Black History - White History: Britain's Historical Programme between Windrush and Wilberforce [1. Aufl.] 9783839419359

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Barbara Korte, Eva Ulrike Pirker Black History – White History

Historische Lebenswelten in populären Wissenskulturen History in Popular Cultures | Volume 5

Editorial The series Historische Lebenswelten in populären Wissenskulturen | History in Popular Cultures provides analyses of popular representations of history from specific and interdisciplinary perspectives (history, literature and media studies, social anthropology, and sociology). The studies focus on the contents, media, genres, as well as functions of contemporary and past historical cultures. The series is edited by Barbara Korte and Sylvia Paletschek (executives), HansJoachim Gehrke, Wolfgang Hochbruck, Sven Kommer and Judith Schlehe.

Barbara Korte is professor of English Literature at the University of Freiburg, Germany. Eva Ulrike Pirker is lecturer in English Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Freiburg, Germany.

Barbara Korte, Eva Ulrike Pirker

Black History – White History Britain’s Historical Programme between Windrush and Wilberforce

Printed with the support of the German Research Council (DFG)

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de © 2011 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover layout: Kordula Röckenhaus, Bielefeld Cover illustration: Steffne / photocase.com Proofread and Typeset by Barbara Korte, Eva Ulrike Pirker Printed by Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar ISBN 978-3-8376-1935-5 Global distribution outside Germany, Austria and Switzerland:

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Contents

Acknowledgments | 7 Note on Citations | 9 Introduction | 11

PART I: BETWEEN P UBLIC AND P OPULAR: APPROACHING A BLACK BRITISH HISTORY 1. Discovering a Past for the Present | 17 2. Historical Culture and Social Communication | 37 3. Popular Re/Presentation of History and Its Media | 47 4. Key Aims and Questions | 53

PART II: T HE BICENTENARY E FFECT : HOW THE S LAVE TRADE , S LAVERY AND ABOLITION W ENT P UBLIC 1. Remembering and Forgetting Slavery | 57 2. Screening Slavery and the Slave Trade before the Bicentenary | 65 3. Simon Schama’s Rough Crossings: From Popular History Book to Television History | 81 4. The Abolition as Costume Film: Amazing Grace – Black History with a White Hero | 99 5. Setting a Critical Tone: In Search of William Wilberforce | 115

6. ›Doing an Anniversary‹: The Event Culture Surrounding 2007 | 121 7. The Impact of 2007 – Slavery and the Slave Trade in British Museums | 135 8. Family Matters: Genealogy as Popular (Black) History | 163

PART III: KEEPING P OST -W AR MIGRATION V ISIBLE: THE WINDRUSH STORY IN THE TWENTY -FIRST CENTURY 1. Screening and Staging an Arrival | 183 2. Family, Sport and Period in Wondrous Oblivion | 185 3. Notting Hill in a Historical Crime Serial | 199 4. Migration as Heritage Drama? Small Island | 207 5. Migration History as Entertainment? Trends in Contemporary British Theatre | 231 6. The Windrush Story as Musical | 239 Conclusion | 251 Bibliography | 255 Index | 279

Acknowledgments

This book is the result of a project funded by the German Research Council (DFG) as part of the Freiburg Research Group 875: History in Popular Cultures of Knowledge. We are indebted to the members of the research group for many lively discussions and feedback. In addition, we would like to thank James Walvin and Mike Phillips for helpful comments during different stages of our research. The chapters »The Abolition as Costume Film: Amazing Grace – Black History with a White Hero« and »Family, Sport and Period in Wondrous Oblivion« were drafted by Barbara Korte while she was an Internal Senior Fellow at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS). Doris Lechner has assisted us with bibliographical work and internet searches. For their help in preparing the manuscript for publication our thanks go to Natalie Churn, Kathrin Göb, Katja Bay and Georg Zipp. Freiburg, June 2011 Barbara Korte and Eva Ulrike Pirker

Note on Citations

For our film analyses, we have used DVD versions where available (until 2010). In other cases, the minutes cited refer to copies accessible at the British Film Institute or the Media Archive at Goldsmith College, London. All references to internet websites were verified in June 2011. Where websites are no longer available, the last access date is given.

Introduction

History is a contested field whose images and narratives emerge to a considerable extent from discursive processes. In Western societies today we can observe a pronounced need for and an increased »consumption« of history (cf. De Groot 2009). As a consequence of this demand, histories are increasingly being produced and made available in ways that – rather than speaking to specialists or special interest groups – are accessible to wider audiences.1 The general audience’s interest, it seems, can be taken for granted and is served on the cultural market. Like other countries, the United Kingdom has been experiencing a conspicuous peak of historical interest since the end of the twentieth century, as David Cannadine remarks: »In Britain, the late 1990s and early 2000s witnessed what was widely regarded as an unprecedented interest in history; among publishers, in the newspapers, on radio and on film, and (especially) on television; and from the general public who, it seemed, could not get enough of it. Translated into the market-orientated language of our day, it looked as though more history was being produced and consumed than ever before.« (Cannadine 2004: 1)

Reasons for this history boom suggested by Cannadine include, among others, »unprecedented outbursts of national retrospection« (for instance on the occasion of the Queen Mother’s death in 2002) or the sheer availability

1

Of course, such audiences display, in themselves, a high heterogeneity in terms of class, age, gender and ethnicity. It is a cross-section of such audiences that products aimed at a ›general‹ or ›mainstream‹ audience usually try to reach.

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of historical information through the revolution in information technology. In addition, history has become a major entertainment source, not only on television but also in literature or in themed environments and special events. The possible motives for the contemporary historical interest are plenty and difficult to concretise, but they can be seen as an indicator of an intensified need for orientation. Definitions and explanations of belonging and identity are sought in a world that has become more complex in a short period of time due to rapid changes. The »patterns of understanding« we construct for the past can help us to »explain the origins and nature of the world in which we live. And doing this, we define and redefine the place that we occupy in that world.« (Morris-Suzuki 2005: 2f.) What must engage us when we consider history, therefore, are not only its many forms, but also the diverse functions which history fulfils in various societies. The term ›historical culture‹ is increasingly used for the ways in which societies make certain segments of the past significant and useful for their present concerns and interpretative needs. »Cultures of history«, according to Billie Melman (2006: 11), are »cultures at work«; they make »versions of history meaningful and workable for individuals within the constrictions of society, the economy, and the state«, and they do so »both in a social and material world and in their imaginary« (Melman 2006: 4). Historical cultures today draw from a wide range of media and forms, notably those with a mainstream or even ›popular‹ appeal.2 The particular interest of this book is the ways in which a black history has been made accessible and relevant to a wider audience in the United Kingdom in recent years. This history – like black British culture in general – has become the subject of intensified academic activity.3 How-

2

The popularisation of historical knowledge is an expanding but diffuse field of research. Cf. the surveys provided by Korte/Paletschek (2009a; 2011) and Berger/Lorenz/Melman (2011). The term ›popular‹ is a contested term and this book cannot review the debates surrounding it in depth. It should be noted, however, that no cultural product is inherently popular; its popularity depends on cultural contexts and processes that make a product popular.

3

Cf., for instance, the pioneering studies of Walvin (1971; 1973) and Shyllon (1974; 1977), later continued, among others, by Edwards/Walvin (1983), Fryer (1984), Dabydeen (1985), Dabydeen/Wilson-Tagoe (1987) and, again, Walvin (1984; 1986). An important impetus for further research was provided by the

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ever, treatments of this history which address a non-specialist audience have a particular capacity to disseminate knowledge about the longstanding presence of black people in the national past and anchor it in the national historical consciousness. This is seminal in a society which has begun to identify itself as a multiethnic society. However, in many of the recent ›popular‹ representations, black history still emerges as contested, and the choices of whether, and how, to address its complexities vary considerably. To do justice to this variety, we approach our subject through a number of case studies of presentations that come in different media and genres and display different perspectives on black history. They all date from the now already historical period during which a New Labour Government promoted ›multiethnicity‹ and hence gave impetus to revisions of the nation’s historical culture. Part I provides essential background information and the basic premises of the present study: a survey of the promotion of black history in the British public and its establishment as an essential component of a new historical culture for a ›multiethnic Britain‹, as well as our main conceptual framework and terminology. The case studies in Parts II (on the British slave trade and its abolition) and III (on post-Second World War migration from the Caribbean) constitute the core of this book. They concentrate on those two segments of black British history which have received the biggest share of public attention over the past years. Both were articulated on the occasion of prominent anniversaries in 1998 and 2007 respectively: the fiftieth anniversary of the arrival of the Empire Windrush from the Carib-

1981 International Conference on the History of Blacks in Britain, which was accompanied by a special issue of History Today (The History of Blacks in Britain 1981). Race relations have been a dominant theme in research from the 1990s onward (cf. Goulbourne 1998; Miles 1993). Another area that was investigated in more depth was the black presence in Britain during the slave trade and the colonial past (cf. Morgan/Hawkins 2004; Myers 1996; Okonon 1998 and Walvin 1992; 1998; 2006; 2007). Yet the field still remained fragmented until the publication of The Oxford Companion to Black British History (Dabydeen/Gilmore/Jones 2007), the first encyclopaedia comprising information about historical figures, key terms and movements. For an assessment of the emergence of narrative (factual and fictional) discourses surrounding a black British history cf. Pirker (2011a).

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bean, and the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade.4 That anniversaries can function as triggers for the inclusion of new themes in a nation’s historical culture brings up questions with regard to the sort of history that is represented or performed for a wider audience: Which anniversaries are taken up in the first place, when, where and why? Who are the agents that bring about, take part in and consume historical celebrations? Which anniversaries (or commemorative events more generally) compete with or dominate over others and why? These as well as other related questions are considered in several chapters of this book, which otherwise provide close critical readings of the cases investigated. Taken together, the analyses in Parts II and III give insights into what is a highly diverse and contested historical culture, regardless of the fact that in all cases a ›general‹ audience was the intended addressee. The comparison of the popularisation of the Windrush story with the recent narratives around slavery and abolition also raises the question as to what kind of black history it is that ›suits‹ the recent historical culture of Britain best.

4

For research into the significance of anniversaries and celebrations in historical culture cf., among others, Johnston (1991), the survey by Macho (1998), the studies by Chase (1990) and Botstein (1997) and the contributions by BenAaron, Katriel and Sarangi to a themed issue of the journal Text (September 2005).

PART I: Between Public and Popular: Approaching a Black British History

1. Discovering a Past for the Present

In the United Kingdom, 2007 was a year of intensified engagement with a chapter in the nation’s past that resonated with current concerns. It marked the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade by the British parliament – a sensitive issue in a country where descendants of the black diasporic community now form a significant part of a ›multiethnic‹ society. Unsurprisingly, there was no lack of official addresses from high-ranking officials, including the Prime Minister, who felt urged »not just to say how profoundly shameful the slave trade was – how we condemn its existence utterly and praise those who fought for its abolition – but also to express our deep sorrow that it ever happened« (DCLG 2007: 1). Blair’s choice of expressing sorrow rather than a formal apology gave rise to public debates.1 Yet even if the question of how to address and commemorate 1807 and the events leading up to it has led to controversy, Blair’s address and the entire culture of commemorating Abolition in 2007 point to the fact that a profound change has taken place in Britain’s historical culture in recent years

1

This pronouncement of shame and concern by a leading politician also points to the fact that apologies for historical wrongs have become a trope in today’s political rhetoric to the degree that they are taken for granted and expected as a matter of course. For insights into the recent phenomenon of the public apology cf. Gibney/Howard/Hassmann et al. (2008). In 1997 and 2005, Tony Blair issued two significant public apologies in the context of British-Irish relations and thus influenced the latter in a positive way. In contrast to Blair, the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone (who had a concrete, local interest in community relations), apologised for the slave trade on behalf of London (cf. Livingstone 2007).

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and that a general awareness of a past that involved black people as victims, agents and heroes has become a hallmark of British historical culture – not only in separate, peripheral narratives, but as part of the public perception of the nation’s past. Since around the year 2000, a consciousness of black themes and figures as part of a British historical culture (rather than a ›foreign‹, African or Caribbean one) has been promoted in the public sphere. It has been pronounced in official directives, as part of a politics and concurrent institutionalisation of history,2 but also in the arts, and, perhaps most significantly, in a prolific cultural production for mainstream audiences that ranges from television programmes and feature films, events and exhibitions, bestselling fiction and non-fiction to West End musicals. Easyaccess internet supports activities in schools3 and museums and accompanies television programmes. To a certain extent, the recent awareness of a black British history is part of an international history boom that seems to utilise almost any anniversary to (re)define historical heroes, to stage events for public commemoration and to invest the past with fresh interest – also commercial interest – for the present. But in the national context of the UK, the present consciousness of a black past is also rooted in recognition of the impact exercised by migrant minority ethnicities on contemporary British culture and cultural identity. The newly public status of a black presence in British history in this national context is manifest in a wide range of examples, such as the attention presently bestowed on Black History Month (first introduced in Britain in 1987). In October 2008, Black History Month received the Guardian’s attention at a time of special historic significance:

2

For the significance of a politics of history (Geschichtspolitik) cf. also Assmann (2006), who examines the tensions between personal experience and official remembrance, explores practices in a culture of commemoration and draws attention to the diverse forms and functions of (public) memory spaces.

3

Cf., for instance, the internet portal »Black History 4 Schools« at http://www. blackhistory4schools.com. Television channels and museums increasingly offer access to online resources for teachers and students. Cf., for example, the Museum of London’s teaching resources at http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/ Schools/Resources/blackhistory.htm.

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»These are historic times. Next month Barack Obama will become the first man of African descent to stand for a mainstream party in the United States’ presidential election. In Britain, this year marked the 60th anniversary of the arrival of the Empire Windrush which began the wave of post-war migration that has made Britain a modern multicultural society. It is fitting, therefore, that in this particularly fitting Black History Month, the Guardian marks the contribution of Africans and their descendants to British and global history. This poster [a black history timeline], published in five parts starting today, celebrates some of the greatest stories almost never told. Stories of world-shaping individuals, from emperors to writers, freedom fighters to inventors. But let us be clear: this is not about creating a separate history; it is about adding a rarely heard story to the history we are familiar with. A story which shows that African people’s history did not begin with slavery, but, from the Romans onwards, has been intertwined with Europeans and others around the world.« (Bennett 2008)

This citation is noteworthy for two reasons: It identifies black British history as part of a global concern with black history and, at the same time, emphasises that black history should be seen as part of British history – »the history we are familiar with« rather than a separate history. Indeed, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, some segments of a black British history have become so widely visible that they can now be considered public and popular knowledge, i.e. a knowledge circulating in the whole of society and at least vaguely familiar to a cross-section of the British population. Black History Month in Britain is a case in point: In its early years, it was largely regarded as a community event restricted to South London. In the late 1990s, national organisations gradually began to include Black History Month in their programmes. By its twentieth anniversary in 2007, over 6000 events took place, many of them beyond the realms of community groups or national institutions.4 Black History Month today functions as a recognisable, recurring landmark that serves as an umbrella for a large number of events, narratives and directives that might otherwise go unnoticed. The rise of Black History Month to public prominence, as well as

4

Cf. The Official Guide to Black History Month at www.blackhistorymonthuk. co.uk.

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the great number of public events outside this month,5 indicate how programmatic (cultural-) political demands made just a few years earlier have actually taken hold in British historical culture. The identity politics of New Labour in terms of the redefinition and rebranding of Britain as a multiethnic and culturally diverse society6 required a new view of national history and its relevance to the present. This view departed radically from the Thatcher government’s notions of a white, English, upper-class and rural national ›heritage‹ – a highly contested use of the term that still reverberates when it is employed in Britain today. In order to construct a multiethnic national identity on a sustainable basis as intended by New Labour, it does not suffice to create equal opportunities and fair representation in present-day society and provide perspectives for the future. It is also vital to generate a historical culture that acknowledges a diversity of experiences in the past and pays tribute to the fact that British myths and notions of British- or Englishness7 can no longer be conceived as

5

To name just two recent and representative examples: The Victoria and Albert Museum ran a »Black Heritage Season« from September 2009 to Autumn 2010 that invited the public to »[l]earn about the relationship and movement of people and objects between Britain, Africa and its Diaspora«. In this context, it also hosted the international conference From the Margins to the Core in March 2010. The conference was devoted to »exploring the shifting roles and increasing significance of diversity and equality in contemporary museum and heritage policy and practice«, and »Sustaining the Impact« was one of its topics (cf. Victoria and Albert Museum 2010a,b). An exhibition at the London Globe Theatre in February 2010 was devoted to the singer, actor and activist Paul Robeson, who was the first black man to play Othello in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1959.

6

Cf. Tony Blair in an interview in Time Magazine (27 October 1997) in an issue with a special report on Blair’s »Renewed Britannia«: »I want a society which is multi-cultural. I want a society where women feel absolutely equal with men. If you like, the cultural change in the country has found expression in politics.« (Time Magazine 1997: 42) Another example are the projections of a more inclusive notion of British identity in Britain™, a publication by the Labour think tank Demos (cf. Leonard 1997).

7

For the debate about Britishness in recent years cf., among other instances, »The Britishness Issue« of the Fabian Review (Winter 2005).

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purely white. Racism clearly did remain a problem despite New Labour’s agenda,8 and support for the agenda began to crumble in the wake of the 9 terrorist attacks of 9/11 in New York and 7/7 in London. However, in terms of identity politics, New Labour’s political programme indicated a significant departure from the migrants-as-problem discourse that had prevailed under Thatcher, and it went hand in hand with a redefinition of the national historical consciousness and its view of the pasts that should be considered part of a meaningful historical legacy. A national conference of the Arts Council held at Manchester in 1999 had the programmatic title Whose Heritage? The Impact of Cultural Diversity on Britain’s Living Heritage.10 According to one of its organisers, it had a landmark status, bringing together »the full spectrum of cultural, heritage and arts practitioners and policy-makers, for the first time on a national level, in order to debate and challenge our concept of heritage in the context of today’s multicultural Britain« (Hewitt 1999: 5). The opening address was delivered by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport of the time, Chris Smith, who proclaimed that »[d]iversity is a fun-

8

This is evidenced by continuing cases of institutional racism. The most famous of these got public attention with the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry (cf. Macpherson 1999).

9

Trevor Phillips, chairman of what used to be the Commission for Racial Equality, claimed in 2005 that Britain was becoming a segregative society. On the challenge for multiculturalism posed by the 2005 attacks on London Transport and its passengers cf. »Multiculturalism after 7/7: A CQ Seminar« (2006).

10 The conference’s agenda stands in stark contrast to earlier views on the matter of a diverse history, such as Lord Elton’s notorious statement: »We need more English History, and not this non-existent history of ethnic entities and women.« (qtd. in Fryer 1988: 77) The problem of race in the discussion about English/British heritage is taken up by Littler and Naidoo (2004), who diagnose a constellation of white heritage vs. the multicultural present in British culture and instead plead for »usefully interrogative heritage practices« that »emphasise the relationship between our multicultural past and our multicultural present without sanitising and skating over the inequalities that have and do exist [sic], or the interrelationship between power, money, ›race‹, class and gender« (Littler/ Naidoo 2004: 340).

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damental feature of British culture, and it is what makes it, in many ways, rather special« (Smith 1999: 8). He also emphasised the consequences of this for the presentation of the nation’s history: »Official history is inevitably a selective interpretation of facts. Some things are given a higher or a lower profile. Others are left out altogether. History should ideally piece together many strands of life from many perspectives of the social memory.« (Smith 1999: 8) In October 2005, the Secretary of Culture of the time, David Lammy, delivered a speech in what could be considered a shrine of history, the British Museum, at the invitation of the Heritage Lottery Fund and on the occasion of Black History Month. Lammy too emphasised the necessity of a diverse history for a multiethnic country, contrasting the desired new consciousness with an older mode of conceptualising the past. As an example for the latter, he cites Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall’s long-lived history book for children, which was first published in 1905, exactly a century before Lammy’s speech:11 »Two aspects of the book and its title stand out. One is that it is about our ›island‹, with little reference to its place in the world. The other is that it presents ›a‹ story, a single shared narrative about what all these disparate currents of history mean to us as a people. Whether we like it or not, Our Island Story needs updating in both these respects. First of all, the story of who we are no longer makes sense to many British people, without an understanding of Britain’s role in the world. I speak as someone who was born up the road in Tottenham, but whose ancestors were taken from Africa to Guyana by European slave traders in the 17th century; whose great-great-grandparents became British subjects when Guyana became part of the Empire in 1831; and whose parents came to these shores to find work and a better life in the 1950s. Secondly, it is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain a single shared narrative about Britain. Identity itself is increasingly multiple and fragmented, not just be-

11 Marshall was living in Australia when she wrote her book. Our Island Story (1905) is permeated by a spirit of patriotism and Empire. It went through many editions until 1953. After that date, it was not re-published until 2005, by the think tank Civitas, which, though proclaiming itself to be independent, holds a sceptical view of immigration (cf. Civitas 2010).

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cause of a growing black and ethnic minority population, but because of stronger Scots, Welsh and English identities. Don’t get me wrong: such diversity makes the search for common ground more, not less important. But it means that this common ground cannot be staked out in a single narrative about who we were but a more intricate narrative about who we are. Our Island Story, in short, needs to become Our Island’s Stories.« (Lammy 2005)

That Lammy referred to a history book for children is significant since ›informal‹ education consumed for pleasure as well as instruction exercises a considerable influence on the formation of individual historical consciousness – not only in the case of a nation’s young. This is also implied in Stuart Hall’s keynote address for the Whose Heritage conference of 1999: »Since the eighteenth century, collections of cultural artefacts and works of art have also been closely associated with informal public education. They have become part, not simply of ›governing‹, but of the broader purposes of ›governmentality‹ – how the state indirectly and at a distance induces and solicits appropriate attitudes and forms of conduct from its citizens. The state is always, as Gramsci argued, ›educative‹. [...] Through its power to preserve and represent culture, the state has assumed some responsibility for educating the citizenry in those forms of ›really useful knowledge‹, as the Victorians put it, which would refine the sensibilities of the vulgar and enhance the capacities of the masses. This was the true test of their ›belongingness‹: culture as social incorporation. It is important to remember that the nation-state is both a political and territorial entity, and what Benedict Anderson has called ›an imagined community‹. Though strangers to one another, we form an ›imagined community‹ because we share an idea of the nation and what it stands for, which we can ›imagine‹ in our mind’s eye. A shared national identity thus depends on the cultural meanings, which bind each member individually into the large national story. [...] The National Heritage is a powerful source of such meanings. It follows that those who cannot see themselves reflected in its mirror cannot properly ›belong‹.« (Hall 1999: 14)

One might question whether there is any individual who can see him- or herself truly reflected in the mirror of a national heritage, since heritage products tend to display and rely on idealised historical situations, on types rather than complex characters and on simple narratives rather than twists

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and controversies. But ›heritage‹ is an important formative element of collective identities and collective consciousness, and if these are to be changed, ideas about what constitutes a relevant historical legacy have to become more inclusive and encompass all groups in British society – and they have to reach all layers of society. Hall’s claim of 1999 that British historical culture needs to be rewritten for a mainstream that incorporates both white and non-white citizens (as well as all classes and genders, one should add), has not entirely lost its urgency: »First, there is the demand that the majority, mainstream versions of the Heritage revise their own self-conceptions and rewrite the margins into the centre, the outside into the inside. This is not so much a matter of representing ›us‹ as of representing more adequately the degree to which ›their‹ history entails and has always implicated ›us‹, across the centuries, and vice versa. The ›Black‹ presence in Britain since the 16th century, the Asian since the 17th century and the Chinese in the 19th century have long required to be made the subjects of their own dedicated heritage spaces as well as integrated into a much more ›global‹ version of ›our island story‹. [...] Thirdly, there is the record of the migrant experience itself. This is a precious record of the historical formation of a black diaspora in the heart of Europe – probably a once-in-a-lifetime-event – still just within living memory of its participants.« (Hall 1999: 19-21)

Much of the knowledge about black history Hall mentions here had been accumulated long before the 1990s – by both academics and decentralised community and educational activities that had emerged in the 1970s and 1980s.12 However, it had never reached the mainstream before because it did not ›fit‹ the earlier master narratives of British historical culture. A decade into the twenty-first century the story of Britain is no longer exclu-

12 The Black Archives in Brixton, for instance, look back on a history of more than thirty years; the collections in the George Padmore archives, pertaining to social movements in London’s black community, likewise go back for decades. Many of the early findings provide the bulk of information that is today prepared in different media for large audiences. For two examples of community-based local history projects cf. Lambeth Council (1988) und Mel E. Thompson (1990).

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sively ›white‹, and the public are offered black British history in many palatable forms. At the same time, the island’s new story also has its distinct omissions and preferences. As a construct geared towards the present, historical culture works in waves with peaks and lows of attention, and it is biased towards themes, icons and figures that suit current interpretative needs better than others. It is conspicuous, for instance, that it is black and not South Asian history that has been popularised and has entered the national historical imaginary of late, and that this black history is focused on the AngloCaribbean, a cultural space that seems less ›other‹ from its former mother country than the multi-lingual and religiously ›foreign‹ subcontinent. Of course, the Raj is an essential part of the history of the Empire and has also featured prominently, albeit mostly in stereotypical ways, in British ›heritage‹ products, but the history of Asian migration to Britain in the twentieth century is only in the first stages of being redefined as a part of the national historical imaginary.13 By contrast, two major themes dominate the now ›familiar‹ black storyline of British history: post-war migration from the Caribbean, epitomised in the arrival of the Empire Windrush (fig. 1), and its ›pre-history‹ of slavery and abolition. Both themes can make use of anniversaries (of the years 1948 and 1807 respectively) and their potential

13 The British Library hosted an exhibition and conference in September 2010 entitled Bharat Britain: South Asians Making Britain 1870-1950, which both addressed »the ways in which South Asians – whether writers, politicians, students or lascars – positioned themselves in Britain during this period, and, in turn, how they were depicted by the British public and in British culture«. Beyond this, the project aimed at highlighting the impact made by South Asians on Britain’s cultural and political landscape and »the ways in which their interventions challenged the national imaginary, and how debates about citizenship and Britishness during the period continue to resonate with contemporary preoccupations regarding Britain’s multi-ethnic identity« (http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/ south-asians-making-britain/conference-about.htm). The conference was part of the Making Britain initiative, a cooperative project between the Open University, the University of Oxford and King’s College London. One result of this cross-disciplinary work has been the launch of an interactive web-database which contains hundreds of entries including a facsimile of the British library exhibition (http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/south-asians-making-britain).

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for celebratory commemoration, and both have developed images and figures that impress themselves on the public memory. Fig. 1: The SS Empire Windrush docking at Tilbury in June 1948

Image credits: Camerapress London, photograph by IWM

Six decades after it docked at Tilbury on 22 June 1948 (an event captured in now famous photographs), the Empire Windrush has evolved into a foundation myth. David Miles refers to it as »the mythical ark of West Indian emigration – their Mayflower« (Miles 2005: 440), but the ship is

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now also hailed as an »icon« of British history, along with the Notting Hill Carnival.14 This iconicity is all the more striking if one considers that, before the late 1990s, the Windrush had practically slipped from Britain’s historical consciousness. In June 1998, during an event that was part of that year’s Windrush commemorations, the Prince of Wales remarked in a speech during the »S.S. Empire Windrush Reception« at St James’s Palace on June 25: »First of all, I have to say I had little idea of what the name Windrush signified when the Foundation first made contact. But I was not – quite – born when the S.S. Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury 50 years ago this month. So preparing for this afternoon has been an education. Many other Britons, black and white, have been through the same process over recent weeks. The Foundation, Mike and Trevor Phillips and – even – the BBC have done a wonderful job of raising awareness.« (Prince of Wales 1998)

Even if Charles had already been there on 22 June 1948, the Windrush might have escaped his attention, especially since it constituted a highly contingent historical incident, a »first voyage« that was not planned,15 as Robert Winder points out in his popular history of migration to Britain: »An enterprising skipper simply took the initiative and advertised for trade to fill his half-empty ship. The rest was history. The British authorities did not even know that a shipload of migrants was on its way until the Windrush had left Jamaica far behind.« (Winder 2005: 335) The ship’s impending arrival aroused political concern and a debate in Westminster

14 Cf. Icons: A Portrait of England. This Internet project, launched in 2006, was specifically designed to identify an ›English‹ identity, a composite portrait of the country, in a multicultural society: »Some people argue there is no such thing as a shared English culture. They say all those invasions by the Normans and Romans simply left us with a ›hotch potch‹ of other people’s cultures. Paradoxically, this melting pot is what makes England unique. And today’s multicultural communities make this mix even more vibrant and interesting.« (Icons 2010: »Introduction«) 15 It was not even a first voyage. The Ormonde, a ship with a hundred migrant workers from the Caribbean, docked in Britain as early as 1947, not being noted by the media at all (cf. Winder 2005: 347).

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about a possible wave of migrants, and there was a crowd of sightseers and some media attention when the ship actually docked in Tilbury. But this attention was modest when compared to the Windrush’s mythical stature today. The general public only saw a few, now also famous, pictures in the newsreels,16 and the papers published short notices about the event, such as The Times of 23 June 1948: »Jamaicans Arrive to Seek Work Of the 492 Jamaicans who arrived at Tilbury on Monday to seek work in this country, 236 were housed last night in Clapham South deep shelter. The remainder had friends to whom they could go with prospects of work. The men had arrived at Tilbury in the ex-troopship Empire Windrush. Among them are singers, students, pianists, boxers, and a complete dance band. Thirty or forty of them have already volunteered as miners.« (n.n. 1948)

The historical impact with which the Windrush is remembered today is hardly anticipated in these few lines, and there is no indication that the ship would ever become, in Hobsbawm’s well-known phrase, an ›invented tradition‹. On the contrary: The Times notice rather suggests that the men on the Windrush were not the beginning of post-war migration since half of the group »had friends to whom they could go« – black people already established in Britain. Considering that the Windrush was given short shrift in the media of its day and »did not trigger an immediate surge of similar voyages« (Winder 2005: 341), it is not entirely surprising that it was soon

16 Since the late 1990s, these newsreel images have been circulated on television, in museums and even in fiction and have thus been engraved in historical consciousness by mere repetition. British readers of Jackie Kay’s short story »Out of Hand« (2002) will be able to visualise the following passage, in which the female protagonist sees herself step off the Windrush in the Pathé news, with quite concrete images in mind: »Rose sees herself for a brief moment in blackand-white coming down the ship’s steps with her red hat on. (Though only she knows it’s red.) Her hat is tilted to the side and she is holding on to it. Her coat has blown open a bit and her smart navy dress is showing.« (Kay 2002: 163) Today, there are several other images of black Britain in the post-war era that have achieved an almost iconic status. One is the photograph »Boy with Flag« by Vanley Burke, shot in the late 1960s (cf. Pirker 2012).

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forgotten along with other segments of recent black British history, in particular black people’s contribution to Britain’s ›finest hour‹.17 In the wake of the Windrush’s resurrection in British historical culture, this contribution has also (re)surfaced in the national consciousness, as we show in later chapters of this book. The most conspicuous ›rediscovery‹ of an earlier black British past, however, concerns the slave trade and its eventual abolition. Britain’s leading role in the trade and the trauma it imposed on millions of black people is now acknowledged, sometimes in a mixture of guilt and shame, but abolition and the people who fought for it can be celebrated. Also, since abolition was a collaborative effort of whites and blacks, its narrative offers the sort of ›racial healing‹ needed for the new story of the diverse society. Before 2007, no anniversary of 1807 was publicly celebrated in any significant form.18 Not even in 1957 was the abolition of the slave trade an issue for the media – despite the fact that the wave of migra-

17 As Mike and Trevor Phillips noted in the Guardian in 1998 (in an article that accompanied their landmark BBC documentary about the Windrush): »It comes as a shock now to note the complete absence of black Caribbean or African participants in the plethora of British films about the second world war. After all, the involvement of black colonials was a fact that was part of our experience. Our astonishment was, and still is, to do with the extent to which they had disappeared, had been expurgated from the story, as if they had never existed.« (Phillips/Phillips 1998) 18 This does not mean that the abolition of slavery went completely unnoticed in the mainstream media during the early twentieth century. In the 1930s, a time when many black intellectuals were staying in Britain and taking part in the country’s political debates, the centenary of the Emancipation Act of 1833 was marked by a BBC Radio series. 2007, however, was also unprecedented as an occasion during which public memory and academic history converged in a concerted effort. Several new monographs on aspects of the slave trade and slavery as well as special issues of general history journals (e.g. the History Workshop Journal’s special feature Remembering 1807, to name but one example) appeared throughout the commemorative year.

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tion from the Caribbean, then at a peak, was a consequence of the system.19 Fifty years later Britain celebrated the bicentenary with a number of highprofile events and wide attention in the mainstream media: A March of Abolitionists was joined, among others, by the Deputy Prime Minister; a Walk of Witness was led by the (white) Archbishop of Canterbury and the (black) Archbishop of York. Museums in London, Liverpool and Bristol were brought up-to-date, and these cities, which played a leading role in the trade of human beings, now offer black history as part of their urban attractions. Olaudah Equiano and Ignatius Sancho, central figures in the abolition campaign, have attained the status of historical celebrities; they are the subject of recent books and television programmes and were shown on stamps released by the Royal Mail to coincide with the bicentenary.20 Equiano is commemorated by the city of Westminster with a green plaque at the place where he lived in the 1780s (fig. 2). Equiano in particular instances how contemporary historical culture still operates with hero figures, now including black heroes. The ex-slave, abolitionist and autobiographer, a bestselling author and celebrity of his time but then widely (though not completely) forgotten,21 is now almost synonymous with black British history. His portrait appears on book covers, in museum exhibits and on websites. Excerpts from his autobiography are taken up whenever ›authoritative‹ historical references to the slave trade and slavery are required. Today, Equiano is the most published black eighteenth-century author, and a renewed interest in his Interesting Narrative attests to the growth in popularity of black history in general. The Narrative has been published (in new editions as well as adaptations) for

19 The complete lack of commemorative gestures in 1957 appears particularly significant in light of Queen Elizabeth II’s visit of African Commonwealth countries in that same year. 20 The four others in the series are white abolitionists: William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, Granville Sharp and Hannah More. 21 The 15th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1982) included a short entry of c. 350 words about Equiano. This has been expanded to 475 words in the online edition of 2010. That Equiano’s entry in the Oxford Companion to Black British History (whose publication coincided with the bicentenary) would be one-and-a-half pages long, was to be expected.

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diverse audiences and is deemed particularly apt for young people, as countless book publications geared at this readership show.22 While the late-eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, with their dramatic narratives of the abolition campaign and mass migration respectively, are at the focus of current public interest, black icons have also been located in other periods.23 Mary Seacole, the black (Jamaican) nurse to the British Army during the Crimean War, is a case in point. Seacole was revered as a heroine of the Crimea. Her autobiographical account of nursing, travel and entrepreneurship, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands, published in 1857 with a preface by the famous war reporter William Howard Russell, was a bestseller. Her death was announced in The Times, but, as the entry in the Oxford Companion to Black British History states: »[s]he was mourned as a British heroine, then promptly forgotten, surely in part because her colour and defiant self-possession forbade her from becoming a fashionable role model for Britain’s young ladies. Recently she has emerged again, thanks to a reprint of Wonderful Adventures […] in 1984, as a peerless model of self-belief, triumph over prejudice and preconception, and sheer strength of charac24

ter.« (Dabydeen/Gilmore/Jones 2007: 435)

22 Cf., for instance, Ann Cameron: The Kidnapped Prince: The Life of Olaudah Equiano (2000), Jean-Jacques Vayssières: Amazing Adventures of Equiano (2001) and Paul Thomas/Victor Ambrus: Olaudah Equiano: From Slavery to Freedom (2007). 23 In some instances, such efforts to establish black historical figures as heroes or icons appear far-fetched, such as recent attempts to claim black Romans as black Britons (cf. Pirker 2010). 24 There were minor commemorative efforts on a ›special-interest‹ scale from the 1970s onwards. In 1973 a group of Jamaican nurses found and identified Seacole’s grave in London for the public. Occasional small publications on Seacole appeared in the 1980s and 1990s (cf. Alexander/Dewjee 1982; Stuart 1990). In contrast to Equiano, however, Seacole did not receive an entry in the Encyclopaedia Britannica of 1982.

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Interest in Seacole, as a black woman who lived in Britain25 and engaged in a British cause as a black complement to Florence Nightingale, has surged dramatically over the last decade: With increased attention to black history since the Windrush celebrations and with the 2007 celebrations ahead, the time was obviously ripe for the relaunch of Seacole as a national heroine who is also suitable as a role model for children, as several books for young readers illustrate.26 Seacole was voted the Greatest Black Briton of all times in 2004 and still leads the list of 100 Great Black Britons.27 The 200th anniversary of her birth in 2005 drew further attention, for instance with two films on British television: A thirty-minute documentary was screened on BBC 2 as part of a two-part programme entitled Hidden History,28 while a Channel Four documentary, The Real Angel of the Crimea, compared Seacole’s efforts for the soldiers with those of the better-remembered Nightingale. In the same year, Penguin Classics published a new edition of her autobiography, and the »first full-length biography« by Jane Robinson (2005)29 came out, which had a decidedly popular appeal due to the author »humanising her heroine« and the intention to reduce historical distance

25 Black women had lived in Britain at least since the sixteenth century, but they were less visible in public life than black men; »unlike Equiano and Sancho, they left no written records of their life’s experience, women in general at this time having less access than men to literacy, let alone a literary education« (Edwards/Dabydeen 1991a: 165). 26 Cf. Trish Cooke: Hoorah for Mary Seacole (2007). Other publications directed at children had appeared after the Windrush year as part of popular educational series, e.g. Malam (1999) and Castor (1999). Prior to this, there had been a Seacole issue in the GINN: History Stories Series (Collicott 1991). 27 On the website »100 Great Black Britons«, a poll is regularly taken and persons can be voted in or out (cf. http://www.100greatblackbritons.com/results.htm). A good portion of the persons on the list are historical figures. 28 The other part of Hidden History focused on Samuel Coleridge Taylor, the black Victorian conductor and composer. While Coleridge Taylor, as a composer of classical music, is less likely to become a popular icon among general audiences regardless of their educational background, Seacole, the nurse with her hands-on approach to illness and injury, the war heroine and adventuress, is an apt figure for popularising efforts. 29 This was followed by other biographical works such as Lynch (2006).

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and »clean the glass [...] that separates our world from hers and look through« (qtd. in Watson 2005). Figs. 2 and 3: Memorial Plaques in London: Green Plaque (left) commemorating Olaudah Equiano at 73 Riding Street and Blue Plaque (right) commemorating Mary Seacole at 14 Soho Square. Whereas Blue Plaques follow a national scheme, the Green Plaques are part of a Westminster-based design.

Image credits: E.U. Pirker

In 2007 a Blue Plaque was erected for Seacole at 14 Soho Square, making her one of few black people honoured in that manner to date (fig. 3). In 2006, Seacole was selected as the only black person represented on stamps issued to celebrate the National Portrait Gallery’s 150th Anniversary.30 The ›discovery‹ of one of her portraits and its purchase by the NPG were turned into a sensational event: The historian Helen Rappaport (in whose sittingroom the portrait had hung since its discovery at a car boot sale in 2002) and the NPG did not announce the ›news‹ until the first month of the bicentenary year, thus making it appear as if the portrait had turned up just in time for the celebrations. The portrait, then in the possession of Rappaport, went on loan to a much-noted touring exhibition in Manchester and Bir-

30 Alongside Winston Churchill, Joshua Reynolds, T.S. Eliot, Emmeline Pankhurst, Virginia Woolf, Sir Walter Scott, William Shakespeare, Dame Cicely Saunders and Charles Darwin.

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mingham art galleries (2005-2006)31 before it was eventually purchased by the NPG in 2009, where it is now displayed between Florence Nightingale and Queen Victoria. As Rappaport comments on her homepage about the sale: »I am sorry that Mary Seacole will never return to my sitting room wall but she now belongs to the nation, and that is only right and fitting.« (Rappaport n.d.) The examples briefly considered so far illustrate the unprecedented peak of interest in black history in British culture that coincided with new political and cultural interests. The hype, with its emphasis on certain narratives, events, icons and figures (and not others), has attracted criticism. Thus it has been noted that Seacole is still usually presented as ›the other Nightingale‹ rather than standing on her own historical feet. The iconography of the Windrush has been criticised as restrictive, for instance by Barnor Hesse who argues that »the prevailing narratives of contemporary Black settlement in Britain tend to relegate the earlier part of the twentieth century to the shelf of curiosity studies, while suggesting that matters of real historical interest take place in the middle to late twentieth century« (Hesse 2000: 103). But despite such critique, the anniversaries, narratives and icons of a black British past have played a major role in establishing at least some elements of that past in the historical culture of a nation which not long ago still chose to perceive its past as purely white. If the demand for a new historical culture is one factor that explains the rise of black British history over the past decade, another is the role which accessible representations have played in the process. To quote Chris Smith’s address at the Whose Heritage conference once more: »[I]n order for society to know that there is more than one interpretation of particular events or periods of history, we must be shown them. We need to give a proper place to those interpreters already doing this, while encouraging more socially inclusive research in the future. [... R]ace equality issues are relevant not only to life today, but also to how we define and report the art, culture and events of the past.« (Smith 1999: 8; our emphasis)

31 Black Victorians: Black People in British Art 1800-1900; a catalogue accompanying the exhibition was prepared by Jan Marsh. It contains a reprint of Seacole’s portrait (Marsh 2005: 105).

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Seacole’s career in Britain’s historical culture is not only explained by the timely reappearance of a black female heroine. It has also been pushed, as we have seen, by an impressive circulation of representations in a range of media that reach and appeal to a wide cross-section of the public. Indeed, the recent interest in black history can be seen to have originated as a media event: Mike and Trevor Phillips’s Windrush documentary for BBC television, originally broadcast in 1998 and accompanied by a book publication (Phillips/Phillips 1998). There had been earlier documentary series about migration to Britain, but the impact of Windrush was unprecedented.32 The series turned the ship’s name into the designation of a whole generation and a household term of British history.33 This happened even though the series’ original broadcasting slot was not the prime of primetime: »Windrush is an important series, screened on Saturday on BBC 2 at 8pm. It’s too important to be buried here. It should be on BBC 1 after the news on a weekday, because it’s significant not just as a memoir for black people, but as an education for white people. Part two is on tonight; set the video.«34 Apparently, many people heeded the reviewer’s advice. Windrush was seen by a large audience, both black and white – if not on the first occasion of its screening, then on a later one35 – and drew further atten-

32 A major early television production that took up the theme of post-war migration (looking at African and Caribbean migrants among other groups) is the multi-part series A Passage to Britain (Channel Four 1984) that pointed out the significance of migration for Britain at a time when race relations were conspicuously strained. Neither in the introductory episode, »A Nation of Immigrants«, nor in that on the West Indians is the Windrush noted. Productions of a similar ›epic‹ scope were not brought forth until Windrush, and Trevor Phillips had to face considerable difficulties before the Windrush series could actually be made (cf. T. Phillips 1998). 33 Cf. the entries for ›Windrush‹ and its compounds in the Oxford English Dictionary. 34 Stuart Jeffries (1998) in his »Channel Surfing« column in the Guardian. 35 The series was rescreened on several occasions, for instance accompanying the fortieth anniversary of the Notting Hill Carnival in August 2004. According to Mike Phillips, the BBC have not produced a DVD or video for sale because of a rights situation, but it means that they are able to rescreen it successfully in the context of other black history events (cf. Phillips in Pirker 2004: 3).

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tion because it alerted the media. Already the preparations for the Phillips brothers’ project had raised awareness of the coming Windrush anniversary, so that around the series’ first broadcast, post-war migration was also addressed in press articles and other television activities (as well as the Prince of Wales’s Windrush reception referred to above). The BBC launched a whole May to August season of programmes celebrating fifty years of the Caribbean community’s contributions to British life after the Second World War, and Channel Four produced a documentary series of its own, The Windrush Years (broadcast from 1 June 1998). With some pride, Mike Phillips claimed in an interview in 2006 that »I often think how Windrush changed the country’s perception of our history. It has passed into the language, and people talk about the Windrush generation. I’m very proud of that.« (Morris 2006)

2. Historical Culture and Social Communication

As stated above, this book approaches black history as part of British historical culture. This concept, which refers to the various ways in which history is translated into the present and for the public, is employed with increasing frequency in historical studies. We have already cited Billie Melman’s definition (p. 12). A more strongly theorised approach has been developed by Jörn Rüsen, whose understanding of historical culture can be paraphrased as the sum of all articulations of historical consciousness that are relevant in a given society. Three dimensions interact in historical culture: the cognitive dimension of historical knowledge, the aesthetic dimension of presentation, and the political dimension of the societal use of history (cf. Rüsen 1994).1 Central to the various definitions of historical culture is their focus on historical knowledge that is relevant to the present, or, to phrase it differently, knowledge that is articulated with current interests in mind. In this respect, historical culture overlaps with the notion of ›heritage‹ that has taken a prominent place in discussions of British attitudes to

1

Rüsen has further adapted and refined aspects of his theory of historical culture, for instance in Rüsen (2005). For attempts to integrate international aspects of the debate surrounding historical culture cf., for instance, Lee (2005), who draws from an earlier phase of Rüsen’s conceptualisation, as well as the research by Cornelius Holtorf (2007) and Stefan Berger (2007) and Peter Seixas’s collection of articles (2004). The approach has also inspired research centres and study programmes, most importantly Cultura Historica (University of Barcelona) and the Center for Historical Culture at Erasmus University, Rotterdam.

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and utilisations of the national past. The term ›heritage‹ has been applied in a wide and descriptive sense for all kinds of uses and ›stagings‹ of the past for a general public by such scholars as Raphael Samuel and David Lowenthal.2 But, as was indicated above, in the UK it has also acquired a special association with Thatcherism and has turned into a controversial and sometimes pejorative term.3 We therefore prefer the concept of historical culture and reserve the use of ›heritage‹ for modes of presentation in special product lines that present the national past with a distinct focus on the sense of tradition, nostalgia and pictorialism with which ›heritage‹ became charged in the 1980s and that is still a mark of many heritage sites and heritage merchandise, as well as heritage film and television. With its orientation towards interpretative demands of the present – including the functionalisation of history for political and social directives which Hans-Joachim Gehrke (2007) terms ›intentional history‹ – historical culture is an essential element in the formation of collective identities. In this respect, the concept overlaps with, and indeed incorporates, notions of ›social‹, ›collective‹ and ›cultural‹ memory. The fact that cultural memory is constructed and continually reconstructed, that it takes place in waves of forgetting and remembering and responds to present needs, has been established in numerous studies in recent years.4 Aleida Assmann employs the

2

Cf. Lowenthal (1985; 1998) and Samuel (1996). The terms ›history‹ and ›heritage‹ are not always used with clear distinction, but heritage tends to denote a past that is relevant, and made relevant for the present in light of identities, ideologies and values as well as psychosocial needs. A recent addition to this research is Jerome De Groot (2009).

3

For a critique of the Thatcherite notion of heritage and especially its creation of a heritage industry that offers a highly commodified version of the past cf. Wright (1985), Hewison (1987) and Corner/Harvey (1991). The central argument of Hewison’s influential study is that heritage has become the last resort of Britain’s economy, replacing a declining ›real‹ industry. For an overview of the debates surrounding heritage culture in the 1980s cf. also Hardy (1988) and, for a comment on the specifically Thatcherite guise of British traditionalism, Samuel (1992).

4

In Germany, an influential branch of research into collective memory, sparked by Maurice Halbwachs’s conceptualisation of social memory, was founded by Jan and Aleida Assmann. Research from the late 1980s onwards has

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internet as a metaphor to stress the ›intrinsic‹ relation between memory and culture when she points out that, just as the internet »creates a framework for communication across wide distances in space, cultural memory creates a framework for communication across the abyss of time« (Assmann 2007: 97; our translation). This comparison may appear puzzling at first, but if we think of the internet as a flexible medium and expandable archive, it becomes fruitful. Indeed, just like the internet, cultural memory consists of active and passive realms (that can be reactivated) and it is formed and reformed in dynamic processes. In this dynamics of cultural memory, aspects of the past are either foregrounded or forgotten in light of the present’s commemorative demands; memories are activated when they fulfil a specific function for individuals, groups or an entire culture,5 and they are also reinterpreted according to cultural preoccupations and needs. Some of Rüsen’s and Aleida and Jan Assmann’s conceptual work has been translated into English and appeared in international contexts, but as yet its impact on the fields of ›heritage‹ research and ›public history‹, which dominate the discussion in Britain and North America, is limited. Furthermore, the notion of ›historical culture‹ also competes with ›public history‹. This concept for the collaborative study and especially the practice of history outside schools and scholarly institutions began to emerge in the 1970s and now serves as an umbrella for a wide range of historical activities in, for, about and by the public,6 especially in the Unites States, where Public History was established as an academic discipline in the

increasingly taken up the related debate about collective identity. Cf., among others, Connerton (1989) and Samuel (1996-97). For a short overview of scholarship on memory within and outside anglophone contexts cf. Zika (2005: 240-249). 5

Aleida Assmann identifies different forms (individual, collective, cultural) and modes (storage vs. functional) of memory (cf. Assmann 1999) and continues to revise and refine this model, adding new details that seek to explain specific themes of memory (cf. Assmann 2007) or focus on public, institutional and political aspects of commemoration (cf. Assmann 2006).

