those, like Simba, who continue to struggle today.