6

Cf. Charles C. Cole Jr. (1994: 11). However, definitions of Public History vary, as Irmgard Zündorf (2010) shows in a survey article that covers the United States, Australia, Britain and Germany. For the state of research in Public History in English-speaking countries cf. Ashton/Kean (2009).

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1980s. The present book, by contrast, is more concerned with ›popular history‹ in that it focuses on the cultural products and productions through which a black British history is popularised within British historical culture and disseminated to (potentially) large sections of the British audience. It is thus not concerned with black British history per se or a specifically black historical culture (as circulated, above all, in black communities and Black Studies research), but with a wider popular awareness of black pasts within British historical culture.7 In general, historical culture can be configured as a collaborative effort including and based on the work of academic and lay research as well as institutions of (formal) learning, but also the offerings of various history markets, the latter being of particular significance for the construction of popular historical knowledge (fig. 4). Historical culture reflects socially dominant views of history, but also more peripheral meanings generated by societal sub-groups or individuals. In our case, the urge to reconstruct the nation’s historical consciousness to incorporate ethnic diversity and create an image of a past that is also black has been strongly promoted by opinion leaders in British society. However, one can also identify other contributions to the building of the new historical culture, such as the historical activities of black communities in Britain. The rise of black history in the British historical consciousness was thus brought about by discourses from above and from below: a more recent political will expressed in the institutions of national politics, and an older struggle on the part of the communities to have their stories told within the wider national framework.

7

It might be argued that 1970s and 80s trends towards micro-histories, i.e. an examination of the historical experiences of smaller units within society, have rendered such a general, national focus obsolete, also in light of the fact that it has become common in cultural discourse to conceive national identities as multiple, fragmented and heterogeneous. At the same time, however, issues of national historical culture have become urgent again in many societies since the 1990s, sparked by the new political order after 1989, increased economic and political migration as well as the climate of threat and fear created in the wake of 9/11.

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Fig. 4: Historical culture in context

A second premise of this book is that historical culture is generated in acts of social communication that range from face-to-face conversation to political statements, and that involve a significant layer of cultural representation. The well-known Open University model of the ›circuit of culture‹ (du Gay/Hall 1997) has become a standard in Cultural Studies to account for the circular communication of meanings in society qua representations. Its particular interest in the interrelation of representation and the formation of identities makes it highly pertinent to discussions of historical culture, not least because it highlights aspects to be considered for all instances of cultural communication: qualities of the re/presentation8 as such (signs, codes, the specific medium and genre in which re/presentation occurs), the circumstances and agents of production and consumption, as well as the processes and agents involved in disseminating and monitoring cultural products – an aspect which the Open University model conceptu8

Live performance (such as reenactment and living history) is a significant medium for communicating history in popular ways. Our use of ›re/presentation‹ intends to draw attention to the necessity to widen the implications suggested by the term ›representation‹ in the original circuit of culture.

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alises as regulation, i.e. a process that can operate both as suppression or censorship, and as encouragement. The political programme of the ethnically diverse society, for instance, was expressly encouraged in the regulation of British television. The main broadcasters formed a Cultural Diversity Network and committed themselves to diversity in employment as well as programming. This was expressed, for instance, in a speech by Greg Dyke, the BBC’s Director-General, given at the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association Conference in Manchester on 3 May 2002: »If I come to a narrower definition of diversity I believe that in the area of ethnic diversity there is real evidence that important parts of the BBC’s audience – for example the young – are already some way ahead of us. Ethnic diversity is one of the central defining characteristics of modern Britain – particularly among the young. For young people in this country today multi-culturalism is not about political correctness, it is simply a part of the furniture of their everyday lives. It just is the way it wasn’t when I was growing up in London thirty odd years ago. Our aim at the BBC must be to actively reflect that. [...] Just as important [...] is reflecting the genuine diversity of our society on our mainstream television channels BBC ONE and BBC TWO, both through the types of programming we offer and the portrayal of our society within programmes them9

selves.« (Dyke 2002)

Of late, a similar spirit of change can be observed in the museum sector. At a »groundbreaking symposium on cultural diversity and heritage«,10 it became clear that servicing a culturally diverse public via regulative forces that are enacted top down is not enough. Instead, multifaceted consumers’ identities have to be considered in the production of historical meaning and its narratives. In his introduction to the ensuing report, the Chief Executive

9

On the commitment of British institutions in film and television to cultural diversity cf. also Korte/Sternberg (2004: 15-21).

10 These were the words used on the flyer announcing the symposium Heritage, Legacy and Leadership: Ideas and Interventions, jointly organised by the Cultural Leadership Programme and the Mayor of London’s Commission on African and Asian Heritage and held on 22 February 2008.

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of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Association, Roy Clare, maintained: »In a time of economic uncertainty, people and communities can derive strength, purpose and reassurance from experiences involving culture, the arts, learning and the celebration of heritage and identity. But in a modern age we simply must apply these ideas to all people – people of all backgrounds, ages, ethnicities, genders, orientations and means. Creativity and imagination can help us to see ways to remove barriers to understanding; to deploy the widest possible array of media; to see that the legacy of heritage can be understood and appreciated through a stimulating blend of music, performance, art, dance, display, study and reflection. Collections, references, information and materials belong to us all. These resources can be presented, interpreted and applied for everyone but more emphasis is needed on the approaches to making it so.« (Cultural Leadership Programme 2009: 3)

However useful the circuit of culture is, its elegant form disguises a number of complexities. For the purposes of this study, it is therefore adapted and combined with concepts borrowed from an approach in media cultural studies: S.J. Schmidt uses systems theory to configure the relationship between social communication and individual cognition, which are thought to be connected by a process of structural coupling. In Schmidt’s conception of media cultural studies, social communication – particularly in its modern, highly medialised forms – plays an essential role in creating the ›reality model‹ that determines how a society’s members perceive the world and behave in their everyday lives. This reality model is a collective, shared knowledge acquired through communication and social practice. It posits values, i.e. relevance to certain categories of knowledge, and thus provides the ›social programme‹ (or ›culture‹) which, in Schmidt’s conceptualisation, orientates the actions of the members of its society. Societies are held together because their members act according to the general social programme or certain sub-programmes that are specific to individual cultural fields. Importantly, Schmidt’s conceptualisation allows for programme change through the feedback assumed between social communication and individual cognition: Individual agents can adopt social (sub-)programmes or reject them, and since the social system observes itself and its actors, it will adapt its programme (or sub-programmes) when deviant behaviour becomes evident or dominant. In modern media cultures, the media are

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essential for providing feedback between individuals and the social system, and each society has a more or less complex media system in which different media complement each other.11 Schmidt’s approach offers a more differentiated perspective on the circulation of social meaning than the circuit of culture. For the purposes of the present study, however, it has one conceptual shortcoming. Consistent with the assumptions of systems theory, Schmidt posits that the social programme rewrites itself rather than being rewritten by social agents, as assumed in studies of historical culture. Notwithstanding, it seems productive to think of historical culture as driven by a programme with dominant values and emphases that are effective in a society at a given time. This historical programme is executed in concert with other cultural programmes that derive from the given reality model. The attention recently granted to black history in the United Kingdom can be conceptualised as a rewriting of a formerly socially dominant programme that only registered a white British past. It is interlinked with a general intensive interest in black culture in the arts and the media,12 as well as with New Labour’s political approach to cultural diversity and race relations. The assumption in Schmidt’s model of a feedback between social communication and individual cognition can also be fruitfully adapted for our purposes. Such feedback grants social sub-groups and individuals an influence over the creation of shared knowledge: Individual historical knowledge is nourished by socially shared knowledge, but individuals (or groups) can also feed their knowledge into society and thus effect a change in the greater historical programme. As we will see several times in our case studies, committed individuals and black organisations have often played a significant role in creating the new popular awareness of a black British past. By adapting and blending the concepts sketched above, the connection between historical culture and social communication can be represented in

11 Some of Schmidt’s publications have been translated into English. For his concept of media culture societies and especially the notion of »cultural programmes« cf. Schmidt (2007: especially 36-38). 12 Cf., for instance, the essay collections of Baker/Diawara/Lindeborg (1996), Owusu (2000) and Donnell (2002); a focus on literature is provided by Stein (2004), J. McLeod (2004), Procter (2003) and Innes (2002). Cf. also the publications mentioned in note 3 of our introduction.

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the diagram in figure 5: A society’s historical culture (with its specific historical programme) is part of that society’s general system of shared social meanings. It is affected by and interlinked with other social subsystems, for instance the political landscape, and it stands in a necessary interrelationship with the system of social communication. Historical culture requires communication and re/presentation to become manifest,13 but at the same time, as the double-headed arrow between historical culture and communication indicates, the products and the forms of communication have repercussions for historical culture: Not only can media products such as the Windrush series give impetus to changes in the dominant programme of historical culture; the more products there are, the more perspectives on history are (potentially) offered, adding complexity to historical culture. Products of popular or mainstream culture are sometimes characterised as conservative, but they may also have a potential to suggest alternatives and challenges to socially dominant views.14 Last but not least, all forms and media of cultural communication also have their own conditions and shape historical content according to their possibilities and needs: A historical novel contributes in a different manner to the generation of historical consciousness than an exhibition, a reenactment or a television documentary does; the medium is always at least part of the historical message. The re/presentations that manifest and build historical culture thus have to be analysed with respect to their specific signs, codes and media properties as well as their agents and conditions of production and regulation, consumption and use.15

13 Also cf. the sociological framework of Berger and Luckmann (1966), who posit that knowledge only becomes socially relevant when it is manifest in signs or institutions. 14 As Stuart Hall has argued, black popular culture in particular is a contradictory space, »a sight of strategic contestation« that »can never be simplified or explained in terms of the simple binary oppositions that are still habitually used« to map out popular culture: »no struggle can capture popular culture itself for our [black] side or theirs« (Hall 1996a: 470). 15 The circuit of culture draws attention to the fact that ›production‹ and ›consumption‹ should be understood as interlinked. Accordingly, agents on the producing and consuming/receiving end of cultural processes must not be conceived as separate. The internet in particular shows many examples where the dividing

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Fig. 5: Historical culture, historical programme and social communication

line between producer/creative agent and consumer/receiving agent is blurred and roles are switched.

3. Popular Re/Presentation of History and Its Media

When historical consciousness and the modes and forms of the popular merge, new horizons of relevance can emerge and add facets to a society’s historical culture. ›Popular‹ historical culture is built and maintained not only through products that are created and distributed with the intention of disseminating historical knowledge (such as popular-history books or television documentaries). It can also be built, as a side-effect, through popular products primarily designed for other purposes (such as a novel or musical). Popular-culture research is still a contested area, but like work on the popularisation of knowledge1 it provides useful hints as to which factors make history popular and which properties a popular re/presentation of history is likely to display. Although popular culture is not identical with mass culture or mass-media culture, it tends to be more market- and consumer-orientated than so-called high or elite culture and acknowledges its audience’s desire to be entertained (as well as instructed). Its products are potentially accessible to non-specialised, cross-sectional audiences. This not only effects a preference for certain kinds of content, but also for modes of re/presentation: Popular re/presentations of history prefer clear narrative lines and visualisation, and where they operate with fictional elements, they will often go for dramatic stories, personalisation through charismatic char-

1

Shinn/Whitley (1985) have influentially reconceptualised the processes through which knowledge is disseminated in the public. The sociology of science had divided into several schools; surveys of the field are given by Joerges/Nowotny (2003) and Stehr (2005).

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acters, and invitations to empathise and identify. Some modes of presentation also encourage the audience’s active participation and interaction. Another frequent strategy of popular re/presentation is to make history appear relevant within the ›lifeworlds‹ of its consumers; explicit bridges are often constructed that enable them to establish connections between their own present and worlds of the past. With Edmund Husserl, we understand lifeworld as the world of experience, the »constantly pregiven« world, the »universe of what is, which is ever in unceasing movement of relativity for us« (Husserl 1970: 382f.). It denotes that which is familiar and known through everyday and/or universal experience. Husserl claims that the ›scientific-objective world‹ is different in quality to the lifeworld, but that both engage in a relationship. While the world of science and scholarship elevates its contents to themes or problems, »there is no reason for making [the lifeworld] explicitly thematic for ourselves universally as world« (Husserl 1970: 379). Thus, in order for consumers to be able to quite literally ›receive‹ historical contents and open their minds to historical situations, they need elements that permit them to connect to the past. The lifeworlds typically conjured up in popular historical products (both as background and as contents in their own right) show clear instances of overlapping with the life experience of the consumers;2 this, again, feeds back into the idea that historical consciousness is determined by the conditions and needs of the present. In this light, it has certainly helped the popularisation of black history that elements of a black culture have long made their impact on contemporary popular culture,3 particularly through an internationally marketed black music industry that continues to create, recreate and disseminate powerful (if often stereotypical) sets of images of the black subject. Significantly, black popular music is employed in almost every single popular product concerned with black history that has an audio element. The media and genres of social communication all have their own potential to disseminate and, at the same time, configure historical knowledge. In today’s systems of social communication, popular re/presentations of

2

A close tie to lifeworlds is also inherent in the common characterisation of popular culture as rooted in the local, everyday practices and experiences of ordinary people (cf. Hall 1996a: 469).

3

Albeit in sometimes questionable ways, as an exotic other to the mainstream.

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history come in many media and genres, from exhibitions and live performances to novels and, with particular frequency and impact, audiovisual re/presentations and the internet. Museums and exhibitions have traditionally offered their visitors the attraction of direct contact with ›authentic‹ and ›auratic‹ material objects, but in recent times they also make efforts to involve and entertain their visitors to a higher extent than previously, offering living history and reenactment, or opportunities for visitors to become active themselves. Our discussion in the subsequent chapters includes the presentations of several museums and exhibition events with particular attention to their displays around the 2007 bicentenary. Also in connection with the bicentenary, we address live events as forms of ›staging‹ history for the present.4 But traditional theatre also has possibilities of treating history in popular ways, especially in a genre explicitly dedicated to entertainment, the musical. Live stagings have the character and attraction of the special event, but the most influential ways of ›showing‹ history, because they have a potential of reaching mass audiences – or a wider range of different audiences – are television and cinema, which, thanks to the mimetic qualities ascribed to the photographic image, turn their audiences into ›eyewitnesses‹ of history and offer them the visual pleasures and fascination of ›real‹ places and objects of the past: »more easily than the written word, the motion picture seems to let us stare through a window directly at past events, to experience people and places as if we were there. The huge images on the screen and wraparound sounds tend to overwhelm us, swamp our senses and destroy attempts to remain aloof, distanced, or critical. In the movie theatre we are, for a time, prisoners of history.« (Rosenstone 1995: 27)

Films about the past are popular with audiences and thus important shapers of images of history.5 At the same time, such films also have »a special relationship with notions of nationhood and national identity«, as James Chapman emphasises: »The British historical film offers a popular version

4 5

On ›staging‹ history cf. Oesterle (2010), as well as Hochbruck/Schlehe (2010). Young people in particular »obtain a good deal of their understanding about the past from dramatic films rather than nonfiction history books, critics of cinematic history point out« (Toplin 2002: 9).

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of the past that promotes dominant myths about the British historical experience for lay audiences who do not comprise large numbers of professional historians.« (Chapman 2005: 6f.)6 In Britain, historical films have long been a staple of the national cinema culture (cf. Monk/Sargeant 2002b: 1), but they have only recently begun to include black history. We will consider important cinema and television productions for both the period of abolition (Amazing Grace) and post-war migration from the Caribbean (Wondrous Oblivion and Small Island). The terminology for such historical screen fiction is not clear-cut. In this book, we use the term ›period film‹ (synonymous with ›costume film‹) to refer to dramatic films set before the now-contemporary time. What such films have in common is that they devote care to depicting their diegetic time with a historically ›authentic‹ mise-en-scène. They can refer to actual historical events and persons (and will then be referred to as ›historical films‹7), but they can also deal with fictional characters and events and be historical primarily in their evocation of a specific period. Where such films are set in the recent past, within the living memory of their audiences, one also finds the term ›retro film‹, which takes special care to revive the lifestyle of its period (through costume, hairstyle and a ›typical‹ soundtrack).8 In the British context, ›heritage film‹ has been identified as a special genre of the period film that emerged in the Thatcher years and was associated with such features as a (presumed) conservative ideology, the promotion of a (patriotic) national identity, the commodification of the past, a restriction to an English past, an emphasis on rural, pastoral locations, bourgeois and especially upper-class lifestyles, presented in a high-quality but conservative filmic aesthetic with an emphasis on pleasant pictorialism or outright historical spectacle, and a

6

For the general significance of film and television for the promotion of national identity cf. also Richards (1997).

7

»[A] historical film is one that is based, however loosely, on actual historical events or real historical persons. Thus it is that the historical film is a narrower category than the costume or period film, both of which are terms that denote narratives set in the past but that are not necessarily in themselves ›historical‹. [...] the historical film in this definition does not include films that happen to be set in the past but are predominantly fictional narrative.« (Chapman 2005: 2)

8

Cf. the use of the term by Sargeant (2002).

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tendency to musealise the past and invite a nostalgic gaze.9 In recent years, however, the idea of heritage film as a distinct genre has come under critique; the term has been questioned as too homogenising even for the films of the Thatcher years and, furthermore, as ideologically charged itself.10 The label ›heritage film‹, then, has to be used with caution. Nevertheless, the films originally discussed under this label have developed certain trademark features and audience expectations, and where a film deploys such features and, implicitly or explicitly, inscribes itself into a certain tradition of re/presenting the British past on the screen, we will still use the term with the appropriate restrictions. Apart from cinema (or DVD), television is another major disseminator of period and history films. However, as a medium associated with news and current affairs it has, above all, a special affinity to documentary modes.11 As a medium of everyday life, television made a significant impact on British post-war society. The proliferation of programmes on terrestrial, cable and satellite channels has since led to a strong fragmentation of television audiences, but television historians such as Jack Williams feel that this has not effected as dramatic a change in the medium’s societal impact as one might suspect: »The fact that over twelve million viewers watch the most popular programmes on most evenings suggests, though certainly does not prove, that many may be deriving the same satisfactions from these programmes and may therefore be understanding them in the same manner.« (Williams 2004: 5) In primetime programme slots that still aim at a mainstream audience, programmes about history are a main attraction. Documentaries about the black historical experience in Britain and

9

Cf., in particular, the influential work of Higson (1993; 1995; 1996; 2003).

10 »The idea, and critique, of heritage cinema first emerged in Britain in the late 1980s to early 1990s as a deferred response from the academic/intellectual left to certain British period films produced or released since the early 1980s – at the height of Thatcherite Conservatism – and argued to be ideologically complicit with it.« (Monk 2002: 177) Cf. also the critical discussion by John Hill (1999: 73-98) who points out that, while celebrating certain aspects of the past, heritage films also express criticism of elements of that past. Sheldon Hall (2009) provides a survey of the heritage film debate. 11 On developments in the British history documentary cf. the contributions in Cannadine (2004).

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black ›heroes‹ have, as we have already indicated, proliferated in recent years, and we discuss further examples in the context of representations of the slave trade and abolition, in particular the television version of Simon Schama’s Rough Crossings. What is obvious here, as in the documentary genre in general, is the extent to which the format now integrates fictional reenactment to emotionalise and personalise historical information, or is even presented as ›docudrama‹, i.e. a full dramatisation of historical characters and events.12 In another direction, historical ›infotainment‹ has opened itself to the currently fashionable format of reality TV. There is no historical docusoap in Britain (yet) that includes black reenactors of historical experience, but the format of the genealogical show in the style of Who Do You Think You Are, in which celebrities discover the history of their family and how it was connected to the wider historical context, has included black Britons in recent years. It is noteworthy that in contemporary public history this popular television format is closely interlinked with the internet. The internet has become – apart from being a prime site for presenting historical information of all kinds – a means for the public’s own historical investigation. Furthermore, the internet exemplifies how media convergence has developed into a characteristic feature of today’s social communication: Not only are all re/presentations of black history we investigate in this book advertised on the internet; many are also linked with websites providing additional information or encouraging the user’s own historical activities.13 This cross-mediality contributes essentially to the cultural visibility of black history in Britain today and will help to sustain its cultural presence.

12 »Docudrama argues with the seriousness of documentary to the extent that it draws upon direct, motivated resemblances to its actual materials. As fictions, docudramas offer powerful, attractive persuasive arguments about actual subjects, depicting people, places, actions and events that exist or have existed.« (Lipkin 2002: 4) 13 On media convergence in the presentation of history also cf. Morris-Suzuki, who notes that, »as the media of historical expression multiply, so they increasingly interact with one another. [...] In this context, there is much to be gained from exploring the ways in which a variety of popular media of historical expression coexist and relate to one another.« (Morris-Suzuki 2005: 16)

4. Key Aims and Questions

The subsequent case studies highlight the ways in which a black British history has been popularised in products aimed at British (and sometimes international) audiences. These case studies will be grouped around themes of slavery and abolition on the one hand and post-war migration on the other. The respective products were either disseminated through mainstream media, and/or they show clear marks of popular re/presentation, production and consumption. For each of the products we ask which aspects tend to make it attractive and relevant for an ethnically diverse (but still predominantly white) audience in Britain. Our analyses address, with different emphases, the following questions: What re/presentational choices are made in a product? What aspects of a black British history are emphasised and which ones are neglected or omitted? What reasons can be found for the specific moulding of historical meaning? What is its relevance to the present and especially the everyday lives of both producers and consumers? What individuals, groups or institutions have an interest in propagating this specific knowledge? How is it presented in order to appear relevant? How does the product’s mode of re/presenting black history (in a specific medium and genre, through utilising certain signs and codes) make this history accessible and appealing? How do the re/presentational potentials of television, novel, non-fiction book, musical or the internet interact with the content of a specific product? What are the cultural consequences of presenting history as attractive, as a past that comes alive rather than as ›dry facts‹? What are the effects on historical culture when popular history selects and emphasises aspects of the past to which non-specialists can relate (such as social and cultural

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history), over more complex issues of political and institutional history? How does the personalisation and emotionalisation of history affect people’s understanding of the past and its relevance for the present? Taken together, the case studies aim to show how the British historical programme, in conjunction with the system of social communication, promotes a popular awareness of black history that is relevant in the construction of a multiethnic British identity. This process and the cultural politics behind it will have to be critically examined. Is the emergence of a discernible black line in Britain’s new island story, in Stuart Hall’s terms, a »cultural strateg[y] that can make a difference«? In the early 1990s, Hall argued that »spaces ›won‹ for difference are few and far between«, that they are »grossly underfunded, that there is always a price of incorporation to be paid when the cutting edge of difference and transgression is blunted into spectacularization« and that »what replaces invisibility is a kind of carefully regulated, segregated visibility« (Hall 1996a: 468). That re/presentations concerned with a black British history are underfunded is no longer the rule; but this makes Hall’s allegations with respect to regulation even more urgent.

PART II: The Bicentenary Effect: How the Slave Trade, Slavery and Abolition Went Public

1. Remembering and Forgetting Slavery

Aleida Assmann postulates that the recent worldwide preoccupation with themes of memory and identity is related to a widespread recognition of traumatic fissures and the historical consequences of »extreme violence« (Assmann 2007: 22f.).1 The Holocaust is an obvious example, as is the trauma of the Middle Passage, a violent chapter of history in which countless British slave traders were chief perpetrators. However, the 2007 anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade afforded the British not only an opportunity to remember their inglorious role in the triangular trade. It also gave them an occasion to celebrate their more glorious role as the nation that put the trade to an end. Abolition entered the circuit of social communication with a blast – in performances, the media and exhibitions. It fit into the Blair government’s general focus on humanitarian issues2 and was a timely remembrance in light of Britain’s new programme of a diversified historical culture for a heterogeneous society. Moreover, the period of abolition in the late eighteenth century provides examples of heroism and heroes, and these heroes are suitably white and black – even if, for a long

1

Assmann thus emphasises that interest in history can be nourished by ethical obligations such as a duty to remember. She holds that the imperative to remember comes into play when the spontaneous impulse to remember is lacking and where a »dynamics of forgetting« is in effect, a dynamics aimed at a »disposal of guilt and shame«. Remembrance can help unite factions, it can »bring together neighbours divided by hatred, colonisers and colonised, victims and perpetrators« (Assmann 2007: 25f.).

2

This focus can be contextualised within a wider culture of what Keith Tester has recently termed »commonsense humanitarianism« (Tester 2010).

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time, it was chiefly the white abolitionists who were generally remembered. As Robert Winder notes, black agency in the struggle against slavery was a sensitive matter even during the period of abolition itself: »The leaders of this movement were heroes, to be sure, and their revolt was inspired by the best of motives. But to present abolition as a merciful blessing bestowed by an enlightened officer class confirms that freedom, for Africans, was automatically in the gift of their British ›superiors‹ – a patronising suggestion in itself. It denies to the slaves any major role in their own emancipation.« (Winder 2005: 134)

In scholarship and in the dominant cultural memory, acknowledging the agency of black people in the movement for abolition has remained a deficit to this day: »There is a tendency to associate the abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade almost exclusively with polite debates in parliament or rousing speeches from pulpits in churches or assembly rooms. Such is the penchant for this traditional interpretation of anti-slavery activity that the efforts of enslaved Africans are seldom factored into the equation of the abolition movement.« (Reddie 2007: 125)

As the examples addressed in this section show, the question of agency was of key importance – and also a matter of controversy – in the re/presentational choices regarding the activities and products created around the bicentenary for a general audience. It would be wrong, of course, to berate the importance of the movement’s white members who were, after all, in a position to act as opinion leaders with political power. The anti-slavery movement was carried to a large extent by religious groups in which white people formed the majority, especially Quakers and Evangelical Christians. As early as 1772, Granville Sharp had achieved a ruling in the ›Somerset case‹ (named after James Somerset, an African maltreated by his master in London) according to which West Indian planters were not permitted to hold slaves in England; slavery was thus confirmed to be contrary to English law. The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade was formed in 1787. William Wilberforce was its leader in Parliament, while Thomas Clarkson was the movement’s main organiser who travelled tirelessly collecting evidence that proved the inhumanity of the trade. Clarkson, with Granville Sharp,

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also formed the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade (in 1789), thus channelling various similar initiatives. Other leading members included Henry Thornton (Wilberforce’s cousin), Charles Grant, Edward James Eliot (Prime Minister William Pitt’s brother-in-law), Zachary Macaulay, James Stephen and Hannah More. The abolitionists were often referred to as the ›Saints‹ or the ›Clapham Sect‹, although the latter’s efforts to achieve social reform were not restricted to the slave trade.3 The act that abolished the slave trade to the British colonies was passed in 1807, while slavery in the British colonies was not ended until 1834, and full emancipation was only reached in 1838. However, in the discourse leading to the abolition, black people were a significant driving force: »[T]he slaves themselves were able to contrive a shift in the national mentality by inspiring, demanding and sometimes guiding the abolition crusade. They fought, and ultimately triumphed, against the injustice that had befallen them.« (Winder 2005: 133) The Sons of Africa, a group including Olaudah Equiano and Ottobah Cugoano, were part of the Abolition Committee and campaigned as ardently as their white fellows.4 Some of these black activists enjoyed celebrity status in their time, in particular Equiano with his bestselling autobiography. He toured Britain as indefatigably as Thomas Clarkson. Another prominent example is Mary Prince, whose slave-autobiography was published in Britain in

3

The Clapham Sect consisted of – mostly wealthy – Evangelical Christians active between 1790 and 1830, including Wilberforce, Thornton, Stephen and others; Hannah More’s schools and her pamphlets were supported by the sect. Their name is derived from a church in Clapham whose rector, John Venn, was an important member of the group. Apart from abolition, they worked for prison reform and other philanthropic causes and supported missionary work in England and abroad. The Claphamites were nicknamed the ›Saints‹ because their work often touched on sentimental issues.

4

»[T]he literate black contributed directly to the liberation of his fellow Africans. Black autobiographies and testimonies formed an essential weapon in the arsenal of the Abolitionists who were mobilising public opinion against the slave trade. His addresses to the public as well as his lobbying in Parliament made him, in the opinion of the Irish abolitionist Thomas Digges, ›a principal instrument in bringing about the motion for a repeal of the Slave-act‹.« (Edwards/Dabydeen 1991b: xi)

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1831, became a bestseller and fuelled the movement to abolish slavery in 1834. Despite their active and significant role in the process of abolition, however, the black campaigners dropped out of the general cultural memory for a long time, as did their cause. By the mid-nineteenth century, memory of Britain’s involvement in the slave trade, abolition and black emancipation was still active and could be referred to as public knowledge. Apart from a considerable body of historical literature,5 it manifested itself as a theme of bestselling books in Queen Victoria’s age such as Samuel Smiles’s Self-Help (1866), which presents the »philanthropic labours« (Smiles 1897 [1866]: xvii) of Granville Sharp, Thomas Clarkson and Fowell Buxton in particular as examples of »Energy and Courage« (ibid.: 250-262). The dominant figure in the 2007 commemorations, William Wilberforce, is only marginally mentioned by Smiles,6 and black protagonists are not referenced as agents of abolition, but only as victims of slavery and beneficiaries of abolition.7 The image of abolition we find here is therefore already a white-washed one that casts the white abolitionist as an exemplary hero and fits in with the contemporary debates surrounding the apt treatment of colonial subjects. Abolition, as transpires from Smiles’s and other publications at the time, did not effect a new perspective on the black subject as the white man’s equal and as

5

Cf., for instance, James Hiley Morgan’s A History of the Slave Trade, and Colonial Slavery (1833), Esther [Hewlett] Copley’s A History of Slavery and Its Abolition (1836) and Thomas Clarkson’s History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1839); in the second half of the nineteenth century, works on slavery and the slave trade continued to appear, for instance Charles Buxton’s Slavery and Freedom in the British West Indies (1860), Joseph Cooper of Walthamstow’s The Lost Continent; or, Slavery and the Slave-Trade in Africa (1875) and John K. Ingram’s A History of Slavery and Serfdom (1895).

6

»Wilberforce was selected to lead in parliament; but upon Clarkson chiefly devolved the labour of collecting and arranging the immense mass of evidence offered in support of the abolition.« (Smiles 1897 [1866]: 259)

7

None of the black abolitionists are mentioned; instead, Smiles elaborates Sharp’s engagement for the plight of the »poor African« Jonathan Strong and his role in »the important case of James Somerset« (Smiles 1897 [1866]: 251, 256).

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someone principally capable of agency. Instead, the common view was that Africans were a ›species‹ in need of the white man’s help. The image of the black victim (which has been perpetuated along the image of the black ›threat‹ or ›problem‹ until today) became fixed during and after the abolitionist discourse. This victimisation is controversially exemplified in the famous Wedgwood Medallion, created in 1787 to support the Abolitionist Movement but showing a kneeling slave in chains (fig. 6). The motif was widely distributed, making its way onto china, enamel boxes and tokens. That narratives surrounding slavery and abolition were still thriving and popular in the late nineteenth century was partly due to the possibility of casting a white, Protestant, British culture of philanthropy as morally superior in an increasingly competitive world of imperial strife.8 This notion was also fuelled by British outrage at the fact that slavery still existed in other parts of the world and in most notorious forms in the US-American South.9 The preoccupation with the ›slavery of others‹ arguably helped to block Britain’s involvement in the trade from memory. Fig. 6: »Am I Not A Man And A Brother?« Medallion by Josiah Wedgwood

Image credits: Trustees of the British Museum 8

That Britain continued to profit from the slave trade and slavery well into the twentieth century is argued by Marika Sherwood (2007).

9

The majority of the literature, pamphlets or lectures to be found on the subject of slavery and abolition in the British Library catalogue directly address the persistence of slavery in the United States.

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By the early twentieth century, references to the slave trade had become scarce in popular re/presentations. A rare pre-World War II example is the British feature film Song of Freedom (1936), starring Paul Robeson (who has, despite his US-American background, become one of today’s icons of the black British past). Set in a present that shows a black Briton well-integrated in his London Docks community (later becoming a famous singer who ›returns‹ to his African roots), the film opens with »a prologue that uniquely in British films depicts the horrors of the eighteenth-century slave trade as well as its abolition in 1838« (Richards 1997: 73). With the First World War, the number of black people in British port cities and industrial centres, which had declined considerably in the Victorian era, was on the rise again with overseas workers filling the gaps in the British workforce. These new black groups, however, were no longer perceived as an immediate living legacy of the transatlantic trade, and historical consciousness of the trade and its abolition waned. The thoroughness with which it was erased from general memory is conspicuous, yet explanations for this erasure are complex and multifaceted. One possible explanation is that the nation’s imperial power reached its peak decades after the abolition of slavery and could successfully overlay the memory of the latter with memories of greatness. Nazi Germany’s example of the disaster of racial thinking provided further reason to turn away from a history of involvement in the slave trade and slavery. Racial thinking and racism were readily identified with the war enemy, and even historically closer events of racial transgressions in Britain (such as the riots against black settlers in Cardiff in 1919) were quickly relegated to oblivion. Song of Freedom may be seen as providing an alternative perspective, but it remains an exceptional instance. Thus by the mid-twentieth century, race relations entered the political agenda as a problem discourse perceived to be linked to new colonial migrants who made their appearance, as it seemed, out of a historical void. That they had a history of their own to look back to, and that this history was inseparably linked to British history in ways that cast a shadow on the role of British protagonists and the nation as a whole, was not a matter deemed worth contemplating at the time. Another half-century had to pass before the nation’s historical culture could tackle subject matters that had previously been suppressed. In the United Kingdom, as the novelist Andrea Levy has recently pointed out, learning about the slave trade at school in the past meant learning the ›facts‹ about the triangular trading system and

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plantation life, »[b]ut there was always the sense that it was a very long time ago, and you don’t really need to look at it. [...] It’s a very touchy subject. It’s not something that Britain can be proud of.« (Mansfield 2010) However, it appears that the Windrush narrative has functioned as a door-opener for earlier phases of black history, including the difficult discourse surrounding slavery. By the end of the twentieth century, the slave trade, abolition and its agents began to be newly remembered and increasingly attacked head on, not only by ›alternative‹ historians and activists, but also in popular re/presentations. Today, the long silence has clearly been broken, and we are offered an impressive cultural production dealing with slavery and the British slave trade that seeks to inform, instruct and also (where aimed at a wide audience) to entertain. The question arises, however, as to whether the mere existence of a multitude of products grants an adequate representation of this difficult and highly complex chapter of British history. It might be argued that the charged subject matter of the Atlantic slave trade and slavery defies representation in the first place. Here, the older debate surrounding the possibility of representing the Holocaust comes to mind. For both historical contexts, critics as well as writers, artists and filmmakers have claimed the difficulty and even impossibility of representation. But both the Holocaust and Atlantic slavery no longer seem to evade attempts at being represented: The number of films, exhibitions, novels and even graphic novels devoted to an understanding of the Holocaust exploded in the 1990s, and slavery and the slave trade too became representable in a blockbuster Hollywood film: Amistad (1997) by Stephen Spielberg, who had previously directed Schindler’s List (1993). With the new wealth of products devoted to these charged histories, it becomes all the more important to take a closer look at their respective agendas. As a reviewer of Andrea Levy’s The Long Song, a novel set during British slavery in Jamaica, remarks: »[L]ike the Holocaust, slavery offers ample opportunity for crude sensationalism and reprehensible voyeurism. Written from a white perspective, it can too easily appear to mimic Gone With The Wind; from a black perspective, it can echo Alex

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Haley’s Roots. It is not easy to walk in the footsteps of blockbusters.« (Stuart 2010)10

The history of British slavery and the slave trade is embedded in a colonial situation and it is a history in which the narratives of victims and perpetrators, victors and vanquished are complexly intertwined. It is not surprising, therefore, that highly diverse cultures of memory have been constructed around these narratives, and have existed separately from one another. In addition, there are many narratives that cannot be easily boxed into these four categories, and there are national as well as transnational historical programmes involved. The difficulty of bringing all these stories, discourses and agendas together to form a coherent picture for the public has become a productive challenge and resulted in numerous new approaches to this history. An analysis of any product that re/presents the history of Britain’s involvement in the Atlantic slave trade – and of products with a popular appeal in particular – must take into consideration the special perspective assumed in this product, the question of its thematic focus and the overtness or covertness with which both perspective and thematic focus are displayed. Our case studies in this part concentrate on the major areas of re/presentation involved in the bicentenary celebrations of 2007. As a backdrop to these analyses, the ensuing chapter will first investigate some television productions of the pre-bicentenary years that exemplify the representational challenges posed by the slave-trade and the presence of enslaved people in Britain for a new historical programme.

10 After the publication of four previous novels, among them her successful Windrush novel Small Island (2004, cf. pp. 207-225) Levy eventually turned to the subject matter of slavery, initially reluctantly and with the intention »to get out of there very quick. But you can’t avoid slavery.« (Younge 2010) The Long Song was shortlisted for the 2010 Booker Prize whose longlist was already »the strongest selling since 2001« (The Man Booker Prizes).

2. Screening Slavery and the Slave Trade before the Bicentenary

In her study The British Slave Trade and Public Memory, Elizabeth Kowaleski Wallace covers products and practices that helped popularise knowledge about the slave trade in Britain between the late 1990s (the period of the Windrush anniversary) and 2003, including three television productions: A Son of Africa (BBC 2 1996), a half-hour documentary biopic about Olaudah Equiano; the television adaptation of a popular novel by Philippa Gregory, A Respectable Trade (BBC 1 1998); and Britain’s Slave Trade (Channel Four 1999), a four-part primetime documentary co-produced by one of the makers of the Windrush documentary, Trevor Phillips. In all three examples the question of agency (both historical and historiographical) is at the heart of the re/presentational agenda, but they address this challenge in different ways. A Son of Africa profited from the fact that by the 1990s, Equiano’s Interesting Narrative had become a set text in academic teaching and had already been republished several times. Equiano, as an abolitionist, exemplary Christian convert and Briton-by-choice, is a figure who can easily be integrated within a conventional British slave-trade narrative with the inevitable culmination in the nation’s moral victory over the system of the trade. Nevertheless, the film, whose remit is educational and which appeared in a special time slot and a programmatic series of »hidden« his-

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tories,1 openly problematises such patterns of discourse, for instance by including Stuart Hall as an authoritative academic commentator who openly addresses the contentious issue of agency: »›We forget that slavery is what lies at the root of and shapes predominantly relations between black and whites in the west. Abolition has written out the agency of blacks. It’s as if abolition were really a gift by liberal and reforming whites to the enslaved peoples and not to one in which slaves themselves played an active part‹.« (qtd. in Kowaleski Wallace 2006: 135)

A Son of Africa emphasises Equiano’s agency, and it does so beyond the context of abolitionism by casting him not only as the author of his famous autobiography, but also as a figure who fulfils several functions for several narratives, from the »theme of Equiano-as-cosmopolitan [...] to the theme of Equiano as African statesman« (ibid.: 135). By contrast, the function Equiano has come to fulfil for Britain’s historical culture with the approach of 2007 is increasingly narrowed down to that of an emblem of British abolition. A Son of Africa – aired before the Windrush hype – did not reach a wide audience, but it was well-placed for the target group it addressed, i.e. a general middle-class audience of educational programmes, and may have opened their minds to relatively complex questions. While in A Son of Africa non-British spaces are also put in focus, the action of A Respectable Trade stays firmly put in Bristol, one of Britain’s main ports within the triangular trade. This television drama is set around the year 1787, when the first abolition bill was defeated, and it centres on a love affair between a white woman from a trading family and a black slave. With this romance between two attractive characters (Ariyon Debo Bakare as Mehuru and Emma Fielding as Frances Scott) it was aimed primarily at a female audience. Following Andrew Higson’s analysis of heritage film, Kowaleski Wallace points out that the visually appealing images of the production and its ideology offer conflicting messages:

1

A Son of Africa was part of the Hidden Empire series which was screened on BBC 2 on consecutive Monday nights in a pre-primetime slot (7.30 pm-8 pm) from 8 January to 12 February 1996.

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»On the one hand, its narrative encourages reflection on eighteenth-century trade, and it elicits moral outrage that human beings should ever have been taken in slavery. But on the other hand, its image tract plays to a scopophilic impulse, in which we are encouraged to love visually the very world we have been asked to judge intellectually. In addition, by aligning the narrative with Frances’s point of view, the mise-en-scène encourages the viewer’s identification with her erotic attachment to Mehuru. Although the narrative struggles to complete Mehuru’s story and to represent him as an individual with agency, the film’s image tract relegates him to the object of Frances’s – and the viewer’s gaze. Thus, while the narrative line gives us a Mehuru who is set free, the image tract gives us a Mehuru whom we can possess with a look.« (Kowaleski Wallace 2006: 147)

The white, female perspective offered as a marker of identification is thus a step back towards the noble (and handsome, one might add) victim discourse. The fact that A Respectable Trade, as the adaptation of a popular historical novel,2 could be successfully screened at primetime3 and did not require a themed season or an accompanying event gala (like the Windrush documentary only a month later) demonstrates the persisting popularity of this particular approach to the black historical subject. A truly groundbreaking approach to the slave trade, however, was offered by the context of Channel Four’s Untold season in 1999, with a documentary series that explicitly emphasised how the slave trade laid the

2

Philippa Gregory specialises in the genre of historical fiction. Her first novel, The Other Boleyn Girl (2001), was adapted for the small and the big screen (in 2003 and 2008 respectively). The mixture of typical themes, plots and elements of a recognisable past make up Gregory’s success formula. A Respectable Trade ends on an apologetic note which offers a tentative bridge of hope into the present, but it also affirms white agency: Frances’s testament, which effects the freeing of all her slaves, ends the novel with the words: »I am sorry. Perhaps one day we can learn to live together in Love and Respect?« (Gregory 2005 [1995]: 501) The freedom of the black characters depends on the white woman’s benevolence rather than on their own doings.

3

The film was screened from 9.20 to 10.20 pm on a Sunday evening (19 April 1998) on BBC 1, the slot which has traditionally been reserved for period drama, and also the slot in which the Windrush mini-series Small Island (cf. pp. 207-229) was broadcast in 2009.

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basis for a hybrid Britain (in quite literal terms). Britain’s Slave Trade was screened during Black History Month in 1999.4 With four episodes of 60 minutes each shown at primetime, it was granted a similar space as the Windrush series a year earlier. Trevor Phillips wrote about Channel Four’s landmark decision to commission an entire season of »untold« history at the time: »Channel 4 is commissioning programmes which suggest that black and white Britons have some history in common; this [is] the first time anyone has hinted that multiculturalism can be more than the stuff that only the black and Asian people watch. It’s a virtual revolution for those of us who have spent much of our TV lives trying to force some recognition of the black British presence on to the screen.« (T. Phillips 1999: 4)

Britain’s Slave Trade presents its material as hidden knowledge that has to be un- and recovered in order to become relevant for contemporary society. Claiming to set a record of ›misinformation‹ straight, the elements of newness and historical discovery are the documentary’s driving force. They were continuously repeated in order to stay firmly planted within the viewers’ awareness and keep their curiosity alive over the period of three more weeks. The gesture of newness and discovery is maintained, for instance, in the programme’s voice-over narration, whose information is continuously backed up by live expert interviews. These experts are black and white historians affiliated with institutions in West Africa, the UK, the Caribbean and the United States. Their chorus draws attention to the trade’s transnational connections, but the focus is clearly on the role of Britons. There is a notable emphasis on British cities and their links to the Atlantic trade, such as Bristol, Liverpool and London, as well as specific locations that exemplify the splendid riches accumulated through the trade, such as Goldney Gardens and Follies in Bristol or Penrhyn Castle in North Wales. When a descendant of a wealthy Bristol merchant is quoted as saying, »It seems to me that the slavery part was just part of the cycle of things« (0:00:08), the politics of the documentary have already been outlined: Here, the slave trade is not to be presented as an accident or a chain of unavoidable causal links, but as the very tangible result of an effective mixture of

4

From 3 to 24 October 1999.

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greed and cold-blooded calculation, particularly on the side of Britons. Accordingly, the documentary juxtaposes the affluent British settings with the more established sites and locations in the historical culture surrounding slavery and the trade: the slave forts in Ghana and the plantations in the West Indies. Several markers in the presentation of the material, however, make it clear that there is a cut between past and present approaches to this history, and that this cut is in the process of effecting a change. In episode one, this is achieved through the depiction of the changing attitude of a city to its local historical involvement in the slave trade. In episode two, the revelation of a common ancestry of black and white Britons leads to a process of reflection and learning, and thus an approach of hitherto separate perspectives. In episode three, which is devoted to the theme of abolition, common black and white heroes are put on the agenda. Already towards the beginning of the first episode, a changing attitude towards the common history is implied. A sequence of shots shows a multiethnic group of people gathered at a small pedestrian bridge. It is accompanied by the following voice-over comment: »The first sign of change appeared. Bristol dignitaries gathered for the opening of a new footbridge. It was a small step, but a victory for the campaign to commemorate one of the slaves who lived in Bristol, a man called Pero Jones.« (0:00:06) Then the narrative embarks on Pero’s experience as the ›property‹ of the Pinney family, a dynasty of profiteers from the slave trade. The interweaving of personal stories of historical subjects (through reenactment) with the continuity of the voice-over narration and the backing up of facts by historians, i.e. a mixture of narrative and dramatic devices, text and moving image, conveys the impression that the past conjured up here is not ›dead‹, but of major significance for the present. The most effective device in Britain’s Slave Trade, however, enters in the fourth and final episode, aptly entitled »A Message from Our Ancestors«. It is the addition of present-day ›witnesses‹ whose ancestry is traced back and connected to the history of the slave trade.5 The trope of newness and discovery is here driven even further and blended with what Kowaleski Wallace calls the »family trope«: The stories of »ordinary Britons« are

5

This has already been anticipated in the second episode (»Unfinished Business«), in which the descendants of a slave owner and a descendant of the latter’s slaves meet and explore their common family name and roots.

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»embedded to disclose a surprising discovery of a family ›secret‹« (Kowaleski Wallace 2006: 149). Thus the history presented in Britain’s Slave Trade emerges as a history shared by black and white Britons in a literal and very personal sense. This personal link is an important device of authentification; mostly associated with living witnesses’ narratives, it is used here for a period that seems distant in that it can only be related to through documents. The tracing of – unexpected – living descendants is thus an effective bridge to the past and has also been employed in documentary productions of the bicentenary ›craze‹.6 Another important forerunner to the wave of treatments brought on by the bicentenary is the BBC’s production The Slavery Business.7 Broadcast in 2005, and not embedded in a special season or commemorative context, this three-part docudrama produced and directed by Michael Samuels and written by Justin Hopper appears to have been free of some of the constraints brought about by the celebrations two years later. It stands out against the bicentenary productions in that it emphasises, assesses and dissects white perpetratorship. This agenda was clearly verbalised even in the pre-screening announcement for the first part: »Now on BBC 2: Making profits from people. A drama through the eyes of a slave trader, based on historical documents. This is the cold-hearted world of The Slavery Business!« The programme presents the shameful historical aspect of the British involvement in slavery and the slave trade with a powerful use of understatement that exposes the cynicism of what is referred to as »business«.8 The opening scenes (episode 1, 0:00:00-01:48) are a case in point. Over piano music, writing fades in across a black background: »This drama is based on the life of Henry Lascelles, one of the richest businessmen of the eighteenth century.« A close shot of blue-grey eyes, then the fleshy,

6

For further examples and the status of ancestry tracing as a trope in treatments of the history of the African diaspora cf. pp. 163-179, and in particular our discussion of Motherland (BBC 2003).

7

The first episode, »How to Make a Million from Slavery«, was broadcast on 3 August 2005, the second episode, »Sugar Dynasty«, on 10 August 2005 and the third episode, »Breaking the Chains«, on 17 August 2005.

8

Already the wording of the title, The Slavery Business, raises the expectation that a history charged with immorality and inhumaneness will be at the centre of the film.

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rosy cheeks and nose of Lascelles, slowly gives way to an image of the face, the white wig and then the entire man who says »What’s he doing now?«. At this, the camera moves over to a painter who is measuring proportions with two sticks. The identification of the setting fades in, »Yorkshire, 1744«, and the voice of Lascelles’s son is heard replying: »I believe he is working out the perspective.« The camera moves further away, showing the painter’s back, his canvas to his left and three sitters facing both him and the camera: Lascelles is seated, belly protruding and holding a walking stick, his son is standing behind him, carrying his tricorn in his right hand and holding on to a wooden bench with his left. Seated on the bench is a woman, Lascelles’s younger second wife, with a little pet dog on her lap. Lascelles’s comment, »The man has been paid to paint, not daydream. I should introduce him to one of my slave drivers«, is followed by an immediate, abrupt cut, and a new set of shots of the sitters from the left side, which shows their faces in profile. Now an additional sitter’s face emerges, occupying one third of the image: a black child’s face, framed by a headscarf and collar. Placed behind, between Lascelles and the child, is a globe adjusted in a manner that makes West Africa visible. Now the white woman’s voice is heard exclaiming, »Oh don’t be such a bore Henry! All the best artists take their time.« The camera shifts to show the woman kissing her pet dog. The son turns his head to the right, facing the camera (which shows the group in profile all along), and says »Father!«. The camera makes a 180 degree turn, settling into the line of the son’s gaze, and shows a black man carrying rolls of paper walking towards the group. Lascelles says, »Nice of him to fetch the plans for the new house«, gets up and walks towards the man. The camera is now driven backwards to reveal the entire scene: The painter, shown from the back, is raising his hands in despair because all the sitters have stood up and his scene has been destroyed. The surrounding landscape becomes visible from the distance, displaying green hills, a grey sky, dark silhouettes of trees and hedges. The landscape appears gloomy and seems to mirror the expression on the black child’s face. The series title and below it the episode title, »How To Make A Million From Slavery«, fade in in white on the dark grey sky as the piano music gets louder. With its conspicuous editing of shots, this short establishing scene is full of allusions to the difficulty of approaching the subject of slavery from any perspective in general, and of finding an approach to the perspective of

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the perpetrators in particular. Famous, moneyed and blue-blooded British profiteers of the »business« have, in fact, been remembered for many other things they did and were in history, while their involvement in slavery has been blanked out. The Lascelles are a case in point. The camera’s shifting perspective and focus parallels the painter’s efforts within the diegetic action to find his perspective and the right proportions. In addition it highlights the film’s focus on specific persons whose actions are ›measured‹. The change of perspective effected through the sharp cut from frontal portrayal to profile alludes to the multiperspectival approach required by the difficult topic, but also the different faces and natures that coincide in one person (slave trader vs. family father, happy family scene vs. atrocity). Indeed, the presentation suggests that eighteenth-century Britain had two faces: one characterised by splendour and affluence, the other by moral baseness. It operates on exposing this dichotomy which remains »difficult to grasp« for »modern readers and students«, as James Walvin, who acted as consultant for the docudrama, notes in his introduction to A Short History of Slavery: »It was as if Atlantic slavery was morally neutral for those most actively involved (counted in their tens of thousands), from the humblest of sailors to the grandest of planters and slave merchants. The annals of slavery are brimming with accounts of Western people (mainly white) dealing with black humanity in the most grotesque of fashions – and yet not even noticing what they were doing. Slave captains, planters and colonial officials (often God-fearing men to their fingertips) filled their logs, ledgers and diaries with the most violent and degrading accounts of their dealings with slaves, all without registering the least doubt or hesitation about their actions. Moral self-doubt and religious hesitation rarely intruded into the way they described their working lives, which were dominated by daily face-to-face dealings with Africans and their enslaved descendants. [...] To modern eyes, it all seems so odd, so out of kilter with present-day sensibilities and values.« (Walvin 2007b: 2)

It is precisely the focus on this ›oddity‹ that is used as the first episode’s driving force. In order to bring the point home the film conjures up an almost exaggerated image of eighteenth-century splendour and lifestyles through the repeated use of interpictoriality. The opening shots of the family as sitters, for instance, are reminiscent of many similar eighteenthcentury family portraits which have become part of the repository of cul-

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tural memory and visual ›heritage‹, including the slave child as an aesthetic prop.9 In contrast to the agenda of Britain’s Slave Trade, which would presumably have raised the issue of the boy’s identity, the boy in this docudrama is just left in his role as prop, and the focus shifts back to the person of interest, Lascelles. Black characters in the episode are without exception portrayed as victims. Lascelles’s manservant Joseph, who brings the plans for the new house in the opening scene, occupies a special status in the household as the first black slave Lascelles had bought (»Seasoned him myself. Reminds me where I come from«, 0:14:09-15), but his existence in servitude is never relativised. He appears like a painted figure with his wig, period attire, and a thick golden ring around his throat and neck that sports a lock. A conversation between Lascelles and his guests reveals that Joseph had tried to kill himself by cutting his throat during the Middle Passage. The conversation is interrupted by Lascelles’s order to Joseph to »bring the pisspot« (0:13:50-55) into which Lascelles then urinates, simultaneously looking skywards and speaking of Barbados, oblivious to the fact that he is sprinkling Joseph’s hands all the while. The scene virtually smells of Lascelles’s contempt for the black man as a human being and it profanes the period ›image‹ otherwise created by the episode’s ›reenactment‹ of paintings that evoke the eighteenth century as a grand and affluent period in which trade and liberalism were the catchphrases of the day.10 One scene in which influential London merchants are shown in a meeting is almost a tableau vivant: It shows a group of men, one seated at the centre and two at either side holding glasses, all remarkably self-assured (0:03:54-05:32). Also, beyond enacting such images, the film’s aesthetics

9

For more insights into the representations of blacks in eighteenth-century art cf. Dabydeen (1987). A detailed family portrait situation is also imagined in Andrea Levy’s novel The Long Song, Chapter 26.

10 A painting that comes to mind here is Gainsborough Dupont’s painting of London merchants (1794) which can be found on the wall of the staircase of Trinity House in London, where the most influential merchants would meet in the eighteenth century. The painting shows some of the rulers of the ›golden age‹ united: Baltic, East India and West India merchants. It also fares prominently in a later documentary, In Search of William Wilberforce (BBC 2 2007), which is considered below (pp. 115-119).

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rely heavily on details of costume and scenery. Interiors in particular play a vital role in conveying the image of a ›golden age‹, bathed in the light of candles and the mellow glow of dimmed light. While scenes set inside almost always display the opulence of people drinking and eating in abundance (fresh exotic fruits are a regular prop), exterior scenes rely on sky and nature in the manner of the landscape-painting conventions of the time. The sense of period is enhanced by a soundtrack of baroque music. Even scenes set in Barbados, where the cruelty of slavery is visualised in great detail, are accompanied by strings. Such juxtapositions contrast a seemingly familiar composite image of the period as enlightened and cultured with disturbing evidence of inhumanity and oppression, and they are arguably more important to the episode’s agenda than the plot which evolves around Henry Lascelles’s corrupt ploys. The second episode, which offers a new story, operates on a similar strategy, contrasting eighteenth-century decadence with the base cruelty of the slavery system. Here, the realisation is effected through the juxtaposition of two cousins of the Beckford dynasty: One is William Beckford of Fonthill, the famous artist-writer son of William Alderman Beckford, heir of immense fortunes derived from his family’s possessions, »the largest property real and personal of any subject in Europe« (Leslie 1740: 267). The other is William Beckford of Somerley, a Jamaican planter and illegitimate son of the Jamaican planter Richard Beckford, William Alderman Beckford’s brother. While Beckford the planter is actively involved in running the »slavery business« on location, Beckford the artist is more interested in spending the money derived from the business than taking an interest in its sources. The cousins’ lives intertwine when Beckford of Somerley comes to England in 1777 after the loss of his plantations and in search of financial support from Fonthill. The episode centres in particular on Beckford of Fonthill’s decadence and downfall which is anticipated in his penchant for orgies, continued in a scandal about his homosexuality (which almost prevents his ascent into peerage) and culminates in the collapse of Fonthill Abbey, one of his architectural projects. A powerful coda sums up the connections that have been established (0:56:40-58:05): Shots of Beckford of Fonthill going up the spiral staircase in his Abbey’s tower merge into shots of the turning wheel of a sugar mill, slaves and a mule, followed by shots of liquid sugar syrup, and eventually shots of fireworks that show Fonthill’s initial »B« appearing and disap-

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pearing. The voice of the narrator (whose comments interchange with choir music) muses over those alternating images: »The Beckfords rose from nowhere and made a fortune on the back of their slaves. But their notorious story came to an end, and the dynasty burned out in spectacular style. All that was left was the abbey. But this monument to human suffering and Beckford pride was built on unsupportable foundations. Just three years after it was sold the tower came crashing down.« Over a close-up on his face, Fonthill is heard saying: »The tower falling was an unfortunate accident. But it purged me of Fonthill Abbey. I had been living with the sword of Damocles over my head. And I’m philosophical enough not to cry over something which was, after all, just a plaything.« This is followed by the narrator’s comment: »Fonthill’s plaything cost twenty million pounds of today’s prices. It’s been estimated that more than three thousand slaves were worked to death to pay for its construction.« One aspect which comes to mind for both the Lascelles and the Beckford cases is that of shifts in the class system and a new class mobility.11 The colonial connections provided (formerly unknown) avenues for the upwardly mobile, and one of the discourses underlying the narratives in episodes one and two of The Slavery Business is based on the notion of the parvenu whose unscrupulousness may account for some of the basest cruelties enacted in the history of Atlantic slavery. In both episodes, black people appear all the more at the mercy of white people’s economic interests and social ambitions. Accordingly, they are represented exclusively as (anonymous) victims who are literally sacrificed for the interests of whites. This picture changes dramatically with the third episode, which is devoted to abolition. The pre-screening announcement for the episode claims straight away: »The Slavery Business continues now with the truth about the end of slavery that has been hidden for 200 years. A powerful dramadocumentary using historical documents, ›Breaking the Chains‹ reveals the real heroes in the battle against slavery.« Again, the opening scenes provide memorable impressions (0:00:00-03:28), showing a nocturnal sea, a rowing boat, the light of a lamp and a ship in the distance with its sail rolled down. A white man carrying the lamp enters the camera’s focus, obviously

11 Both cases are also discussed by Jill Casid in her study Sowing Empire (2005) which provides insights into the families’ efforts to »transplant« their fortunes and status gained through colonial slave labour back into English society.

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looking for something. Extradiegetic cello music fades in and the voiceover narrator is heard: »By the end of the eighteenth century, British traders had become the masters of the most terrible trade on earth. Over the course of two centuries they had perfected the capture, transportation and sale of human beings [the man on the shore waves his lamp, and from the boat emerge the ducking figures of several black men]. British ships have carried over three million Africans to the shores of the New World and into lives of bondage and suffering. [The black men get off the boat.] And the Atlantic slave trade had made enormous profits for the traders and merchants. It was at the heart of the blooming British Empire. But in 1807, Britain did something remarkable: It ended the slave trade [two white men dismiss the Africans and it becomes clear that the scene shows patrols at work rather than slave traders] and turned its back on its vast profits. This was largely down to one man – William Wilberforce.« (0:00:16-01:09)

There follows a change of scene, and Wilberforce enters saying that God will bless Britain for the Abolition Act. However, the voice-over narrator almost cuts him short, continuing his establishing narrative: »But there is something about William Wilberforce that’s been brushed under the carpet for two hundred years. And that’s that although he ended the trade in slaves, in private he believed that those Africans already on the plantations should remain in slavery. [A whipping scene is followed by another appearance of Wilberforce who insists that to give ›them‹ freedom ›now‹ would be unwise.] This is the story of how the brutality of slavery was finally ended; and how that struggle was not led by Wilberforce, but by the slaves themselves who found new leaders and came together to overthrow the system. [The enslaved are shown marching in unison, first towards and then away from the camera; then, images of a baptism follow.] The slaves were inspired by new religious ideas brought to them by a generation of radical, evangelical missionaries. These were the years in which the resentment caused by centuries of oppression and cruelty finally exploded. The years in which Britain learned the true cost of slavery [images of burning fields give way to a third appearance of Wilberforce, walking towards a door and turning to face the camera], its last and untold chapter in the life of William Wilberforce [the closing of the door marks a cut; a whiplash is thrown to the ground with a bang] and the extraordinary story of the final death of British slavery.« (0:01:22-03:18)

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We then see a neck collar hitting the ground with another bang; the series title fades in, followed by the episode title, »Breaking the Chains«; the music fades out, and the following caption appears on the black screen: »The words spoken in this film are from the documents of the time.« (0:03:10-28) The ›documentary‹ character of the episode is further emphasised by a device not used in the two preceding ones: Conspicuously, the historical characters speak to the camera and thus remind one of living witnesses. Among them are black figures such as the resistance hero Sam Sharpe. This device effectively counters the notion of the black historical figure as silent, silenced and victimised. Reinvented as witness, the black figure speaks and acts in reaction to the experienced oppression and also narrates his own story. The use of this device further underpins the sharp turn in the representational politics after the first two episodes, from a focus on perpetratorship to resistance. The third episode oscillates between parliamentary debates (that expose Wilberforce as a moral leader, but also as a master of propaganda) and scenes of plantation life in Barbados where upheaval is increasingly in the air. The reasons for change are presented as complex,12 and the agents of change are shown as many individuals and groups operating in different places and on different levels of involvement: The Baptist preacher and missionary William Nibbs, for instance, is presented writing letters back to England to gain support and money (0:13:45-15:10). Sam Sharp, the black protagonist of the production, is cast as a man who draws from a powerful mix of religion and political conviction and is an inspiration to the people surrounding him. The episode takes care to present the variety of persons who achieved the end of slavery in the British colonies, not in one concerted effort, but in many connected ones. That it builds on two episodes that expose the cynicism of the system of slavery while in operation is a notable difference to the productions emerging around the bicentenary that focused strongly on the moment of abolition. Although a white agency is at the centre of episodes one and two of The Slavery Business, it is clearly presented as a

12 The film highlights, for instance, the fact that societal struggles in Britain (such as the beginning trade unionism and the rise of the women’s movement) did not go unnoticed among the enslaved populations in the colonies and influenced their decision to resist.

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problematic agency that casts a shadow of perpetratorship and complicity on many Britons at the time, a shadow that is more difficult to adopt as part of one’s own history (or even ›heritage‹) than the glory of achievement surrounding a few select abolitionists whose motivations and actions are not generally questioned. The different arenas in which the abolitionist movement emerged and the question of why it emerged »is another curious challenge«, as James Walvin notes: »Though it scarcely raised a moral whimper for centuries in the West, slavery ended in a crescendo of outrage and ethical disgust. The institution which had survived for centuries without attracting very much opposition ended its days denounced as an offence to Christian values and a blot on the Western conscience. Clearly, something had changed. What had happened to transform slavery into such a moral and irreligious monster? If the slave trade and slavery were so deeply immoral and unchristian in, say, 1830, why had that not been the case in 1730 or 1630? Had slavery changed? Had the West changed? Or had slavery come to occupy an utterly different position in the Western world?« (Walvin 2007b: 3)

The Slavery Business seemed to be guided by precisely these questions and covers some ground in this direction. On the whole, however, these questions lead to complex territory that cannot possibly be tackled coherently within one television production. The host of productions that emerged around 2007 detracted attention from such complexities rather than tackling them. The strongly celebratory attitude towards the subject matter adopted during the bicentenary caused major controversies, in particular around questions of agency, regarding both the historical context of 1807 and the context of the present historical culture surrounding it. Although it was clear that the events could hardly be conducted without Britain’s black communities, the shining figure in many of the bicentenary celebrations was still one white man, Wilberforce, and the event – a veritable ›Wilberfest‹ – became a farce in the perception of some. Nelson Mandela declined an invitation to a commemorative event hosted by the city of Bristol after he was informed about controversies between the local black organisations and the majority white city council with respect to the way in which the commemorations were being conducted (cf. Sengupta 2007). An incident at Westminster Abbey, in which a

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representative of the human rights organisation Ligali13 interrupted the commemorative service in March 2007 with an impromptu indictment of the celebrations as acts of marginalising the role of blacks in the abolition, received a lot of attention in the media. Before looking at the various ›live‹ activities, performances and exhibitions staged around the bicentenary, the following chapters continue the discussion of filmic representation, focusing on two productions aimed at a wide audience that were specifically made to coincide with the anniversary. Simon Schama’s television documentary Rough Crossings and the feature film Amazing Grace differ considerably in their aesthetics, approach and intent. While the latter is openly celebratory and focuses on Wilberforce, Schama’s production deliberately undercuts the festive mood and focuses on a specifically inglorious chapter in the abolition movement. Yet both products testify to the problem of ascribing agency, a problem which the bicentenary brought to the fore, and both fall back into positions which The Slavery Business, with its abolition episode, had already effectively challenged.

13 According to information on the organisation’s website, its remit is to challenge »the misrepresentation of African people, culture and history in the British media« (Ligali 2007).

3. Simon Schama’s Rough Crossings: From Popular History Book to Television History

Rough Crossings, Simon Schama’s screen version of his own popular history book of the same title, is a prestigious television production made with a wide audience in mind. Schama, professor of Art History and History at Columbia University, is one of Britain’s most popular presenters of history on television for a mainstream audience. The success of his 15-part History of Britain (2000-2002)1 won him a deal with the BBC for further book publications and television programmes, which included the Rough Crossings project. The book (published by BBC Books) came out in 2005 and was followed by the ninety-minute documentary – or rather docudrama since it relies heavily on fictionalised reenactment – written and presented by Schama himself.2 It was aired on BBC 2 at 9 pm (the primetime documentary slot) on 23 March 2007, the day of the bicentenary.3 Despite this timely release, however, the programme was not the major success that had 1

In this series, black history enters the narrative in four episodes that centre on colonialism, empire and the slave trade: »The Wrong Empire«, »Forces of Nature«, »Revolutions« and »Victoria and Her Sisters«. The latter casts Mary Seacole as one of several women who achieved extraordinary things during Victoria’s reign.

2

It was produced and directed by Steven Condie, as a co-production of BBC and

3

In the United States, Rough Crossings was shown on PBS on 16 February 2009,

WNET New York. as part of Black History Month.

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been intended; it was not in the Top 30 listing for the day, having under 1.7 million viewers. The subject covered in Rough Crossings is an underrepresented chapter in the history of slavery and abolition in which black and white, or black versus white, agency was a major issue from the very beginning. The title refers not to the notorious Middle Passage, but to crossings of the Atlantic that resulted in the resettlement of former slaves from British North America in Sierra Leone. Their story is part of British-American relations in the late eighteenth century, and Schama presents it as a chain of shameful betrayals. Above all, Rough Crossings presents the abolitionists in a manner that casts a shadow on their status as humanitarian heroes of British history. Disappointed by the American Revolutionary War and still excluded from the ›land of the free‹, many American slaves escaped and joined the British troops, fighting against the Revolutionary Army. Their decision was prompted by the fact that the resolution of the Somerset case in 1772 had practically liberated all slaves on British territory, even if this result had not been originally intended by the judge who pronounced the decision. As Schama writes in the book version of Rough Crossings: »the liberation of James Somerset had done something startling to the society of the free and the enslaved that stretched across the Atlantic. It had made the idea of British freedom a germ of hope. On the evening of the 22nd of June 1772, blacks in London had no doubt at all that there was reason to celebrate, and they did so at a party at Dr Johnson’s house organized by his servant Francis Barber, as well as a ›frolick‹ for some two hundred people at a London tavern.« (Schama 2005: 63)

After Britain’s defeat in the War of Independence, many former slaves sought refuge in those parts of North America that remained loyal to the King, settling in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Not only was the climate uncongenial; the liberated slaves also continued to live in poverty and under conditions of service that were hardly better than those they had (nominally) escaped. Thus when news reached North America in 1791 that the British abolitionists were about to revive Granville Sharp’s Province of

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Freedom in Sierra Leone,4 many Africans in Nova Scotia were determined to cross the Atlantic once more. One of their spokesmen, Thomas Peters, a sergeant in George III’s army and wounded in the king’s service, made the voyage to London in 1791 and convinced the abolitionists that the Christian and hard-working blacks of Nova Scotia were the right kind of settlers to make the Sierra Leone scheme work. For their second attempt, the abolitionists founded a trade company so that their enterprise would be not only benevolent but also profitable. They felt that, with a financial venture at stake, a white man, rather than Thomas Peters, was needed to mastermind the recruitment of settlers and their emigration from North America. Accordingly, Thomas Clarkson’s brother John was appointed as leader of the expedition and later as the first Governor of the Freetown settlement. Schama’s book emphasises – and criticises – this insistence on white agency: »Peters was to return to Nova Scotia himself to spread the word among the black communities. [...] But given what Peters had told them about the conduct of the white loyalists towards the blacks, not to mention their dependence on them as a source of cheap labour, Clarkson and Sharp worried whether their sergeant would be capable of ensuring that the wishes of government and the company were faithfully executed. Someone else, someone white, needed to go to Nova Scotia: someone of tenacious determination, irreproachable integrity and inexhaustible energy; someone capable, not just of canvassing the blacks, but of chartering a ship and organizing the voyage and seeing it safely to Sierra Leone [...].« (Schama 2005: 265)

4

Sharp’s first province had been a spectacular failure. Cf. Robert Winder’s account in Bloody Foreigners: »Thousands of slaves in Virginia and Carolina had heard about the James Somerset case and joined the British army in the War of Independence in the hope that it would lead to freedom. After the war many of these unfortunate loyalists were betrayed – dumped in Nova Scotia and Jamaica – but a large number returned to Britain as veterans. They were unwelcome and could not find work. London acquired an unsightly new feature: black beggars«. Therefore, after a particularly hard winter in 1786, the abolitionists came up with plans to ›repatriate‹ these blacks: »In Sierra Leone, of course, no provision had been made for their arrival, and there was no medicine in their modest supplies. […] Only 60 lived more than four years.« (Winder 2005: 142f.)

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According to Schama’s compelling narrative, John Clarkson soon identified with his mission and adopted the fate of the former slaves (more than a thousand agreed to resettle in Sierra Leone) as his personal cause. He tried to spare them another disappointment and to make their Atlantic passage as comfortable as possible so that traumatic memories of the Middle Passage would not resurface. Unfortunately, the fleet’s crossing was a particularly rough one, haunted by storms and serious illness. Clarkson himself became so ill that he was taken for dead and his body was almost thrown into the sea. To make matters worse, when the settlers finally arrived in Sierra Leone, they found their future home completely unprepared by the Company. Contrary to the agreement granted by the Company and the British government, they were also denied self-rule. Torrential rains led to further illness and death, and the Colony’s white members, intended to support John Clarkson, turned out to be lazy and incompetent. As a consequence, John and, above all, the black settlers felt betrayed again. Once more Peters acted as their spokesman, causing significant unrest until his unexpected death, after which the settlement at last began to flourish: »By October 1792 Freetown was no longer just an idea (and a far-fetched one at that). It was a place – a place quite unlike any other in the Atlantic world; it was a community of free black British African-Americans.« (Schama 2005: 342) John Clarkson’s mission seemed fulfilled and eighteen months after its beginning, he left Sierra Leone for Britain, intending to get married. After his departure, however, the new Company representative adopted a firm attitude towards the black settlers, delimiting many freedoms granted by John Clarkson and thus sparking further protest and rebellion. The second Sierra Leone scheme eventually ended as another failure and betrayal of people formerly enslaved. This is the basic narrative of Rough Crossings, both in the book and the television version. It is a history interesting for the mere fact that it presents material unknown to a wider audience and, for that matter, material that can be presented with an investigative note. Rough Crossings exposes a history that has been omitted from the more popular and glorious stories of American Independence, honourable British abolition and even African-American emancipation. The narrative Schama presents thus shows a dark underside of the American Revolution, introduces black heroes forgotten because they fought on the wrong side and casts the British abolitionists in a distinctly unfavourable light. That he ›uncovers‹ a story excised

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from several historical cultures, US-American, British and AfricanAmerican, is emphasised in Schama’s book: »Although the history that unfolded from the entanglement between black desperation and British paternalism would often prove to be bitterly tragic, it was, nonetheless, a formative moment in the history of African-American freedom. In Sergeant Thomas Peters, it produced the first identifiable African-American political leader. [...] That he is (with a few honourable exceptions) conspicuously missing from the pantheon of African-American heroes, a name utterly foreign to high school history texts in the United States, is a scandal explained entirely by the inconvenient fact that Peters happened to fight for the Wrong Side. [...] However awkward for the orthodox history of the Founding Fathers and their revolution, the genesis of African-American liberty is, then, inseparable from the British connection during and after the war.« (Schama 2005: 17f.)

The gesture of discovery is even more pronounced at the beginning of the documentary. Here Schama explicitly says that he has »discovered« the story (at least for himself) and emphasises its high relevance for the present moment: »There are some stories so big, stories that tell us who we are, what we’ve become, you can’t believe they ever got away, vanished from the history books. But then, I had no clue about this story myself. Escaped American slaves who fought for King George, not George Washington, in the American Revolutionary War, who flocked to the British flag, thousands of them. And who believed so badly in British freedom, they went through every kind of hell to get it. A few years ago, though, I found that story, or rather it found me. A story of three men, two African Americans, one young, white Englishman. A soldier, a preacher, a sailor. And they have haunted me ever since. And so they should, those ghosts, black and white, tugging at our memory. You want to know what it means to be British, American, African now? What it means to be enslaved? What it means to be free? Then we need this story. We owe our ancestors their moment. This moment.« (0:00:18-01:36)

Schama chose a most suitable moment for making this chapter of history public: It fits into the general interest in the Black Atlantic, Britain’s new interest in black history as well as a renewed interest in British-American

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relations in the wake of 9/11 and the subsequent wars. But it is not only the material per se that makes Rough Crossings intriguing history. It is, above all, Schama’s manner of presenting his story that has a popular appeal. Schama has been hailed as »our modern Macaulay« (Temperley 2005) for his talent for making history come alive through suspenseful narrative, dramatisation and visualisation. His famous predecessor’s History of England became popular in its own day (and beyond) »not only because it was the success story of what so many Victorians wanted to believe in, Protestantism, progress, balance and the acceleration of improvement, but because of its style and its approach. This history was not the dry narration of facts. This was history with a hero, history with a sense of drama and the significant detail, history written by a historian who adulated Scott the writer of fiction, and felt that all historians could and should learn from him.« (Calder 1977: 34)

Schama too presents his material as a gripping narrative with colourful settings and ›heroes‹ whose thoughts and feelings are often (re)imagined, so that they are brought close to his audience. But the book version at least also contains many hints that Schama, as a scholar, researched his material: He quotes from his sources, especially autobiographical material and letters, uses footnotes for documentation and offers a list of Further Reading. At the same time, the book makes every effort not to appear too ›academic‹ and thus exclude the general educated reader. Schama’s strategy of popularisation is appreciated, among others, by his reviewer in the Times Literary Supplement: »The story he tells here has been told before, but not recently and never as well. [...] One reason the story is not generally known is because those best qualified to tell it have been more concerned with abstract and quantitative issues such as the intellectual origins of the Anti-Slavery movement, the scale and profitability of the slave trade and the extent to which Britain’s eighteenth-century prosperity derived from slavery, all of which Professor Schama blithely ignores. Presumably this is not because he thinks them unimportant, but because that is not the sort of history he writes; he is a storyteller. Writing this type of narrative history is not easy. It is much easier to theorize than to recreate events with this degree of verisimilitude. One has only to dip into Rough

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Crossings to appreciate the command of detail that lies behind his apparently effortless ability to come up with the right quotation or description.« (Temperley 2005)

At the very beginning of the book, a list of »Dramatis Personae«, 48 in all, already signals that the story to be presented will be dramatic and focused on characters. Schama’s frequent glimpses into the minds of these characters are often based on letters or journals, but they are also partly (and in some instances entirely) imagined and thus illustrate the extent to which Schama blends fact with fiction or at least fictionalises his material. Throughout, the historiographer’s overt narration is interspersed with passages that are internally focalised and render the historical agents’ thoughts and feelings, usually in the mode of narrated monologues that blend more smoothly into a piece of factual writing than direct thought in the first person: »But where were they going? Somewhere called Port Roseway, a harbour in Nova Scotia; a new Scotland, so perhaps carpeted in heather and running with deer? They would have land; they would have liberty; they would have dignity; they would have churches; they would have each other. It was, probably, cold. But they had been warm and had been slaves. And whatever it might be, this second Scotland, it could not possibly be worse than where they had come from. Could it?« (Schama 2005: 155)

Schama’s technique of internalising his narrative invites empathy with his protagonists, and where the point of view is that of former slaves, this internalisation supports the book’s revisionist intent. Programmatically, a black perspective is introduced already in a short prelude with the title »British Freedom’s Promise«, where British Freedom refers both to politics and a concrete human being who epitomises the collective experience of the Nova Scotia blacks: »Ten years after the surrender of George III’s army to General Washington at Yorktown, British Freedom was hanging on in North America. Along with a few hundred other souls – Scipio Yearman, Phoebe Barrett, Jeremiah Piggie and Smart Feller among them – he was scratching a living from the stingy soil around Preston, a few miles northeast of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Like most of the Preston people, British Freedom was black and had come from a warmer place. [...]

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What were they doing there? Not just surviving. British Freedom and the rest of the villagers were clinging to more than a scrap of Nova Scotia; they were clinging to a promise. Some of them even had that promise printed and signed by officers of the British army on behalf of the king himself, that the bearer so-and-so was at liberty to go wherever he or she pleased and take up whatever occupation he or she chose. That meant something for people who had been slaves. And the king’s word was surely a bond.« (Schama 2005: 12)

Having elicited the reader’s attention and sympathy with this prelude, Schama proceeds, in his first part, to present the history of British abolition since the days of Granville Sharp, with important stages such as the Somerset case and the debate about the Zong incident.5 Here his presentation is more date- and fact-driven, but Schama’s basic approach remains personalised. Significantly, this part is entitled »Greeny«, using a friendly abbreviation of Sharp’s Christian name. And Greeny is introduced like a character in a novel or a fiction film, emerging from a door into the colourful scenario of eighteenth-century London: »Mincing Lane in the Ward of Cheap in 1765 was neither the worst nor the best address in the City of London. The Sisters of St Helen, known as ›Minchen‹, who had given the street its name, were long gone, and piety had, unsurprisingly, been replaced by profit. Solid mercantile chambers and warehouses, many of them connected to the colonial trade, lined the street. At regular intervals in the morning, carts bearing chests of sugar and tea, coming from the East and West India wharves, would rumble up the lane from Great Tower Street, carve a path through the throngs of pie vendors, ale wagons, flower girls, beggars and balladmongers, pass through broad gates and unload in the cobbled inner courtyards. [...]

5

The Zong incident became infamous in the history of the British slave trade and led to the abolitionist movement gathering pace. In 1781, one hundred and thirty-three slaves carried across the Atlantic on the Liverpool slave ship Zong were thrown overboard for insurance claims. »Nothing had a more graphic impact than the Zong massacre of 1781 [...] unique in its cold-blooded slaughter« (Walvin 2007a: 198), and this applies both to the abolitionist campaign and the cultural archive of slavery and abolition. The incident was captured by J.M.W. Turner in his famous painting The Slave Ship (1840).

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The door opened and out stepped an angular man looking older than his thirty years. His tall but meagre frame, hollow cheeks, lantern jaw and short curled wig gave him the air of either an underpaid clerk or an unworldly cleric; the truth is that Granville Sharp was something of both.« (Schama 2005: 30)

The scene is visualised with attention to detail and atmosphere as well as a keen sense of visual point of view. It is easy to imagine a camera filming it, first panning the street, then focusing on the door and zooming in on the main actor. In another passage, Schama’s ›camera shots‹ are even more extreme: »Riding the thermals in the damp Virginian heat, a keen-eyed turkey vulture [...] would have picked out below, curls of smoke from newly burned houses and fields, a puff here, a puff there; and along the roads beside those charred fields, the gold and green turned to brown and black, a long defile of soldiers, cannon, carts and wagons pulled by patiently plodding horses, the ›everlasters‹ as they were called in the South, their heads breaking the rhythm of the walk to shake away the flies; in some of the open carts heaps of groaning men in dirty bandages; then sleeker mounts, with or without riders, walking not even at much of a trot; an inexplicably sudden charge of light cavalry exploding out of the line three abreast, tearing off somewhere as if they knew where they were going, kicking up red dust and disappearing into the woods or beyond a knoll; and behind the men and the carts and the guns, cattle, driven along and lowing as they went; and behind them, with the baggage train, more men and women and children, most of them black, dressed, when they were dressed at all, in a brilliant motley, as if returning home from a carnival a long way away.« (Schama 2005: 118)

From a bird’s eye view, the ›camera‹ here zooms in on individual figures: soldiers of the defeated British troops and the black people that follow in their steps. Schama literally depicts history, makes it come alive in pictures. Where Sir Walter Scott and his emulators were often inspired by historical paintings, Schama, the television historian, borrows from film to make his presentation not only verbally but also ›visually‹ appealing. The dramatic and heroic appeal of his story, however, is most fully realised in the book’s second part. It is entitled »John«, identifying John Clarkson as the narrative’s centre of experience, and it is revealing with respect to Schama’s rendering of black agency. Although Schama, true to

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his critique of the white abolitionists, acknowledges the black leaders of the Nova Scotia blacks, Thomas Peters and the Baptist preacher David George,6 their role in the plot of Rough Crossings is overshadowed by Schama’s presentation of John Clarkson. Clarkson rather than the black men comes across as the main agency of the expedition and also as its main voice, since Schama quotes extensively from John’s journal and uses journal entries to imagine John’s thoughts: »John Clarkson [...], who had spent years in the slaving Caribbean without ever being moved to anger or dismay by what he saw every day in Jamaica or Barbados, had had a truly Pauline conversion. Every day for almost three months he had been surrounded by the free blacks. Old men, young women and small children had crowded about him, had opened his doors and his suddenly enlarged sympathies to their agonies [...]. They had been through so many shabby betrayals. He would stand by them. He would be their British freedom or die in their defence.« (Schama 2005: 300)

John Clarkson is the book’s hero, belying to a certain extent Schama’s intention to revise a dominant historical narrative. One wonders about Schama’s reasons for this representational choice: Is it because the black leaders did not leave journals and as many letters as John Clarkson? Or is it that, for a wider British audience, a white hero might still be more acceptable? There is a perceptible friction in the book between its declared intention to tell history from a new angle and the actual execution of this intention. Schama does attempt to render black as well as white perspectives and to tell a story that deviates from dominant narratives of American Independence and British Abolition. With a white hero, however, this strategy is not pursued consistently and the narrative seems undecided. It is interesting

6

Cf., for instance, the following passage: »Peters wrote on everything affecting the blacks: their land assignments or lack thereof; the charity schools; relief, during times of distress, from labour service and taxes. Why, after all, should the blacks, themselves so impoverished, be charged with paying the poor tax rather than receiving it? Gradually his energy and determination made him recognized in the province as the ›One Person nominated and Appointed to Act for and in behalf of the whole of us; in all matters both Civil and Religious‹.« (Schama 2005: 249)

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in this respect that the meta-historiographical epigraph to Schama’s book epilogue (which sketches the further course of the abolition movement in Europe and America) proclaims the inconclusiveness of all stories made (up) about history: »Histories never conclude: they just pause their prose. Their stories – like the one just told – are, if they are truthful, untidy affairs, resistant to windings-up and sortings-out. They beat raggedly on into the future, into, in this case, an infuriated nineteenth century. But even as history is overtaken by events, it leaves behind it a wake of recollection, a thin skein of light on the murky ocean of time which jumps and dances like the fugitive flashes we apprehend when, at last, we close our eyes.« (Schama 2005: 385)

The television version of Rough Crossings ends with a similar, if more explicit and less poetic comment: »Well, history isn’t Hollywood. In history, feel-good endings are hard to come by. This great experiment in black democracy did fall apart, but the idea of Freetown endured. After the abolition of slavery, Sierra Leone became the country to which those liberated from the slave forts and ships and plantations flocked for a new life as free Africans. But of course, peace and freedom are always fragile victories. You don’t need me to tell you that, of late, Sierra Leone has had more than its fair share of war, sorrow and slaughter. And that’s why we need to cherish the story of Peters and Clarkson and George. The precious moment when determined men and women, black and white, endured the worst to bring about a modestly good beginning. A small, decisive turn to the light. That’s all we can ever ask from history really, a memory of free will exercised against the odds. So remember this part of your African, American and British history. Try and imagine what those most unlike you went through. And then take that murmur of the past, that needful little haunting, into our shared, uncertain future.« (1:21:25-23:07)

Adapting to a more diverse and, arguably, historically less educated audience than that of his book, Schama’s language in the television programme is more accessible, suitable to be heard rather than read. It is also more casual in style, and sometimes deliberately provocative: An early sequence shows images of the Fourth-of-July celebrations in New York in 2006 that are overlaid with a sarcastic citing from the Declaration of Independence,

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followed by the statement that the ideal of freedom was obviously not meant to embrace the slaves (0:02:00-50). And when the abolitionists (to whom the text poignantly refers as »the Saints«) decide not to entrust their scheme to Thomas Peters alone, Schama’s comment is shorter and more cynical than the corresponding passage of his book: »They needed one of their own.« (0:16:02-05) Abridgements and streamlinings have to be expected when a book of four hundred pages is turned into a ninety-minute television programme. Significantly, Schama decided to concentrate on the part of his book with the most coherent narrative line: the ›exodus‹ of the former slaves from Nova Scotia, led by John Clarkson as a kind of Moses figure. The events leading to this story are presented in short flashbacks and bits of narration, while most of the material presented in the first part of Schama’s book – Granville Sharp’s activities and the failure of the first Province of Freedom – were entirely abandoned for the sake of a compact story with three protagonists: Thomas Peters, the preacher David George and John Clarkson. However, the television version not only deletes from the book but also adds an audiovisual layer with its own significance. Two sequences, in which the image seems almost arrested, are particularly powerful: When Clarkson’s fleet is ready to begin its voyage, we see a full shot of all the ships, impressive and sublime against the sky, and this sublimity is even enhanced by choral background music (0:35:49-57). Towards the end, when the Province of Freedom has failed a second time, another back-lit shot shows David George contemplating a tree from which one of the rebellious Freetowners has been hung (1:20:42-21:15). This image has an elegiac and iconic quality, epitomising the black settlers’ final betrayal. Music, both diegetic and extra-diegetic, contributes to the emotional effect of many sequences. When trails of black people cross Nova Scotia to join Clarkson’s fleet (0:30:06-55; also 0:31:18-42), solemn music underscores the biblical allusion to the exodus. A religious layer is even more prominent in a later sequence in which we see a full moon and hear David George’s black congregation sing, beautifully and emotionally, the hymn »How Heavy is the Night« (0:33:52-34:50), thus expressing their hope that deliverance will finally be attained. That these good and trusting Christians will be failed by abolitionists who believe themselves to be acting in the name of God makes their later betrayal particularly perverse. Thanks to audiovisuals, this is a message which the television audience of Rough

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Crossings is meant to grasp not only intellectually, but also affectively. To a far greater extent than the book, the programme is designed to draw its audience into its story, and to this end, it also provides explicit links between past and present. The most prominent and personal link is Schama, ›the historian‹, himself. Often appearing on the screen and addressing the viewer directly, he stages himself as a historical investigator keen to recover the past for his audience and thus restlessly crossing the Atlantic himself, back and forth. In the final images, his task achieved, he enjoys a hard-earned sunset beer on a Freetown beach, relaxing after his ninety-minute pursuit of history around the globe – but he is still dramatically haunted by voices from the past (1:23:22-50). The narrative structure too, from its very beginning with the images of the Fourth of July celebrations, suggests that historical events and the present are interwoven. Schama frequently appears in contemporary environments of the (black) Atlantic world: New York City, London and Freetown, in streets, markets, pubs or on the beach. Often, such present-day images are inter-cut with pictures and voices from the (reenacted) past, and this style of editing supports the effect of communicating time levels (apart from making the narrative dynamic, especially in the quick-paced pre-credit and credit sequences). Significantly, the sequences in contemporary New York and London always show black and white people, suggesting that, in the former slave-holding countries, the history of slavery has resulted in a mixed, multi-racial society and that slavery is therefore relevant history for these societies. While the narrative voice in Schama’s book is usually covert, his television voice is omnipresent, frequently delivering ironic comments. Since he does not restrict himself to voice-over narration but also appears in the image, speaking to the camera, Schama’s contact with the audience is intense. He takes his viewers by the hand and guides them through history with authority, never holding back his judgements, which further adds to the personalised, deliberately ›non-objective‹ mode of his presentation. The London abolitionists are the preferred target of his mockery right from the beginning: »Thomas [Clarkson] was a road warrior, none more tireless. To hook converts to the cause, he’d travel up and down the country preaching in chapels and town halls his evangel of horror that people who called themselves Christians could convert fellow

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men into inventory, cargo. Thomas Clarkson wasn’t alone in his endeavours. There were others who had taken on themselves to rescue the slaves. The banker Henry Thornton, the politician William Wilberforce, men who didn’t blush to be known as the Saints.« (0:11:55-12:45)

Schama’s presence and his opinions are all the more prominent because he is the only expert appearing on screen. Rough Crossings is not the ›talking heads‹ documentary that was fashionable in the 1980s and 90s, where a range of experts and witnesses was meant to produce an effect of authenticity and reliability. Rather, adhering to a presently fashionable model, Rough Crossings is a presenter-led programme: Schama alone embodies historical authority, while reenacted scenes provide historical drama, atmosphere and ›presence‹. In this drama-documentary, or docudrama, the historical parts are performed by actors who turn historical figures into human characters. The actors are often filmed in close-ups that reveal their emotions, and their voices are frequently used for citing from their characters’ letters and diaries, thus personalising and emotionalising the source material. In addition, flashbacks visualise the black characters’ traumatic memories of enslavement, showing the violence of their experiences in drastic images, for instance when David George, as a boy, has to watch his mother being flogged to death (0:23:43-24:05). Above all, antagonisms and friendships between the leading characters, Clarkson, Peters and George, are more strongly developed than in the book, thus exploiting the dramatic potential of the narrative. David George, the Baptist preacher who still believes in British benevolence, is presented as John Clarkson’s trusted and trusting friend. In one of his sermons, he preaches about the Babylonian captivity, thus providing a frame in which John Clarkson can be interpreted as a man who will deliver the Nova Scotian blacks and lead them to a promised land. And indeed, in David George’s church, John Clarkson explicitly promises the congregation that he will be their »protector« and »friend« (0:26:25-26:29). Between Clarkson and Thomas Peters, on the other hand, the drama constructs antagonism right from the start. Even before he embarks for North America, Clarkson is warned by his brother Thomas not to »get too close to Peters« (0:17:45-54), and when Clarkson’s fleet is about to cross the Atlantic, the two men clash openly, Peters being frustrated by his treatment in Nova

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Scotia and the fact that a white man has been appointed leader of the expedition: »Peters: So what is expected of me? Clarkson: It means that your ship’s skipper will ask for your opinions on any of the decisions I make when we are out there. Peters: My opinions. Your decisions. [Laughs] Commodore Clarkson. Clarkson: There can only be one man in charge, Peters. Peters: You know what’s at the bottom of that ocean? A trail of bones that leads from here to Africa.« (0:32:35-33:16)

Schama’s comment, partly spoken to the camera, emphasises the antagonism, while (over-)explaining Peters’s sense of discrimination for the audience: »It was bound to happen, this falling out, wasn’t it? For Peters, this young Englishman was just a functionary sent by men in London to organise the sailing. If it was to truly be a voyage to liberty, then he, Peters, who had shed his blood for it, was the natural leader of its self-determination.« (0:33:31-53) Conflict between the two men escalates in Sierra Leone, where Peters openly confronts Clarkson and explicitly raises the issue of black agency and self-determination: »Enough is enough. We are sick of watching your friends lay about whilst we break our backs in the sun. […] We don’t want you deciding everything for us. We came here to be free, to make our own decisions.« (0:59:02-30) After Peters has been elected Speaker General of the black settlers, John accuses him of sedition, and Schama comments: »In the days after the showdown, Clarkson was horrified to discover that many of those who had supported Peters’s claim to be Speaker General were those he most trusted, including David George.« (1:04:38-53) Frequently in the programme, the historian expresses understanding for the black man’s position. Generally, however, it is the white man who is at the centre of the narrative. Peters’s voice is heard occasionally, for instance in the following voice-over (spoken with an African accent) that accompanies images of Peters alone and almost lost in a desolate Nova Scotia landscape: »There is in Nova Scotia such a degrading and unjust prejudice against people of colour that even those who are acknowledged to be free are refused their rights.« (0:07:22-35) But citations from John Clarkson’s diary occupy far more space, and in particular, his biography rather than

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that of the former slaves is at the core of the narrative. The phase of his life shown in Rough Crossings is presented as a story of significant personal development. The drama introduces John as an ›unlikely‹ hero, a young lieutenant of the Royal Navy on half-pay courting a rich heiress.7 But John then grows with the mission imposed on him, and he develops zeal as well as leadership qualities. In Nova Scotia, we see him completely devoted to his recruiting mission and developing deep sympathy for the former slaves and their plight among what turned out to be bigoted whites. And he writes in his journal: »Ever since Europe called itself enlightened, these poor people have experienced nothing but treachery, oppression and murder. I have promised to take them to a better life, and I think I would lay down my own life to see that promise fulfilled.« (0:34:50-10) Despite all set-backs, Clarkson is finally successful, and when Freetown begins to flourish, the programme takes the time to present his triumph. Rough Crossings even depicts Freetown as a (short-lived) ur-democracy with the first elections established by Clarkson as governor – a gesture of posthumous appreciation for his former rival Peters. Images of the election show a happy Clarkson among a happy black electorate (1:10:05-50), and Schama’s comment celebrates the political achievement: »The householders of Freetown, men and women, would elect their own constables, councillors and juries. It might seem a small thing, but it was a stunning landmark. Free elections for ordinary people, decades before it came to Britain and America. These were the first women to cast a vote for anything anywhere in the world. The liberties Thomas Peters had advocated for his people all through his extraordinary life had been granted after his death.« (1:10:08-11:04)

This comment restores some honour and importance to Peters after the hero’s role has been occupied, for the better part of the programme, by John Clarkson. Interestingly, the cover of the BBC DVD suggests a different hierarchy among the characters. It shows Clarkson, George and Peters, but it is Peters, not Clarkson, who stands in the foreground. The text on the DVD also promotes Rough Crossings as a docudrama especially about

7

In contrast to the book, we do not learn in the documentary that John had already engaged himself in the abolitionist cause before he was asked to become a leader of the Sierra Leone mission.

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black history, »the story of the thousands of African-American slaves who left cruel slave plantations to journey through the fires of the war to the dream of freedom«, if one that »offers profound insights into contemporary life in Britain, America and Africa«. In the UK, Rough Crossings was aimed at the 2007 bicentenary and could profit from the current interest in black history. In connection with the bicentenary, Rough Crossings was also adapted for the stage by the acclaimed novelist and playwright Caryl Phillips. Black agency is more prominent in Phillips’s adaptation, while white agency is not diminished. John Clarkson still plays a prominent role, but the conflicts between George and Peters are played out in a more extreme way, casting them as highly contrastive characters. John McLeod (2009) reads Peters and George in Phillips’s play as figures whose characterisation is interspersed with popular images of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X respectively, so that both appear as a blend of resistance figures from a more recent and a more distant past. In the stage version, Peters is the more charismatic leader, while George is the more reasonable one but also the one who might be accused of an ›Uncle Tom‹ manner. The black characters in the play are not exactly ›black Britons‹ from the eighteenth century, but Africans who have been raised in American slavery. They are Britons by choice, but this choice turns out to be a questionable one. The play was first performed in London in September 2007 by the Headlong touring theatre company and then taken on tour to be shown in Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds until November 2007. It reached out to a considerable audience by tying in with school projects and local bicentenary programmes, but unsurprisingly it disappeared from the stage immediately after the anniversary celebrations. Unlike a television programme, which has the potential to be further distributed via DVD or rescreened on different occasions, a stage play cannot be restaged easily once it is taken off a programme. A stage performance has the sensual and emotional power of the live event, but for a lasting impact on the formation of historical culture, plays depend on being reproduced (or at least reread in educational contexts). Four years after the bicentenary, Phillips’s play has not been revived on the stage. In terms of mere longevity, television and film productions have a greater chance of survival, and their (mis)representations thus have greater potential staying power. Of course, certain film productions will also be more influential than others. Schama’s prestige and market value made the tie-in

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DVD for Rough Crossings an automatic choice. The programme discussed earlier, The Slavery Business, was never run after its first screening, nor was it available as a DVD, with the result that its specific perspective on black agency, although targeted at a mainstream audience for documentaries, had a more restricted dissemination than Schama’s. Arguably, the most strongly revisionist element of the television production Rough Crossings is not its recognition of the black fighters for abolition, but its treatments of those white abolitionists who were at the centre of the bicentenary celebrations. With the exception of Thomas Clarkson’s brother, a marginal figure in history, the abolitionists are scathed by Schama as naive, ineffective and patronising ›Saints‹ whose Christian benevolence succumbed to political and economical interests, and it seems significant that prominent black figures of the movement in Britain, such as Equiano or Cuguano, are not even mentioned, as if their names were not meant to be smudged by Schama’s general critique.8

8

The absence of Equiano is particularly noteworthy. Not only was he well acquainted with Sharp and Thomas Clarkson, who were (along with John Clarkson) original subscribers of his Interesting Narrative; Equiano also played an active role in the original Sierra Leone scheme himself. He was, in fact, »the only person of African descent to be involved in the organization of the project« (Carretta in Equiano 1995: 298n637) and carried the title »Commissary on the part of the Government for the African Settlement«.

4. The Abolition as Costume Film: Amazing Grace – Black History with a White Hero

While Rough Crossings made an effort to confront its audience with the issue of white and black agency in the struggle for abolition, our next example seems to retreat to earlier stages of re/presentation that favoured a white perspective on the abolition. In the United Kingdom, Amazing Grace (directed by Michael Apted, written by Steven Knight) opened nationwide on 23 March 2007, in time for the bicentenary celebrations;1 work on the film had even been rushed to meet this date.2 The film is a commercially made British feature with a considerable input of American money and with an eye on the US-American market. In style and cast, it is a prestigious production speaking to a wider audience, although it was produced for a comparatively modest 29 million dollars.3 Like many British period films, 1

As a matter of fact, a screening of the film was integrated into one of the major celebratory events on 23 March; the March of the Abolitionists from Hull to London went through the Greenwich Foot Tunnel, at the end of which they were met by children of a local school, and schoolchildren from across the borough were »among the first to watch ›Amazing Grace‹, a new film based on the life of William Wilberforce« (Greenwich Council 2007).

2

Michael Apted in the audio-commentary on the DVD (British release).

3

This money was more than retrieved at the box office in 2007. An American website cites the international box office results for this year with over 21 million dollars domestic (US) and over 10 million foreign (cf. Box Office Mojo 2007).

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the cast includes British stars of international standing, and the film was shot in attractive original locations (including Greenwich, Hampton Court Palace and other historic sites). Depicting actual events and characters, Amazing Grace can be classified as a historical film; as usual with this genre, the film blends its factual content with fiction, as a note in the final credits reveals: »This motion picture is based on true events, however, some of the characters, names and certain locations and events have been changed, and others have been fictionalized for dramatic purposes.« (1:52:35-47)4 With its slow and episodic narrative, its long takes and especially its appealing period sets, props and costumes, Amazing Grace also goes for an obvious ›heritage‹ appeal which contributed to the controversy around the film. Most of all, however, Amazing Grace is a biopic centring on William Wilberforce, the philanthropist, politician and Evangelical Christian who here becomes the embodiment of the abolitionist cause, overshadowing all other agents in the movement. Even the eminent role played by Thomas Clarkson – whom the film portrays as a long-haired and eccentric political radical – is reduced to a supporting act; the whole group of abolitionists seem ineffective until Wilberforce agrees to become their figurehead.5 Accordingly, the original promotional poster showed an image of Wilberforce with the subtitle »The William Wilberforce Story«. Wilberforce as hero-cum-saint is an apt device for personalising and emotionalising the history with which the film is concerned and makes its pol-

4

As a matter of fact, the script takes significant liberties with some historical facts, as critics, notably Adam Hochschild (2007), have pointed out. There is no evidence, for instance, that Wilberforce ever personally met Equiano, and his meeting with the repentant John Newton took place at another time than that portrayed in the film.

5

Since Wilberforce is a hero of Evangelical Christianity, the film also received attention from this side, especially in the United States, where it was released a month earlier than in Britain, in February 2007. Criticism of the film noted that it was endorsed by Evangelical groups and also substantially financed by a member of the American Christian right, Philip Anschutz (cf. Hochschild 2007). The film has an official companion biography written by Eric Metaxas (2007) and published by a house that promotes Evangelical literature. In the United Kingdom, however, the film was primarily received as part of the abolition bicentenary, and this aspect will be the focus of the present discussion.

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itics and humanitarian issue palatable for a broad audience. The film’s main title is another obvious means of attracting such an audience’s interest and feelings: At first sight, Amazing Grace refers to the popular hymn that might say more to a general audience today than the name Wilberforce, and thus builds a bridge for the spectators into unfamiliar historical terrain. But it also refers to the ›grace under pressure‹ with which Wilberforce shouldered the struggle against slavery. Right from the beginning, and even before the action proper gets going, Wilberforce is established as a heroic character. A pre-title caption declares him to be one of a handful of men brave enough to stand up to the political and economic interests of a global superpower and to articulate in public that Britain’s imperial wealth was built on human sacrifice: »By the late 18th century, over eleven million African men, women and children had been taken from Africa to be used as slaves in the West Indies and the American colonies. Great Britain was the mightiest superpower on earth and its empire was built on the backs of slaves. The slave trade was considered acceptable by all but a few. Of these, even fewer were brave enough to speak against it.« (0:00:20-43)

The underdog or outsider fighting against social injustice and the powers that be is classic plot material of Hollywood and European mainstream cinema. Right from its pre-titles, Amazing Grace announces this generic affiliation quite openly and thus signals what the audience can expect. With the film’s subject matter, this is of particular importance since, before the bicentenary, the abolition was hardly an item of general historical consciousness, and Wilberforce was hardly a household name (at least outside Evangelical circles). Arguably, this is less of a problem in the case of television documentaries, whose audiences expect to be informed about a history they may not be familiar with. This expectation is weaker in the case of historical feature films made for the big screen that are watched primarily for their compelling stories and characters, as well as the attractions of period settings. The caption cited above is thus also required to provide the most essential background knowledge in a nutshell. The general cinema audience’s ignorance of the film’s historical issues must have been a major challenge for the scriptwriter, who was obliged to insert much

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information about the abolition movement and Wilberforce into his characters’ dialogue, which, in consequence, seems rather stilted at times and over-fraught with historical detail. All the more important are the film’s strategies to involve the audience in Wilberforce’s humanitarian concerns and his personal life, and to develop a plot structure that will engage and hold the spectators’ attention. Wilberforce’s story is therefore not told in chronological sequence, but the main dramatic action (which forms the film’s diegetic present) begins in the year 1797, at a point when the abolitionists’ efforts seemed to have fallen prey to the Napoleonic scare and a wave of reactionary politics in Britain. From this low point in his life and career, Wilberforce’s final struggle can be dramatised as a journey from a hero’s tragic defeat to his triumphant return. This is a classic storyline of popular cinema with a strong potential to engage the audience’s sympathy. The film’s first scene, set in the rainy English countryside (a typical locus of heritage cinema), depicts Wilberforce (played by Ioan Gruffudd6) and Henry Thornton approaching Thornton’s country house in a carriage. Wilberforce calls for a halt when he sees two men flogging a fallen horse and intervenes. The men stop hitting the animal when they recognise Wilberforce, whom one of them has seen speaking in London. Wilberforce is thus introduced as an empathic and compassionate man and a political figure who has earned the common man’s respect. However, at the present moment, Wilberforce is a man obviously at the end of his strength. He suffers physically from an intestinal disease and is mentally exhausted by the apparent failure of the abolitionist cause, for which he feels personally responsible. As he says in a later scene: »I was chosen for this task and I failed«, while Thornton emphasises Wilberforce’s sacrifice: »You’ve given your youth and your health for this cause.« (0:36:38-59) Wilberforce is thus established as a martyr, a Christian hero who has risked his own life for the benefit of others. He is to be resurrected, however, and, as suits a film with intended popular appeal, romance plays an important part in his redemption.

6

The popular Welsh actor already had Hollywood experience and gained ›period‹ credentials, among others through his appearance in the Hornblower television series (1998-2003).

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While Wilberforce is ill and recuperating in the Thorntons’ household, he is introduced to Barbara Spooner, who will become his wife and whom the film presents as having a decisive influence on Wilberforce’s decision not to abandon his cause. Spooner is not only the woman who helps the hero to heal. She also serves an important structural function for the film’s narrative. Having admired Wilberforce since the age of fourteen, when she became an ardent supporter of abolitionism during its first successful phase (0:56:55-57:07), she can be used as a source of information about that phase for the audience: Conveniently, Spooner tells Wilberforce about her own activities, such as signing petitions, going to a presentation of Olaudah Equiano’s Narrative, boycotting sugar and wearing the emblematic medallion made by Josiah Wedgwood (0:39:48-40:20).7 In turn, Wilberforce tells her (and the audience) about his early career and thus motivates many of the flashbacks (not the most spectator-friendly mode of narration) through which the film presents the events that pre-date its diegetic present. The first flashbacks, dated fifteen years before the film’s present, show Wilberforce as an attractive, young, energetic and rhetorically gifted Member of Parliament, still torn between a future in politics and the life of a religious man. We also see how his general philanthropy is gradually channelled into his engagement for the abolitionist cause. The young Wilberforce goes through a phase of learning and decision-making, at the end of which he discovers that he can be both, a man of God and a political reformer. The close companion during this phase of his life is not a woman, but his friend and political adviser William Pitt the Younger. Pitt is another attractive young man with the stamina to take on the establishment, but in the film’s grouping of characters, he also serves as foil character for Wilberforce. While Wilberforce is presented as acting out of humanitarian concerns, Pitt is a devoted politician, aspiring for power in the state. As he tells Wilberforce quite early in the film, he is planning to become the prime minister »soon. Very soon« (0:20:52-55), and we witness how this plan is

7

This medallion (cf. p. 61 has become a lasting symbol for the abolitionist movement, but its agenda that casts the black man as a victim without the capacity to develop an agency is, of course, contested. Evoking this image has the effect of perpetuating the discourse of victimisation and of alienating modern audiences who are sensitive to the issue of stereotypical representations. Such alienation is obviously not considered in Amazing Grace.

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realised. Aware of the difference between them, Pitt needs Wilberforce at his side in order to bring about reform. He utilises his friend to fight the injustices which he has identified himself but is not willing to address to the last consequence, particularly when this might stand in the way of his ambition for power. As the action proceeds, their different motivations will estrange the two men until they are eventually reunited as friends and allies one last time (another familiar narrative pattern of popular film). At first, however, Pitt guides Wilberforce towards the fight against slavery. Among the first of the film’s flashbacks is a debate in the House of Commons about the Revolution in America. Wilberforce, still in his twenties, challenges the government’s harsh course against the rebels from the opposition bench: »Surely it is time for the fat fellow [i.e. the Prime Minister] and his friends opposite to make way for others who consider the good of their country of greater moment than their own personal interests.« (0:10:15-26) Once more in the film, he is thus characterised as a politician with a humanitarian outlook who pleads for moderation in order to avoid further bloodshed. His attitude towards slavery is introduced in a subsequent, more private scene. During the parliamentarians’ evening entertainments at a club, Wilberforce finds himself drinking and gambling with some of his political opponents, including the arrogant Duke of Clarence, one of the King’s sons. When the latter runs out of money, he offers Wilberforce his »nigger« coach driver instead of an IOU to continue the game: »I bought a nigger in Port of Spain. He eats better than I do, so he’s strong as an ox. He’d fetch at least 25 guineas at the West India Dock.« (0:13:19-29) Wilberforce leaves the table in disgust, and Pitt follows him; they then talk about their shared desire to change England. When a singing round is heard in the background, Wilberforce, who has a reputation for his excellent voice, decides to join it and express his position with a song: He performs »Amazing Grace« for his fellow parliamentarians, ironically dedicating it to the Duke of Clarence (0:16:07-13) and pointing out that the hymn was written by his old preacher, John Newton, a leader of the Evangelical Revival, in repentance for his sins as captain of a slave ship.8

8

Newton has in recent years become another protagonist of the historical culture surrounding slavery and the slave trade in Britain. Part of the detailed knowledge about his activities are derived from the journal (1750-1754) which he

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Wilberforce’s audience within the film is deeply touched, and for the film’s spectators too the scene is an emotional climax that invites them to empathise with the hero and foreshadows his later impact. John Newton’s repentance is presented as a driving force in Wilberforce’s decision to fight the slave trade.9 He once told Wilberforce, when the latter was still a child, that he lived »in the company of 20,000 ghosts« (0:32:36-40), and Wilberforce now wants his mentor’s advice as to whether he should enter the fight against the trade. He visits Newton in his church and finds him still haunted by his former life: »There’s still blood on my hands.« (0:33:28-33) Newton has been unable to take public action against the crimes in which he participated, but he encourages Wilberforce to accept Pitt’s offer to take the slave traders on: »Take them on. Blow their dirty, filthy ships out of the water. The planters, sugar barons, Alderman ›Sugar Cane‹, the Lord Mayor of London. Liverpool, Boston, Bristol, New York. All their streets running with blood, dysentery, puke. You won’t come away from those streets clean, Wilber. You’ll get filthy with it, you’ll dream it, see it in broad daylight. But do it. For God’s sake.« (0:33:40-34:16)

Before this meeting between Wilberforce and Newton, Pitt has already acquainted Wilberforce with the existing group of abolitionists who need a leader with money and political influence to become more effective. They

kept meticulously and that makes him, like Equiano, a witness of history with a distinct voice (cf. Newton 1962). 9

Cf. Hochschild on the film’s distortions in this respect: »The reality was quite different. Most inconveniently for sin-and-repentance storytellers, John Newton came to evangelical Christianity before making four transatlantic voyages as a slave-ship officer, not afterward. He left the trade not for reasons of conscience but of health. And when he later was ordained a minister, he had all his savings invested with his former employer, who still had a fleet of slave ships at sea. There is no evidence that he mentioned slavery when Wilberforce first came to see him. Newton said not a word in public against the slave trade until 1788, several years after meeting Wilberforce and more than thirty years after he left the sea; by then a huge mass movement was underway and it was no longer easy for so prominent a former slave trader to avoid taking a stand.« (Hochschild 2007)

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hope that Wilberforce will accept this role. During a supper, Wilberforce and the film’s audience are introduced to some of the movement’s key figures, including Thomas Clarkson, Olaudah Equiano and a pale and quiet Hannah More. They produce drastic material evidence of the slave trade’s inhumanity – Clarkson has brought shackles and manacles – and together with Wilberforce the audience is lectured, mainly by Clarkson and Equiano, about the cruelty of the Middle Passage: »Clarkson: When the slaves leave port in Africa, they’re locked into a space 4 foot by 18 inches. They have no sanitation, very little food, stagnant water. Their waste and blood fills the holes within three days and is never emptied. These irons and chains are to keep them from throwing themselves overboard. Equiano: The chains are not unlocked until you reach the plantation in Jamaica. Around half of the slaves are dead already. In the markets, they stuff knotted rope into the anuses of those who are sick to disguise the dysentery. When you reach the plantation, they put irons to the fire and do this [Equiano revealing the brand mark on his chest]. To let you know that you no longer belong to God, but to a man. Clarkson: Mr Wilberforce, we understand you’re having problems choosing whether to do the work of God or the work of a political activist. More: We humbly suggest that you can do both.« (0:26:15-27:33)

During this initiation into the practices of the slave trade, the camera is on the faces of the characters, showing them in close-up, in order to convey an impression of how deeply the abolitionists’ personal pleas and testimonies are affecting Wilberforce. There are only two short sequences in the film which directly show Africans experiencing slavery; the first is the image of an African woman in chains who appears in one of Wilberforce’s feverish dreams during his illness (0:09:34-38). The other ›illustrates‹ a letter describing conditions on a sugar plantation (0:35:37-36:00). Otherwise, the audience only hears about the inhumanity of the Middle Passage and plantation life. One might criticise this as an attempt to avoid images that would clash with the film’s heritage style. However, it can also be seen as a means of restricting the film to the entirely domestic perspective of the man who is at its centre; like many other abolitionists, Wilberforce never travelled to Africa or the West Indies and only knew about slavery and the trade second-hand, through reports by others. By having to rely on (oral and written) narrations about

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slavery, the film’s audience is put in the same position as most of the abolitionists and the public whom they originally addressed. When Wilberforce is convinced that he will actively join the cause, his change of mind is dramatised in a short scene in which he surprises Clarkson with a coffin-like box he has had made to demonstrate the size of a slave’s berth: »I thought you could use it in your practical demonstrations.« (0:35:04-08) Wilberforce is now determined to introduce a bill against the slave trade in the House of Commons (0:35:25-28). However, his first petition fails because an overwhelming majority of parliamentarians have an interest in the West Indies and deem abolition of the slave trade a serious intervention in the nation’s wealth and a particular threat to the British port cities. As the film presents the situation, humanitarian reformers are defeated by selfish profiteers (0:45:00-47:10). But Wilberforce has managed to gain the support of at least one senior politician, Charles Fox, the former Prime Minister, and he also lands an effective propaganda coup that the film presents with a spectacular recreation of London’s port: Believing to be on a pleasure cruise of the Thames estuary, a group of parliamentarians and their female companions are taken to the docks, an actual and at the same time symbolic site of Britain’s imperial power, and rowed near a slave ship, the Madagascar, that has just returned from Jamaica.10 Here they are visibly shocked and disgusted by the »smell of death« and told by an energetic Wilberforce to »Breathe it in. Breathe it deeply. Take those handkerchiefs away from your noses. […] Remember that smell, remember the Madagascar. Remember that God made men equal.« (0:53:42-54:15) The sense of energy which the movement, in the film’s narrative, has gained with Wilberforce is then captured in a quickly edited sequence that summarises (with voice-over narration by Wilberforce addressed to Barbara Spooner) some of the movement’s activities: the gathering of evidence against slave traders, the publication and success of Equiano’s Narrative, and sugar boycotts. After a year, the abolitionists are

10 A number of myths emerged about the ›slave ship‹ Madagascar after the screening of Amazing Grace. In fact, the Madagascar was a frigate built in 1837. Its disappearance in the Pacific carries a potential for myths, but there is no evidence supporting its connection to the Atlantic Slave Trade. The fictitious name, however, is taken for granted and repeated in countless blogs, in semi-informed educational websites and even in school activities.

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able to present a petition signed by over 390,000 people and Charles Fox even adds his own signature in the House. However, after a heated debate with Lord Tarleton, the MP for Liverpool, who functions as Wilberforce’s prime antagonist in the film, the decision about the petition is suspended, and even an eminent supporter of the movement, Lord Dundas, the home secretary, suggests a more gradual procedure than straightforward abolition: »This great ship of state must not be sunk by a wave of good intentions.« (1:07:28-35) It has not helped the movement that they have brought the voice of the people in and thus raised the spectres of the American and French revolutions. The rest of the flashbacks show the movement in decline during Britain’s conflict with post-revolutionary France. Abolition becomes unpopular as British politics become increasingly conservative. Even Pitt now advises Wilberforce to be more careful and not to »mix with the wrong people« (1:13:37-39), that is, people of a radical reputation such as Thomas Clarkson, whom the film shows going to France in order to be close to the Revolution; he explicitly expresses his hopes that its spirit will sweep across the Channel: »It’s a natural wave that’s flowing, Wilber. First Boston, then Paris. Next London.« (1:10:18-29) Even the celebrated Equiano now comes under suspicion of radicalism: »They say he was born in Carolina and as an American, therefore must be a revolutionary.« (1:13:59-14:05)11 Wilberforce is suspected of receiving letters from Thomas Jefferson, which makes Pitt reprimand him: »I am warning you as your Prime Minister that when war comes, opposition will soon mean sedition!« (1:14:35-41) However, the film takes care to establish that Wilberforce is not a radical; he clearly distances himself from Clarkson’s political visions: »Thomas, you must never speak of revolution in my presence ever again.« (1:10:31-38) As a character with whom the audience is intended to empathise, Wilberforce does not exhibit any extremism that might offend mainstream political sensitivities. He is a hero with whom a majority can agree and ›feel‹: a champion for human rights. Not only do the flashback sequences dramatise the main events of the first phase of abolitionism; within the action, they also contribute to

11 The film here refers anachronistically to fairly recent suggestions, proposed by Vincent Carretta (2005), that Equiano was not born in Africa, as claimed in his narrative, but in America.

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Wilberforce’s physical and psychological healing, and they significantly stop when his restoration has been achieved. When the war with France is over and people are open to the issue of slavery again, Wilberforce regains the confidence and strength to continue his struggle. In addition, he gets married to Barbara Spooner, who encourages him to take up his mission again. During the wedding ceremony, »Amazing Grace« is sung (at the request of the bride), initiating the second phase of the campaign for abolition. The scene goes for emotional intensity and even verges on kitsch when Wilberforce, who had lost his formidable voice during his crisis, recovers his voice and joins the chorus. During the celebration, he is also reconciled with Pitt, who is now a sick man. What follows in the film’s story is the second bloom of abolitionism, which the film presents dynamically in a fast-paced narrative without further interruptions. John Newton dictates his memoirs to be published, an intention he declares with pathos: »This is my confession. You must use it. […] You must publish it. Blow a hole in their boat with it. Damn them with it! I wish I could remember all their names. My 20,000 ghosts, they all had names. Beautiful African names.« (1:24:01-55)12 Wilberforce personally recalls Clarkson into the movement: »We need you back in London straight away« (1:26:26-30), and during a meeting of the abolitionists, James Stephen gives a first-hand account from the West Indies. Apart from statistics and accounts of slavery, he mentions the revolution in Haiti, where »King Wilberforce« is hailed as a man who will save them (1:27:40-28:33). Stephen pronounces the slogan for the movement’s second phase: »So this time, gentlemen, we must not fail them« (1:28:38-42), and as a lawyer, he suggests that a new strategy is needed: »We cheat.« (1:29:35-37) The trick the abolitionists agree to use (with Pitt’s agreement) is to introduce a bill directed against the war enemy France, but which is also anti-slavery so that, within a short time, the trade will become unprofitable: »We’re going to suggest that French cargo ships sailing under the American flag of convenience be liable to seizure by privateers. [...] 80 percent of all slave ships sailing to the Indies are flying the neutral American flag to prevent them from being

12 This is another anachronism to focus the film’s attention on Wilberforce’s story: Newton’s Thoughts Upon the Slave Trade were published as early as 1788.

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boarded by privateers. If we pass a law removing that protection, no ship owner will dare allow his vessel to make the journey.« (1:30:48-31:50)

The film builds an entertaining, final suspense when Lord Tarleton smells the trap and tries to prevent the passing of the bill at the last moment, trying to get as many MPs as possible into the House to vote against the bill. However, Wilberforce has given them free tickets to the Epsom races, and the bill is passed. This gives the movement its final impetus, and after two years, Parliament votes in favour of the Abolition bill, shortly after Pitt’s death. Amazing Grace presents this political event as Wilberforce’s personal moment of triumph: He is applauded by almost everybody in Parliament (the standing ovation is a historical fact). Even his former opponent, the Duke of Clarence, acknowledges that »noblesse oblige«. When Lord Tarleton begs him to explain this comment, the Duke’s answer is a further tribute to Wilberforce: »It means my nobility obliges me to recognise the virtue of an exceptional commoner.« (1:43:45-59) The whole scene is presented on a high emotional note that is enhanced by the soundtrack, and Charles Fox, now foreign secretary under Lord Granville,13 delivers the final eulogy, once more emphasising Wilberforce’s special kind of greatness: »When people speak of great men, they think of men like Napoleon. Men of violence. Rarely do they think of peaceful men. But contrast the reception they’ll receive when they return home from their battles. Napoleon will arrive in pomp and in power. A man who’s achieved the very summit of earthly ambition. Yet his dreams will be haunted by the oppressions of war. William Wilberforce, however, will return to his family, lay his head on his pillow and remember the slave trade is no more.« (1:44:20-45:12)

After this speech and more applause, the film ends with a freeze frame of Wilberforce’s face (1:45:58-46:03) – emphasising that the whole film was meant to praise this famous man. This is also confirmed by a final caption which, as an extradiegetic historical comment, summarises the achievement of Wilberforce’s life: »William Wilberforce continued to battle injustice for

13 Once more, for the sake of a powerful statement about Wilberforce, the film departs from fact. The historical Charles Fox had died already in September 1806.

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the rest of his life. He transformed the hearts and minds of his countrymen on education, health care and prison reform to accomplish his second great dream – making a better world.« (1:46:06-15) Amazing Grace shapes the life story of William Wilberforce into classic cinema material: the story of a man who has fulfilled his dreams and his mission against all odds. An approved pattern of mainstream film is used here to present a sensitive and long-repressed aspect of British history in the guise of a story about personal heroism. Abolition is not entirely depoliticised, but its politics are turned into an arena for a great man’s dream of a better world – a dream of global dimensions which a present-day audience can easily share. However, the film’s biographical – even hagiographical – focus on Wilberforce detracts from the other protagonists in the abolition movement and, as Adam Hochschild notes in his review of the film,14 presents an image of abolitionism that is markedly incomplete from the contemporary scholarly view: »In recent decades […] scholars have seen the history of British abolition as involving far more than Wilberforce’s personal virtue. In 1787-1788, during the heady period between the American and French Revolutions, a huge grassroots movement against the slave trade burst into life in Britain, startling abolitionists and slave traders alike. There was a solidarity across racial lines that often seems elusive in our own time. […] In 1792, more Britons signed petitions to Parliament against the slave trade than were eligible to vote. In the same year, more than 300,000 people refused to buy West Indian sugar. This was the largest consumer boycott the world had yet seen, and for tens of thousands of women – none of whom could vote – the occasion for their first political act. Without such pressure, Wilberforce could have done nothing in Parliament. The movement was led by an extremely imaginative, hard-working committee of activists, most of them Quakers, who pioneered tactics that are still used by human rights groups today. The committee’s moving spirit and travelling organizer, Thomas Clarkson, was for much of his life a staunch radical who kept in his living room a stone he had proudly removed from the ruins of the Bastille a few weeks after its fall. […] Historians now also give credit to the fiery Quaker pamphleteer Elizabeth Heyrick (1769-1831), who inspired the formation of some seventy women’s antislavery societies. Another important stimulus to popular feeling came

14 Hochschild’s study of the abolitionist movement, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves, appeared in 2005.

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from the eyewitness testimony of two former slaves living in Britain, Quobna Ottobah Cugoano and Olaudah Equiano, each of whom wrote books and travelled extensively throughout the country promoting them – Equiano for five years. […] A further major force in the history of British abolition, widely recognized today, was the West Indian slave revolts, which erupted with particular intensity during the revolutionary decade of the 1790s. The Haitian Revolution of 1791-1803 was the largest slave uprising in history. […] We might expect, then, that a film about British abolition released in 2007 would reflect some awareness of these broader historical currents that have recently been the subject of much attention. […] The wigs and stagecoaches may be authentic, but ›in spirit and essence‹ the movie could have been made a hundred years ago. Its overall effect is to give the impression that William Wilberforce brought the slave trade to an end almost single-handedly.« (Hochschild 2007)

Indeed, Clarkson and Equiano, although cast with charismatic actors, receive only superficial treatment, serving as sidekicks for the great man, and Hannah More is an especially underdeveloped character, usually silent, remaining in the background and hardly a worthy representative of the important role that women played as supporters of the abolition campaign. Some viewers found the choice of focusing on Wilberforce straightforwardly insulting to the black community. On 2 May 2007 the Evening Standard invited a »panel of experts« to comment on Amazing Grace. Lee Jasper, director for equalities and policing in the London Mayor’s Office at the time, found that »the film seeks to elevate the campaigner William Wilberforce to a status of near sainthood, while Africans are reduced to cameo roles of no significance. In truth, Wilberforce was no saint and the attempt to create his ›Wilberfest‹ is, frankly, insulting. Nowhere do we see the horrors of the Middle Passage or the brutality and degradation of plantation life. Nowhere are we shown the continual fight for freedom led by Africans in the Caribbean, on the slave ships or in English courts. Africans were at the forefront of the resistance movement and yet this film seeks to put a pretty gloss over what was one of the greatest crimes against humanity, committed against a group of people solely because of their race.« (Jasper in n.n. 2007)

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Equiano is the film’s only significant black presence – other black people only briefly appear as suffering, humiliated individuals15 – and thus, in the phrasing of Stuart Hall (1996b), carries a significant »burden of representation«. He is played with great dignity by a Senegalese star musician (Youssou N’Dour) and is mentioned several times as an important figure of the movement. However, in his few major appearances, we rarely see Equiano acting on his own. Most of the time, he is shown in the company of Wilberforce (despite a lack of historical evidence of an actual meeting of the two men) and primarily used to serve as a living testimony of the slave trade. He thus represents the familiar story of the victimisation of Africans rather than their political agency. Equiano makes his strongest appearance in one of the flashback sequences where he shows Wilberforce a slave ship in London’s East India Docks. Here he explains the cruelty of the Middle Passage and emphasises his great personal loss: »Before I travelled in a ship like this, I was a prince. In many ways not unlike you.« (0:44:27-35) With his marginal presence, Equiano almost comes across as the film’s token African. It is obvious throughout Amazing Grace that its makers intended to tell the story of abolition from a white perspective and with a focus on the challenge which the humanitarian movement caused for the contemporary power system and, specifically, its representatives in the British Parliament. This representational choice was defended by critic Libby Purves in The Times: »[T]his is a political film. It is about vigorous parliamentarians in a vigorous Parliament, sacrificing health and peace to fight a ten-year battle for human rights. It is about principled people arguing against pragmatic fat-cats who made up excuses ranging from the ›God-given‹ trade wind direction to the need for Newfoundland fishermen to have someone to sell fish-heads to, for feeding slaves.« (Purves 2007)

Consistent in this artistic decision to its very end, the film offers a coda after the closing credits, in which a band of pipers in military guard uniform is shown in front of Westminster Abbey playing »Amazing Grace«. Over

15 In the gambling scene, the Duke of Clarence’s black coach driver serves as an icon of the injustice which the white establishment commits against the Africans; the man never speaks and looks at the ground most of the time, epitomising his people’s degradation (0:13:05-14:16).

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this image appears the caption: »William Wilberforce continued campaigning until his death in 1833. William Wilberforce lies buried in Westminster Abbey next to his friend, William Pitt.« (1:47:01-48:45) This final tribute to Wilberforce takes the audience out of the film’s narrative and into the cultural memory of the present. The film seems deliberately unclear about the time frame of its final images. The band’s uniforms have a slight nineteenth-century look, so that the time portrayed might be that of Wilberforce’s funeral. However, as the respective uniforms have changed only little over time, and are shown against the real Westminster Abbey, the sequence has a ›documentary‹ quality and thus forms a bridge into the audience’s experiential present. With its reference to the Abbey, the film also monumentalises Wilberforce as a great player in British history – rather than abolition as a great event in British history that had many heroes, white and black. The filmmakers’ decision to focus their attention on Wilberforce and his victory in Parliament may have been topical at a time that saw its own parliament, after the war on Iraq, in turmoil. However, as a film speaking to the wider British public about abolition (and released specifically for the bicentenary), Amazing Grace popularised an oldfashioned view of its period and was untimely for the interpretative needs of a multiethnic society. The struggle for abolition might have provided an opportunity to write black agents into a popular heritage film,16 but this was a road not taken by the makers of Amazing Grace. The film’s distinct traces of English heritage cinema even underscore the film’s ›whiteness‹. Schama’s television drama Rough Crossings has its flaws, but it does better than Amazing Grace in terms of representing black agency, and certainly resists hagiography.

16 On the failure of British period cinema to acknowledge the black presence in the nation’s past cf. Bourne (2002). Also cf. a statement by writer and actress Meera Syal who observes the same deficit for the historical presence of Asians in Britain: »The current vogue for historical dramas leaves ethnic minority actors at a further disadvantage despite the opportunities it should offer, Syal says. ›There has been a black and Asian presence in Britain since the 1600s. It’s extraordinary how many Asians there were here in the 18th century – Bengalis who came over on the curry boats, set up curry houses; it’s a great story, not to mention all the Asian royalty who were coming to hobnob with royalty over here‹.« (Byrne 2008)

5. Setting a Critical Tone: In Search of William Wilberforce

Broadcast one week before the bicentenary day, on 16 March 2007, the BBC documentary In Search of William Wilberforce also set out to resist hagiography and to establish a critical attitude to the whole ›Wilberfest‹ that was about to occur both on the screen and in a wide range of events. The popular news presenter Moira Stuart – who went on a search for her own family roots in slavery in the programme Who Do You Think You Are (cf. pp. 168-172) – set out to assess Wilberforce’s role in the commemorative culture surrounding slavery, abolition and emancipation.1 Stuart focuses on the many misconceptions about this role that have been fixed in the collective memory, for example through the inscription on the socket of the Wilberforce statue in his native Hull which reads, »England owes to him the reformation of manners, the world owes to him the abolition of slavery.« (0:17:00-17:40) By visiting the different places in which the com-

1

Another episode of the In Search of… series, also screened in 2007, featured Niomi Daley, better known as the icon of British music culture Ms Dynamite, who went »in search of Nanny Maroon«. Nanny, the leader of a stronghold against the British army and liberator of hundreds of enslaved, has become a heroic figure in the Jamaican memory of slavery, resistance and emancipation. Daley’s investigation does not only include a tracing of Nanny’s history, but also a presentation of her relevance for present-day Jamaica. Unlike Moira Stuart’s »search« of William Wilberforce, which provides a deconstruction of a heroic figure, Niomi Daley’s presentation is an affirmation of the heroine’s status and seeks to translate Nanny’s relevance for British audiences.

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memorative culture manifests itself, Stuart turns herself into a researcher or detective who, not dissimilar to the researcher of family history in Who Do You Think You Are, aims at finding a truth of the past which is of great relevance to herself but also to others: those who share her discomfort about the iconography surrounding Wilberforce and those who may not have thought about it and will possibly be surprised by her acts of uncovering ›truths‹. The idea of a personal motivation and engagement is highlighted right from the beginning. The documentary is announced as »following the crusade of the man who is said to have abolished Britain’s trade in human cargo« (0:00:10) and sets in with a title sequence in which sombre cello music accompanies images of the slave dungeons of Cape Coast Castle in Ghana that fade into shots of chains, mixing with snippets of voices that phrase such terms as »barbarity« and »crimes against humanity« until we hear Stuart beginning to speak: »William Wilberforce is credited with bringing this inhumanity to an end. […] He is remembered for leading Britain out of its darkest hour.« (0:00:30-57) Images of Wilberforce statues, documents and crowds of people at the Hull celebrations as well as some of the films’ expert consultants make their appearance before Stuart says: »This is the story of my quest to find out why.« The title fades in and out, and a pensive Stuart is shown on a veranda overlooking the Ghanaian coast. Palm trees sway in the background. A hard cut abruptly ends the melancholy scene, followed by images of celebrations, fireworks, the Wilberforce statue in Hull and a crowd of white faces (0:01:00-02:10). Although the historical figure Wilberforce is scrutinised here with respect to his subsequent elevation to a national hero, the act of the legal abolition of the slave trade in which he did play the leading role is presented to us in a spectacular way, with a literal move from an eminent exterior to its significant core: We see a montage of panoramic shots of the British Parliament before we see Stuart meeting her guide in this scene, historian James Walvin, at the entrance of the impressive building of Westminster Palace. We follow them to the dungeons of the Parliament’s archive, are shown a door sign announcing the »Original Act Room« and led through a labyrinth of shelves stacked with rolls. Walvin ›finds‹ the roll they are looking for and opens it with gloved hands (fig. 7). A close-up on the words confirms that the object in focus is, indeed, the document containing the Act of the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Stuart’s exclamation, »Good gracious! History in your hands! Extraordinary!« only adds to the

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impression that we are in the process of witnessing a precious moment of discovery, the discovery of an ›authentic‹, original and highly consequential historical object – and the scene thus draws attention to the high (present) relevance of this document as a treasure of Britain’s past (0:36:52-34). What is more, it detracts the focus from Wilberforce by presenting the Abolition act as an »Act of Parliament«, approved by its members and by the King (there is a close-up on the document’s phrase »Le Roi le veut«, and the words are specifically pointed out and translated by Walvin). Fig. 7: Screenshot from In Search of William Wilberforce (2007)

Reproduced with kind permission by the BBC

Throughout the documentary Stuart draws attention to the ambiguousness of the material memorial culture that perpetuates both the heroification of Wilberforce and the victimisation of the African subject.2 Overall, the film relies on a mix of representational strategies, oscillating between the aura of

2

The famous Wedgwood theme of the kneeling slave in chains is outlined as extremely problematic. And rather than complementing the image of victimised Africans with the image of a strong, British abolitionist hero, Stuart chooses to highlight Wilberforce’s physical unimpressiveness (0:18:00-20:00).

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spaces and objects that speak of the past of slavery and abolition, and expert commentary of historians and public figures who have a voice and opinion on the matter. Among the commentators guiding Stuart around British memory spaces are the historians Adam Hochschild, James Walvin and Catherine Hall. In Ghana, the novelist Abena Busia functions as Stuart’s guide through the slave dungeons, and the Ghanaian Minister for Tourism and Diasporan Relations,3 Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, articulates a West African perspective according to which »Wilberforce played a role […] but [...] others played a role in the emancipation process as well, especially Africans played a role in the emancipation.« (0:14:08) This is confirmed in the Jamaican narrative thread in which historian Verene Shepherd is consulted to add comments to images of memorials of the slave rebellions. The documentary ends in London’s Docklands area, another significant space in the history of the slave trade, on a contemplative note about the importance for Britain to remember her history adequately, but without guilt. Catherine Hall, the final commentator, finds the iconography surrounding Wilberforce »very unhelpful, because [...] it’s associated with the claim that the abolition movement was simply a movement driven by moral force and that what it demonstrated was how progressive, how forward-looking, how liberal Britons were. And it enabled people to not see the aspects of exploitation and degradation that went on long after slavery because we’d done this good thing. [... W]e have to take responsibility for what we did. Just as the Germans have to know and remember and take in what the Holocaust was in order to move beyond it, so we have to understand that that’s our history. And it’s not a history that’s just to do with black people. It’s a history that is fundamentally to do with white people. [... G]uilt takes us nowhere. But understanding takes us a long way.« (0:54:20-56:00)

An aerial view of a large traffic junction in which streets merge and separate, suggestive of flow, of change, but also of guidance and control, accompanied by electronic music, forms the bridge to the final scene in which Stuart draws attention to the necessity of reexamining history and of

3

›Diaspora tourism‹ is a thriving business branch in Ghana aimed primarily at African American tourists and investors.

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placing more emphasis on the multitude of people who struggled against slavery (not only the trade) in the Atlantic context in diverse ways: »If Wilberforce is remembered as the conscience of the nation, surely they should be remembered as the conscience of the world.« (0:57:15) Broadcasted prior to many of the bicentenary festivities in a primetime slot (9 pm), In Search of William Wilberforce provided a well-placed and timely critique of the iconography surrounding Wilberforce and highlighted the necessity to remember other aspects and agents in the history of Britain’s slavery, abolition and emancipation. Simultaneously, however, it could only glimpse at the existence of countless other agents, and ironically Wilberforce was placed, by way of the critique, once more at the centre of attention. The documentary shows (albeit in a critical manner) an abundance of commemorative material, including several monuments built in Wilberforce’s honour. The only other icon of British abolitionism that emerges in the film, and which is not subject to scrutiny, is the Westminster Parliament. Nevertheless, the screening of this critical documentary in an exposed programme space draws attention to the fact that debate and controversy were not entirely blanked out in the commemorative year and its celebrations for the whole nation.

6. ›Doing an Anniversary‹: The Event Culture Surrounding 2007

In 2007, looking for an occasion to commemorate Britain’s involvement in the slave trade on a larger scale was overdue. Staging it as a national feast of ›Remembering Abolition‹, however, was arguably a distortive move in many respects. Yet even if the debates surrounding the celebrations proved to be highly controversial, they were debates at last and the anniversary did spark a much-needed discussion about how to remember this particular aspect of the nation’s past. Apart from the museum landscape (discussed below, pp. 135-161), a great diversity of events throughout the UK contributed to the creation of a new or at least widened public awareness of British abolition, and thus also an awareness of the British involvement in the slave trade. Historian and museum consultant Catherine Prior commented on the sheer number of events that took place in March 2007 alone: »Now, at the time of writing in March 2007, the commemoration of the Abolition anniversary seems likely to overwhelm the coverage of all the other anniversaries competing for attention in this remarkable year: the English settlement at Jamestown in 1607, the Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707, Ghana’s independence in 1957, the Falklands War in 1982, and a multiplicity of dates for India (the Battle of Plassey in 1757, the Mutiny in 1857, and independence in 1947).« (Prior 2007: 200)

As has been suggested above, it was the preference given to abolition rather than slavery per se which caused controversy. However, it is important to remember that commemorative culture functions to a great extent through dates and emblems of significance, and anniversaries have increasingly

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become such emblems over the past two decades. Therefore, despite justified critique, the bicentenary and its abundance of events can also be seen as a gateway through which the commemoration of the more important, and more difficult subject matter of slavery and the slave trade could be made accessible. It can be argued, for instance, that without the attention generated through the anniversary neither the DVD of Schama’s TV Rough Crossings nor the touring theatre production of Rough Crossings would have received a lot of attention, but as a package tied in with other products and events, they were marketable, especially in the educational sector. The theatre performances of Rough Crossings were embedded within local school projects as well as community and city projects. In Leeds, for instance, this was an exhibition of the city’s local black history, placed very visibly in the main street, the Headrow. Leeds is not an isolated case. Overall, there were more than 200 events in the anniversary year on regional, local and national levels. The government issued a publication which was distributed through public institutions and organisations as the »official magazine«.1 In his opening words, Tony Blair reminded people that »[t]his is everyone’s anniversary« (DCLG 2007: 1) and invited them to take part in the many activities listed on its pages. Apart from listing events, the publication gave an overview of themes in connection with the slave trade, slavery and abolition. In terms of countering the view of black victimisation and supporting the idea that black agency was a vital component of the path towards abolition, the magazine took an innovative stance, devoting two pages to black »Resistance« and then granting the abolitionist movement a space of five further pages (»Parliament, Passion and People Power«). Notable in terms of the publication’s rhetoric is also the section »Cities Remember«, which mentions London, Liverpool, Bristol and Hull. It is unsurprising to see the usual

1

Cf. the description of this publication on http://www.communities.gov.uk/ publications/communities/bicentenary. On another government website which sums up major »events«, the launch of the magazine that is committed to telling the »story of abolition and the people – both British and African – who played a role in it« is classed as one such event. However, the magazine is largely an advertisement of the government’s commitment to the commemorative celebrations (http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/slavery/DG_065915).

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suspects represented here, but what is said about the sort of money that flowed into projects in these cities gives the section a specific edge: The Heritage Lottery Fund helped finance events »with grants totalling more than £20 million«, and »Britain’s oldest slavery museum, the Wilberforce House Museum in Hull« had a »£1.5 million refit to commemorate the bicentenary«; the temporary »Breaking the Chains« exhibition at the Bristol Empire and Commonwealth Museum was kicked off with a »£770,000 Heritage Lottery Fund grant« to run for two years, and the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool is identified as a £9.5 million project (DCLG 2007: 22f.). The focus on finances in the »official magazine« is symptomatic of the communicative problems that undercut the discourse surrounding the commemoration of Britain’s slave trade, slavery and its abolition. On the surface, such figures convey the impression that the government had not shied away from costs and considerable efforts to make »everyone’s anniversary« happen. Against the backdrop of an ongoing apology and reparations debate,2 however, the mention of the costs of public, government-led commemorations appears inept. Whereas the profits made from slavery are only marginally mentioned (as in the case of London, where »profits from the trade funded much of the city’s industrial and financial success«, DCLG 2007: 22), the expenses of its commemoration are spelled out in a very explicit manner. Instead of allowing important tangible controversies their due presence, they are, it seems, glossed over with generous funds. While some of the 2007 events were specifically designed for the anniversary context, others have existed as regular events or permanent venues for a long time. The Notting Hill Carnival has been embraced as a street festival for everybody since the late 1990s,3 and as a welcome occasion to stage black history events, show films on television and develop other marketable tie-in products. Using the Notting Hill Carnival as a platform for the commemoration of slavery makes sense because of its rootedness in a specific Caribbean, mostly Trinidadian resistance culture against

2

For a concise overview of past and recent developments of this debate cf. Rupprecht (2007: esp. 10f.). For a longer discussion with reference to Jamaica, cf. Shepherd (2008).

3

For more information on the Notting Hill Carnival’s history (before it became a major commercial event) cf. Owusu/Ross (1987).

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the institution of slavery. That it came to the UK as a means of resistance against metropolitan racism is rarely mentioned these days, as if to address this history of the Carnival would be to acknowledge the existence of racism in the UK’s recent history. The way in which the Notting Hill Carnival is communicated in the anniversary programme makes it appear cut off from its history and as an instance of partying for partying’s sake. This was a missed chance in the context of the 2007 commemorations, despite the fact that the Notting Hill Carnival committee had decided to make the bicentenary its 2007 theme. This was done with the idea in mind that the Carnival »had the potential to engage the mainstream population and start to generate interest and news in 2006«, as the Carnival’s director, Chris Mullard, stated in one of the meetings of the Deputy Prime Minister’s official group of advisors (DPMO 2006: 2nd meeting, 4).4 The advisory group’s meeting protocols are just one instance among many which show that communication rather than content was central in many of the events of 2007. In general, these documents provide an excellent illustration of intentional historiography since many events were not only advertised by the government, but actually co-ordinated by it. In one of the advisors’ meetings, for instance, the Royal Mint’s design for the commemorative £2 coin was presented and serious concerns were raised regarding the design which combined the well-known image of the interior of a slave ship, the Brookes, and the text of Josiah Wedgwood’s medallion for the Abolitionist movement: »The Royal Mint consulted widely on the design for the coin, including with AntiSlavery International and Baroness Lola Young, the Commonwealth Museum in Bristol. Four/Five artists were approached. The selection process consisted of [a] briefing session, sifting exercise, short listing and a judging selection. A printed

4

The advisory group, which according to the government’s website (http://www. direct.gov.uk/en/slavery/DG_065915) consisted of »academics, religious leaders, community groups and representatives from museums and other cultural bodies«, had the function of supporting the government, which officially coordinated the events. Those present at the meetings according to the protocol were, however, mostly institutional directors, diversity officers and political representatives. »Community groups« in this context appears to be an exaggerated term.

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copy of the [Brookes] design and a 3 dimensional prototype was passed amongst the group. It was important that the coin represented the slave trade and be as authentic as possible. The coin includes a well known image of the slave ship ›Brooks‹ [sic] and has an edge inscription ›Am I not a man and a brother‹. There was mixed feedback from the Advisory Group. Some found it politically offensive and that it could do more harm than good to public relations with young black people. However it was acknowledged that the process had been handled sensitively. The Royal Mint explained that this discussion was not part of the decision-making process. The coin would be accompanied by literature. DL [David Lammy] said he was grateful for the advice. The Royal Mint had gone through a process and we are where we are. It’s important to have a coin rather than not. We accept that we cannot get people to agree on an image but, it was important that we are able to have a debate. He thanked Kevin and Matthew [representatives of the Royal Mint] for their presentation. 5

Trevor Phillips said the CRE can offer support in the handling of any issues.« (DPMO 2006: 3rd meeting, 6)

The Royal Mint eventually decided not to use the Brookes image, choosing instead a broken chain for the design.6 Nevertheless, the excerpt cited above shows how ethical questions were raised but then cast aside in favour of getting on with the project, and how limited the advisory group’s influence ultimately was (»this discussion was not part of the decision-making process«). The fact that the coin was to be accompanied by a small booklet explaining backgrounds and details shows that little consideration was given to the fact that in most people’s encounters with the coin during its everyday circulation, the explanation would not be available.7 This is

5

The reference is to the Commission for Racial Equality, which became part of

6

Before the image of the Brookes came into play, the possibility of using the

the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) in 2007. Wedgwood image of the kneeling slave in chains was suggested, but met with outrage. 7

Non-collectors had to specially order the booklet. Aside from the limited issues of uncirculated collectors’ coins (of 1,000 in gold, 10,000 in silver 100,000 in

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noteworthy since the coin is one of the few sustainable material articulations of the 2007 commemorations and its motif is controversial: The chain accompanied by the inscription inadvertently, but nevertheless effectively, emphasises the victimhood of those enslaved. A more abstract image was obviously not considered by the advisory group, and this is characteristic of the entire visual culture surrounding slavery, which relies to an exhausting degree on explicit images. The coin was unveiled in April 2007, three weeks after the Royal Mail’s commemorative stamps were issued on 22 March. Both are just as much part of the 2007 ›event culture‹ as of an allegedly longer-lasting ›material culture‹. The same can be said for the (re)openings of several museums and permanent exhibitions in 2007. The Wilberforce House Museum in Hull reopened after a phase of redevelopment in March; the former slavery gallery of the National Maritime Museum in Liverpool was reopened in August as an International Museum of Slavery in its own right; and November saw the opening of a new gallery in London’s Docklands Museum. A unique, one-time event was the commemorative service held on 25 March in Westminster Abbey, organised by a committee set up by Churches Together in England. For the occasion, it named itself the »Set All Free« group – a telling name with an Evangelical agenda that in itself could be seen as offensive in light of the complicated legacy of slavery, suggesting as it does that a committee of awakened believers could have a capacity for undoing the past or lifting its burden. What made the service memorable, however, was neither a communal awakening nor the presence of the Queen, but the ›scandal‹ around Ligali member Toyin Agbetu’s protest and his ensuing arrest by members of security (p. 79). Other commemorative services took place up and down the country and were conducted in various manners. In Bristol, the service held at the cathedral was co-organised by the Council of Black Churches. Another commemorative service took place on 23 August in partnership with UNESCO and was held at London City Hall; its highlight as an internationally orientated event was the presence of the American celebrity minister and civil rights icon Jesse Jackson.

base metal), a base metal coin is in circulation (8,455,000 according to correspondence with the Royal Mint Museum).

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The international character of the subject matter – slavery, the slave trade, abolition and emancipation – was emphasised by several events that went beyond British borders in their scope and that were set up by (or in partnership with) non-British organisations. One of the most memorable of these events was the docking of the replica schooner Amistad in London, Liverpool and Bristol on its 2007 Atlantic Freedom Tour, after leaving its last stop in Nova Scotia and before continuing its journey to destinations in West Africa, the Caribbean and the USA. The Amistad, based in Connecticut, where it serves to draw attention to the local history of slavery and abolition, docked in Liverpool between 20 and 26 August to be present for the opening of the new International Slavery Museum on 23 August, the UNESCO International Remembrance Day of the Slave Trade and its Abolition.8 Another major event staged on 23 August 2007 was the reenactment of the parliamentary debate on the abolition of the slave trade of 23 February 1807. It was embedded in a temporary exhibition entitled »The British Slave Trade«, which was mounted in Westminster Hall, the oldest building on the British Parliament’s premises, from 23 May to 23 September. As a highlight of the exhibition but also of the commemorative events of 2007, and planned to coincide with the UNESCO Remembrance Day, the reenactment took place in a building near the site of the original debate featuring the antagonists William Wilberforce and Lord Tarleton (established as Wilberforce’s adversary in the film Amazing Grace, pp. 107-110). In addition to the debate, a reenacted Olaudah Equiano, Ignatius Sancho and the latter’s wife Anne Osborne were present to interact with visitors and speak about their lives, their experience of and views on slavery. The exhibition and the reenacted debate (and especially both together) successfully conveyed a relevance to its present-day audience from the UK and abroad, and many visitors and spectators were emotionally touched, as was revealed in comments cited on a Parliament website:

8

The day was chosen after an uprising of enslaved Africans on the island of Saint Domingue in 1791 and commemorates resistance and emancipation rather than abolition, thus emphasising the agency of enslaved Africans in their own liberation.

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»I liked the debate. I think they should of [sic] got the public involved [...].« (Solomon, 23 August 2007). »It showed me how lucky i am that i was not born into the slave trade [...].« (Jerome, 23 August 2007) »I cried so hard and I had only been viewing the exhibits for a few minutes. The displays near the entrance are mainly about Jamaica, where the bones of my ancestors – my Resistance heroes reside. Reading about them as someone else’s property 9

was disturbing to say the least [...].« (Jacqueline Brooks, 7 September 2007)

According to Mark Wallis, director of the Living History company Past Pleasures who was in charge of the reenactment, the event »was only a oneday thing, very small, but it was very successful. [...] Sometimes, we have to do a huge amount of work for a small thing, but it’s all worth doing it.« (Pirker 2011b) For Wallis, the success of first-person interpretation as a form of reenactment significantly depends on the proper location, i.e. places where a strong link to the historical theme or period is immediately evident. The reenacted debate took place in such a location, and additional significance was bestowed on it by the date on which it was staged. The embedding of the debate in space and time on several levels thus clearly contributed to the sense of the event taking place »in the right place«. However, 2007 also saw many events that were apparently staged in a rush to fulfil an obligation rather than an effort to come up with a meaningful contribution. Wallis’s company, for instance, was also commissioned to stage a slavery-themed reenactment at Kew Palace, one of the Royal Palaces where »the link [to slavery] wasn’t very strong«: »The trouble with that is that Kew Palace is a beautiful little house. You get a certain sort of public there, pretty much always white, middle-age, with some money, leisure, cultured, they understand what they’re going for. They’re not going to a theme park or to a place just about slavery. They’re going for a day out in a nice environment. And suddenly, they were confronted with – although confronted is the wrong word, because we don’t confront –, they saw a character, a white gentleman visiting

9

Cf. »Parliament and the British Slave Trade 1800-1807« (http://slavetrade. parliament.uk/slavetrade/yourvoice/thewestminsterhallexhibtion/internationalre membrancedayoftheslavetrade/internationalremembrancedayatwestminsterhall. html). Accessed 10 August 2010.

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– good, they’d expect that. Someone in costume, but at least he’s one of us. This is the white housekeeper, lower-class woman – that’s good. Because we Brits can identify with a servant. And then they saw a black servant. Jesus! They hadn’t come for that. Some people actually loved it. They were surprised, but then they could get past the surprise and talk and learn and discuss. Other people didn’t like it at all, they walked straight past. We had a black woman and a black man doing this – and they were fabulous, they enjoyed it. I wasn’t in the event, but I watched it a lot and could see how some of the British public did not know how to engage with these people, so they were standing, looking, which wasn’t good. What I would have wanted was a board outside the door saying, ›Today, you will meet these characters. And one of them will be a slave.‹ Because then people could think: I don’t want to see this, or: Oh, how interesting! So it was not a good experience for us.« (Pirker 2011b)

While one could argue that surprise elements can be instructive and an incentive for generating interest, it is true that events like the one described here show the engagement with the anniversary as a momentary undertaking. The example of Kew Palace reveals once more that a link of some sort is required in order to make the past relevant for a general, present-day (and potentially unsympathetic) audience.10 It illustrates that the lack of a tangible link and narrative, as well as an embedding context that might guide the audience can be alienating in the end. Indeed, many of the events officially advertised by the government do not seem to have a strong connection to a specific history of slavery and abolition at all; some were clearly

10 A strong link to the history of slavery and the slave trade can be seen in many of the country houses that emerged as powerful emblems of wealth in the eighteenth century. A conference entitled Slavery and the British Country House: Mapping Current Research took place at the London School of Economics in November 2009. The proceedings of the conference, edited by Madge Dresser in collaboration with English Heritage, are due to be published in 2012. Pioneering research has, again, been provided by James Walvin, who made knowledge about the history of Harewood House in Yorkshire accessible as a consultant of the television series The Slavery Business and such projects as the BBC’s online gallery »Building Britain«, to be found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/ abolition/building_britain_gallery_more.shtml. For more examples of British country houses that have a link with slavery cf. also Dresser (2001).

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just one-offs, and others were a case of jumping on board a long-established regular event such as the Notting Hill Carnival. City tours also have a strong element of event and were frequently advertised as part of the 2007 activities. However, Black History tours in the UK rely mostly on local, often self-taught amateur historians and have in most cases existed since the late 1990s or even longer. They usually originate in local community projects and the communication between tour guides and official institutions is often fraught with difficulties. In Liverpool, a Black History Walk has been conducted by the local historian Eric Lynch for many years, while in London, Steve Martin more recently devised the initiative »A Walk Around Westminster: On the Road to Abolition«, a self-guided tour that included sites with a connection to the history of slavery and abolition, but also several museums and galleries that hosted special events in 2007 (fig. 8). Permanently available city walks are often advertised in museums (such as the Museum of London), but the guides are not employed by these institutions, working instead as freelancers. Therefore, the day when the black history city tour might become an institution is not yet in sight. Since 1996, there has been a black history trail in Bristol, which was complemented by the city’s Georgian House museum’s »Sugar Trail« in 2007. On specific commemorative occasions, guided tours of the trails are offered, but otherwise they are self-guided. A black history trail on Manchester’s black history website (which has a link to the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre which, in turn, is connected to Manchester University) provides a short written guide for a black history trail in Greater Manchester,11 but some of the venues on location are difficult to locate and will not ›come to life‹ when the stories and anecdotes, ideally conveyed by

11 Cf. http://www.actsofachievement.org.uk/blackhistorytrail/.

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Fig. 8: Detail from the leaflet »On the Road to Abolition«

Image credits: Jointly produced by the City of Westminster Archives Centre, the Tate Gallery, the Parliamentary Archives and the National Portrait Gallery in 2007. Reproduced with kind permission by the City of Westminster Archives Centre.

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an able guide, are missing. There is great popular potential in city walks and guided district tours because of the mediation through a living individual, but this potential was hardly realised during the anniversary.12 Overall, it would be wrong to see the events staged in 2007 in too negative a light. It is clear that many of them were put up hastily as organisations were under pressure to come up with ideas for the bicentenary. But the proliferation of events in 2007 had at least one positive effect since every organisation and institution of some standing had to seriously inquire into their history, to contemplate it, and perhaps for the first time open up to the idea that it might have some link to slavery. The engagement with this history is problematic where the established link has a one-sided focus on abolition: for instance in the city of Hull, whose staging of ›Wilberfest‹ completely overshadowed the efforts aimed at a more balanced presentation made by the Wilberforce House Museum; or in the case of the commemorative service at Westminster Abbey. The focus on the white abolitionist hero often goes hand in hand with a representation of blacks as victims without agency. The continuous representation of such patterns in products designed to be consumed by many cannot serve to lessen stereotypes surrounding race, but will only strengthen them. Finally, a link frequently established between Atlantic slavery and present-day forms of slavery in some products and productions of 2007 is highly problematic.13 The importance of raising awareness of present-day slavery and the trafficking of people in the context of human rights struggles must not be understated. However, its links to the Atlantic slave trade and slavery are ethical questions rather than connections based on historical continuity. Instead, the continuity between the historical system of Atlantic slavery and present-day racism in postcolonial societies such as the UK is apparent and might be seen as the ›real‹ legacy of Atlantic slavery – a legacy which was almost completely blanked out in the commemorative con-

12 A similar problem can also be observed for museums contexts, for instance the Victoria and Albert Museum’s temporary 2007 initiative discussed in the subsequent chapter. 13 This link is made almost habitually. The Amazing Change Campaign against present-day slavery, for instance, was effectively connected to the launch of Amazing Grace (cf. pp. 99-114) and is advertised on the film’s tie-in website: Cf. http://www.amazinggracemovie.com/amazing_change.php.

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text of 2007 with its focus on a celebration for and of a multiethnic society. In this respect, the institution of 23 August as a national remembrance day for slavery rather than abolition in line with UNESCO’s day of remembrance is apt, and 2007 can be seen as a door-opener for such developments. The legacy of slavery and its consequences for contemporary societies have to be addressed by national, regional and local politics if they are meant to be remembered in a sustainable and socially functional way.

7. The Impact of 2007 – Slavery and the Slave Trade in British Museums

The prototypical space in which a functional memory is constructed from collections of images and objects is the museum. Museums continue to enjoy great popularity, particularly in the UK, even though they have undergone considerable changes during the past two decades: »During 1999-2000, there were 12 million visits to English Heritage sites; […] in 2005, there were over 100 million visits to museums and heritage sites in the UK. After charges were scrapped in 2001, nearly 5 million extra visits were made to museums in the UK by 2006. Engagement with the national past at the level of the site and the artefact is important to the consumption of history in Britain, whether by domestic or international visitor. The terms and conditions of this engagement have changed subtly in the past 15 years, in response to financial burdens, methodological and theoretical shifts, and consumer expectation. Funding cutbacks meant that institutions had to radically change their fundraising practice; new museological and postcolonial theories meant that the politics and mechanics of display were hotly debated; the increased definition of the visitor as customer changed the power relationship, emphasising the visitor experience over the educative impetus. Add to these new paradigms, government rhetoric over access and citizenship, the concerns of an increasingly globalised tourist market, and the possibilities as well as the problems of new technologies, and it might be argued that museums are the places in which the experience of history has changed the most.« (De Groot 2009: 233)

Such developments also form the backdrop to representations of black history in museums, and in some cases, the representation of black history

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may have provided a welcome springboard for museums to prove their commitment and adherence to changed agendas. The slave trade, slavery and abolition are still relatively new themes in the UK’s museum landscape. Some institutions that stand out are discussed in the present chapter. Among them is Wilberforce House Museum in Hull as the oldest museum space to address slavery and the trade. As national institutions, the Maritime Museums in Liverpool and London deserve attention and invite comparison. While the latter only opened its »Atlantic Worlds« gallery in 2007, the former had already provided a space for a »Transatlantic Slavery« gallery in 1994; this gallery ›emancipated‹ itself from the Maritime Museum and became the International Museum of Slavery in 2007. As a pivotal year for museums and slavery, 2007 not only saw the opening of another important permanent gallery in the Museum of London in Docklands, »London, Sugar and Slavery«, but also several temporary shows. All these museums and exhibitions have to react to the fact that their visitors expect attractive displays that appeal to them aesthetically, especially visually, and possibly also emotionally. The lifeworlds of the more recent past – including that of post-war migration to the UK – are brought to life through photographic records and, of course, the testimony of living witnesses. For pre-photographic (and pre-phonographic) periods such as that of the slave trade, slavery and abolition, curators rely strongly on older pictorial genres such as paintings1 and the archives of material culture more generally. However, for the slave trade, slavery and abolition the material archive is also problematic, as a look at the development of historical museums in this sector reveals. Until Wilberforce House Museum in Hull was opened in 1901 and began to collect material pertaining to the slave trade and slavery systematically (as a side effect of collecting material

1

Portraits, seascapes and historical scenes fare prominently in the new thematically grouped archives surrounding black history. The National Maritime Museum’s slavery gallery in Greenwich and the accompanying catalogue show a considerable number of oil paintings of ships and seascapes. The catalogue informs us that »[t]here are more than 4500 oil paintings in the [...] collection. A large number have some connection with the broader history of slavery and abolition [...].« (cf. Hamilton/Blyth 2007: 214) Paintings of landscapes and family portraits continue to serve as a basis for film costumes and sets. Cf., for instance, the discussion of The Slavery Business above, pp. 70-78).

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about William Wilberforce), an abundance of objects were scattered all over the place. Wilberforce House Museum only entered a competitive situation in the 1930s, when the Wisbech and Fenland Museum equally began to place an emphasis on the slave trade, slavery and abolition in connection with its holdings relating to Wisbech’s famous son Thomas Clarkson (cf. Oldfield 118). Among its displays, the Wisbech and Fenland Museum can boast the ›Clarkson box‹. This wooden chest is a museum within a museum, so to speak, since the display of objects illustrating the slave trade was its original function.2 Clarkson had bought several African artefacts that he had found on board a ship (not a slave ship) he visited on a ›research trip‹ to Liverpool in 1787. Convinced that visual displays could strengthen his argument for direct trade with Africa, he arranged samples of these artefacts in his travelling box. Also contained in the box were objects that exemplified the cruelty of the slave trade and slavery, such as manacles. In a sense Clarkson’s habit of illustrating his talks not only with pictures and witness accounts, but also with material objects, is an early example of a multimedial presentation. His and other abolitionists’ reliance on material objects or ›speaking images‹ such as the Wedgwood medallion were instrumental in the creation of a British visual archive not only of abolition, but also more generally of slavery. After abolition, these objects disappeared or remained in private households and only began to be collected from the early twentieth century onward. Even then, the commemoration of slavery and the slave trade in Britain occurred exclusively through the focus on such central abolitionist figures as Wilberforce and Clarkson. And, as John Oldfield (2007) shows, it was largely on the occasion of Wilberforce and/or Clarkson anniversaries when a commemorative push occurred that brought with it – as a side effect – an instance of commemorating slavery. This situation was to persist until the 1980s, when a politics of multiculturalism granted black communities a formative agency of public culture, at least in a cultural niche. The call for the commemoration of a history that was relevant to them, a history that they did not see reflected anywhere in the nation’s historical culture, was heard for the first time, and

2

In the episode »Revolutions« of Simon Schama’s television History of Britain, Clarkson’s box provides the key image for the theme of abolition (cf. 0:56:00).

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it was also met with funding schemes for the first time.3 Today the situation is different, and it has been acknowledged (at least on a theoretical and rhetorical level) that the history of slavery and the slave trade is not just part of the history of black Britons, but part and parcel of the history of all Britons. Accordingly, museums have been pushed to adapt to the political programmes first of the 1980s and then those of the last decade. These rather rapid changes in paradigm from preserving and displaying a ›white past‹ to reflecting the multicultural society’s pasts and finally to re/presenting an inclusive and diverse national heritage have posed major challenges to museum curators – after all, pieces in the collections and displays of a museum often find themselves buried deep in the archives before entering a collection, and undergo several levels and processes of restoration before being presented as part of an exhibition. A major project originating in the 1980s and persisting to this day is Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (BMAG)’s »Gallery 33«, the museum’s ethnographic collection, whose display objects were donated by the ethnographer and traveller Arthur Wilkins in the first half of the twentieth

3

Gemma Romain sees an even more recent continuation of this trend: »The last few years have seen an enormous expansion in local community oral history groups in Britain. Local African-Caribbean, Asian, and Jewish communities have organised history projects and exhibitions themselves in order to show the richness of their heritage and their various experiences of life in Britain. These projects and exhibitions have also been carried out within museums, libraries and archives specifically representing the history and experiences of Black and minority ethnic communities, for example within the Jewish Museum of Finchley, the Manchester Jewish Museum and the Black Cultural Archives in Brixton.« (Romain 2006: 14) Romain holds that projects such as these are indicative of »the changes within twentieth century museum culture giving rise to the interactive museum, and focusing on the everyday life of local people« and outlines a trend of »museums, libraries and archives working jointly with a range of community groups, who themselves create their own projects« (Romain 2006: 13f.). Importantly, community collaborations are often restricted to small, local venues such as neighbourhood museums. When they enter the agenda of larger venues, they are only used as one outreach strategy among many others. It is rare that a community project changes the approach of a big national institution.

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century. The collection was reconceptualised as »a meeting ground of cultures« and caters in particular for school projects. Near the entrance is a photographic montage of Vanley Burke’s »Faces of Birmingham« series which represents Birmingham’s multiethnic population. Having a separate gallery dedicated to the world’s and Britain’s ›other cultures‹ has been a key approach from the 1980s and continues to persist in some instances such as »Gallery 33«. In 2006, however, BMAG provided one of the venues for a major exhibition that attracted c. 60,000 visitors (in Birmingham and Manchester together): »Black Victorians« showed portraits and other representations of black individuals in different genres of nineteenthcentury visual art. Many of the images on display actually did not represent black Victorians, but black people from the first half of the twentieth century; the catchy title was a means to attract audiences since the Victorian period is popular in the national memory as well as an internationally recognised and marketed ›icon‹ of British heritage culture. In 2007, BMAG’s Gas Hall provided the space for an Equiano exhibition which attracted almost 30,000 visitors.4 The exhibition, which used both the museum’s collections and national and international material objects and artwork, explored the »life and times« of Equiano, offering the use of interactive media as well as more traditional display formats, thus providing access to users of different ages and dispositions. Like most 2007 events, it was tied in with school and local arts projects, and included an affordable tie-in book. The temporary exhibition was so successful that the museum board decided to have a permanent display of selected objects from the Equiano project (»Gallery 35«). Until the 1980s, material pertaining to slavery was largely found in the dens of ethnographic collections (such as the Arthur Wilkins collection in BMAG), in many cases not even making it to the exhibition surface, and when it did, it was not as a rule embedded in a meaningful narrative. Coinciding with the imperialist phase of colonialism, the ethnographic interest of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries resulted in a feverish move of amassing all sorts of material objects from overseas, and it was the

4

According to in-house visitor research, the exhibition exceeded the visitor target by 2000 and reached a significant proportion of African and Caribbean visitors. The tie-in website attracted 2.5 million visitors (cf. BMAG 2009).

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heroic collector’s story that superimposed itself as a master narrative over all the other possible stories ›buried‹ within the collected objects: »For all the strides that museums have made in recent years, it is still possible for a national museum to create a website dedicated to Hans Sloane and to omit to mention that the Jamaica he visited in 1687-8 was a slave-owning society or that some of the inhabitants from whom he sourced botanical information were forcibly imported to the island from West Africa.« (Prior 2007: 209)

Many of the objects that can today be seen in displays which illustrate the narrative of Britain’s slave trade, slavery and abolition found their way into the respective collections rather inadvertently, and without the purpose of being part of such a narrative. However, since many of these objects – such as china painted with the Wedgwood motif or manacles – did not require a lot of explanation, they were readily available to exhibitions and museums when demand for them presented itself. Indeed, they continue to be part of every slavery-related exhibition. What had been largely missing until 2007 was a more concerted effort to show different aspects of and perspectives on British slavery and abolition and to come up with (new) material that would challenge, or at least complement, the objects that had been used so frequently to support the same conventional narratives. Even then, according to Mike Phillips, essentialist understandings of a ›black‹ or ›white‹ side to history did not wane: »[I]nstead of looking at citizenship and identities in 2007, too many institutions had fallen back on the drama of the master and slave relationship, reinforcing the obsessive psychology of race.« (Museum in Docklands 2008: 9) Such issues had not been at the forefront of debates when the »Slavery Gallery« of the National Maritime Museum (NMM) in Liverpool opened its doors back in 1994, after more than a century of silence about the city’s, and more generally the nation’s, involvement in the trade. The gallery’s concept of presenting slavery was still very much informed by the multiculturalist approach of the 1980s and the remit, as part of a national institution, to cater for the needs of what were then identified as separate sections in the population. The multiculturalist framework that called for a celebra-

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tion of ›cultures‹5 partly showed itself in the Liverpool gallery’s displays: The curators of the »Slavery Gallery« made a point of giving an account of the ›richness‹ of the African cultures that preceded the system of European ›chattel‹ slavery, reflecting a discourse of revaluing a devalued and forgotten historicity of African culture and agency. Moreover, the legacy of a century-old African slave trade was emphasised. The curators meant well, but the exhibition did not sufficiently inform a general public about the historical relevance of the transatlantic slave trade and slavery as a system with large-scale consequences and impacts for both Africans and Europeans. The original impetus of staging a slavery exhibition in one of the centres of the Atlantic slave trade had a questionable outcome and gave the impression of a half-hearted engagement: Instead of Liverpool, Africa was put in focus. Instead of a multifaceted approach, a simple yet incomplete narrative was conveyed. To John Oldfield, the foregrounding of African cultures was part of a »revisionist« agenda also at work in other slavery exhibitions such as Wilberforce House in Hull and the Industrial Museum in Bristol. While in all these places attention was drawn to the richness of African cultures prior to European involvement, none of the displays drew attention to instances of agency in the life of the enslaved themselves, but rather emphasised cultural achievements prior to the state of enslavement (cf. Oldfield 2007: 122). The focus on Liverpool’s role in the slave trade could arguably have been more pronounced from the start, drawing from existing research by local historians in a more encompassing way.6 However, visitors’ – and even scholars’ – expectations were obviously divided on this point; for some, the emphasis on the local involvement was too pronounced already. In her study on »Geographies of Race«, anthropologist Jacqueline Nassy Brown comments on the »Slavery Gallery« of the National Maritime Museum:

5

The opening of the 1994 Liverpool gallery was preceded by a series of local history events such as the »Staying Power« exhibition (1991) which had an explicit anti-racist agenda. It coincided with similar initiatives up and down the nation, such as the Museum of London’s »The Peopling of London« exhibition (1993-4) (cf. Tibbles 2005: 131f.).

6

For instance Anstey/Hair (1976) and Cameron/Crook (1992).

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»In 1994 the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside installed a permanent exhibit, Transatlantic Slavery: Against Human Dignity, housing it in the Maritime Museum at the Albert Dock – a popular attraction among British tourists. [...] While Blacks I knew were elated with this development, I remain ambivalent. The exhibit’s placement in already marginalized Liverpool suggests that this »out-of-theway-place« is where Britons should properly go to learn about slavery. [...] Here, the territory of liberal antiracist feeling is not being expanded but contracted so that White Britons, in their own travels to Liverpool, may conveniently absolve themselves of any complicity in racism against Blacks in Britain as a whole – in their own communities and in Liverpool. Such would not be possible if the slave trade were ritually and institutionally narrated and denounced not only in the other twelve British slave ports but everywhere. To its credit, the exhibit treats the history of slavery in hemispheric rather than local terms. But situated where it is, the exhibit may work to further lodge Liverpool’s identity in the eighteenth century, rendering it – now permanently – a place apart. A national aberration. A slave to history.« 7

(Brown 2005: 186)

Importantly, the critique raised by Brown centres on the choice of the location rather than on the narrative conveyed in the exhibition itself. It is true that there should be other, and more, spaces of commemorating slavery and the trade, but not to have one in an ›apt‹ space like Liverpool would be like not having a Holocaust memorial in Berlin. However, it has to be noted that the exhibits of the »Slavery Gallery«, before they moved to the NMM’s third floor in 2007 (and were actually expanded into holdings of the International Slavery Museum, ISM), were located in a basement space and easily missed by the accidental visitor or passer-by. Nevertheless, the com-

7

The reluctance to criticise Liverpool for its amnesia with respect to its involvement in the slave trade can be explained by the perception of the city as a ›victim‹ of more recent history and politics, first and foremost Thatcher’s regionalism. This era, however, has clearly been overcome, and the city, by now one of Europe’s capitals of culture, has seen a major renaissance along with the former industrial centres of the north. To its credit, the city has recently assumed greater responsibility for its slave trading past. A mass-produced information leaflet (Westgaph 2007) produced by English Heritage and others and distributed in museums and public sites provides information about street names connected to this history, and there are many other initiatives in this direction.

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plex of the redeveloped Albert Dock itself was a popular (and free) venue for British visitors, as Adrian Mellor, puzzled by the enormous influx of people, observed in the early 1990s: »What do visitors make of the site? [...] What are 3.5 million of them doing on the Albert Dock anyway? [...] They are enjoying themselves; that is why they are there. [...T]hey are not worrying about the state of the culture, the spread of kitsch consumerism, or misrepresentation of their heritage.« (Mellor 1991: 106f.) Mellor also noted, if only marginally, that »[o]ne has to look quite hard for that rather important bit of Liverpool’s heritage called the slave trade« (Mellor 1991: 98). With the 1994 gallery this changed dramatically, and critics have been apprehensive about the relationship between the Albert Dock as a tourist site and the gallery. Vron Ware and Les Back express concerns about the ethics of tackling slavery as part of the popular »tourist itinerary« of the Dock and the National Maritime Museum: »A commemorative site is likely to become a potential feature of a tourist itinerary, which will in turn influence the way that it is presented to the public. This requires an interpretation of historical evidence that is sensitive to the line between entertainment and education. How does this story ›fit‹ into the bigger picture of the nation’s invincible seafaring past?« (Ware/Back 2002: 216)

While the Liverpool exhibit, with its transformation into a museum in its own right, has moved beyond representing just one of the aspects of Britain’s maritime history, the concerns addressed by Ware and Back are arguably applicable to a different institution, the NMS in Greenwich, where a new permanent gallery was established in 2007. This gallery in Greenwich, »Atlantic Worlds«, opened its doors under similar circumstances as the first »Slavery Gallery« in Liverpool in terms of the requirements that had to be met: Firstly, both were subject to the pressing need, as institutions devoted to maritime history, to address a major long-neglected aspect of this history;8 secondly, both were expected

8

That the slave trade is indeed a major aspect in Britain’s maritime history is reflected by the abundance of material that the NMM Greenwich had at its disposition. As Sara Wajid observes, »it’s hard to believe the gallery replaces an even more thematically wide-reaching ›Trade and Empire‹ gallery, which held half as many objects« (Wajid 2007).

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to cater for the needs of a heterogeneous society, particularly the neighbouring communities;9 thirdly, as major visitor attractions, both had to negotiate the subject matter in a way that would be accessible and meaningful to large audiences with diverse educational backgrounds. In the Greenwich case, the arrival of the abolition bicentenary seemed to have put additional pressure on the curators to come up with presentable results in time. In terms of location, approach and scope, however, there are many other parallels between the former Liverpool and the present Greenwich gallery: The Greenwich gallery is also not easy to find at first glance, hidden as it is on the third floor of the vast building and not particularly well indicated. It also seems to have been designed as an informative additional exhibit rather than as a commemorative space with local legacy. And it also led to divided reactions from visitors and critics alike. One conclusion to be drawn from these diverging impressions and the disappointment of expectations is that the exhibition in Liverpool was, and arguably the one in Greenwich still is too small. To their credit, the curators for the Greenwich venue clearly state that most of the items on display were taken from the existing collections of the Maritime Museum and »only tell part of the story« (gallery information plate); they do not provide an all-encompassing picture that would have required loaned objects. The Greenwich gallery appears modest and entirely swallowed up by the rest of the museum’s wealth of displays.10 Its title, »Atlantic Worlds«,

9

Liverpool has one of the oldest mixed-race communities of the UK; Greenwich is surrounded by South London districts whose population is to a significant extent black and Asian.

10 Kowaleski Wallace politely terms it »the most understated in its approach« in comparison with other exhibitions (Kowaleski Wallace 2009: 228), but it is precisely the understated character that can be seen as problematic. Reviewer Sara Wajid names two examples where this becomes evident: »[A] panel titled Migrations includes slavery as a sub-section. This accidental blurring of the line between forced and voluntary migration is uncomfortable. Similarly, a folder of personal case histories on ›Atlantic Migration‹ has one chapter on ›British Migration to North America and the Caribbean‹ with detailed personal case histories and a mirror one on ›Caribbean Migration to Britain‹. The Caribbean case studies are of the renowned black abolitionists, Wedderburn and Sancho. Organising the manual like this feels inappropriately neutral, retrospectively im-

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does not necessarily alert visitors to the issue of the slave trade. This cautious approach to the theme may go back to earlier controversies. The National Maritime Museum appeals to admirers of British naval history who might be angered when the museum attempts something unexpected. This was exemplified by the controversy about the Drawing Room exhibit of 1999, when the museum mounted a display that drew attention to the link between the everyday consumption of sugar and slavery. The museum eventually removed and partially relocated the exhibit, and, in the words of Mark Stein, »[i]n the debate about the celebratory and critical agenda of museology at the NMM, those in favor of celebrating maritime achievement seem to have gained the upper hand« (Stein 2004: 147f.). The Greenwich National Maritime Museum’s regular attempts to strive »for selftransformation, to move away from celebrating maritime achievement in order to engage in a critical representation of the involvement and complicity of British naval history« (ibid.: 147) have therefore not been entirely successful.11 The »Atlantic Worlds« gallery can be seen as yet another attempt that has not been entirely successful, but to have such attempts is certainly better than not to have them at all, and with the arrival of 2007, the institution had little choice but to make a renewed effort. Once ›found‹ by visitors, the gallery can be entered from two sides, and its objects are subdivided into thematic groups that are arranged in the form of honeycombs, with objects displayed both in the centre of the hexagonal formations and on the walls surrounding them. This open form allows visitors to enter and leave at will without being held captive by the sequence of a narrative. Topics addressed in the individual sections are: »Exploration and Encounter«, which presents the European perception of the world in maps and provides an insight into seafaring practices; »Trade«, which concerns itself with the rapidly increasing trade of goods across continents; »Enslavement«, which shows the step from trading in goods to

plying parity, as if the transatlantic slave trade was a kind of exchange programme.« (Wajid 2007) 11 Whereas Stein focuses on the reactions of conservative ›maritime admirers‹, Kowaleski Wallace reminds us that outrage was also generated by the fact that the show »reduced the representation of slavery to a single, manacled black hand rising up from a cargo hatch« (Kowaleski Wallace 2006: 221n52). Cf. also the comments by Vaswani (2001: 139).

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trading in human beings and, while addressing European chattel slavery, also highlights the involvement of African traders in the business. »War and Conflict« presents British abolition, the ensuing British patrolling of waters in search of illegal slave ships and the colonial wars between British and other European powers. Overall, the slave trade is presented as one of many aspects in the theme of Atlantic trade. The notion of the ›Atlantic world‹, however, is not presented as one that could be met with indifference, and the atmosphere in the gallery is accordingly low-key: The walls are kept in a grey colour suggestive of a rough sea. A pensive note is added through poetry and an art installation. »Caption poems«, written by John Agard, who was poet in residence at the museum in the commemorative year 2007, are placed alongside exhibits. The art installation, for which Gary Stewart and Trevor Mathison had been commissioned, consists of filmed sequences which are projected onto circular platforms at each entrance to the exhibition. The accompanying electronic sound which reminds one of the sea pervades the entire gallery as a sound carpet. Projected onto each platform are moving and static images of objects and quotes from historical texts that bear testimony to slavery. The two installations provide a mixture of visual impressions that allude to the ›Atlantic world‹ and the traumatic chapters buried within it, both in its seascape and in the archives. The artworks draw attention to the fragmentary nature of histories and can be seen as disturbing elements for visitors who ›merely‹ seek information. However, their capacity to ›disturb‹ is curbed by the limited space assigned to them, and their primary function appears to lie in accompanying the exhibition rather than adding a fundamentally different note to it. At both entrances, visitors are welcomed with the words: »This gallery is about the movement of people, goods and ideas across the Atlantic Ocean from the 17th to the 19th century. The connections created by these movements changed the lives of people in Europe, Africa and the Americas. They profoundly affected the cultures and societies of all three continents, and fundamentally shaped the world in which we live today.« (information plate)

The »Atlantic Worlds« gallery primarily centres on the objects on display. The narrative it offers is – like the artwork – of an accompanying rather than an embedding nature and avoids exploring the presented objects’

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possible implications. The narrative’s few causal links are largely based on economic and political events, developments and conflicts.12 The role of expert advisors to the gallery appears extremely pronounced, with a list placed prominently on a sizeable information plate and assuming a considerably large space in relation to the gallery’s limited size and scope, which gives the impression that the curators felt the need to guard themselves against attacks of some sort or other. Advisors to the gallery include, among others, James Walvin, an authoritative voice in the historiography of slavery and the slave trade. As an established historian in this field, but also as a ›public‹ historian who has been involved in television productions (such as The Slavery Business) and other museum projects, Walvin is a desirable expert partner for projects such as the one in Greenwich. While the new exhibit at the Maritime Museum remains rather distanced and suggestive with respect to its representational politics,13 both the old Liverpool »Slavery Gallery« as well as the new ISM have attempted a more emotionally challenging approach. The old gallery had a three-dimensional display of a reconstructed space below deck that was designed to make visitors ›feel‹, or at least form a vivid idea of the ›experience‹ of a slave ship. This approach has its own specific problems, as John Oldfield points out: »[S]hip reconstructions [...] run the risk of trivialising the transatlantic slave trade, not least by suggesting that by walking through and around them we can find out ›what it was really like‹. The presumption here is that we can ›know‹ the past by experiencing or re-experiencing it. Even if this were possible, where are the limits? Are those who find the Liverpool display ›clean‹ and ›empty‹ suggesting, as an alternative, total immersion in the slave experience, involving all our senses; and, if so, would this constitute ›knowledge‹ or merely pander to a kind of voyeurism that,

12 This forms a stark contrast to the anti-racist agendas and multiculturalist narratives which Oldfield identifies as »revisionist« (Oldfield 2007: 122) and which deliberately provide a narrative of continuity based, for instance, on diverse forms and developments of racism or imperialism. 13 To attentive visitors, but certainly not to those rushing through, the art installation will convey the impression that there are many buried implications in the artefacts and objects on display.

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by its very nature, demands thrills and entertainment? Inevitably, displays of this kind also raise awkward ethical questions. [...] This is not an argument for doing nothing, or simply saying that transatlantic slavery, like the Holocaust, defies description. But [...] we do need to think critically about our ability to use ship reconstructions ›as a means of entering into and living vicariously in a past time‹, just as we need to ask ourselves whether [...] ›absolute empathy‹ is either possible or desirable?« (Oldfield 2007: 125)

Instead of departing from the approach of a reenacted space, the opposite has been done in the new Liverpudlian museum: A film installation has been mounted in the central room of the exhibition space. Although it cannot be physically accessed (neither could the three-dimensional walkthrough display of the ship’s bottom be ›tried out‹ in the sense that one could lie down on its planks) it is mounted in a space that has to be entered. Once ›inside‹ the elliptical space, viewers are virtually surrounded by two concave screens. The display of a close-up on the face of a black person seems designed to convey a captured African’s experience of the Middle Passage. He is surrounded by a dark space, bedded on wooden planks, tossed back and forth by the movement of the ship on a rough sea and constrained by chains. The viewers are faced with an abundance of blood, sweat and vomit and the respective accompanying noises of the character’s suffering. The noise can even be heard in the adjoining exhibition rooms. The outside of the space is inconspicuous and does not give away or warn the viewers about the reenacted display that will captivate them once inside. In contrast, the unspectacular exterior paired with the amply audible sound will even rouse their curiosity, in particular the curiosity of minors who rush through the museum’s displays only to linger in the installation space. What are the implications of displays such as these? Their aim may be to rouse the visitors’ empathy and – similar to the rebuilt slave ship interior – to convey an impression of what it was ›like‹, but the cost of this seems to be either a portrayal of »the victims of slavery as degraded« or »becoming complicit in an inappropriate voyeurism« (Kowaleski-Wallace 2009: 230). While a mock ship interior can never break up the divide between displayed object and viewer, a well-designed film installation is a medium which can come very close to suggesting an ›experience‹ in which the viewers can lose themselves. The problem here is that very strong impressions and even emotions are conjured up on the one hand, while the act of mediation be-

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comes covert on the other. When viewers leave the elliptical installation in the ISM they are virtually left alone with its impact. Although the new Liverpool museum offers a great diversity of approaches for different visitors with special interests and expectations, the installation experience will most likely form the strongest and most memorable impression. The horrors it conjures up may provoke a sensationalist gaze or alienation, but they will not engage visitors in further learning and a will to assume responsibility for a shared past. Such responsibility, arguably, can only lie in the acquisition and spread of knowledge – not in simulated experiences of horror. In accordance with new concepts of museology, the ISM Liverpool uses an abundance of media that allow interactive access and even aural and haptic experiences. In many cases, these new forms exist side by side with the more traditional visual display composed of a mixture of object/image and text. The advantage of exhibits presented in multimedial display situations is that they can combine different approaches and include several narrative strands. The disadvantage is, obviously, that they can become more diffuse and difficult to grasp, particularly for one-time visitors. The new museology is a challenge not only to curators, but also to »the museum-going public« that is »confronted with the retreat of the white cube and, in its place, the creation of something like a Gesammtkunstwerk of a specifically designed combination of artistic objects, sometimes with the building and the spaces therein as active participants« (Bal 2010: 9). In the ISM, a wide variety of formats is combined, but still presented with care. Among the exhibits inviting visitors to engage in interactive learning are, for example, a detailed miniature replica of a Jamaican plantation in which single elements can be highlighted by pressing buttons. Drawers of a chest can be opened to reveal copies of diverse historical documents pertaining to the slave trade. A window immediately directs the visitors’ gaze to Liverpool’s ›Three Graces‹, the Cunard Building, the Liver Building and the Port Building, which are all eloquent built witnesses to the history of the city’s involvement and affluence gained in the trade. This view is incorporated into the display in room two and explained on a plaque adjoining the window. Despite the many different incentives that invite visitors to engage in diverse ways with the themes of slavery, they are never ›lost‹ with this abundance of possibilities, thanks to the clear structure of

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the exhibition, which offers visitors the opportunity to explore specific sections in depth, depending on their interest. In addition to the on-site possibilities, interactive learning is also offered through the ISM’s web presence. The latter has become an important factor of new museological concepts, allowing individuals to access small parts of the collection from outside the museum and to form a basic idea of the museum’s approach to the theme. One example of interactive learning that can be accessed both on the internet and through a touchscreen at the museum is a late-eighteenth-century painting by William Jackson, A Liverpool Slave Ship. Viewers can zoom in and out of different points in the painting which shows a massive ship, the sea and a coastline in the background. Zooming into the space between the ship and the coastline one will discover three small boats with Africans in a standing position. The additional information provided about the painting even adds to the moment of discovery when it reveals that »[t]he approaching small boats and some of the figures on the shoreline had been painted over prior to the painting’s acquisition by the museum and were only revealed as a result of conservation treatment in 1994«.14 In general, the Liverpool exhibition strongly operates with the notion of discovery: Firstly, it enables visitors to make their own discoveries and experiences based on their specific choices of engaging with interactive exhibits. Secondly, it presents much of its material as things unknown or hidden: »Hear the untold stories of enslaved people and learn about historical and contemporary slavery« is the slogan that invites people to search the website or visit the museum’s actual location. The museum’s agenda is clearly to close a gap (the fact that both the 1994 gallery and the present museum were the first of their kind at the time they opened their doors is frequently highlighted) and to provide information for and make an impact on newcomers as well as on ›experts‹. Compared to other institutions which were transformed in 2007, the ISM appears relatively independent of the 1807-2007 agenda and highlights its international remit. Its gallery of black achievers, which can be visited in its final room that adds a positive note to the horrendous history presented before, includes a fair portion of Britons, but it also sports international black figures. Nevertheless, the local history and legacy is not understated.

14 Accessible at http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/maritime/collections/artsea/ paintings/slaveshipzoomify/index.aspx.

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Overall, visitors interested in diverse aspects, scopes and impacts of slavery, the trade, abolition and emancipation will find ample material to consider and will still be guided by the exhibition’s clear structure. The new Docklands Museum’s gallery »London, Sugar and Slavery«, which opened in November 2007, shares the new museological approach, but its inclusion of multimedial displays is not as lucidly organised.15 In contrast to London’s other major display, the »Atlantic Worlds« gallery in Greenwich, it takes a perceptible stance and has a clear agenda in that the history it presents is London’s history rather than a ›black‹ history or a history of trade, empire and the sea. But this London history is also history shared by many, as a film montage suggests in the entrance area. This film uses passages taken from Equiano’s Interesting Narrative, but the sequences change, moving back and forth between images of the modern Docklands area and historic images of slavery and individuals who move their lips to Equiano’s words which are recounted by an extradiegetic narrator. While the installation may serve to communicate the gallery’s agenda, the first major static object greeting visitors near the entrance is more disturbingly explicit: It is an excerpt taken from a chartbook that lists the voyages of slave ships leaving London during one decade in the late seventeenth century, complete with the names of owners and captains, the date of clearance in London, the number of enslaved Africans, and the destination in the Americas. Simple as it may appear, this chart succeeds in conveying a memorable impression of the trade’s scale and has fixed the exhibition’s reputation as the one »most comfortable naming names« (Kowaleski Wallace 2009: 230). The focus on individual profiteers is expanded in the course of the exhibition to the entire city which – as is continuously repeated – was shaped by the slave trade and slavery since the seventeenth century. The exhibition offers a blunt critique of the capitalist ideology which enabled the trade and slavery overseas and provided a broad basis of (sometimes silent, sometimes vociferous) consent with these practices in the metropole. The exhibition challenges visitors to rethink what they know about the transatlantic

15 Kowaleski Wallace describes the »dramatic ›light and sound‹ displays« as both »evocative« and »disorienting« (2009: 231); whether the former or the latter is the more apt description depends, indeed, on the individual visitor’s capacity and willingness to take these incentives in.

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slave trade by frequently addressing them directly with questions. It has a strong interest in exposing the representation of slavery past and present and to instil in viewers some critical interest in what they know. It problematises language and also images, for instance by presenting an eighteenth-century image of plantations in the West Indies alongside a more recent representation based on historical insight. Aside from this, iconic symbols are ›deconstructed‹: Objects containing the famous Wedgwood image are displayed, but attention is also drawn to their presentation of blacks as victims. In the case of the Wedgwood medallion, this has been achieved through an outreach project in which members of the local community in East London were asked to provide reinterpretations of the Wedgwood motif. The results of this project were transferred onto selfmade sugar bowls and can now be seen in the gallery. In the same way other images and symbols are questioned and critically examined. The displays are a mixture of art, documentation, narrative, description of items, creation and reaction (in the form of participants’ comments and other contributions such as poems). The gallery’s aim is clearly not only to fill gaps and tell untold stories, but to draw attention to the implications of these gaps and new narratives. The exhibition stands out as innovative in many respects, but its audience is perhaps somewhat limited because in contrast to the national exhibitions and museums (and the ISM Liverpool) it is not free of charge. Since the Docklands and the Greenwich projects are both located in London and were planned and carried out simultaneously, they literally invite comparison. As new and permanent projects that emerged after the big debates surrounding museology, heritage and Britishness had been waged, the two galleries could both be expected to reflect the changed public and museum agendas, i.e. show a ›richer‹ and more inclusive heritage that can speak to heterogeneous audiences. However, the result was not only two very different exhibitions, but different curatorial concepts: Both places invited in people from outside the museum. Whereas the Greenwich gallery, object-focused as it is, does not show any traces of these initiatives (apart from the art installation and a plate with the names of consultants), the input of diverse consultants and even participants is clearly perceptible in the Docklands gallery. Its curators made a point of being open to the possibility of a new approach and included outside people even on the level of creation. This was not merely reflected in non-com-

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mittal consultants’ meetings prior to the project’s materialisation. Rather, it materialised in the display situation itself as well as in an after-the-process reflective toolkit that is made available online (cf. Museum in Docklands 2008). The displays in the exhibition not only acknowledge, but also expose the presence of controversies arising from the creative process of ›inclusive scholarship‹. Visitors are not spared the debate for the sake of a polished space of display and an explanatory narrative; rather, they are confronted with controversial views in a direct manner. The statement made here is obvious: Participation on the creative level replaces ›gesture politics‹ (such as hearing community consultants), while debate and polyphony are favoured over patronising didacticism. In order to achieve a veritable change, the very structure of a museum display and its language must be reconsidered. Tom Wareham, who was involved in the process at the Docklands museum, describes the process of what he terms »languaging« in »London, Sugar and Slavery«: »It hardly needs to be said that the subject of this gallery is a difficult one. I don’t think any museum has approached it lightly or without some anxiety. But there was one issue the Consultative Group raised that took the curatorial team completely by surprise. It is such a fundamental matter that I don’t think I’ve even now grasped the full implications of it. From the outset of the project, the text for the gallery had been drafted by members of the team. We had shared this with the Consultative Group, and then regularly deleted, edited or re-wrote it in response to their suggestions. Then in July 2007, just weeks before the text was due to be sent to the designers, we presented what we thought would be the final draft to the Consultative Group. There was, it has to be said, some evident uneasiness among the group. Then one of them took the plunge and began to explain the problem. It was the narrative voice. The voice was that of the museum curator, not the voice of the community it addressed. Despite all our care in dealing with a whole raft of difficult issues, we had overlooked something so fundamental, we were stunned. More than that, we were dismayed at the prospect of having to completely rewrite over 15,000 words of text in time to meet our critical deadline. Once again, though, the Consultative Group proved its value. One of the group agreed to sit down with one of the curatorial team and rewrite every panel. It took six exhausting days, but the result was something the curatorial team are certainly proud of. Once again, though, I must

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leave it to you to judge the gallery for yourselves.« (Museum in Docklands 2008: 13)

As has been outlined above, debate and controversy as well as the questions of who owns a (version of) history and who can tell it are reflected on several levels of the display; not only in the programmatic video installation cited above, but also in the presentation and (re- or new) contextualisation of historic objects. Overall, the Docklands gallery demands a lot from its visitors, quite possibly even overfeeding them, but then the theme of slavery and the trade are arguably too complex to be presented in too simple terms or as a mere aside. Many voices are needed in the discourse. Acknowledging their presence is a first step, but acknowledging that they will not necessarily speak in unison must follow. 2007, with its sheer number of museum initiatives, seems to have led to a ›healthy‹ polyphony, so that one may be inclined to see Catherine Prior’s commentary that museums reflect »British society’s puzzling amnesia about the crucial role that the enslaved peoples of the Caribbean played in the enrichment and industrialization of modern Britain« (Prior 2007: 209) as outdated. That this has changed perceptibly is certainly one of the results of 2007. The Museum in Docklands may stand out for its efforts of diversifying the agency of the ›historians‹ and ›narrators‹ of slavery, but all the other institutions considered above also focus on different aspects of resistance, rebellion and emancipation on the side of Afro-Caribbeans. In the National Maritime Museum Greenwich, this is achieved through objects such as the bust of Dessalines16 and references to Maroon communities in the Caribbean. In the ISM Liverpool, the Saint Domingue rebellion is represented in depth and contextualised within a history of resistance towards the end of the exhibition’s second section. The Docklands gallery grants resistance in Jamaica ample space. Its »Maroon project, Journey to Accompong, a display within the LSS gallery generated by members of a youth organisation in Brent known as The Linx Project, from their journey to Jamaica to meet members of the Maroon community« (Museum in Docklands 2008: 12), is one of the many results of the museum’s inclusive

16 Jean Jacques Dessalines played a decisive role in the Saint Domingue revolt and struggle for independence and became the first head of state of the republic of Haiti in 1804.

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curatorship practiced throughout the preparations for the gallery. Even Wilberforce House Museum has emancipated itself from the formerly prevalent Evangelical abolitionist narrative to allow resistance its due place. However, religion here remains a leitmotif, as the emphasis on voodoo and obeah as countercultural elements in the Caribbean shows. A few years from now, we will be able to scrutinise the sustainability of the 2007 initiatives. Of particular interest for such an undertaking are those institutions which did not establish a permanent, separate section or gallery devoted to the themes surrounding slavery but included special projects for a limited period. Many of these short-term, temporary initiatives received a major share of public funding. An approach taken by several museums on the occasion of 2007 was based on a rethinking of stories told by objects already in their collection. Like the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, many museums possess collections that offer close links to the history of Britain’s slave trade, slavery and abolition and can become speaking objects in these narratives. This approach is intelligent not only because it can be used for mainstreaming new aspects into the museum’s permanent narrative and display order, but also because it can achieve a change in perspective with relatively modest means, i.e. avoiding the more costly acquisition or loan of new objects that would then also have to be embedded and explained within the site’s context. This approach was taken by both the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) and the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London. The NPG’s 2007 initiative »Portraits, People and Abolition«, whose opening was attended by Minister of Culture David Lammy, set up not only a programme of singular events surrounding the slave trade and its legacy, but cultural geographer Caroline Bressey was also commissioned to write a »journey through the NPG’s collection« focused on the theme.17 The portraits which were part of the trail are still accessible online, but have to be searched for on the NPG’s website under the section Digital Resources/History. The approach of addressing and scrutinising the existing collections could have easily been mainstreamed into the gallery’s permanent displays. As it stands, however, there is a

17 Thus described on the NPG’s website (http://www.itzcaribbean.com/national _portrait_gallery.php.). The exhibition at the NPG was part of the initiative »A Walk Around Westminster: On the Road to Abolition« (cf. pp. 130-131 and fig. 8).

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special information leaflet and online presence that has to be consulted by those specially interested in the theme, but there is no information that will enlighten passing-by visitors to the permanent displays. Thus a first step towards mainstreaming the history of the slave trade, slavery and abolition was made on the occasion of 2007, but once the bicentenary had passed, this information disappeared into the ›events archive‹, remaining more or less accessible, but difficult to find. A similar case in point was a trail through the V&A. Planned to coincide with the museum’s »Uncomfortable Truths« art exhibition,18 the »Traces of the Trade« trail was designed to be led by tour guides and community ›ambassadors‹ in person, and there was little printed text material accompanying it. The maps provided were only slightly helpful in light of the vast space of the venue: »The large size and the labyrinthine layout of the V&A meant that viewing its exhibition was more like being on a treasure hunt; some displays were difficult to locate and view, especially for those unable to walk long distances« (Kowaleski Wallace 2009: 225) – and, one might add, for any visitor who did not come with the specific aim to track down the trail. After 2007, not the slightest trace is left, and visitors will not be alerted to the diversity of stories that, for instance, a large eighteenth-century embroidery from Herefordshire or the Drake Jewel and an abundance of other ›speaking objects‹ hold. The reason habitually cited for the temporary and limited nature of such projects is that funds for the 2007

18 »Uncomfortable Truths« consisted of works by eleven British and international artists. These thought-provoking works of art were positioned among, or next to, objects in the museum’s permanent displays, shedding a new light on these objects’ implications. Works such as Lubaina Himid’s Naming the Money, Keith Piper’s Lost Vitrines and Yinka Shonibare’s Sir Foster Cunliffe, Playing (2007) served to comment on the aspects of commerce, material culture and the accompanying mindsets (so well reflected in the permanent displays of the V&A) and the seemingly paradoxical coexistence of British liberalism and British slavery in the eighteenth century. »Uncomfortable Truths« was shown in London from 20 February to 17 June 2007; then the artworks were exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art in Hull where they were arranged – more conventionally – in sections devoted to individual artists, not placed in a dialogue with other objects directly, but rather with the other 2007 sights and events at Hull (including Wilberforce House, the city’s commemorative initiative and others).

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initiative had only been granted for a relatively short period. However, even within a restricted temporal frame sustainable results can be achieved. Setting up additional information plates or rewriting some of the existing ones cannot be considered a large financial investment. Another temporary exhibition for which makers chose to complement material in their (rather young) collections with an abundance of loaned objects and artwork was the »Breaking the Chains« exhibition at the Empire and Commonwealth Museum, an independent organisation located in Bristol since 2002.19 The exhibition was also set up on the occasion of the bicentenary and the city felt obliged to jump on board, advertising the exhibition in the following manner: »Before they planned Bristol’s commemorative events, the city council asked local people, including the city’s well-established black community, how they wanted to remember 1807. ›Breaking the Chains‹ at the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum is the result. Based on what the community wants, the exhibition is as much a celebration of African culture as a commemoration of the abolition of slavery. ›Breaking the Chains‹ features beautifully carved artistic, religious and domestic African and Caribbean artefacts, as well as displays explaining Britain’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade.« (DCLG 2007: 23)

Although the museum’s collaboration with the city was limited, the latter’s official events list of 2007 redirected visitors to this long-running, awardwinning exhibition, which attracted more than 50,000 visitors and offered a breadth of approaches similar to that of the gallery in London’s Docklands and the ISM Liverpool. Sound stations were installed to make personal memoirs (both historical and present-day) and music samples available, thus also drawing attention to an ›oral history archive‹ of commemorating slavery that continues to impact on present-day popular culture. Additionally, an interactive box invited visitors to convey their feedback orally rather than in a visitors’ book. The exhibition was subdivided into six thematic sections, beginning with general information about slavery, moving on to Africa and Europe, the Middle Passage and slavery in the Caribbean,

19 Since its opening in 2002, the museum navigates a difficult line of coming to terms with both the ›greatness‹ and the brutality of British colonialism and the empire. For a reflection on this ambiguous agenda cf. C. McLeod (2009).

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abolition and the struggle to end slavery, as well as the long consequences of slavery that continued to be felt by people in the Caribbean. Reference to the horrors of slavery occurred in a more subtle way than at the ISM Liverpool: Rather than film clips containing reenacted scenes of suffering, a modern image depicting the slave ship Brookes charged with ›human cargo‹ was provided in a narrow corridor. And instead of a gallery of achievers, the final space provided multimedial displays (including interactive touch screens) that conveyed a host of reflections and opinions about today’s legacy of the presented history. The relocation of the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum to London left a noticeable void regarding representations of Bristol’s involvement in the slave trade.20 Indeed, the city’s permanent galleries faced great difficulties in putting this history on their permanent agendas, having to rely on loaned objects and short term funding packets. The Museum of Industry’s gallery »A Respectable Trade?«21 − the title obviously alluding to Philippa Gregory’s bestselling novel and its television adaptation (pp. 66-67) − disappeared when the museum was closed in autumn 2006. A new museum, M Shed, opened its doors in June 2011 and hosts displays pertaining to the city’s industrial and maritime history. Material objects that speak of Bristol’s slave-trading history are not as abundant as in Liverpool or London, but existing research shows a number of possible points of engagement.22 M Shed does not offer a gallery exclusively devoted to the subject matter of the slave trade, but includes exhibits relating to the theme in its »Bristol People Gallery«.23 In light of the legacy of the 2007 initiative

20 The reopening is planned for 2012. 21 »A Respectable Trade?« was originally mounted in Bristol’s City Museum and Art Gallery. 22 Cf., for instance, a reading list published by Bristol Libraries in 2009 (»Bristol 1807: A Sense of Place: Our City in the Year of Abolition«). 23 Cf. http://mshed.org/museum/galleries/people. African artefacts such as a Benin head can be admired in the City Museum’s »curiosity gallery«, which was opened in autumn 2009 and invites visitors to »explore objects from the Archaeology and World Cultures collections from different perspectives« (cf. http:// www.bristol.gov.uk/ccm/content/Leisure-Culture/Museums-Galleries/curiositygallery-.en).

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which challenged Bristol, its institutions and organisations to make a greater, concerted effort of addressing and re/presenting the legacy of the city’s past to a wider public, the downsizing of the scope of what was first made available in 1999 with »A Respectable Trade« appears surprising, at least on the surface. The permanent space granted to the theme of slavery and the slave trade in M Shed is not specially advertised. One can argue that this permanent space has been successfully mainstreamed into the museum’s ›story‹ of »Bristol People«. However, one might also wish for a more immediate and visible presence of the city’s history of slavery following the 2007 debates, which were to a significant extent debates about societal participation and inclusion in present-day Bristol. In this overview, only some of the more outstanding initiatives have been addressed while many smaller ones had to be neglected. The general picture emerging from the examples discussed is that the bicentenary of 2007 in itself can be seen as a major historical ›event‹ with a wide-reaching impact on the British public perception of the national history: »The bicentennial itself seems to have regenerated interest in all aspects of the history of transatlantic slavery and abolition. Indeed, one would have to hark back seven or eight generations to the great popular petitions of the half century before 1840 to find a similar level of British popular involvement.« (Drescher 2008: 541) Where it did not provide the first incentive, 2007 was a major push towards an intensified engagement with the history of slavery, the slave trade, abolition and emancipation. Even some of the temporary exhibitions have left traces in the public culture, »in the form of web pages, in many cases with links designed for schoolteachers. Looked at collectively, such traces suggest how British state schools might work to integrate last year’s lessons into the curriculum for its youngest citizens. Indeed, as of September 2008 the UK National Curriculum [...] mandate[d], for the first time, the teaching of ›the nature and effects of the slave trade, and resistance and decolonization‹ for Key Stages three and four. The stakes, then, of the many museum exhibits are arguably quite high, since, in their community outreach, they suggest broader, popular trends in the processing of a particular national history. For school groups in particular the museum exhibitions may well become a kind of walk-in textbook.« (Kowaleski Wallace 2009: 226)

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In addition to educational material, it is noteworthy that in some of the cases discussed above, catalogues were made available to accompany and complement the museum displays, and as a rule, the catalogues close gaps where certain exhibitions show[ed] shortcomings. However, catalogues are costly and are not necessarily purchased by the average museum visitor. If visitors find an exhibition lacking, they are not likely to buy the accompanying catalogue. As in the case of the commemorative coin whose design is explained in a booklet, an exhibition that needs to be further explained in an accompanying book will not speak to a general audience. A successful exhibition already has to convey the sense that it is a satisfactory resource in itself as visitors, when they want to learn about history and for this purpose go to a museum, expect the museum to convey a core of knowledge. The museum, whatever other function it may fulfil today (including spectacle and entertainment), still bears a considerable authority in popular perception and is still perceived as a proverbial ›shrine of learning‹. But does the accessibility of knowledge mean that it is mainstreamed into British historical culture? Does the history of slavery not defy mainstreaming or even ›popularising‹ efforts? As contested history it certainly needs to be addressed and conveyed with care. In his overview of slavery exhibitions before 2005, Anthony Tibbles still states that the »question ›How did the black community get here?‹ [...] immediately led to the subject of the transatlantic slave trade« (Tibbles 2005:131f.) and that it is a question that has to be accounted for by exhibition makers once they get involved in the theme of slavery. While this may still be one important link, it is also a link that detracts attention from the many other legacies of the slave trade which are ›spoken of‹ – but not always heard – in Britain’s architecture, painting, and material objects for everyday use, in short, the nation’s heritage culture at large. Deconstructing this bastion is no small thing and cannot be achieved through amassing new aspects and celebrating a ›diverse heritage‹ without effecting changes to the stories that were previously disseminated. In the words of Colin Prescod, »to speak always and only of the ›richness of London’s and Britain’s heritage‹ risks presenting an artificially sweetened version of heritage. Heritage, the residue of cultural history, will consist of rottenness as well as richness, with a record of privations of pillage as well as accumulations of cultural wealth. This is ›grown-up‹ history and heritage.« (Prescod 2009: 80) The legacy of Britain’s involvement in slavery and the slave trade, and even the process of

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abolition and emancipation, are complex and uncomfortable matters, not something that can be brought before an audience in such a manner that they »may comprehend the whole of it at a single view«, as Thomas Clarkson formulated the intent of the ›Abolition Map‹ printed for purposes of visualisation in his ambitious History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament.24 That these matters have begun to be addressed at all in the nation’s museums is laudable. Attempts at ›popularising‹ the knowledge about them, however, must be watched with critical attention, as they require that the subject matter be conveyed in the most accessible and grappling manner; such approaches may lead to one-sided presentations or even misrepresentations of the subject. The degree to which the history of slavery is ethically and emotionally charged transpires not only on the level of collective commemoration and the public exhibition space, but also on the individual, psychological level. This becomes clear when we consider yet another field in which history reaches a large audience: in the private sector of genealogy.

24 Qtd. by Marcus Wood who comments that »Clarkson’s map, like his title page, finds no place for the African or New World slave. Yet as the indefatigable and fearless work-horse of the first phase of British abolition campaigning, and as a pre-eminent anti-slavery propagandist, Thomas Clarkson was in, and felt himself to be in, a unique position to provide an official justification of the movement.« (Wood 2000: 4)

8. Family Matters: Genealogy as Popular (Black) History

The claim of history’s relevance to the present plays a decisive role in attempts to popularise historical knowledge. An effective means of emphasising such relevance is to point out and create personal links between past and present, between history and individual people’s actual lives. Arguably, the most personal access individuals can have to the past is through the history of their family; researching such history may be a first step in generating a wider historical interest, and it can produce a sense of historical agency. Amateur genealogy has a long tradition, but it is enjoying particularly wide-spread popularity at the current cultural moment. Indeed, genealogical research has become a highly active – and commercially viable – branch of popular history, especially since it has been facilitated by the internet, which now offers a whole range of products and projects concerned with private and social genealogy. Some serve a purely personal interest of finding out ›where we come from‹, while others are didactically orientated and use family history to trigger an interest in one’s country’s history.1 In relation to the history of the African diaspora, however, a generational approach poses a particular challenge since the system of slavery aimed to destroy family ties and links to an African ancestry. While the enslaved were enchained in iron fetters, their family chains were deliber-

1

Ancestry.co.uk, for instance, offers a monthly membership rate that differs depending on how far the amateur researchers want to go back in time and how far they want to extend their research geographically.

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ately broken. Yet despite this traumatic disruption of heritage and legacies, the generational approach to black diasporic history has been frequently practised, especially since the international success of Alex Haley’s Roots – first as a book (subtitled The Saga of an American Family, 1976) and soon after as a television series (1977). Roots demonstrated to a large audience that family trees of black people could still be traced, at least in some cases, back to Africa, and it sparked a wave of historical activity among African Americans, ranging from a still expanding branch of African American tourism to West Africa, to the less expensive alternative of genealogy on the internet. This virtual travel into one’s family’s past is encouraged by organisations such as the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society, Afriquest (a free online database for African and African American genealogy interests) or Distant Cousin, which offers a compilation of black genealogy records. In the United Kingdom, no comparable organisation exists so far. However, here too the family and generational theme has developed into a prominent topos for presenting the history of Britons whose past lies in the African diaspora. This section focuses on three products that make prominent use of the family theme to depict the history of black Britain: a bestselling novel, a genealogical celebrity show and a documentary that combines travel back to Africa with genetic evidence. As a variety of the historical novel, the generational or family novel presents history through the formative experiences and development of members of a family over several generations. It characteristically links individual and collective history (cf. Assmann 2007: 74) and thus provides a personalised entry into history par excellence. The appeal of this approach to the past is attested by the success of the family novel in ›high‹ as well as ›popular‹ literature.2 The genre was used to great acclaim in Zadie Smith’s

2

In popular literature, its success with readers, especially a female audience, has been uninterrupted to this day. Despite this longevity, the popular family novel gets short shrift in studies on popular literature such as Bloom (2002), McCracken (1998), Hughes (1993) or Wallace (2005). As a ›serious‹ literary genre, the family novel enjoyed a first peak during the first decades of the twentieth century. For a study of this peak, which includes Galsworthy’s Forsythe Saga, cf. Glitz (2009); for a brief general view of the genre from a comparative point of view cf. Ru (1992). Eichenberg (2009) investigates the new peak of generational novels since the late 1990s for the German context.

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White Teeth, an international bestseller of the year 2000, which was adapted for primetime television in 2002.3 The novel’s main concerns are the emergence of multiethnic Britain through post-war migration from the Caribbean and South Asia, and the consequences this migration has had for the definition of an ›English‹ identity: Smith ultimately suggests that Englishness cannot be defined by origins and that biological descent does not or should not matter any more.4 However, the novel also bears clear traces of (postcolonial) historiographical metafiction and, through a pronounced teeth, root and tree imagery as well as an omniscient narrator’s ironic commentary, subverts the programme of imperialist history and historiography. For a period from the 1970s to the 1990s, White Teeth traces the experiences of two generations of two migrant families, the Bangladeshi Iqbals and the mixed West Indian-Cockney Joneses. They live in a London that is becoming increasingly ›multiethnic‹, torn between the extremes of a naive multiculturalism sensitive to migrants’ customs and festivals, and racist insensitivities such as Norman Tebbit’s cricket test, which is cited with emphasis on its historical implications as the epigraph to the novel’s second part: »›Are you still looking back to where you came from or where you are?‹« The novel’s historical scope is widened through flashbacks that offer revisionist glimpses into the more distant past of Britain’s main migrant groups. In the part set during the Second World War, the novel shows how both family fathers, white Archie Jones and brown Samad Iqbal, have served the British war effort as comrades (and, significantly, not in segregated regiments). When portraying the heyday of British imperialism the novel debunks colonial myths of British superiority in the Raj and in Jamaica respectively, and it develops counter-narratives to the ›official‹ versions of history. Specifically, Smith addresses how colonial history and its injustices are collectively remembered or mis-remembered –

3

For an analysis of the television adaptation cf. Korte (2009); the television version, however, reduces the temporal range of Smith’s original historical references significantly.

4

Cf. the frequently cited statement of one of the characters that the idea of a pure English origin is a »fairy tale« (Smith 2001: 232), and the fact that the baby Irie Jones is expecting at the end of the novel has white, black and brown ancestors and a father (either of the Iqbals’ identical twins) that cannot be ultimately determined.

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distorted through imperialist frames of interpretation – and passed on through the chain of generations. For instance, the school attended by the young members of the two families, the Iqbals’ twins and the Joneses’ daughter Irie, is named after Sir Edmund Flecker Genard, »whom the school had decided to remember as their kindly Victorian benefactor« (Smith 2001: 303). He made his fortune with tobacco in the West Indies and decided to invest some of it for the ›benefit‹ of both his Jamaican workers and the English working class. However, a flashback from the perspective of the historically omniscient narrator exposes the alleged philanthropist as a man who enjoyed ›his‹ black women just as unscrupulously as the slave-holders who preceded him – and just like his white friend Durham, who impregnated Irie’s great-grandmother but had no intention of marrying her. »The English are experts at relinquishing one responsibility and taking up another. But they also like to think of themselves as men of good conscience, so in the interim Durham entrusted the continued education of Ambrosia Bowden to his good friend Sir Edmund Flecker Genard, who was, like Durham, of the opinion that the natives required instruction, Christian faith and moral guidance. Genard was charmed to have her – who wouldn’t be? – a pretty, obedient girl, willing and able round the house. But two weeks into her stay, and the pregnancy became obvious. People began to talk. It simply wouldn’t do.« (Smith 2001: 358)

Flecker Genard is later killed in the Jamaica earthquake of 1907 while trying to rape Ambrosia in a church (cf. Smith 2001: 360), but Irie is unaware of his ignoble role in the past of her maternal family and thus also of the irony of her school’s name. However, Irie is painfully aware of other gaps in her family history. When she tries to imagine her family tree on the Jamaican side (cf. Smith 2001: 338), its early branches, which go back to the days of slavery, are full of anonymous men and unknown paternities – a white legacy that has been silenced both in official history and in the history of Irie’s family. 5 Through

5

Accordingly, Irie is envious of the full family tree which another character proudly exhibits on the wall of his study. Marcus Chalfen descends from Jewish migrants who came to England in the 1890s and apparently had no problems tracing his ancestors. To the reader, Chalfen’s family tree demonstrates above

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the information provided by the historically omniscient narrator, the novel’s readers are enabled to fill at least one significant blank in Irie’s genealogy. How much Irie will ever find out about her Jamaican family heritage and the crimes committed against her female ancestors is left open. But she develops a strong interest in her family history and reads up on anything she can find among the things her grandmother once brought from Jamaica: »She laid claim to the past – her version of the past – aggressively, as if retrieving misdirected mail. So this was where she came from. This all belonged to her, her birthright, like a pair of pearl earrings or a post office bond. X marks the spot, and Irie put an X on everything she found, collecting bits and bobs (birth certificates, maps, army reports, news articles) and storing them under the sofa, so that as if by osmosis the richness of them would pass through the fabric while she was sleeping and seep right into her.« (Smith 2001: 400)

The overwhelming success of Smith’s novel with a large audience is explained at least partly by the skill with which its author combined topical interests around the time of the Millennium: the definition of English- and Britishness, the multiethnic society, the significance of history (especially following the proclaimed ›end‹ of history after 1989) and, last but not least, a widespread interest in matters of family descent and the practice of genealogy. It is hardly surprising that primetime television jumped on the bandwagon of ancestor tracing and developed the new format of the celebrity genealogy show. This type of reality television (itself a popular vogue) sends well-known personalities on a quest for their – often unexpected, intriguingly ›hidden‹6 – ancestry, and with this ancestry, a quest for facets of their country’s history. The format, which combines time travel with the

all that his pronounced Englishness is not based on any ›naturally‹ English origin but is merely a nurtured property. He has successfully adapted to an English (upper-middle-class) environment, and for his cultural identity, descent and genes seem to play no role whatsoever. 6

Cf. the blurb for the DVD release of Who Do You Think You Are? (Series One): »Who Do You Think You Are? follows the journeys of ten well known personalities as they explore their family trees, uncover their family history and discover fascinating and poignant facts about their ancestors that have been, until now, hidden in the annals of time.« (our emphasis)

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visual attractions of actual journeys through space, was originally developed by the BBC for their series Who Do You Think You Are? (which began in 2004). This programme proved highly successful with its audiences, first on BBC 2 and then, because of its growing appeal, on the more mainstream-orientated BBC 1.7 The series is available on DVD and has inspired a range of similar television products in the UK and abroad; it is also believed to have triggered a vogue of ancestry hunting and other historical activities among the lay public. As the Guardian noted when new archive records were published on the internet in 2009: »Hundreds of thousands of people took to the web this morning to hunt down ancestors and former occupants of their homes – or simply take a peek at other people’s lives almost a century ago – as the 1911 census records of more than 27 million people in England went online, three years earlier than planned. [...] Organisers of the publication are expecting peak demand to be triple that for the 1901 records, published in January 2002, and have prepared 26 servers – five times the previous total – to cope with ferocious public appetite for researching family trees, fuelled by programmes such as the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are?.« (Meikle/Walker 2009)

As might be expected of a show produced for the twenty-first century’s multiethnic society and a broadcasting company that has committed itself to diversity, the family trees presented in Who Do You Think You Are? – like the fictional ones in Zadie Smith’s novel – include those of famous black and Asian British personalities. The first series, for instance, featured episodes on the British-Asian writer and actress Meera Syal and the black news presenter Moira Stuart. Stuart declares at the beginning of ›her‹ episode: »I am a true mongrel. And I’m proud of it« (0:00:50-55) – quite in a manner that echoes the positive attitude towards ›mixed‹ origin and ›mixed‹ Englishness expressed in White Teeth. Stuart was »born and raised in Britain« (0:01:38-40), but her family roots are in the Caribbean

7

On the popularity of Who Do You Think You Are? cf. ratings in the Guardian Media of 4 September 2008: »BBC 1’s genealogy show Who Do You Think You Are? was the clear winner in a competitive battle for the 9 pm slot last night, September 3, with ITV 1’s new drama Lost in Austen attracting just under 4 million viewers.« (Holmwood 2008)

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(Dominica and Antigua), and it is in the Caribbean where the programme’s narrative eventually leads her to make a surprising and, to Stuart, disturbing discovery concerning her origins. What might surprise the audience first, however, is that the migration history of Stuart’s family is not inscribed in the typical and familiar story of the Windrush generation. As the episode’s voice-over narration is careful to point out, Stuart’s genealogy leads us to historical terrain which the audience will still have to discover: »The popular perception is that black immigration to Britain began in the 1950s, when thousands of Caribbean migrants came to the UK in search of work. But Moira’s ancestors tell a different story.« (0:02:10-23) Following Stuart’s family tree through the maternal line, the audience is introduced to a history of black migration that preceded the Windrush and that was also socially more privileged. Stuart’s mother, Marjorie Gordon, stemmed from »a wealthy middle-class household« in Dominica (0:03:40-42) and was sent to Britain in 1935 to finish her education in a boarding school. During the Second World War, she trained as a nurse and, as the narration is careful to underscore, thus »was one of ten thousand black Britons living and working in London during the war« (0:04:34-40). The presence of black people in Britain during the Second World War, now a prominent motif in popular narratives of black British history, is illustrated with authentic photographs and newsreel footage, thus identifying – in a manner typical of the whole series – the history of the celebrity’s family as part of the UK’s wider social history. Stuart’s grandmother, Clara Christian, is an even more unexpected figure in the history of black people in Britain: a rare female specimen among the few colonial subjects who came to Britain early in the twentieth century to finish their higher education. She studied medicine in Edinburgh which, as the narrator points out in another more general observation, had »emerged as a haven for black students from Africa and the Commonwealth« after Emancipation (0:10:17-21). Stuart is shown paying homage to a plaque erected in honour of the university’s first African graduate, James Africanus Horton of Sierra Leone (1835-1883). Going one more generation into the past, Clara Christian’s social privilege is explained as the result of her father’s eminent and exceptional career. George James Christian, Moira Stuart’s great-grandfather, was born in Dominica in 1869 and came to London to study law during the final years of Queen Victoria’s reign. He became a renowned practitioner of the

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law and a politician with a special concern for »the plight of black people throughout the world« (0:27:23-26). Even as a young man, George James Christian was a delegate to the First Pan-African Congress in 1900 whose aim, as the audience learns from the voice-over comment, »was to examine the destructive effects of colonialism. George Christian was at the heart of proceedings« (0:28:01-10). If her great-grandfather thus gives Moira Stuart another opportunity to be proud of her family heritage, he is also the ancestor through whom she is led to a more troubling circumstance of her roots. George Christian’s father, also named George, originally stemmed from Antigua and stands for a generation for which slavery was still a tangible presence: »It’s not clear whether George was born into slavery, but his parents would certainly have been slaves.« (0:44:00-06) In one of the episode’s most emotional scenes, Stuart is shown in Antigua’s national archive, investigating the registers of slaves owned by plantation masters in the early 1800s. Overwhelmed by all the names, she cannot suppress her tears, identifying all enslaved as her collective ancestor (»They’re all my ancestors«, 0:45:04-07) and delivering a poignant judgement on slavery: »What a travesty, what an obscenity, what an injustice.« (0:45:59-46:05) She then has to leave the room because she cannot face the camera any more and is rendered speechless; the emotional effect of the scene is heightened by the fact that it is followed by a fade to black (0:46:48). The suffering of the enslaved, the scene suggests to the audience, haunts their descendants across time. Stuart’s personal look at the history of slavery is then put into a wider historical context once more as the narrator explains (over a series of period illustrations): »For nearly 200 years Europe, Africa and the Caribbean formed the infamous triangle whose trade in goods and human beings helped to fuel the Industrial Revolution. Millions of African slaves died in transit across the Atlantic. Those who survived faced lives of suffering in extreme brutality on the plantations.« (0:46:53-47:20) The fact that Moira Stuart’s ancestors were able to escape the legacy of slavery within just one generation then leads to the episode’s final revelation. Apparently, the Antiguan George Christian made his escape thanks to the missionary education he received as a boy. This privilege, as a local historian reveals to Stuart, is most obviously explained by the fact that he was the descendant not only of a slave, but also of a white slave-holding father who probably raped his mother (0:48:15-55). In Smith’s White Teeth, the character Irie is troubled by the gaps in her ances-

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try she cannot fill. Moira Stuart, by contrast, is troubled by a gap she is able to fill unexpectedly and also unwillingly since it means having to acknowledge an ancestry she emotionally rejects. Wandering along an Antiguan beach, Stuart is shown to be disturbed by this discovery, and her emotional reaction is emphasised by her own voice-over comment: »I thought there might be some very noisy skeletons in the cupboard, but I didn’t expect to have to, if not embrace, at least acknowledge the slave owners as well as those who I thought were my true ancestors. There is a rage within me and a guilt that my family were closer to the big house. It seems the ultimate indignity that one should find hierarchies in something as disgusting as slavery. I cannot own the travesty, the crime, of the slave master. I really can’t.« (0:51:09-52:16)

Her comment is continued over images that show Stuart finally arriving in her London present again after her journey into the past: »Well, I found that my family was wider than I expected. But I’m still very aware of being an onlooker, and I think it will be some time before the echoes and the shouts of slavery, of that experience, fade. And I don’t want to be confined or defined by slavery. But it’s an excellent lesson that one cannot in any way just have a nice easy simple answer to such a difficult question – who am I?« (0:52:34-53:21)

The Moira Stuart episode of Who Do You Think You Are? illustrates the assets and attractions of the television genealogy show: History is personalised and emotionalised through the experience of ›real‹ people, the format of the quest entails the possibility of pleasant as well as disturbing surprise, and the underlying plot device of the journey promises discovery and the possibilities of ›exotic‹ settings. Furthermore, the narrative and, above all, the comments made by the celebrity and the narrator indicate how history can become meaningful: by relating it to one’s present and by finding out how every individual is shaped by the past. Specifically in relation to the UK’s black history, the episode shows that there is more to this past than the Windrush narrative and the legacy of slavery. There is also a history of Victorian and early-twentieth-century migration from the West Indies where much still remains to be discovered. And finally, the episode also manages to suggest the complexities behind the notion of Britain as a ›mongrel‹ nation. At the beginning of the episode, Stuart ex-

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pressed pride in her ›mongrel‹ identity; at the end, she takes a more differentiated and thoughtful look at an origin whose ethnic mix contains both elements to be celebrated and to be disconcerted about. A genealogical programme inspired by the success of Who Do You Think You Are? but more explicitly linked to Britain’s history of migration was the primetime series Empire’s Children (Channel Four, broadcast in July and August 2007, with between 1.4 and 2.1 million viewers). The producer’s website emphasised the link which the programme strove to make between an imperial past and the multiethnic present, thus identifying the Empire as the common origin of Britain’s present diversity: »The United Kingdom is home to British people from hugely diverse ethnic backgrounds, as well as the British expatriates who, after generations of colonial settlement, returned to the mother country. Although they represent different cultures and experiences, all these people share a common heritage; they are children, grandchildren or great grandchildren of the Empire. Each film in this six-part series will tell the individual story of a well-known Briton who is a child of the Empire, following the story of their family’s past as the personal entwines with the historical. From their powerful, personal voyage of discovery emerges a picture of the wider, collective experience of migration within, and the dismantling of, an Empire.« (Wall to Wall 2004)

Made by Wall to Wall, the same company that produced Who Do You Think You Are?, this series presented three celebrities whose families had migrated from Britain to different spaces of the Empire, and three whose families came to Britain from the Empire’s so-called periphery. Migration from the Caribbean to Britain was represented, in the sixth episode, by the family story of one of the UK’s most prominent black actors, Adrian Lester, whose family arrived in Britain from Jamaica. The island’s history of slavery is mentioned, but the programme’s main narrative interest is post-war migration (including discrimination and hostility), which, in Lester’s case, starts with his grandfather.8

8

Also cf. the passage relating to Lester’s episode in Anton Gill’s tie-in book to the series: »In 1655 Britain had seized Jamaica from the Spanish and for centuries sugar was cultivated by slave labour brought over from Africa. Today most Jamaicans are descended from those slaves who were once traded as a

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Although patterned on a successful model, Empire’s Children was not quite as enthusiastically received as Who Do You Think You Are? – even though it was interlinked with other media releases: a tie-in book and an interactive website.9 Both invited consumers to join in the project embarked on by the celebrities on the screen, but Empire’s Children’s take on the United Kingdom’s history as ›multiethnic‹ seems to have been too overtly intentional for the taste of some consumers. In the words of a customer reviewer, the tie-in book »tries to shove multiculturalism down your throat, it almost looks as if it was written by the government«.10 It appears that the reliance of Empire’s Children on migration history contained the stories presented here within a specific field of interest and thus appealed to a more restricted section of the audience than Who Do You Think You Are?, where the history of migrants and their ancestors is embedded in genealogies that relate to a much wider range of historical events and players. That this wider range seems to have a more lasting audience appeal is indicated by the fact that, while Empire’s Children does not survive on DVD, a

commodity until their emancipation in 1834. Adrian acknowledges that he wouldn’t be where he is without slavery, and has always associated the Empire and indeed his own heritage with slavery. But he wanted to know more about how being part of the Empire impacted directly on his mother’s life.« (Gill 2007: 180) 9

The website was even recommended by the Federation of the Family History Societies in their July 2007 newsletter: »At http://www.channel4.com/empire you can publish your own family history as it relates to the empire. The aim of the website is to form a personal history of the Empire through the stories of people who experienced it first hand, their relations and descendants. It is a simple process to upload a story and you can contribute stories from any of the ›empire countries‹. You can view example stories already on the site for inspiration. If you think your story is too small, it is still just as important – all stories, be they one chapter or one hundred chapters, are equally important. The more stories that are uploaded, the more complete the history of the empire will be. As a family historian, I [Maggie Loughran] am sure you can appreciate the uniqueness and the importance of this resource, and I hope you will be able to contribute your story.« (Loughran 2007)

10 Comment posted on 26 November 2009 on Amazon.co.uk (http://www.amazon. co.uk/Empires-Children-Family-History-Across/dp/0007247141).

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flourishing DVD production with several reeditions exists for Who Do You Think You Are?. The latest spin-off is the 2010 Family Tree Maker Deluxe Edition, which offers clips from the television series, sample family trees of the production’s celebrities as well as software that will enable users to create their own family tree and thus to perform their own historical investigation. Today tracing one’s family tree is no longer a matter of genealogy only. Research into family matters is increasingly combined with genetic evidence, and DNA has become a new topos in pursuits of popular history. Zadie Smith’s White Teeth is a case in point, since the novel’s action combines the themes of migration, roots and imperial history with a subplot about genetic engineering around the character of Marcus Chalfen11 – only to conclude, as mentioned above, that lives and identities are not genetically determined and cannot be engineered. Indeed, the novel paints a predominantly negative image of genetics as a science that reduces living beings to various pre-determinations, also in the discussion around ethnicity and race. Tellingly, Chalfen’s mentor turns out to have been a doctor who once worked for Nazis in sterilisation and euthanasia programmes. In the discourse on multiethnic Britain, however, DNA can also be invoked with more affirmative intentions, for instance as evidence of the mixed biological origin of all Britons and of Britain as a »mongrel nation« of long standing (Winder 2005: 5). For proof of this tradition, Robert Winder’s popular history of migration to Britain goes back as far as pre-historic times: »Britain has always been invigorated by foreign people and influences, has always been a cross-breed [...]. While the bones of a Stone Age man unearthed recently in the Cheddar Gorge contained DNA that has survived in at least one contemporary Somerset man, that DNA has long since been threaded, plaited, twisted and embroi-

11 Chalfen is a prominent professional geneticist, but several other characters also have a special interest in biology, including Samad Iqbal, who once studied the subject, and Irie Jones, who takes biology A-levels at school. Critics have taken notice of the novel’s genealogical discourse (for instance Thompson 2005), but have so far neglected its preoccupation with genetics. On the novel’s promotion of multiethnicity and hybridity cf. Head (2003); Rupp (2006) focuses on the novel’s presentation of history.

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dered with other strands. Most of us, even those who claim direct descent from Cheddar Gorge Man, have immigrant ancestors somewhere in the dense foliage of our family trees, whether we like it or not.« (Winder 2005: 9f.)

Winder’s book – and his use of ›our‹ – is addressed to a general readership in which white people still form the majority. For this audience, reference to DNA seems to be offered as scientific proof that ethnic ›mongrelisation‹ has inscribed itself into the country’s genetic code since early, pre-national beginnings and that unexpected genetic heritage is not an entirely improbable affair: »Across Britain, today, there are people surprised, as a new generation of researchers begins to pass genealogy through more searching racial filters, to learn that they have a black ancestor. They are rare but eloquent reminders of the connection between modern Britain and a time we have since tried hard to forget.« (Winder 2005: 145) DNA is here presented as a means to remind all Britons of a history of ethnic and racial mixing that is part of their nation’s story – whether welcome or not. The discovery of black ancestry in white families used to be a scandal and has been treated as such in literature and film.12 It has less frequently been shown that, from the perspective of black Britons, the opposite may also be the case, as in the Moira Stuart episode of Who Do You Think You Are?. How complex and potentially troubling revelations about their ancestry can be for Britons originating from the African diaspora was the theme of the genealogical, genetic and actual back-to-roots journeys13 presented in the television documentary Motherland (2003). The programme used a then

12 How ›forgotten‹ black genes may resurface with a vengeance is the subject of Muriel Spark’s famous short story »The Black Madonna« (1958). Written during the phase of intensified migration from the Caribbean but well before the emergence of new multiethnic sensibilities, the story exposes the hypocrisy of a Roman Catholic couple who pray for a baby but reject it when the mother’s hidden black ancestry unexpectedly comes to the fore. 13 In general, this type of journey has been less prominent for black Britons than for African Americans in the wake of Haley’s Roots. Cf., however, Ferdinand Dennis’s travel book Back to Africa (1992), and for a literary comment on this quest, Caryl Phillips’s The Atlantic Sound (2000).

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current popular fascination with DNA14 to introduce a BBC 2 audience to a special dilemma of black (British) history: the fact that so much of that history used to be suppressed and hence is difficult to retrieve from cultural and family memory alone. Like Who Do You Think You Are? it is reality television, but with a focus on ›ordinary‹ people rather than celebrities. The programme’s three protagonists, Beaula McCella from Bristol, Mark Anderson from London and Jacqueline Harriott from Peterborough, were chosen from a pool of hundreds of applicants. They describe their expectations in the outcome of the project in clear terms: Beaula, a youth worker in her thirties, seeks to find out if her cultural Africanness, which she describes as the source of her sense of self, is matched by her genetic identity (0:06:35-07:36). Mark, in his twenties and active in the music business, also seeks an African identity to hold on to, but in contrast to Beaula his motivation is not primarily affirmative but driven by the exclusion he experiences as a black man in British society (0:05:00-06:00). Jacqueline, a school teacher in her forties, expresses little interest in her African heritage but rather in the Caribbean mix. She expects to find that a European ancestry might not only be represented in her family name, but also in her bloodlines (0:08:20-10:15). For all three, the interest in the research is not scientific but connected to their very personal sense of self and society, and the results of the genetic quest are presented as carrying personal and political significance. The results are, however, in all three cases unexpected and surprising (0:19:36-27:00): Beaula’s maternal chromosomes show a complete match with those of a tribe on a small island on the West African coast. Mark’s paternal chromosomes show a clear European lineage. For Jacqueline, an above-average European ancestry is confirmed, yet less than she had hoped for. After establishing the protagonists’ backgrounds and then relishing in the revelations of science, the final part of the documentary is devoted to ›reuniting‹ the protagonists with their families’ histories on the spot, taking them to places and people who, through genetic matching, can be identified as their distant relations. Beaula’s visit to ›her‹ ancestral village results in her initiation into the local tribe and her accepting of a tribal name. However, she is disappointed when the villagers try to oblige her as an economically well-off Western

14 The programme was embedded in a whole season devoted to the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of DNA in 1953.

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relative. She is shown taking off in a helicopter and the narrator comments: »Her reconnection to [the village’s] people was evident. But there was no denying a gap.« (1:14:15-25) This gap, as becomes clear when Beaula visits Ghana’s slave forts, manifests itself between her Western existence (with the diasporic history in the background) and the reality of her African ›relatives‹ (who have not crossed an ocean). Mark, who sets all his hopes on his maternal African line, is reunited with a tribe in Niger. Among his nomad ›relatives‹ he realises how irrevocably westernised he is. Clinging to his notion of a family history of victimisation, he brings up the subject of the slave trade but is met with misunderstanding. When he learns more about ›his‹ tribe’s active involvement in the slave trade (not as victims but as traders), his disillusion is complete; he finally awakens to the complexities of history when he realises that the African name he has just chosen for himself, Kaygama, means slave capturer (1:16:22-18:42). Jacqueline, by contrast, embraces her black West Indian heritage, overwhelmed by the sight of the Jamaican slave estate on which her ancestors toiled. As a result, her African lineage gains significance for her (1:24:01-25:12). Motherland has a lucid three-part structure, following the scheme of hypothesis, proof and evaluation. Beyond drawing on a fascination with popular science and DNA, it captures the dramatic potential inherent in the theme of tracing descent in the context of a black history of uprooting. For all three protagonists, the DNA research and the ensuing encounters with distant relatives trigger massive transformations as regards their selfperception and the question of belonging. The documentary’s aesthetic underlines the significance of these aspects not only in terms of plot construction, but also in terms of imagery and sound. Black spiritual music, for instance, is used to conjure up the ›unspeakable‹ history of slavery; frequent shots of earth and raw landscapes suggest ideas of rootedness and belonging. Such images invariably merge into reenacted scenes of chattel slavery or transmute into a gloomy laboratory setting complete with test tubes and stripes. Even the scientist-experts contribute to the thickening plot with comments such as, »DNA is a message from your ancestors.« (0:00:45-50) As regards Motherland’s implications in the context of multiethnic Britain, it is clear that neither the protagonists and the narrator nor the makers of the documentary could display the ironic detachment adopted in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, which can be read as a sometimes outrightly

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satirical comment on multiethnic Britain. Motherland successfully draws attention to the possibilities of DNA research in light of hidden or silenced histories and broken genealogies. However, it also makes a point of addressing the limitations of genetics in the context of a historical or genealogical search that is too heavily charged with questions of present identity formation. As one expert comments: »It just happens that the mitochondrial DNA and the y-chromosome are good markers into the past. But they’re just markers. […] Who you are is more than simply the genes. That’s not the totality of who you are. Who you are is much more. These questions of motherland and origins – these are profound questions. […] It’s really immoral to just dismiss them with a snippet of DNA.« (1:04:35-06:06)

In tune with the conventions of contemporary documentary formats, Motherland juxtaposes the lived experience of its protagonists with elements of dramatisation, voice-over narration and expert commentary and thus successfully conjures up an impression of having tackled its subject matter of DNA, roots, identity and belonging from several perspectives.15 However, to the attentive viewer it will transpire that views of white superiority linger on even in contemporary black British perspectives: The gap addressed by Beaula and the disillusion experienced by Mark unmask the black British subject as irrevocably European and Western, connecting and disconnecting at will with the African ›people‹ who, as relations, remain distant and strange. As the examples discussed in this section suggest, the family theme, whether in fictional or factual formats, is a highly effective means of introducing popular audiences to the specific problems of black (British) history and specifically the history of Britons whose roots lie in the African diaspora. To show how family research can be extremely difficult for people

15 The fact that the three protagonists are so markedly contrastive in their presuppositions and that they were chosen from a large pool of applicants nevertheless suggests that the programme makers’ first remit was to pick characters and stories that ›work‹ for a general audience. Questions of adequate representation may well have been of secondary importance in this process. The choice of the three figures Beaula, Mark and Jaqueline was clearly key to the programme’s success.

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whose ancestors were victims of slavery thus appears an apt means to sensitise a general audience for the special challenges of that history – including the roles white people played in it. What the examples considered here also demonstrate is that the personal approach to history can be an antidote to historical over-generalisation and master narratives. Of course, an emphasis on surprising and ›hidden‹ facts that genealogy may bring to light – and that elicit an emotional response from the protagonists whose pasts are revealed – has an element of sensationalism, voyeurism and entertainment that serves the purposes of mainstream television in primetime slots. At the same time, however, it demonstrates that history has evolved in ways that are more complex than one might expect or wish to accept, and, last but not least, it may arouse in the audience the wish to do their own historical research and – potentially – feed it back into their society’s historical programme. *** The Abolition bicentenary commemorated an incisive event in the developments that brought an end to an extremely violent and traumatic chapter of history. It was a cause for celebration of an aspect of history that a ›multiethnic‹ Britain can be proud of, but at the same time it brought the highly contested memory concerning the slave trade and the system of slavery into the public arena. The inevitable outcome was a diversification of the understanding of the nation’s past and the fact that this past is, indeed, fraught »with aspects magnificent as well as malignant« (Prescod 2009: 80). Uncomfortable themes such as the notion of perpetratorship came to the fore; the subject of abolition allowed for controversial re/presentations, and it generated debates surrounding the question of agency in the process of ending the slave trade and slavery. In the run-up to 2007, it became clear that the UK would have to face the long-repressed aspects of the nation’s history in a concerted effort, after a prolonged period of neglect. In this process, it also became clear that having commemorations was not enough, but that the question of how to engage in these commemorations was of crucial importance. In 2007, the problems of uncritical celebrations of a past that is charged with trauma came to the surface and could no longer be ignored. Britain began to face this past in a rush to celebrate and commemorate abolition on a grand scale, but in the

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process many obstacles and causes for discomfort presented themselves. In some cases these have led to new forms of engagement with the past – in others they were swept under the carpet, ignored or played down. As already indicated above, the question arises as to how much of the history brought to prominence in 2007 will stay in British historical culture, and what interpretations of this history will remain in circulation. Many initiatives and productions were of a short-lived, temporary nature; but some media products have a better chance of surviving because they are still on the market or are used for educational purposes, and new permanent galleries in museums and websites for family research have a good chance of becoming fixtures in contemporary historical culture. That strategies of popularisation can have lasting effects on historical culture is instanced by a chapter of black British history uncovered about a decade before the bicentenary – the history of post-war migration from the Caribbean or, as it is often phrased today, the history of the Windrush generation. The stories of post-war migration from the Caribbean have become an important segment of the historiography of Britain in the twentieth century and are being mainstreamed into the big national story rather than occupying a ›special interest‹ niche. The Windrush commemoration opened doors for the bicentenary celebrations, and explicit connections were made between the British narrative of abolition and the story of post-war migration, as the example of Andrea Levy shows. Her Windrush novel Small Island was publicly read in massive reading initiatives during the year of the 1807 commemorations. Although this connection may appear strained, it was welcomed by the author: »I think it worked very well. They actually drew attention to the reason why the people in Small Island had come from Jamaica. So that connection was certainly being made, and it absolutely worked.« (Pirker 2009a: 31) The Windrush story has been considered in research before, but it deserves more attention in its function as a door-opener for the bicentenary commemorations, its role for other chapters of black history, and its capacity to occupy a significant space in the nation’s ›history marketplace‹ with products that were specifically designed in accessible and entertaining ways.

PART III: Keeping Post-War Migration Visible: The Windrush Story in the Twenty-First Century

1. Screening and Staging an Arrival

As shown in Part I, post-war migration from the Caribbean is now an established presence in the British historical consciousness and firmly associated with a public icon – the Empire Windrush, which gave its name to a whole generation of 1950s and 60s migrants who made the passage across the Atlantic with high hopes for a future in their former mother country. Awareness of the Windrush was created through a landmark television documentary by Mike and Trevor Phillips in 1998, the fiftieth anniversary of the year in which the Windrush arrived at Tilbury docks, but public awareness of the Windrush generation has certainly survived the anniversary hype, thanks to widespread representation in a range of media. Migration from the Caribbean and its flagship has evolved into a new topos of British post-war history and feature in popular-history books, novels, theatre productions, museum exhibits as well as television and cinema productions for the mainstream. Since a number of documentaries relating to the Windrush story have already been mentioned, this part will begin with a discussion of three fictional productions for film and television – all in success-proven genres – that have helped to keep the Windrush generation visible in the twenty-first century, also intersecting with exhibitions and the book market. The subsequent sections are devoted to the way in which the stories of that generation have also entered the West End stage. The film and television productions to be analysed were intended for wide theatrical release or aired by nationwide channels in prime-time slots. They were aimed at large, cross-sectional audiences and composed in genres designed to appeal and sell to such audiences. As this book has already demonstrated, film and television, as media working with images, have a special capacity to make the past visible for their audiences. Where

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they recreate history in fictional rather than documentary modes, they also have a special potential to emotionally involve and entertain their viewers. Until around the year 2000, the ›ethnic‹ section of British cinema and television was marked by a strong presence of productions focusing on the South Asian-British experience, especially in dramatic comedy and often with a period setting in the recent past.1 While the mood of filmic representations of Asian Britain, in particular Muslim Britain, has darkened considerably in the course of the noughties, leaving the mood of 1990s Asian comedies behind, depictions of black post-war lifeworlds reveal an opposite tendency and are now entering the mainstream.2 The Windrush narrative appears to have made the lifeworld of post-war black migrants incorporable into historical stories for large nationwide audiences, and in some instances even audiences abroad.

1

For a discussion of East Is East and other Asian-British comedies cf. Korte/ Sternberg (2004; 2009).

2

One exception was the television version of Caryl Phillips’s novel The Final Passage (1996). For a discussion of this production cf. Korte/Sternberg (2004: 198-203) and Pirker (2009c).

2. Family, Sport and Period in Wondrous Oblivion

This feature film (2003) set in the 1960s1 engages with multiethnic history by depicting a double story about post-war migration and racism:2 A black West Indian family’s experience is intertwined and contrasted with that of a Jewish family whose parent characters both escaped the Holocaust.3

1

The film is hazy in its chronology: The newsreel comment in the young protagonist’s daydream at the beginning of the film says that »Cricket lovers await the 1960 season with anticipation«, but C.L.R. James’s Beyond a Boundary, which is cited in the film, did not appear until 1963.

2

Its writer and director Paul Morrison, a British-Jewish filmmaker, made his name with films about Jewish people in the UK. Wondrous Oblivion is his second feature film. For further information on Morrison’s biography and work cf. Sternberg (2009). Sternberg discusses Wondrous Oblivion mainly with a focus on its portrayal of a Jewish-British lifeworld caught between an ability, thanks to skin pigmentation, to assimilate, and a discrimination that links Jews to non-white migrants. Quite obviously, the film ties in with a new attention to Jewish-British culture since the 1990s. The documentary Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport (USA 2000, dir. Mark Jonathan Harris) made the history of Jewish migration known to a wider audience. The permanent Holocaust gallery of the Imperial War Museum was opened in 2000 and contains exhibits about Jewish refugees in Britain.

3

Paul Gilroy points to a lack of conversations about the experience of racism of blacks and Jews and argues that this »absence weakens all our understanding of what modern racism is« (Gilroy 1993: 213). For more research into conver-

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Despite this family’s recent trauma, and despite the traumatic racism encountered by the black migrants, Wondrous Oblivion signals its intention to present a popular story about migration to Britain in the post-war world: It negotiates wider social issues in a narrative about family life and coming of age – like the previously successful Billy Elliot (2000) – and it supports the discourse that migrants to Britain, whether from Europe or the Caribbean, came to stay and turned Britain into a different country. The film’s sense of period is evoked with careful attention to visually appealing detail; like successful Asian-British films with post-war period settings, such as East Is East (1999) or Anita and Me (2002), it shows street scenes, interiors, costumes and hairstyles ›faithful‹ to the late 1950s and 60s and still familiar to middle-aged members in the audience who thus get an extra nostalgic treat from watching the movie. And like its Asian-British predecessors, Wondrous Oblivion also employs pop music of the time to enhance its period feel. Since ›golden oldies‹ like »My Boy Lollipop« are still very much with us as soundtracks of everyday life, they help to build a popular bridge from the film’s past into the present. Another such bridge is the use of sport in Wondrous Oblivion. Sport or watching sport is a popular activity we share with earlier decades, and sport films have long been a popular genre for negotiating social issues, including matters of transcultural contact and communication. Indeed, Wondrous Oblivion bears a conspicuous similarity in its opening sequence to Gurinder Chadha’s Bend It Like Beckham (2002), a transcultural comedy that was a major box-office hit with its story about an Asian girl who realises her passion for football and thus finds her way into the British social mainstream despite her Sikh family’s traditional values. Like Chadha’s film, Wondrous Oblivion begins with a young protagonist’s daydream about a sporting career – only this time, the protagonist is a Jewish boy rather than an Asian girl and the sport is cricket, the most »written-about and symbolically significant sport in England and the British Empire« (Bateman 2009: 2).4 The cultural semantics of cricket are

gences in the experiences of Jewish and migrant communities cf. Taylor (1993) and Romain (2006). 4

An earlier mainstream-oriented film comedy about cricket and the integration of blacks into British society is Playing Away (1987), written by Caryl Phillips and directed by Horace Ové. Lagaan (2001) was a Bollywood success that presented

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highly significant for the film’s intended ›message‹, and at least to an adult audience the early scenes already suggest that cricket will function as a central metaphor of integration into society, both in terms of class and race. By the late nineteenth century cricket had become a staple in the education of the nation’s elite, thanks to its institution in public schools (and publicschool novels); it was also a primary means of exporting British values to the colonies: »[C]ricket could be hailed as embodying the cultural bonds of empire and, particularly in India and the West Indies, of the success of the British civilising mission. At the same time, the sport was inscribed with a strong parochial and rural identity. With the English urban middle class struggling to reconcile their increasing material prosperity with an apparent loss of spiritual values, cricket formed part of a mythical and timeless image of the English countryside which, against a background of social Darwinism and fears of racial degeneration, was seen as a repository of AngloSaxon purity. […] By the post-Second World War period, cricket in the newly independent India and in the Anglophone Caribbean was being wrested from its discursive links to Englishness and rearticulated in the cause of anti-colonial and postcolonial agendas. Alternative discourses of the cricket field were emerging which used and subverted the game’s metaphors and moral codes in order to create new, and often problematic, conceptions of cultural identity.« (Bateman 2009: 2)

The association of cricket with both class and post/colonialism transports much of the social meaning of Wondrous Oblivion, but these socio-political implications are presented to the audience through the entertaining and emotionally touching depiction of the young protagonist’s process of growing up and into British society. To David Wiseman, who is obsessed with the sport, cricket is also a means of getting accepted at his posh private school. His personal (day-) dream, presented as part of the opening credits, is expressed in a fantasied black-and-white newsreel feature in which he is hailed by the male voiceover (in the period’s typical broadcasting pronunciation) as a »rising star«

cricket as a means of fighting colonial oppression. The documentary film Fire in Babylon (2010, written and directed by Stevan Riley) explores the success of the West Indian cricket team in the 1970s and 80s against the backdrop of that period’s racism.

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of the sport and a great hope for England’s cricket team: »Tactical genius. Fearless batsman and, as always, spotlessly turned out. Can English cricket afford to ignore this young talent?« (0:00:48-01:01) In colour and reality, however, David is a clumsy player only permitted to score for his team at school. The arrogant coach, Mr Pugh, reprimands him for his complete unawareness of this lack of talent with the phrase »wondrous oblivion« (0:01:46-49). David lives in a terraced house in a South London suburb, but his parents have ambitions for a better life, like their next-door Jewish friends, whom the film’s early scenes show moving to Hendon, »a better class of neighbourhood« (0:05:18-20) where they will also be treated with less animosity. An early scene establishes how the Wisemans are subtly discriminated against by their working-class neighbours. The Jewish family keep a low profile and want to blend into the area, but they are treated as foreigners. A particularly bigoted Englishwoman, Mrs Wilson, asks David’s mother – who seems intimidated by her – if she knows who will move in next door after »their friends« have left and suggests that, »You might prefer one of your own people« (0:03:45-04:08). It is obvious from her facial expression that this is not what she would prefer herself. Ruth and Victor Wiseman, born in Germany and Poland respectively, have lost most of their relatives. Both speak fluent English, but with a recognisable accent that underscores their ›foreignness‹. Victor works hard in his drapery shop and has little time to spare for his wife and children. His diligence enables the Wisemans to give their children a good education: David attends an expensive school, and his sister has cello lessons. However, David is a lonely boy who does not seem to have made friends, either at school or in his neighbourhood. He spends much time alone in his room, playing with his collection of cricket cards whose pictures come to life in his imagination (technically realised through computer animation) and talk to him as surrogate friends. At first, we only see David conversing with famous white players on his cards (0:02:50-03:42), including the charismatic Victorian player W.G. Grace, on whom the rise of cricket to popularity essentially depended. Later scenes show, however, that David’s enthusiasm for cricket is colour-blind; he is highly pleased when he is given cards with black heroes of the sport, such as Frank Worrell and Garfield Sobers (0:15:22-58), and it is through his esteem for the latter in particular that he

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is drawn to his new black neighbour, Dennis Samuels who, like David, is a cricket devotee.5 It is the Samuelses, a migrant family from Jamaica, who replace the Wisemans’ Jewish friends. Dennis, a foundry worker,6 his wife and their teenage daughter have lived in Britain for some time. Only now, after four years, can they afford to send for their two younger daughters, of whom Judy is David Wiseman’s age. The English neighbours watch the new arrivals with dismay and hostility, and Ruth Wiseman is not pleased either, especially when the Samuelses celebrate their reunion with a spontaneous and noisy party. Ruth also keeps her distance because the presence of a black ›other‹ in the street improves her own standing. She is now courted by her English neighbours as a ›better‹ kind of foreigner who might help them get rid of the blacks. Mrs Wilson, who believes that she has to defend herself against reverse colonisation,7 turns Ruth into an ally and honorary

5

Significantly, images of Sobers on the card and of Dennis are intercut in a short sequence (0:21:07-22:07), so that some of Sobers’s heroic qualities are transferred to Dennis.

6

His actor, Delroy Lindo, lives and works in the United States but was born in London. In an interview he revealed why he wanted the role of Dennis in Wondrous Oblivion: »I wanted to tell a story that spoke to my mom’s generation of people from the Caribbean who went to England in the ’40s and ’50s; it peaked in the ’60s. I lost my mother in 1996, but maybe a year or so before my moms passed, I was going through her things, and I found some passports, one stamped in 1948. She’s from a generation called the ›Windrush‹ generation, for the boat that took the first wave of people from Jamaica to England in 1948. When I was researching the film, I started thinking, huh, maybe my mother was on that boat. My mother was a nurse, and another thing I found were letters in which various hospitals she worked in reprimanded her, and my mother’s letters responding to those reprimands. And in that moment I realized just how much hell my mother had caught. That wave of immigrants was victimized in extremely harsh ways. The British would have you feel that they’re not racist – not like, you know, the Yanks. But it wasn’t subtle. The various manifestations of the prejudice against her were stunning. And so I wanted to do this film as an homage to my moms.« (Feinsilber 2007: 126)

7

»We don’t have much, but we’ll defend what we have got. Didn’t fight the war for nothing.« (0:15:05-09)

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Englishwoman: »We’re relying on you, dear, to be a good Englishwoman.« (0:15:13-18) Thus ›naturalised‹ and seeing a chance for the integration to which she aspires, Ruth at first tries to prevent contact between her son and the Jamaicans. Her husband also deems such contact neither desirable nor necessary. To him the West Indians are foreigners that have to be tolerated and treated with politeness but must not be mixed with. Although he has suffered racial persecution himself and is still subject to everyday discrimination, he adopts the same attitude and language of exclusion that his wife experiences from Mrs Wilson: »These are not our kind of people, ok? We have nothing against them, but we don’t mix. Do I make myself clear?« (0:20:48-56) The parents’ appeals are useless, however, since the Samuelses have transformed their backyard into a cricket net so that Dennis and his daughter can practice the sport – not as an ›English‹ activity, but as a sport with special significance in the West Indies. In a later scene of the film, Dennis shows David and Judy C.L.R. James’s book about cricket, Beyond a Boundary (1963), still an esteemed classic of sport writing in Britain today. Dennis cites a passage in which James writes about cricket as an art form (0:53:23-40), but his comment suggests that he is also aware of the political, specifically postcolonial impact of James and his famous book: »C.L.R. James. This man is like Moses to me. A political theorist and the best cricket writer in the world.« (0:53:15-23) This line raises James (19011989), a central figure in the Pan-African movement and the struggle for colonial emancipation,8 to the status of a black ›culture hero‹ and aligns him with the black sport heroes from David’s cards. David is oblivious to the post/colonial significance of cricket, but his worship of black cricket heroes will become an important element in his coming of age. For his more immediate needs of improving his cricket skills, he finds a mentor in Dennis Samuels. When David, against his parents’ wishes, appears at the Samuelses’ net in his spotless cricket gear, Dennis recognises on the spot that the boy will need all the help he can get if he ever wants to bat for his school team. He begins to coach the boy, and the black migrant thus performs an important function for the Jewish boy’s

8

Recognised as one of the fathers of West Indian decolonisation and a representative of black intellectual life in Britain after the First World War, James made an appearance late in his life in the documentary A Passage to Britain (1984).

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social integration – a function that David’s English school fails (or refuses) to fulfil, thus betraying the pedagogic function cricket acquired in Victorian public schools at a time when the sport, in the words of C.L.R. James, became »a genuinely national art form: founded on elements long present in the nation, profoundly popular in origin, yet attracting to it disinterested elements of the leisured and educated classes« (James 2005: 210). In Wondrous Oblivion, it is the black migrant who, influenced by C.L.R. James, still appreciates and practices cricket as a social art,9 though with a significant postcolonial inflexion. As Anthony Bateman observes, Beyond a Boundary suggests that the postcolonial cricketers reinvigorated a sport that had lost much of its original spirit in post-war Britain: »It is through the notion of embodiment that James is most effectively able to account for cricket as a cultural form that was re-articulated at the peripheries of empire and reconstituted as an important instrument of postcolonial subjectivity and agency.« (Bateman 2009: 178) In the film, Dennis Samuels has an impressive physical presence, and it is evident to the audience that he is not only imbued with the spirit of cricket but also practices it expertly. With Dennis as his mentor, David learns from the best, but he also learns a cricket – and with it an ethos – that is not quite the classically ›English‹ one: He is initiated into cricket not as a means to enter an English social elite (as his school coach would see the sport), but as a way of entry into a multiethnic community. Ruth Wiseman eventually accepts her son’s contact with the black family, seeing how important cricket is to him, but she anticipates tensions with the English: »You will get us into trouble.« (0:30:16-20) While the Jewish woman is afraid of and tries to shun conflict and division, Mrs Samuels immediately opens up to David and welcomes him into her family and her religious community. Although a deeply Christian woman, she does not regard David’s Jewishness as an element of other-, but of specialness. To her, the Jews are the chosen people who »gave us the Old Testament« (0:31:22-25). As the understanding between the black and Jewish families increases, the English neighbours distance themselves again from the Wisemans, even treating them as traitors. Mrs Wilson spits at Ruth and

9

»Cricket is a game of high and difficult technique. If it were not it could not carry the load of social response and implications which it carries.« (James 2005: 45)

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David’s feet, and Mrs Wiseman feels she has to justify herself: »I also am an immigrant [...]. Should I teach my son to despise immigrants?« (0:32:0712) This line expresses a redefinition of her social identity. Instead of hushing up, assimilating and ›disappearing‹ into the English environment, Ruth now begins to see and define herself as a migrant. The arrival of and interaction with her West Indian neighbours has sparked a change in her personal and social identity, and, as the further course of action shows, this positive awareness of ethnic difference has a liberating effect on her. Once Ruth perceives herself as having a migrant’s identity, the two families get on really friendly terms. However, the film’s dramatic curve requires a (preliminary) disruption of this harmony and the story is further pursued in subplots that follow the thematic lines of integration, racism and coming of age in different aspects and with a comparative take on the two migrant experiences. Ruth, still a young woman, feels neglected by her hard-working, middle-aged husband and is increasingly attracted by Dennis’s masculinity and vitality. When Dennis takes her and the children to a ska concert and dance, Ruth feels rejuvenated by this experience and, slightly intoxicated by the drinks and rhythms, engages in close dancing with Dennis (0:44:16-48:50). In a later scene, she kisses him and her expression suggests that she would also sleep with him but Dennis, devoted to his own wife and respecting Victor Wiseman, stops the interracial romance before it can properly evolve (0:57:15-59:16). This portrayal of Dennis as a man of honour is significant in light of a long history of white representations of black men as sexually rapacious. Overall, Dennis is cast as a positive character, a role model who stays above many of the adversities he encounters. Under his coaching, David’s cricket skills improve so much that he becomes a valued member of his school team. Integration seems achievable for the white boy, while his friend Judy continues to suffer from open racism at her (less exclusive) school. The friendship between David and his black neighbours is shaken when David hurts their feelings. Proud to be accepted by his school mates, David invites them to his birthday party. Assuming that, as a friend, she is also invited, Judy arrives in her Sunday best and with a present, but David is embarrassed and sends her away (0:04:15-53). After this incident, Dennis gives up coaching the boy. Meanwhile, ›native‹ resistance against the migrant families is forming with heightened aggression. In the film, Mrs Wilson’s grandson represents

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racist working-class youths of the 1950s and 60s.10 Observed by David, he abuses a black ticket collector at the local train station (1:06:45-07:19), and he also threatens both the Samuelses and the Wisemans with anonymous letters, treating the Jewish family as if they too were black. One night, he even dares to openly provoke Victor Wiseman, pointing a gun gesture at him. Victor, however, refuses to be intimidated and merely stares back (1:01:27-02:03). The film does not reveal at first that Dennis has also been receiving hate mail, but one scene indicates that he is deeply troubled, not only by David’s behaviour towards Judy. During a big match between England and the West Indies, David meets Dennis again, who is obviously drunk and gives vent to his frustration about England: »I have plenty of reasons to need a drink, you know. You guys got manners, I’ve got to survive in this shit old country.« (1:10:49-56) At this point in the narrative, cricket fulfils different cultural functions for Dennis and David rather than uniting ethnicities as before. For an embittered Dennis, cricket is a ›decolonised‹ game through which the West Indies can defeat the English; to an audience familiar with Norman Tebbit’s infamous ›cricket test‹,11 this clearly signals his (momentary) dissociation from England as a new home. For David and his family, by contrast, cricket

10 Cf. Robert Winder’s characterisation of the Teddy Boys, who were not, however, the only racist group in British youth culture of the time: »Given half a chance, they would harangue anyone with black skin, and even had a rusticsounding phrase, for their rumbles: they would say they were going out ›blackburying‹.« (Winder 2005: 363) 11 In 1990, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Tebbit claimed that too many British Asians failed the test by cheering for India or Pakistan rather than England. Cf. Dominic Malcolm’s comment: »As the vast majority of postSecond World War British immigrants have been drawn from the nations of the former Empire, cricket has come to be highly significant for many of the people who form the minority ethnic communities in the U.K. It was for this reason, no doubt, that Norman Tebbit, a senior Conservative politician, introduced his socalled ›cricket test‹ in 1990. Tebbit argued that if a British immigrant, or one of his/her descendants, chose to support a team such as India or the West Indies when that team was playing against England, this could, and indeed should, be used as a gauge of his/her level of assimilation into English society.« (Malcolm 2001: 255)

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paves the way into a better class, fulfilling a traditionally ›English‹ function of the game: through her son’s new status in school, Ruth also manages to make friends among his schoolmates’ middle-class and open-minded mothers whose liberalism is indicated, for instance, by their support of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The different meanings of cricket for the two families imply the (momentary) disruption of their understanding, but also their different social choices. At the end of the film the Wisemans, following their Jewish friends, will move to middle-class North London. Their opportunities for upward social mobility help the Jewish family to escape the cruder forms of working-class racism. But for the Samuelses, leaving is no alternative – even after their house and cricket net have been set on fire by the Wilsons’ grandson. This racist incident leads to the film’s climactic and cathartic scenes: The black family are only saved because David discovers the fire in time and warns his friends by throwing a cricket ball into Judy’s window. Discrimination against the Samuelses then reaches another peak when the police, unwilling to interfere, tell Dennis that the fire was an accident and requires no action on their part (1:18:59-19:52). Enraged, Dennis finally produces the anonymous threats he has received and gets support from Victor Wiseman, who, in his old country, experienced persecution himself – as well as, one can assume, neighbours that looked away. Clad in pyjamas – that bear a telling resemblance to the striped clothing worn by victims in concentration camps and thus remind the audience of the racial crime of the twentieth century – Victor identifies the perpetrator, reprimands the neighbourhood, and demands: »You should be ashamed. We should all be ashamed. Officer, ask those two [indicating Mr and Mrs Wilson], ask them about their grandson.« (1:21:14-37) As we have seen before in this book, the expression of discomfort with – and sometimes even a feeling of guilt about – a racist past has surfaced in contemporary British historical culture and the rhetoric surrounding it. In Wondrous Oblivion, the demand for an expression of shame is voiced by a character who has suffered racism himself and therefore speaks with great moral authority. But not only Victor Wiseman regrets his former rejection of the black family. In a long and emotional scene, his son repents his behaviour towards Judy and apologises first to her father and then to the girl – and both gracefully accept the apology (1:24:50-26:31). The Wisemans even convince the whole street (excepting the Wilsons) that they should atone for their former behaviour and

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restore the Samuelses’ cricket net, which thus becomes a symbol of a rebuilt community in which whites and blacks make an effort to live together. What follows during the film’s final minutes is a celebration of friendship and reconciliation conveyed in strong and affective images. They focus on David, who has finally come of age, also because he has absorbed the lesson of cricket as a sport that unites different ethnicities. The »hero of the hour« (1:21:54-57) after his rescue of the Samuelses, David is invited to their Sunday congregation and asked to recite from the Hebrew bible. This scene has a high iconic quality, quite literally blending migrant voices and programmatically presenting them in a British environment. While David is reciting psalm 23 with a timid voice, the strong voices of the black choir join supportively in, and the image we see is that of self-confident black singers in front of a row of Union Jacks (1:22:45-23:49). The West Indian migrants may not be wanted by all of their neighbours, but they have become a part of Britain. This sequence prepares the viewer for a final exchange between Dennis and David, who hates the idea of leaving his friends behind for a better social environment. But the black man reassures the Jewish boy that his parents only want the best for him. When David asks, »What about you? Will you stay?«, Dennis answers in the affirmative: »We’re right here to stay, man. We’re here to stay.« (1:27:07-20) Phrased as it is, this statement seems to reiterate the concession that had only recently been made in official rhetoric around the time the film was made: Black migrants did stay in Britain, despite racism and discrimination, and they changed Britain as well as notions of British identity. This positive message is strongly supported at the film’s conclusion. Its final images are lighter than the dark neighbourhood we have seen before; the terraced houses and narrow backyards give way to a sunlit green where Dennis has organised a picnic for his black friends but also invited the Wisemans. Food is shared and steel drums accompany the cello of David’s sister, suggesting a harmonious mix of cultures. David and his father are also invited to join the black men’s cricket game. If cricket, in the nineteenth century, »was being afforded a social and nation-building mission, with the image of the vigorous body signifying a healthy body politic« (Bateman 2009: 35), then the cricket sequence at the end of Wondrous Oblivion suggests a significant change in post-war – and post-imperial – Britain: The national body as symbolised through cricket now includes blacks and whites, different religions, athletic men like Dennis and unath-

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letic men like Mr Wiseman and, with Judy Samuels, even women. Showing the characters in Wondrous Oblivion thus united in a common public space, as opposed to the public-school lawn shown at the film’s beginning, demonstrates that not only David Wiseman has learnt a lesson. To be together with Dennis, David has even given up his place in his school’s big match. He is rewarded for this act of loyalty when he gets a chance to play against one of his black heroes, Garfield Sobers, who joins Dennis’s picnic with another West Indian star player, Frank Worrell. Thus two of David’s black cricket card heroes have truly come alive. David does not need his daydreaming any more, and he gives his cricket card collection to Judy’s younger sister, who may need them in her own process of coming of age. Before he gives the cards away, however, David bids his farewell to his former ›companions‹ (1:35:00-36:02), all of whom, black and white together, applaud the boy. Once the Wisemans leave South London, the film’s attention shifts entirely to the historical experience of the black migrants. Even while the Wisemans are moving out, we hear a song now firmly associated with black post-war migration: the unofficial hymn of the Windrush generation, »London Is the Place for Me«, sung by the famous Calypsonian Lord Kitchener who came to Britain on the Empire Windrush. The newsreel feature about the boat’s arrival, which featured Lord Kitchener’s song, was included in the Phillipses’ Windrush documentary and hence became known to a wider audience. The song’s lyrics are optimistic, voicing the migrants’ high hopes. However, despite its light final note, the film’s aftertaste is not overly sweet because the final images remind us that the coming into being of a black Britain was hard for black Britons: The Wisemans can leave a neighbourhood in which their hopes for the future could not have been fulfilled, but the Samuelses will ›stay‹ there because upward mobility is not (yet) an option for them. Their cricket net has been restored by a neighbourhood that may be more tolerant now, but it is still located in a working-class terraced house, as the film’s images confirm with a shot of the backyards (1:33:23-34:35). Nevertheless, the film ends on a note that, still accompanied by Lord Kitchener’s song, affirms the staying power of black Britain and its place in the nation’s historical archive. Somewhat surprisingly after the double narration the film has consistently pursued before, the final credit sequence focuses exclusively on the black migrant experience, with authentic photographs that document the place of blacks,

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their struggle but also their increasing confidence in British society: images of arrivals, black bus drivers and nurses, blacks in confrontation with policemen, and the Black People’s Day of Action (1981). As a family film and a story about coming of age, Wondrous Oblivion has found a popular way of telling the story of post-war migration. It makes use of already popular elements such as sport and well-known traditions of black music, both secular (ska) and religious. The narrative has a clear structure and clear lines of conflict; the immigrant characters are all sympathetic. The narrative exposes a bigoted white England, but also an England that has the capacity to reform: ›True‹ racists are presented as a minority, while a sense of fair play and racial tolerance prevails in the majority of the population. Through the juxtaposition and interweaving of black and white stories of migration, the film shows that it was easier for white migrants to succeed in British society than for blacks. Nevertheless, the West Indians in this film are portrayed as a strong integrative rather than a dividing element. The Samuelses are depicted as tolerant from their very first appearance in the film. Dennis helps the Jewish boy find a way into his school team and thus the British establishment; his wife appreciates David’s Jewish culture and makes him feel special in a positive way. The film thus suggests that it is black rather than white people in Britain who have created today’s multiethnic society. In comparison to the Jewish pol itical migrants to whom they are compared, the black migrants from the Caribbean stand for a wave of migration that has changed Britain, and changed it for good.

3. Notting Hill in a Historical Crime Serial

Crime series are a staple of primetime television entertainment. On the book market, historical or period crime fiction has developed into a highly popular and commercially viable genre over the past few decades. Significantly, its presentation of the past qua investigation foregrounds the interpretative element of historical research, »the question of how we know history« (Scaggs 2005: 124).1 This focus makes historical crime fiction a particularly apt indicator for the state of historical culture at a given time, as well as a means to ponder alternative methods of historical interpretation. The format of historical crime fiction, which is »invariably furnished with a wealth of period detail« (Scaggs 2005: 126), translates well into television. In the early 2000s, the BBC was very successful with a period crime serial, Foyle’s War (ITV 2002), that ›revived‹ the years of the Second World War and used crime to investigate key social issues of this period. Jericho, another ITV Sunday primetime crime serial with four episodes was originally aired in Britain in the autumn of 2005. Meant to reprise the success of Foyle’s War,2 it also in a way forms its historical sequel: Jericho is set in the post-war years, specifically the late 1950s. As might be expected, especially with Britain’s great tradition of the spy thriller in mind, the Cold War plays a major role in the serial. However, with its very first episode, »A Pair of Ragged Claws« (broadcast on 16 October 2005), and thus almost programmatically, Jericho also inscribed itself into Britain’s new narrative

1

Cf. Korte/Paletschek (2009b) for a survey of historical crime fiction and further

2

The serial was not continued, however, because with about 5 to 6 million view-

references. ers, it did not quite repeat the high audience figures for Foyle’s War.

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of an ethnically diverse history. The episode pays tribute to the late 1950s as a significant phase of black British history marked by increasing migration from the West Indies and, at the same time, mounting hostility towards these migrants that escalated in the ›riots‹ of Nottingham and Notting Hill in 1958. These events marked a shift in the character of racism in Britain; they put race openly on the political agenda and initiated negative media coverage of black people (cf. Hayward 1997: 50). From today’s retrospective position, they can also be seen as anticipating the later police racism of the 1960s and 70s, although this is not quite corroborated by the historical evidence. For already in Notting Hill, some of the police played a reluctant role: »Britain’s nastiest Teds, and anyone else who thought they were cool and tough, headed for Notting Hill. Some four hundred white men launched two all-night attacks on black people and shops. A petrol bomb was thrown into a black home. Where were the police? They didn’t seem anxious to intervene. On the third night, blacks prepared to fight back. […] This time the police moved. There was a street fight involving hundred of young whites, shouting, ›Down with niggers!‹ ›… Keep Britain white!‹ and waving banners – ›Deport all niggers!‹ […] Mosley’s Union Movement held a rally in a nearby road.« (Winder 2005: 364)

This negative image of the police is of particular importance in a crime serial whose chief investigator is a member of Scotland Yard. Like Winder’s popular history of migration to Britain and Wondrous Oblivion, »A Pair of Ragged Claws« identifies white racists and a racially biased police as enemies of a budding multiethnic society. As will be seen below, a police station in the London of Jericho is not a safe place for black people. But the serial’s central character is a policeman with integrity who looks behind and beyond ›obvious‹ patterns of interpretation and thus serves as a harbinger of a better, more democratic and tolerant Britain to come. The process of investigation in »A Pair of Ragged Claws«, conducted by a detective quite obviously disgusted by all kinds of bigotry, destabilises any simple associations between black migration and ›crime‹ or social unrest. The ›history lesson‹ conveyed in the episode is thus essentially a progressive one. That Britain has a racist past is clearly acknowledged. But there is also the implied message that Britain will become a place where black people have a future, and that, amid all post-war hostil-

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ity, some white people in the past already stood for a better Britain in which blacks are granted the same rights as whites. The serial’s main character is Michael Jericho, Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard (played by Robert Lindsay), a melancholic man who is traumatised by the fact that, as a child, he witnessed the murder of his policeman father. The character is thus a reminder that the past shapes the present; his interest in solving crime and getting perpetrators punished is determined by his childhood experience, as several flashbacks indicate. As far as society is concerned, however, Jericho’s focus is strongly on its diegetic present, London in the late 1950s, a city experiencing dramatic post-war change.3 Like Foyle’s War, the serial was produced with great attention to ›authentic‹ detail in order to evoke a period feel meant to be spectacular per se. Computer animation was used to ›restore‹ the historical ambience of familiar city locations such as Piccadilly Circus as well as various interiors. Viewers are thus offered the pleasure of time travel and illusionary participation in a historical lifeworld. For a reviewer in The Times, the effect was almost too authentic to be believable: »By God, you can feel the money spent on Jericho (ITV 1, Sunday). ITV recently announced that they were spending £849 million on ITV 1 budgeting. Well, here it is. Taking the idea of making noir in colour and running with it, Jericho’s 1950s Soho has an extravagant veracity I’m sure Soho in the 1950s didn’t actually have. Each street scene is packed with correct cobbles, pantaloon-wearing paper-boys with crafty fags, sweater-girls clip-clopping in peep-toe shoes, flashing Bovril signs, fabulously coiffured whores, gents in hats, and flies flying exactly as flies would in 1952.« (Moran 2005)

»A Pair of Ragged Claws« is set in the year of the Notting Hill riots, and although the riots themselves are not depicted, the episode shows much of the hostility that was at its roots. It begins with a mock black-and-white newsreel,4 »In Britain Today«, which presents the news that »Jericho Receives Queen’s Medal«. This fictional news is mixed with authentic newsreel footing that, for the serial’s audience, is part of the newly familiar

3

For a general discussion of Jericho cf. also Müller (2009).

4

This is also a meta-historical device in so far as it reflects the extent to which the media have shaped our image of the past.

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visual archive of Britain’s black history: It includes, among other material, shots of black migrants leaving a ship, while the voiceover characterises the British capital as a »city of 5 million people of old traditions and new opportunities« (0:00:19-22). The general tenor of the newsreel is to present Jericho as a man who helps to keep London safe at a time of societal change and a time when London is notorious for its various underworlds: »We all rely on the men of Scotland Yard to keep our streets safe.« (0:00:22-26) Subtly, by editing migrants into its panorama of London life, the newsreel suggests that the new arrivals might be a risk to the city’s safety, thus echoing a widespread opinion among British whites during the 1950s – an opinion which Inspector Jericho will deconstruct in the course of his investigations and continual reinterpretations. As the episode reveals bit by bit, things are much more complicated than the initial newsreel suggests. We are shown that »old traditions« may be just as dangerous to the well-being of society as black people seeking »new opportunities«, and this is anticipated in the sequence that follows the newsreel: quickly edited snatches from (apparently) unrelated social milieus. Two of these include a visible black presence, both times in typical roles: Jericho is seen in a Soho bar, listening to a jazz band with a black clarinet player; a white man (later revealed to be Sir Nicholas Wellesley) is seen in Smith’s Gentlemen’s Club in Pall Mall; in a bus depot in Notting Hill, a young black employee of London Transport (later identified as Roy Marlowe) and a young white woman (Dawn Masters) hold hands until a young white man (Albert Hall), who also works at the depot, threatens Roy by telling him to »keep [his] monkey hands off her« (0:01:40-43). Roy is then seen being pursued by a group of white men. These fragments lead to the two cases Jericho has to investigate in the episode and which he will discover to be linked: Roy Marlowe is murdered, and the man from the club allegedly kidnapped and later also killed. In the first long scene, the first case is introduced: Jericho arrives at Euston Place in Notting Hill, where Roy Marlowe has been found dead. His desperate father Clive embraces the dead body, trying to drag him »home« (0:04:58) – by which he means a place in London, not the Caribbean. Mr Marlowe, this implies, has come to Britain to stay and make it his new home, yet his hopes of belonging are betrayed when his son is murdered, allegedly by the man we have seen pursuing him. The neighbourhood in Notting Hill is depicted as mixed, and the atmosphere is shown to be tense.

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A young white woman and her black neighbour start quarrelling while observing the police investigation from the doors of their respective terraced houses. Investigations at the bus depot reveal that Albert Hall is a fascist; in his locker, Jericho finds a flag with a fascist emblem, the fist, as well as fascist newspapers. One has the caption, »Blacks Go Berserk – White Man Murdered«, another proclaims »Whites Under Attack« (0:11:24-29), referring to the situation in Notting Hill. Albert Hall is arrested as the prime suspect, and old Mr Marlowe appreciates Jericho’s attempt to find his son’s murderer. When Jericho is surrounded by press men at the Yard, the bereaved father tells the journalists: »I wanna thank this man, this hero has found my son’s killer and locked him up. Swift justice. Thank you.« (0:34:32-48) However, to the press the kidnapping case is more interesting than justice for a black youth. This is also depicted as the dominant attitude among the police force in which Jericho and his team form a laudable exception. When Jericho interrogates Albert Hall, he is visibly disgusted by the young man’s political sympathies, especially since Jericho, as a historically sensitive character, is aware of the crimes committed in the name of fascism during the Second World War: »You a proper fascist? I only ask because I knew some real ones once and they were much more impressive than you.« (0:11:30-37) As the episode unfolds further, Albert Hall is not the only fascist at the depot; he has been recruited for the party by one of his senior colleagues, Mr Shaw, who praises Albert when the latter is released from prison: »The committee think you did well.« (1:13:53-57) It is discovered that Albert only confessed to the murder of Roy Marlowe in order to impress his colleagues, and Jericho has to look for the murderer elsewhere. Old Mr Marlowe is dismayed when Jericho asks him whether his son used to »associate with criminals«. With tears in his eyes, the old man replies: »Are black people responsible for their own murders now?« (0:58:40-48) Mr Marlowe is so desperate to find out what really happened that he even goes to the bus depot – just when Dawn is harassed by Albert Hall and Mr Shaw. Trying to help the girl, the old man is beaten up and only saved because a bobby (another redeeming element in the police force) comes to his assistance (1:16:50-17:50). Later, at the police station, Mr Marlowe is left unprotected and he is attacked again by the fascists apprehended from the depot (1:21:05-15).

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These working-class men are exposed as brutal racists, but Roy Marlowe’s murderer is eventually found among the people involved in Jericho’s upper-class case. The man briefly glimpsed in the Pall Mall club in the early sequence, Sir Nicholas Wellesley, has been kidnapped. His snobbish family, consisting of a wife from an established upper-class family and her grown-up son and daughter, has received a ransom note. When Scotland Yard interferes despite the kidnapper’s instructions, Jericho hears on the phone how Sir Nicholas is apparently shot. This case confronts Jericho with a layer of British society whose classism is just as revolting to him as working-class racism: Sir Nicholas’s wife, Lady Claire, treats the policemen like servants, giving them tea in the kitchen rather than ›upstairs‹. That her son has got one of the maids pregnant – a cause of anxiety and humiliation for the girl – has to remain secret. Another, more consequential secret Jericho brings to light, however, is that Sir Nicholas is not who he claims to be: He was not born into the British upper class but is a Russian migrant who came to Britain penniless in the early 1920s. At the time of the action, he has gone bankrupt and is therefore penniless again, and Jericho suspects that he might have staged his own kidnapping to save the last hundred thousand pounds of his fortune. More essentially, Jericho discovers that Sir Nicholas has been leading a double life and has a second family with a black West Indian woman whom he met as a prostitute. As Mrs Sorin, bearing Sir Nicholas’s original name, Martha Littleton lives in Notting Hill with her two young children. It is the neighbourhood in which Roy Marlowe was killed, and viewers recognise Mrs Sorin as the woman quarrelling with her white neighbour in the introductory scenes. Since Martha is in possession of the suitcase for the ransom money, she comes under suspicion, but Jericho understands her motives for working as a prostitute and later founding a family with a rich man after her migrant’s dream of »the land of plenty« went sour (0:54:40-55:33). Martha is proven innocent, but her brother Shorty, a petty criminal, is involved in Sir Nicholas’s disappearance as is revealed when Sir Nicholas’s body is discovered in the docks where Shorty has a daytime job. He cannot, however, be Sir Nicholas’s killer since at the time of the latter’s death, he was playing the clarinet in the nightclub where Jericho heard him in the opening sequence. Subsequently, Shorty too is found shot by the same weapon used for Sir Nicholas and Roy Marlowe. The solution of both cases is eventually found in the Wellesley’s household. Sir Nicholas never tried to stage his

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kidnapping. Rather, Shorty tried to blackmail Lady Claire with photographs of Sir Nicholas’s other life. Deeply hurt by this happiness with an »immigrant wife« and »immigrant children« (1:27:53-28:00), Lady Claire intended to confront her husband in front of his other home and, in the process, shot him. Roy Marlowe’s death turns out to have been a mere accident. Hearing the shot, he looked into Lady Claire’s car and was in turn shot by the shocked woman who then engaged Shorty’s help to stage Sir Nicholas’s kidnapping. When Shorty demanded too much for himself, she killed him too. Employing patterns of the crime serial, this episode of Jericho presents black history as part of suspenseful entertainment. But it also uses conventions of the crime genre, especially its focus on interpretation, to destabilise viewers’ expectations and the stereotypes they might entertain about the post-war migrants. Typical of crime fiction, things are not what they seem and have to be constantly reinterpreted, both by the fictional investigator and the audience. Although the crime scene is in Notting Hill, the crimes do not derive from the racial hatred that gave rise to the riots in Notting Hill. This hatred is certainly exposed in the episode; with the fascists, racism is presented in one of its ugliest manifestations during the early phase of post-war migration. Even though Albert Hall did not actually commit murder, the fascists are depicted as supporting murder as a ›solution‹ to the black ›problem‹, and they will continue to do so despite the efforts of honourable men like Jericho. The safety of London, which is eloquently evoked in the episode’s initial newsreel sequence, is revealed to be threatened by white fascists rather than the wave of migrants or individual migrants who turn into criminals or prostitutes because they are given no other chance to fulfil their dreams in the city of ›opportunities‹. Eventually, as presented in this episode, it is not race that is at the root of the murders, but the hypocrisy of an upper class that goes to extremes to protect its respectable façade. By interweaving race and class issues in this manner, the episode avoids the representational trap of depicting the history of black people in post-war Britain as an isolated problem narrative. Rather, migration from the West Indies is presented as one facet among others of late1950s Britain – a country in a general process of societal reorientation which, from that period onwards, incorporated a black presence. As products made in different genres and for different media, Wondrous Oblivion and the Jericho episode emphasise different facets of migrant life

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in post-war Britain. But they also bear obvious similarities: Both are period pieces produced with an eye on marketable trends of mainstream cinema and television. And both show a British past of which black people form an integral part, into which they ›belong‹. The parameters of belonging in both films are a strict working ethos paired with the capacity to enjoy life in spite of its hardships, an emphasis on societal and economic contributions, and last but not least moral integrity. To make the notion of black people’s belonging in the national past visually and aurally tangible, both productions reference general knowledge and an active cultural memory of their respective periods’ black people, especially through the use of iconic images of the Windrush generation. They also employ sport and different kinds of music as elements of a black culture that has become part of British everyday life and general popular culture. Both productions suggest the possibility of inter-racial romance: the unrealised affair between Ruth and Dennis in Wondrous Oblivion, and the second family that Sir Nicholas has founded in the Jericho episode. A final similarity of both productions is that, despite clearly pointing to a multiethnic future, their representational choices include Britain’s racist past and the trauma it meant for the postwar migrants. In both instances, upright characters within the action – Mr Wiseman and Inspector Jericho respectively – openly condemn this racism, assist their black fellow citizens and shame the bigoted English. At the same time, however, the conventions of the period film also contain this racism in the past5 and present it as part of a time that has been left behind. It is hardly surprising that many of the elements observed here recur in our third example, the adaptation of Andrea Levy’s Small Island, which is set not only in the post-war years but, to a large extent, also during the Second World War and thus an era which provided the nation with some of its most pervading narratives and defining pillars of its identity.

5

Both, of course, stop short before including the new quality of racism emerging in the 1970s, i.e. when institutional racism was becoming more of a concern. This form of racism had only begun to be publicly debated in the late 1990s, and it continues to create societal tensions.

4. Migration as Heritage Drama? Small Island

That there is today a cultural tendency that engages with racism by locating it in past periods and containing it in this historical ›otherness‹ can also be seen in the television drama Small Island (2009), which is best classified as a heritage production for the ›new Britain‹. Some aspects of such a treatment of the past can be elicited from Levy’s historical novel on which the drama is based. It must be stressed, however, that a specific approach is required to see these aspects as central to the novel – it offers many more, complex, and conflicting agendas that a film adaptation could potentially also have engaged with. As it stands, the film’s narrative as well as its visual and aural strategies further sharpen the notion that the racism of Britain’s past has little, if any, resonance in the present. The novel’s time frame, the Second World War and the years leading up to the arrival of the first post-war migrants in 1948, shows the nation in generally exceptional circumstances. This comparatively short time span marked a period of massive transformations in many aspects of British society: the shock of the Blitz, but also more gradual ›shocks‹ such as an increasing devaluation of the category of class, women’s independence through their newly found places in professional life, the disintegration of Empire, migration and the experience of the nation as a zone of new contacts and conflicts. All these themes converge within the narrative of Small Island, whose main characters are the Jamaican Gilbert, an RAF soldier who is stationed in England during the war and later migrates there in 1948; his wife Hortense, who, as a young teacher in Jamaica, has provided him with the fare to England in exchange for marriage and the promise that he

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will send for her; and the English country girl Queenie, who in order to escape life at her family’s pig farm stays with her aunt in London; when the latter dies, Queenie’s only chance to prevent a return to her farming family seems to be through marriage to Bernard, an uptight Londoner whom she does not love but who has been courting her for some time. Their lives intertwine through a series of coincidences. Bernard – in a bid for heroism – joins the RAF and does not return for a prolonged period of time, leaving his father, a shell-shocked veteran of the First World War, in his wife’s care. Queenie meets Gilbert when her disoriented father-in-law gets lost and Gilbert ›returns‹ him to her. After the war, desperate for a half-way decent place to stay, he looks her up and moves into the big, mostly deserted house near Earl’s Court. When Hortense joins him, conflict is impending, not only because of Hortense’s high expectations and self-conception, which are bound to be disappointed, but also because it emerges that Queenie has had an affair with another Jamaican RAF-soldier, Michael Roberts, who happens to be Hortense’s cousin. Unlike in her obligatory »conjugal relations« (episode 1, 0:36:10-20) with Bernard, Queenie experienced sexual satisfaction with Michael, who visited her twice: once during the war when he was appointed to her house for lodgings, and once immediately after the war, on his way to Canada. When Queenie’s husband belatedly returns from his less heroic war experience in India, the situation explodes. Bernard is outraged to find that his wife is sharing his house with ›coloured‹ people; Queenie gives birth to Michael’s child; Bernard and Hortense suspect that the black baby is Gilbert’s. When this misunderstanding is dissolved, the baby begins to function as a reconciliatory factor for the two couples, but even more it stands for the future and a new generation as well as a moment of ›racial healing‹. However, the ending of the main action is ambivalent: When Gilbert and Hortense find their own place to live, Queenie, in an act of despair, persuades them to take the baby with them and raise him as their own son. Andrea Levy’s novel Small Island was published in 2004 and immediately won a host of important literary awards ranging from the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Orange Prize to the Whitbread Prize. The latter seems particularly noteworthy in the context of our analysis, as its prime criterion of evaluation is the recognition of »some of the most enjoy-

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able books of the year«,1 and it functions as a trendsetter for a wide, general readership.2 The Orange Prize, a much-noted award for women’s writing, also influences the choices of a large section of the reading public. When the Prize’s judges chose Levy’s »humane, generous exploration of post-war England through the eyes of two couples, one English and one Jamaican« (Crown 2005) as the »Best of the Best« of all previous winners, this was generally applauded, although questions about the novel’s literary accomplishment were raised. This can be interpreted as a widespread approval of Levy’s theme, but not necessarily of her position as an outstanding writer.3 The winning of prestigious literary awards is in itself not a warrant for a film bid and much less for a television adaptation. In this case, however, the prize industry, the film industry, the political culture, public reading initiatives4 as well as the upcoming 1807 anniversary presented what appeared to be almost a concerted effort – the circuit of culture working at its smoothest, so to speak – of bringing Levy’s story as an important story about Britain’s past to the television screen and thus an even wider audience. The BBC showed interest in adapting the novel as early as 2005, but it took four years to produce and screen the film.5 When it was eventually

1

Cf. Costa Book Awards (2010).

2

The Whitbread Prize has been awarded since 1971; in 2006, the year after Levy won the Prize, it was taken over by Costa Coffee and has since been known as the Costa Book Award. The winners of the prize continue to be chosen by the Booksellers’ Association of Great Britain.

3

Cf. the comments on the Guardian’s Culture Vulture blog, where »Evan«, for instance, remarks that »though I do not consider it a masterpiece, it is, warts and all, a well-written, good old-fashioned page-turner and deserving of its many accolades. Whether it is deserving of the Orange of Oranges I cannot say [...].« (Crown 2005)

4

The Small Island Read 2007 was a mass reading initiative which included several local reading projects. Tens of thousands of books were given away to individuals signing up for the reading and discussion events (cf. Small Island Read 2007 for more information). For an analysis of the Read cf. Fuller/Procter (2009).

5

In 2008, Levy said that »[t]hey had Sarah Williams do the scripts, and they were fabulous scripts, I really liked them, she did a great job. But the BBC work on

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aired in late 2009, it was not embedded in a context that would typically be seen as ›black‹ (such as Black History Month or the period of the Notting Hill Carnival), but, significantly, during the Christmas season, a time for feel-good and heritage films on television. What is more, both parts were screened on a Sunday, the »traditional night for costume drama« (Walton 2009), and the nine-o’clock slot granted Small Island a cross-section but majority white audience. Britain’s black audiences, still »starved of images and (even more so) narratives about themselves«, as reviewer Tony Dennis remarks, expected and watched the television drama »with a sense of purpose. So all credit to the BBC for allowing […] Small Island to interrupt the usual Sunday night bonnet-fest. It is a rare opportunity for black audiences to see our lives, histories, challenges, loves and achievements portrayed on the small screen. The first episode inspired my wife, not given to rash impulses, to phone friends and family to remind them it was on BBC1, only to learn (with a smug glow) that they were already watching.« (Dennis 2009)

However, even less expectant audiences can be said to have been prepared for this television event, as there had been a considerable stir about the production, be it the rumours about potential high-profile actors,6 the

scripts for a long time and things can take years to come to the screen. I’ve stopped holding my breath on this one. But they’ve spent a lot of money on it so far, and they’ve got the cast in place.« (Pirker 2009a: 35) The commissioning of scriptwriter Sarah Williams, writer of such screenplays as Wallis and Edward (2005), The Secret Life of Mrs Beeton (2006) and Becoming Jane (2007), already points to the film’s agenda as period drama. A second scriptwriter involved at a later stage, Paula Milne, likewise has a record of writing scripts for period drama, for instance The Virgin Queen (2006). 6

In 2005 there were rumours on celebrity news websites about a cast starring either Kate Winslet or Cate Blanchett and Halle Berry, before the production team settled for the British actors Ruth Wilson and Naomi Harris for the female leads. Harris had previously starred in the television adaptation of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth.

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production firm’s efforts to spot original locations, or the BBC’s long-inadvance advertisement.7 The efforts taken before the screening may have served to ensure that the prominent programme placement of this expensive production would pay off and grant it at least the same impressive quota as the usual Sunday night drama.8 The question arises as to whether the adaptation is really an »interruption of the bonnet-fest«, as Dennis suggests, or rather a continuation and a multiethnic variant. In his review of the film, James Walton holds that »in many ways Small Island (BBC One) fits the bill nicely. It has a distinguished cast, an impressive sense of period, several female characters who need a husband for hard-headed business reasons, and plenty of plot, some of which relies heavily on coincidence.« (Walton 2009) If these ingredients mark the success formula for popular period drama, they can be useful points of interrogation in an analysis of the film, which was announced on the night of the first episode’s screening as »[t]he lives and loves of four people entangled by war and fate« and as »an epic love-story set against the backdrop of war and prejudice«. However, as it is a production about neglected aspects of history – aspects that, in many respects, stand in opposition to the images of the past conveyed in the traditional heritage industry – one is well advised not only to look for points of convergence, but also for those of difference and newness. In the ensuing analysis references are made to the novel and to the changes that have been made in the adaptation (particularly in terms of structure and characterisation) to show how the focus is slightly yet significantly altered in the television adaptation. Visual and aural strategies of representation are also emphasised, as these play an important role in the production’s effort to conjure up a lifeworld of the past and make it accessible to a general viewing audience. The opening trailer of the first episode is an immediate case in point. Instead of Queenie, whose childhood experi-

7

Although the screening was announced on the BBC’s website weeks in advance, the actual date and time of the broadcast were withheld until the very last moment, presumably for fear of competitive programming by other channels. After a pre-screening event for a selected audience in a cinema during Black History Month 2009, several favourable press reports appeared in British newspapers.

8

According to TV ratings, Small Island attracted more than five million viewers (cf. Plunkett 2009).

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ence of a visit to the Empire exhibition in 1924 forms the novel’s prologue, Hortense’s moment of arrival is put in focus at the film’s beginning. Furthermore, in contrast to the corresponding passage in the novel, which introduces Hortense ringing the doorbell of Queenie’s house, the film begins at the West India Docks. A near-empty waiting hall is shown with a single figure sitting at its centre; then the camera zooms in on Hortense (played by Naomi Harris) who is sitting on a huge trunk. The atmosphere of these images, which are embedded in a twilight atmosphere, is one of forlornness. String music fades in and the male voice-over narrator is overheard saying in a grave voice: »Put the word ›mother‹ in front of the word ›country‹ and you’ll think of somewhere safe where your potential would be nurtured and your faults excused.« After a short pause, the voice continues, »Hortense had never known the love of a mother. [While Hortense looks away, the camera follows her gaze and zooms in on the clock which shows two o’clock.] Perhaps that’s why she had so long cherished the dream of coming to England [shot of Hortense’s silhouette, close up of her face]. But would it be the rainbow’s end for everything she aspired to be?« (episode 1, 0:00:00-28)

Then there is a cut, followed by shots of Jamaica’s hills and cane fields, dancing children and a flying dove, across which the opening credits fade in. The dove’s flight connects the images of Caribbean impressions to the next set of shots of historic Piccadilly Circus with its iconic statue of Eros.9 Within a few seconds, a shift from nature to metropolitan buzz, from margin to centre, from island to metropole, is conjured up, and the metropolitan space is characterised by motion, passers-by, buses and horseback riding. The images of the dancing children, of the dove and the Piccadilly Eros as well as the extradiegetic melancholy soundtrack conjure up a sense of peace and quiet before the outbreak of a storm – and indeed, viewers have already been prepared for visions of »war« by the prescreening announcement quoted above. As these first shots suggest, the film’s main scene of action and point of culmination is London – the heart of the proverbial mother of Empire. The

9

For the iconicity of this London site in post-war black Britain cf. the discussion of The Big Life below.

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subsequent shots of Queenie dissolve into images of black and white hands, entwined and suggestive of lovemaking. Over this, the title fades in (which again directs attention to the announced »love-story«), followed by a cut and images of St. Paul’s seen through a car window and the perspective of Hortense, who has boarded a cab. It is dark and rainy and the rear-view mirror shows the white cab driver’s disapproving glance at his passenger. Over this gloomy scene the narrator muses: »Sometimes, to make a dream come true, you must swallow your pride.« His voice continues over shots of Hortense leaving the cab and of the house she is about to approach: »Hortense told herself that love was a luxury she could not afford.« (episode 1, 0:01:16-25) The sequence of impressions eventually merges into scenes of (inter)action when Hortense rings the doorbell, the door opens and Queenie and later Gilbert appear. Even before the drama’s action proper sets off, its central themes and conflicts have been introduced: arrival and encounter, strangeness and familiarity, the spaces of colonial centre and periphery, passion and calculation. Hints about the period in which the action is about to be embedded come up (for instance through period dress and the historic images of Piccadilly Circus), but they are minor, introductory references, so that explicit information is added in the form of a caption which identifies the location of the waiting hall in the opening scene as »Docklands« and the time as »1948«. Apart from these hints at the time and place, the general and timeless concerns of the film (a story of love and adverse conditions) are emphasised rather than the particularity of the story as a story of the past. The voice-over narration in particular functions as a bridge between these universal themes and the specific background and past conjured up in the film. Perhaps the very noticeable efforts of presenting the story as a tale of universal relevance would not have been necessary since the specific period in which it is embedded is not an unfamiliar past, but one of the mythic moments in the modern British nation’s becoming. The story of the Second World War, and particularly the Blitz and the Battle of Britain, have played a specific role in popular historical constructions of Britishness. As Jeremy Paxman writes in his bestselling portrait of the English people: »There is a strong case for agreeing with Churchill that the Second World War had been his country’s ›finest hour‹. He was talking about Britain and the British Empire, but the values of that empire were the values which the English liked to think

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were something which they had invented. Certainly, the war and its immediate aftermath are the last time in living memory when the English had a clear and positive sense of themselves. [...] The revisionists tell us that so much of the British achievement in that war was not what it seemed at the time. Certainly, the English have clung fiercely to heroic illusions about the war, the favourite ones being the Little Ships at Dunkirk, the victory of the Few in the Battle of Britain and the courage of Londoners and other city-dwellers in the Blitz. [...] It may be demonstrably false that the English won the war alone, as any reading of Churchill’s desperate attempts to secure American intervention will attest. But the fact remains that the country did stand alone in the summer of 1940 and had it not done so the rest of Europe would have fallen to the Nazis. [...] How many attempts have there been to explain what the Second World War did to Britain? One thousand? Ten thousand? What none of them can undermine is that in that titanic struggle the English had the clearest idea of what they stood for and, therefore, the sort of people they were.« (Paxman 1999: 2-4)

In her novel, Andrea Levy exposes the established World War II narrative as a monodimensional story focused on England and takes care to present a more inclusive picture of the war experience. She depicts the narratives of the Second World War and the Windrush not as separate stories owned and commemorated by separate communities, but as a complexly interlinked history within the context of a larger British story. Nevertheless, Levy also uses the iconicity of the Blitz and the Battle of Britain in order to provide moments of recognition for all Britons by depicting countless details of the (shared) war experience, by addressing the icons while simultaneously drawing attention to the impact of the war on the everyday lives and biographies of British subjects who were male and female, white and black. The blending of the two commemorative discourses, War and Windrush, arguably accounts for much of the novel’s success and provided a formula on which the film adaptation could conveniently build.10 However, the television drama’s composition differs considerably from that of the novel, and the most obvious structural change is the introduction of a voice-over narrator in the film. The novel moves back and forth between chapters set in »1948« (as the sections are entitled) and »Before« (the latter going well back into the 1920s), as well as between chapters

10 This is argued for the novel at length in Pirker (2011a: 149-177).

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recounted by the alternating first-person voices of Gilbert, Hortense, Queenie and Bernard. In the television drama, by contrast, the first part concerns itself largely with the war years, whereas the second focuses on the Windrush story. Both parts strongly rely on the narration of the authoritative heterodiegetic, male narrative voice introduced already in the opening trailer. This voice is ›Dickensian‹ in approach, overtly didactic and spreading truisms (such as »Sometimes, to make a dream come true, you must swallow your pride«). Although clearly designed to bridge the distance between the characters’ and the viewers’ worlds of experience, it was not received favourably in this production. In a blog review Jane Murphy, for instance, observed that »other than those pesky interruptions from the narrator, I loved every minute« (Murphy 2009). Another reviewer remarked that »the voiceover is butting in to turn [the characters] into representative types. [... W]hen it shuts up, the drama is often beautifully underplayed« (Sutcliffe 2009).11 Gilbert, for instance, is portrayed as a man who keeps getting himself into funny situations, but counters his adversaries with his Jamaican wit. In light of the racist hierarchies that he is subjected to in Britain, his repartees do not help him much. In the novel there is more space to characterise Gilbert and let him speak for himself; in fact, there is even a long monologue in which Gilbert speaks about both his fantasies about Britain and the British realities he experienced:

11 Other critics have joined in this evaluation; one holds that whenever another narratorial interruption »returns, it has such an instantly deadening effect that if there were a Bafta award for Biggest Miscalculation in an Otherwise Solid Drama, Small Island would surely be a shoo-in for this year’s« (Walton 2009); another declares: »Tonally and narratively the result was a mess.« (Preston 2009) Importantly, Levy has justified her choice of first-person narratives thus: »For me, it’s akin to acting. Whenever I started to write Queenie, I had her voice in my head. I knew how she talked and what she was thinking. And it was the same with Gilbert and Hortense. I like to live that person. […] Every time I’ve started a new novel […] I’ve said, I’m going to write this one in the third person, but when I begin it’s like a sheet of glass between me and what’s happening. As soon as I switch back to the first, it disappears and I’m there.« (Hickman 2004)

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»[O]ne day you hear Mother calling – she is troubled, she need your help. Your mummy, your daddy say go. Leave home, leave familiar, leave love. Travel seas with waves that swell about you as substantial as concrete buildings. Shiver, tire, hunger – for no sacrifice is too much to see you at Mother’s needy side. […] See me now – a small boy, dressed in a uniform of navy blue, a white shirt, a tie, short trousers and long white socks. I am standing up in my classroom; the bright sunlight through the shutters draws lines across the room. My classmates, my teacher all look to me, waiting. My chest is puffed like a major on parade, chin high, arms low. Hear me now – a loud clear voice that pronounces every p and q and all the letters in between. I begin to recite the canals of England: the Bridgewater canal, the Manchester-to-Liverpool canal, the Grand Trunk canal used by the china firms of Stoke-on-Trent. I could have been telling you of the railways, the roadways, the ports or the docks. I might have been exclaiming on the Mother of Parliaments at Westminster – her two chambers, the Commons and the Lords. If I was given a date I could stand even taller to tell you some of the greatest laws that were debated and passed there. And not just me. Ask any of us West Indian RAF volunteers – ask any of us colony troops where in Britain are ships built, where is cotton woven, steel forged, cars made, jam boiled, cups shaped, lace knotted, glass blown, tin mined, whisky distilled? Ask. Then sit back and learn your lesson. Now see this. An English soldier, a Tommy called Tommy Atkins. Skin as pale as soap, hair slicked with oil and shinier than his boots. See him sitting in a pub sipping a glass of warming rum and rolling a cigarette from a tin. Ask him, ›Tommy, tell me nah, where is Jamaica?‹ And hear him reply, ›Well, dunno. Africa, ain’t it?‹« (Levy 2005: 139-142)

In the book, these passages are addressed directly to the readers (»See me now«; »Hear me now«; »Now see this«), urging them to conjure up Gilbert’s experience in their imagination. In addition, they come in one long, uninterrupted piece, which almost forms a secluded narrative of its own. In the film, Gilbert’s monologue has not been cut out, but cut up, dispersed and positioned differently; its fragments are partly uttered by Gilbert in conversation with Queenie (once in episode 1 in the tea house, 1:00:3701:30, and once in episode 2 in Queenie’s house where Gilbert has just arrived, 0:13:37-14:30) and partly by the narrator who introduces his interferences with words like »He told her that…« (episode 2, starting 0:13:44). The effect of this choice appears patronising, although it may have been intended as dramatisation.

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Whenever the narrator’s voice is heard, it is accompanied by extradiegetic music. Instead of making use of ›black‹ musical traditions in their choice of soundtrack (as for instance in Wondrous Oblivion), the producers chose a kind of music that is familiar from recent historical drama. Composed by Martin Phipps, who has a record of producing soundtracks for high-profile period drama such as North and South (BBC 2004) and The Virgin Queen (BBC 2005), the music used in Small Island is thus an important artistic strategy that identifies Small Island as a film about the past for a general audience and in an established genre. It also contributes to the impression that this story of war and migration is cast as a recognisably British story. Even the Jamaican scenes appear to be filtered through a British film convention not only visually,12 but also aurally. The use of diegetic music is restricted to a few scenes: A marching band leads the Jamaican war volunteers’ parade in Kingston, while women and children equipped with a sea of Union Jacks cheer the soon-to-be soldiers on their way (episode 1, 0:31:56-34:16). Another instance involves a scene in which Queenie is shown passing the evening with her father-inlaw in their sitting-room, sewing and listening to the wireless which plays a light-hearted jazz tune (episode 1, 0:42:02-24). Then Airman Michael Roberts enters the room with an orange and a chocolate bar (»a token of my appreciation for your hospitality«, 0:42:39-42) and Queenie switches the radio off. The wireless,13 the orange and the chocolate bar as scarce delicacies, as well as other period markers of the 1940s and wartime England, are frequently put in focus. They serve to conjure up this specific past lifeworld of which some viewers may still have personal memories, which others may know about through family stories and yet others may have encountered in films, museum exhibitions and other repositories of the historical culture surrounding this period. The Second World War as a time of deprivation and sacrifice for many people is arguably a time of which small details have been remembered with particular accuracy, and are constantly

12 As one reviewer remarks, »[i]t looks wonderful – the Caribbean scenes sunfaded like an old photograph of the colonial past and the London sections dark with smog and nicotine stains« (Sutcliffe 2009). 13 In an earlier scene we see Bernard and his father bent over the wireless listening to Churchill’s famous war declaration (episode 1, 0:26:14-48).

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invoked in the history of its representation. By repeating these period markers, commonplaces of a popular historical consciousness are invoked that are easily compatible with the typical Sunday night costume drama viewers’ horizons of knowledge about the period.14 Significantly, once such a ›comfort zone‹ of historical consciousness has been established, it is also possible to add aspects that are new to the bulk of the audience. Indeed, attention is drawn in Small Island to aspects of wartime England that retreated to the back of general memory almost as soon as the war was over, in favour of such narratives as that of the proverbial ›few‹ heroes of the Battle of Britain that Churchill evoked in his famous speech: »Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.«15 The fact that the »few« had included (and been backed by) a range of soldiers from all over the Empire tended to be conveniently forgotten for decades after the war. Robert Winder also ob-

14 Interestingly, not all viewers noted the detail which the production invested in the use of language, especially the ›educated‹ English then spoken in the Caribbean. Many viewers clearly lacked the knowledge to appreciate this care. One reviewer, for instance, confessed not to »know how people spoke in 1930s Jamaica, but [bets] they didn’t say things like, ›To what do I owe the honour, Miss Hortense?‹ They did in Small Island (last Sunday, BBC One), though – all the time. So much so that even Jane Austen’s Lady Catherine de Bourgh would have sounded a bit yobby by comparison.« (Preston 2009) Reactions from those literate in the history and culture of the Caribbean were accordingly indignant. Online commenter ›Rachel Brown‹, for instance, supposes, »you would feel far more comfortable if Jamaicans spoke in the stereotypical, jokey, Lenny Henry way you’re used to? […] It bores and angers me when people […] make […] uninformed comments without even bothering to do the tiniest scrape of homework. All it would have taken was a call to BBC Archives […] to call up some old footage.« ›Londoner‹ actually took the effort to explain that »most middle class / upwardly mobile Jamaicans were educated to speak in the way the programme suggested at least until the 1960’s. (Including my grandparents and other relatives). You will still find grammar competitions for children on Jamaican radio. In many respects it is quite a formal, courtly culture (but you will not find many depictions of this in mainstream media).« (in Preston 2009) 15 The quote is reproduced in Levy’s novel as an afterthought following the ending (cf. Levy 2005: 531).

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serves this rapid shift in attitudes of white Britons towards both black American and West Indian soldiers who, during the war, had »inspired both sympathy and applause«: »The government did its best to accommodate the American insistence on a form of apartheid, but many Britons leapt to the defence of these victimised allies. [...] Much the same hospitality was extended to the West Indian Men who joined the services. Those working on RAF bases were embraced as friends by their neighbours; some even resolved to come back once the fighting was over. But after the war the situation changed rapidly, and not for the better. Naturally, Britain celebrated victory with a stream of patriotic films, books, combat magazines and triumphalist histories and memoirs, all of which clung to the old idea of Britain as a sorely pressed but invincible island race.« (Winder 2005: 329-330)

Similar to the commemoration of the contributions of colonial troops in the First World War, whose few remaining »Empire veterans were invited to parade for the first time in 2000, eighty-two years after the end of the war«, the contribution of colonial troops to the Second World War was brushed from memory and only put back on the agenda with the Windrush celebrations. However, the black RAF experience may have been bleaker and »the spirit of camaraderie« may have been less omnipresent than Winder notes, as Small Island clearly suggests. Gilbert is disappointed in the role assigned to him in the RAF as a driver and coal shifter in Yorkshire (»needs must in a war«, episode 1, 1:00:14-15) subjected to a hostile sergeant on the base and curious glances whenever he leaves it. The film also makes the point, however, that hostility was not only directed from white to black people in this period of time, but that a multitude of groups – even natively English ones – were marginalised on grounds related to class, ethnicity and origin.16 Racially motivated hostility against blacks is thus depicted as only one form (among others) of difficult social interaction, although this form is, of

16 Cf., for instance, the sequence in which Queenie catches Bernard and their neighbour, Mr Todd, discussing a petition to the Ministry of Housing in order that they might escape having to lodge poor bombed-out East-End families; Mr Todd speaks of having had »enough with the Polacks and Jews invading us, we’re not getting them Cockneys taking us over, too« (episode 1, 0:34:54-58).

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course, put in focus. Another point is made about British attitudes towards blacks through the juxtaposition of British and American forces (episode 1, 1:05:41-07:55). When Gilbert and Queenie queue up for a visit to the pictures, they are attacked by white American GIs because Gilbert refuses to stand in the »coloured« line. The attack ends fatally for Arthur who is accidentally shot by a GI in the commotion, but the situation serves to show Queenie and some British bystanders who rush to Gilbert’s aid in a favourable light. As in Wondrous Oblivion and Jericho, a white figure functions as mediator, advocate and protector of the black characters in Small Island. This time, however, it is a female character who fulfils this integrative function. Queenie is presented in both novel and film as a woman of practical intelligence, a heroine of everyday life who also has her ups and downs and does not hide them. What would perhaps have been regarded as flaws at the time are qualities that mark Queenie as a heroine of a present-day film: an ability to admit to imperfection, a quest for a better life and personal emancipation (also if it involves turning her back on her pig-farming family), and – ultimately – sexual fulfilment. That she has to rely on relations of dependency in order to move upwards in society is also highlighted. When her first vehicle to the big world of the metropolis, her aunt Dorothy, dies, Bernard presents himself as a supplement. Later, Queenie is ready to bestow that function on Michael, dreaming of going with him to Canada, but cannot summon up the courage to ask. In the film, Queenie is ultimately condemned to accepting her fate. In the novel, by contrast, she awakens to action during the war, taking up voluntary work in a shelter. Despite the deprivations it brought and the many sacrifices it demanded of women,17 the war provided many women with functions formerly unattainable outside the domestic sphere. While Queenie’s volunteer work is given great attention in the novel, the film only hints at the new challenges available for women. Again, it is the narrator who lectures over a sequence of shots that show Queenie standing

17 This is a history which has only recently entered the public culture of commemoration: In 2005 the Women of World War Two Memorial was unveiled in Whitehall. It is not without irony that prior to this event, the Animals in War Memorial was unveiled in Hyde Park in 2004. No memorial commemorating the efforts and sacrifices of the war’s colonial troops has been erected in London to date.

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in front of a wall of posters advertising the new challenges for women in the armed forces: »War means different things to different people. To some it threatens to destroy everything they hold dear. [Queenie looks in the direction of the advertisements] For others, it can mean new freedom and new experiences. For Queenie, too, needed [Queenie directs her gaze to a mother holding a crying baby and away from the posters] a lifeline into the future. It meant relinquishing old dreams for a new one.« (episode 1, 0:35:28-55)

In light of the little space given to Queenie’s dreams, the film’s narrative logic is not immediately transparent. By neglecting an entire aspect of Queenie that renders her heroic in the novel – her stubborn insistence on helping out in the shelter despite Bernard’s objections – the film makes her appear more dependent on her husband’s ideas of a woman’s role. The contributions of women to the war are not related to Queenie, but remain a tag (visualised in the posters) that merely serves to contribute to the sense of the period evoked here. Queenie becomes a heroic figure nevertheless, but her heroism is mostly played out in the field of what became known as ›race relations‹ a decade after the time in which the film is set. Why Queenie stands out as different in a society otherwise presented as racist does not become entirely clear, but it may be associated with her other aspect of difference, her origin from a hard-working family of farmers. Queenie is shown as being able to exist in both worlds, the world of well-to-do middle class Londoners and the world of the peasants (in one scene she is actually shown with rubber boots and a bucket, stomping through filth). She can adapt to many situations and is basically open to other people, regardless of their provenance and even more regardless of their skin colour. In a sense, Queenie embodies what Robert Winder terms the »festive side« of the war on the home front, maintaining that »[s]ocially – even sexually – some traditional shackles were loosened« (Winder 2005: 328), although she ultimately returns to the role of Bernard’s wife, thus reaffirming the pre-war ›order‹ between the sexes. The shifting attitude towards gender roles before, during and after the war is presented in the film as having parallels to the changing race relations.

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The prominence given to Queenie in the adaptation of Small Island caused some negative reactions, although Ruth Wilson’s performance of the character was unequivocally acclaimed: »Given more screen time, it is perhaps not surprising that Queenie is the more sympathetically drawn of the pair, and it is her fears and desires we take to heart. In contrast, the portrayal of the newly arrived immigrants, Hortence and Gilbert – facing the biggest challenges of their young lives – is often superficial […]. It seems that Small Island’s writing (Paula Milne) and direction (John Alexander) are generally more assured around more familiar white characters and situations – the exception being their portrayal of interracial sex.« (Dennis 2009)

Contrary to the reviewer’s suggestions, the centrality assigned to Queenie in the adaptation and the guidance of sympathies in her favour is partly derived from the novel. However, as the novel grants equal space and voice to its four protagonists, readers will not be left with the impression of types. In the adaptation, the impression of Queenie’s centrality is partly conveyed through the added emphasis on the (for her) tragic love plot, through which the transient figure of Michael is also given more weight than in the novel. Thus the interracial romance and explicit sex scenes between Michael and Queenie stand out, not only among productions designed for the costume drama slot, but also in British mainstream television. Next to their dominance, the relationships between all other sets of characters become somewhat farcical. A comment posted in the African-Caribbean online network BN Village offers the following perspective: »I would have actually preferred they did not have the explicit sex scenes at all – for any of the characters. What I found interesting was that the film maker obviously decided that the white woman/blk man sex scenes were necessary [...] but to show the blk married couple engaged in the same sort of intimacy was not necessary. Two messages I got from that: black man and white woman sex is titillating for the audience and should be promoted on TV... and blk on blk love between married people is NOT titillating, not ›natural‹ and should not be promoted on TV.« (›comfortandjoy‹ 2009)

Like the baby born out of the relationship between Michael and Queenie, the insistence on displaying the ›successful‹ sex between them at length (in

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contrast to the problematic sex between Queenie and Bernard and the at first non-existent and later non-visualised sex between Hortense and Gilbert)18 indeed seems to carry a message regarding today’s ethnically diverse society: that interracial sex is not a taboo but part of an interracial relationship, the latter being a matter of course.19 The mother country Michael describes would not have provided a viable space for such a relationship: »Before I came to England I had such ideas about what it was like. But it’s just another island. Just like the one I left. Full of small minds. Just like there.« (episode 2, 0:41:34-50) Again, the suggestion here is that the film describes a past situation which was characterised by negative aspects, but that these negative aspects are also contained within the past. Another case in point for such a reading of the film is the treatment of Bernard, which is far more generous here than in the novel. In contrast to Michael, who gains prominence in the film, Bernard’s position is downgraded considerably. The film cuts his entire appearance short and instead (again through the voice-over narrator) repeatedly attempts to explain Bernard’s attitude and his racism: »The trauma of war is like a wound which never truly heals. When a man returns, he can feel like an impostor in his own life. His struggle for recognition can make him act in a way which even he does not recognize.« (episode 2, 0:56:40-57:03) In the novel, Bernard’s racism is not explained but explored in several long passages.20 The film’s politics of explaining Bernard’s (and others’) racism as an aspect of a deficient world of the past can be read as yet another instance of a present societal desire for ›racial healing‹ and reconciliation. If we understand the past we can move on, if we can render the ugliness of white racism of the past in an understandable, humane way, we can put it aside and get on with the future. The fact that Levy, a black female author, provided the basis for such a narrative (regardless of the fact that her novel is much more complex) has caused the producers of the film to ›defend‹ their narrative with reference to

18 Cf. episode 1, 0:48:20-49:49 and episode 2, 0:39:30-40:55. 19 Among the pre-screening announcements, the close shot of Queenie and Michael became the production’s representative image. 20 The bulk of these passages recount his war experience in India (which is only referred to marginally in the film) where he appears to enter a downward spiral culminating in impressions of a Conradian kind of imperialist’s madness.

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Levy’s ›authentic‹ black voice. One reaction to a less favourable review of the first part of the television drama came from Vicky Licorish, a producer at Ruby Films, the firm that got the commission to realise the drama for the BBC: »We all worked very closely with Andrea to ensure that at all stages in the process we could create the best drama we possibly could and we all had an awareness and respect for the fact that Andrea’s novel is already well on its way to being considered a well loved ›classic‹ by all members of the community. [… I]t is a matter of some pride to me to have had the privilege of watching both episodes at our screening for Black History month in October and also to have sat along side [sic] a screening with Andrea Levy, passengers from the original Windrush journey and West Indian ex servicemen, all of whom not only loved the drama but were very emotional in their awareness of what an important landmark this is.« (Dennis 2009)

By contrast, Levy herself assumes little or no authority as regards the television production, as she stated in an interview prior to the screening: »I’m hoping that I don’t have any ownership over a film. I don’t feel that sort of ownership over it.« (Pirker 2009a: 36) In another interview she noted, after having watched the film: »The first time I watched the whole thing it was a shock. […] But then I watched it again as a piece of TV drama, and not as my book. Then I thought it was great. It’s not the book I wrote exactly, how could it be? But it tells the essential story very well and stays true to the spirit of the book. The performances I thought were fantastic. My one quibble was that some of the voice-over narration was maybe a bit odd.« (Levy in Farley 2010)

There is one further choice made by the writers and producers of the adaptation that clearly departs from the novel’s narrative: the inclusion of a short impression of present-day Britain as a concluding thought. While the novel’s last ›act‹ is Gilbert and Hortense’s moving out of Queenie’s house with the baby, leaving the ending open and on an ambivalent note,21 the

21 In one of the public Small Island Reading Sessions in a Starbucks coffeehouse in Liverpool, two elderly, working-class readers of the novel took up the subject of the baby to share their personal memory of how black and mixed-race babies

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film shows Queenie’s baby, named Michael after his father, as an elderly man in the company of his daughter and grandchild, looking at old photographs and explaining his origin. The film closes on their closing the album, deciding to go to the park and Michael smiling. This final scene depicts a representative London family doing representative things, and it is a multiethnic, mixed-race family whose youngest member, the grandson, has a white playmate. The relaxed and happy family situation in presentday London could not stand in starker contrast to the racial division of the society against which the central drama of Queenie’s love for Michael and the drama of the Windrush arrival unfolds. It presents nothing less than a teleological development from a racist past to a present multiethnic conviviality in which the harsh in-between period of 1960s to 80s racism is entirely omitted. If Small Island has a political agenda with respect to its theme, it is therefore a reductive one which serves to render the past less exclusively white and to render it in a way that can speak to a multiethnic present society. One must concede, however, that the reconstruction of the collective memory of the Second World War as an experience shared by black and white British subjects is an important contribution towards the process of retrieving the role played by West Indians in Britain’s last great war from collective oblivion. Thus Levy, as well as the producers of the television adaptation which stays true to this strand of the novel’s narrative, paved the way for other acts of commemoration. Following the success of Levy’s novel, the Imperial War Museum mounted a temporary exhibition entitled »From War to Windrush« from June 2008 to March 2009, inviting visitors to »Discover the Stories of West Indian Men and Women in Wartime« (fig. 9). It was a minor exhibition (clearly overshadowed by a parallel James Bond exhibition) that was not accompanied by a catalogue, but it follows the same strategy as Small Island by emphasising the special significance of the two World Wars for the formation of British national identity and

were habitually given away to foster homes and foster families in their area and even spoke of a church-led institution that provided a place for the birth and foster care of black babies (Small Island Read in Liverpool on 9 November 2008). A literary/critical discourse about the experience of ›transraised‹ black children has been fuelled by the writer Valery Mason-John (2007). Cf. also McLeod (2006).

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inscribing black subjects and groups into the national myth of the wars. Using the Windrush to attract attention, the exhibition also undermined the latter’s myth of arrival by locating the black ›arrival‹ in the earlier war: »On 21 June 1948, the MV Empire Windrush arrived in England. The ship brought passengers from the West Indies in search of work. This voyage is often depicted as the key event in the history of multi-cultural Britain. From War to Windrush commemorates the contribution of Black men and women from the Caribbean and Britain during the First and Second World Wars. [...] Estimates vary, but approximately 16,000 men from the Caribbean volunteered to fight for Britain in the First World War. During the Second World War, over 10,000 servicemen and women answered the call of the ›Mother Country‹. Thousands more served as merchant seamen.« (general information plate, »From War to Windrush«)

The makers even refrained from seeing the wartime arrivals as a starting point; instead they made a point of outlining examples of black presences and activities in Britain that go back 500 years.22

22 Cf. the information plate »Black People in Britain« in the British section of »From War to Windrush«: »There had been Black people in Britain for at least 500 years before the arrival of the MV Empire Windrush in 1948. London, Cardiff, Liverpool, Bristol and other cities had long-standing Black communities. The first Pan African conference took place in London in 1900. One of the concerns of this global gathering was to campaign against official and unofficial discrimination in British society. By 1913, Britain had a Black-owned periodical, The African Times and Orient Review, and a Black mayor, John Archer, in Battersea. In 1919, the year after the end of the First World War, race riots broke out in Liverpool, Cardiff, Newport, London and other locations throughout Britain. The riots started over allegations about jobs, housing and women. Five people died and hundreds were forced to barricade themselves inside their homes. However, the Black population in Britain continued to grow, and by 1939 had reached over 15,000.«

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Fig. 9: Imperial War Museum Exhibition Flyer

Image credits: Reproduced with kind permission by the Imperial War Museum London.

The exhibition took a personalised approach to history, presenting short biographies of participants in the wars as well as large photographic portraits, exploring these witnesses’ »involvement on the front line and home front« with the additional remit of examining »how their experiences led to the establishment of Britain’s contemporary West Indian populations« (general information plate). The presentation focused on experiences of

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discrimination which black workers and servicemen endured during the First and Second World Wars.23 Yet, the exhibition maintained, »[d]espite facing discrimination during their service, many former Black Caribbean servicemen and women and civilian war workers returned to settle in Britain in the first waves of mass immigration from the West Indies during the late 1940s and early 1950s«. This staying power was specifically emphasised in the section »Legacy« that focused on the significance of the black war participants for contemporary Britain. Its introductory plate explicitly pointed to the children and grandchildren of the people presented in the exhibition – i.e. the black British children of the West Indians who took part in the war: »60 years after the Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury, one per cent of the current British population is of West Indian background and the wartime and Windrush generation who feature in this exhibition are now grandparents and great grandparents.« As a temporary exhibition, »From War to Windrush« did not have the standing to redress the still mostly whitewashed history of the World Wars in the Imperial War Museum’s permanent exhibition, where additions here and there might have been a conceivable alternative to mounting a different perspective in a separate space. Nevertheless, the exhibition ties in with the general tenor of the three film productions considered above, adding another facet to the increased presence of the Windrush story in Britain’s culture of history. The three productions belong to different genres, but they all promote a central interest of contemporary British historical culture: the addition of

23 »Black men in Britain were strongly discouraged from serving with the British army during the First World War. Yet in spite of official disapproval, they managed to join all branches of the armed forces, largely due to varying local recruitment practices [...]«. In the Second World War, »[r]acial discrimination was commonplace, and Black workers and servicemen everywhere were subject to unwritten rules prohibiting fraternisation with local women«; »Black British recruits were sometimes encouraged to join Caribbean or African regiments as British regiments sometimes refused them«, and »Black servicemen and servicewomen, whether British-born or from the Caribbean, faced additional discrimination from Americans stationed in Britain who insisted on forcible segregation in places of public entertainment such as cinemas and dance halls.« (information plate in the section »Black People in Britain«)

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black narratives to the nation’s past. In terms of the periods they address, the productions complement each other: While Small Island looks at the Second World War and the present, Jericho assesses the 1950s and Wondrous Oblivion the 1960s. The films effectively attempt to change established (white) historical narratives by including black stories and black subjects (with an agency that is not merely stereotypical) as central aspects of the periods they depict. Mainstream British cinema still brings forth such productions as The Boat that Rocked (2009), a successful period film about 1960s music and a pirate radio station in which black music fares high in the diegetic sound choice, but in which the sole black character is presented as a dull, weed-smoking-and-dealing dummy. In contrast to such persisting stereotypical depictions, the three examples discussed above appear to point to new directions in the popular filmic representation of black British history. That there is a need to do so is no longer questioned, but this need seems to be strongly governed by a wish for harmony instead of debate. One example is the implied teleology that contrasts a racist past with a convivial present; another example is the contrasting of positive black characters with their racist environment; yet another is the introduction of mediator figures such as Queenie, Jericho or Victor Wiseman, who can function as examples of ›white‹ moral courage and integrity. All three productions stand out in their capacity to transport the agenda of Britain’s new and more inclusive historical programme. Perhaps they tend to offer this agenda almost too bluntly, adhering to a palatable mixture of old and new icons of British historical culture. But it is also precisely this mixture that makes these film productions attractive for a popular audience. Comparatively few people will have visited the »From War to Windrush« exhibition; far more will have been alerted to the black contribution to Britain’s finest hour by reading Levy’s bestselling novel or watching its adaptation on primetime television. The next chapters look at recent attempts to put the Windrush generation on the theatre stage in productions that also aimed for a mainstream audience. In terms of audience figures, theatre can hardly compete with cinema or television. But the stage has its own specific potential to make black history visible and a part of popular knowledge.

5. Migration History as Entertainment? Trends in Contemporary British Theatre

As a performative live medium, theatre’s potential to depict historical events and characters clearly differs from that of film or television. It unites actors and audience in the same spatio-temporal frame and thus presents the historical with a particularly strong sense of immediacy. This effect is further enhanced by the fact that live theatre addresses all the human senses and has the affective quality of an ›event‹ shared with others in which theatregoers are immersed rather than being mere viewers and listeners. If identity is, as performance theory argues, to a large part enacted, then theatre is a highly effective art form for demonstrating how identities are configured and reconfigured (as exemplified in the long tradition of British state-of-the-nation plays), and this includes the formation of historical consciousness. Historical drama has a venerable history and, as a genre, is still alive. Not all historical drama has the capacity to appeal to – or even entertain – a wide audience, but during its heyday in the nineteenth century, the staging of historical plays was a primary medium for the popularisation of history. In today’s media culture, theatre is, of course, more limited than television or film in reaching large audiences. Indeed, the very concept of ›popularity‹ seems even more complex than usual when applied to the theatre, where only big shows in big auditoria have a chance of attracting anything approaching a truly ›mass‹ spectatorship.1 However, in relative

1

Cf. the chapter on »Popularity« in Richard Eyre and Nicholas Wright’s Changing Stages: A View of British Theatre in the Twentieth Century (2000: 320-346).

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terms, some kinds of theatre still have the capacity to interest comparatively large numbers of people, such as the commercial sector of musical theatre, but also, in some instances, accessible plays that address contemporary issues. Over the past few years, public attention has been stirred by a number of plays about migration to Britain and British migrant communities, some of which were produced on major stages in the United Kingdom and thus attracted the attention of the media, which helped to make them known outside the theatrical field. Although their point of departure is usually the present situation, some of these plays have a strong historical dimension, such as Richard Bean’s England People Very Nice (2009).2 Performed on the National Theatre’s main stage, the Olivier, early in 2009, it was directed by Nicholas Hytner and presents the story of migration to Britain as a play within the play, with a decided gesture towards popular perceptions and popular culture. In the play’s present, a group of asylum seekers from Eastern Europe and the ›third world‹ wait for a decision on their applications for residency in the UK at an immigration detention centre in Pocklington. In order to while away their time, the characters perform a play about the migrants that came before them, focusing on Huguenots, the Irish, Eastern European Jews and Bangladeshis. The characters are performed by a multiethnic cast who constantly cross-dress into other ethnicities, indicating that Britain today has become an ethnically diverse nation. The reviewer in the Independent, Michael Coveney, called the performance a »comic strip of national stereotypes« (Coveney 2009), and indeed the play aims to expose stereotypes and show that they can be overcome, especially since each wave of migration in the play also features an inter-ethnic romance. The topical and serious issue of immigration – which, in the present, is particularly focused on Asian(-Muslim) communities and more recent migrants from Eastern Europe – is presented as a comedy and borrows from popular culture in several respects. In The Times, Benedict Nightingale compared its approach to the successful Horrible Histories books3 (which, in turn, continue a venerable British tradition of lampooning history, such as 1066 and All That). As Charles Spencer noted in the Telegraph on 3 March 2009:

2

Bean wrote a number of state-of-the-nation plays, including The English Game (2008), a play using the cricket metaphor.

3

Cf. Nightingale (2009).

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»All are ruthlessly lampooned and stereotyped in a play that argues that the English have always been a mongrel race, and that racial prejudice is a natural part of human nature – and absurd. Indeed, the very fact that the piece is being performed, in an entirely colour-blind manner, by a multiracial cast, is evidence that such prejudice can be overcome.« (Spencer 2009)

The play received praise from members of the audience and some critics, but on the whole the reception was controversial and divided the audience. Its stereotypes enraged the Bangladeshi community, some of whose members launched a campaign against the National Theatre. In his critical discussion of the play, John Bull cites Hussain Ismail: »Richard Bean is making it seem like all Bangladeshis are drug dealers or users, muggers and marry their cousins.« (Bull 2010: 132) With its topic and the controversy surrounding the production, the play reached an audience beyond the one normally found in the Olivier’s auditorium. Kate Muir observed in The Times on 7 March 2009: »There are kippas and bald, thoughtful heads in the audience, an indication that the Hampstead and, indeed, Golders Green liberals are taking the Fiddler-on-the-Roof caricatures on the chin. The Jewish Chronicle gave the ›provocative‹ play a good review. There are also plenty of blacks and Asians here, especially compared with other plays showing at the National. And a French couple.« (Muir 2009)

It will also have helped the play to arouse such attention because it is undoubtedly entertaining, not only through its characters, but also through its use of different styles of ›immigrated‹ music and spectacular effects such as projections: »When the script’s satirical energy flags, it is usually revived by Nicholas Hytner’s spectacular direction, which brilliantly organises the huge Olivier stage and exploits the best animated projection I have seen – characters turn into cartoons before our eyes. It may be almost too much fun. Bigotry is wrong, but is there not also something rather glorious about this parade of prejudice, the purblind vigour with which ›England people‹ make comedy out of their narrow-mindedness?« (Billen 2009)

Significantly, England People Very Nice does not deal prominently with migration from the Caribbean or the black British community. Post-war

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migrants from the West Indies are mentioned but not foregrounded in the same manner as historical migrants of other ethnic extractions. This seems to suggest that black post-war migration, as presented in this play, is perceived as an acknowledged status quo, a presence in the British present and the British past that no longer needs to be ›problematised‹ or specifically brought to people’s attention. Bean’s play and its ›popular‹ staging suggest that British theatre sees multiethnic Britain and its history as a topic capable of drawing cross-sectional audiences even to big auditoria – a commercial consideration which even subsidised theatres such as the National cannot push aside. This is a fairly recent development owed, one may presume, to a new political (and historical) programme that has raised general awareness for the issues concerned. Much black (or other minority-ethnic) theatre in Britain, by contrast, is still associated with small fringe theatres, often with a close connection to black communities and specific neighbourhoods. Theatre is generally an art form more closely rooted in communities (and thus, in a more narrow understanding of the ›popular‹, constituting art for and by the people) than mainstream television and cinema whose eye is on large, increasingly global entertainment markets and whose productions involve a large and diverse number of people. However, there have been notable crossovers of black theatre to big central and commercial stages in recent years, as a commentary in the Guardian points out: »[I]n 2005, black theatre artists did indeed seem to be joining the mainstream. Already, a shift had taken place in the perception of black actors: once cast either as criminals or in minor roles, they were taking the leads in new dramas, in plays by Noel Coward, as Shakespearean kings. Kwame Kwei-Armah’s play Elmina’s Kitchen was in the West End, as was The Big Life, and London’s major new-writing venues were snapping up plays by Roy Williams and Debbie Tucker Green. Two black-led companies, Eclipse and Nitro, were touring the country, to much acclaim. […] Three years on, Kwei-Armah, Tucker Green and Williams are still regularly staged, Williams so frequently that critics comment on how prolific he is.« (Costa 2008)

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Of the playwrights mentioned here, Kwei-Armah is the best known and most firmly established on the UK’s major stages.4 He is a playwright with aspirations to write about his own, black experience and to reach a general audience. In an interview, Kwei-Armah gave the following advice for writing about »being Black in Britain«: »Look around to find an issue that is grabbing the attention of the community and the general public and try to see if you can look behind the headlines.« (Get Delirious 2008) Elmina’s Kitchen (2003), a play about the contemporary black British experience, originally performed on the National Theatre’s small stage, was the first play by a black British playwright to be successfully staged in the West End, i.e. the marketplace of the British theatrical field where plays have to make box-office money. An award-winning success, also adapted for radio and television, Elmina’s Kitchen transferred to the Garrick Theatre in 2004. Its ›sequel‹ (in what was to become a trilogy), Fix Up (2004), also premiered at the National Theatre (in the small Cottesloe auditorium) but engaged more strongly with the importance of history for the formation of present black British identities. The list of characters names Marcus Garvey, James Baldwin and Claude McKay as »non-present characters«, and as Kwei-Armah writes in his introduction, the play was his »attempt to give voice to the generation that was almost voiceless, save for the poetry of Linton Kwesi Johnson – the generation of those now in their fifties who came over to Britain as children with their parents from the Caribbean; the generation that walked the streets of London when it was cold; the ones who existed before we discovered the disgracefully high level of discrimination in the police force and schools and everyday life. How they survived, mentally and spiritually, was a story I wanted to tell, that I continually want to tell.« (Kwei-Armah 2009b: xii)

However, the play’s presentation of black history is strongly discursive and philosophical, and considering its low entertainment factor, it is hardly surprising that Fix-Up is, in the playwright’s own words, »the least performed of my plays thus far« (Kwei-Armah 2009b: xii). In a recent play, however, Kwei-Armah has found a more widely accessible and cross-ethnic

4

For an assessment of black productions in the British theatrical mainstream cf. Osborne (2005).

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way to engage with black history. Notably, Let There Be Love deals with the historical experience of the Windrush generation (and not the less popular one of its children as in Fix-Up). In the aesthetic of a well-made play, it interweaves this experience with the most recent migration wave of multiethnic Britain. Let There Be Love was first performed at the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn early in 2008, directed by Kwei-Armah himself. It was so successful in this small but renowned theatre that it got a second four-week run in August 2008. There was also talk about transferring the play to the West End (cf. Kwei-Armah in Francis 2008) and it is understandable why. As a reviewer in the Evening Standard wrote: »In a series of surprising turns, Let There Be Love delves into domestic violence and illness as well as gender and sexuality, dignity and death, without ever losing its sense of humour.« (Curtis 2008) Apart from its universal human concerns, the play has not only funny, but also many sentimental moments, and it makes effective use of a popular tradition of black music. The play’s title, with its articulation of universal desire, is derived from one of Nat King Cole’s best-known songs. Apart from establishing a sentimental soundtrack for the play, Cole’s music also forms a bridge from the play’s present into the past of its main male character, 66-year-old Alfred Morris, who migrated to Britain from Grenada and has lived in London since 1963. Playing Nat King Cole records on the old gramophone he calls Lillie – the first thing he ever bought in England – is Albert’s only remaining pleasure until he comes into contact with a young Eastern European migrant. Alfred is an unhappy, grumpy old man who suffers from terminal cancer (a fact he hides from everyone). He is estranged from the two daughters he raised as a single father; his wife deserted him because he had a habit of beating her. She returned to Grenada, where she now lives with her second husband. Alfred’s daughters hire a home help for him, who turns out to be a young Polish woman. At first, Alfred rejects Maria, and the audience follows a witty exchange of stereotypes and counter-stereotypes, but since Maria understands him and is a better daughter to him than his natural offspring, a sincere friendship develops between the old black man and the young white woman. The experienced, settled migrant helps the new arrival to find her way into British society, and as first-generationers of their respective groups, they have more in common than Alfred has with his British-born daughters. Alfred empathises when Maria misses her home coun-

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try (»That never changes, no matter how long you here«, I.ii, 277),5 and when Maria is beaten by her Polish boyfriend, he offers her the possibility of living in his house, which serves as a token of the fact that he is a migrant who now belongs in Britain. Alfred even wants to bestow on Maria half the money from the sale of his house after his death: »Let me tell you something. I come to this country with nothing and work like a dog. You come to this country and you working like a dog. You’s the rightful inheritor. Not them that squander it.« (II.5, 327) Maria arranges Alfred’s reconciliation with his daughters and his wife, tricking him into a family reunion in Grenada. Eventually, in the last scene, she also helps Alfred to commit suicide so that he will not have to die in hospital – an ultimate proof of the (platonic) love that has developed between them. With a plot centring on human interest and personal relationships, Let There Be Love is a much less political play than the trilogy Kwei-Armah wrote about the black British experience for the National Theatre. Many themes of Let There Be Love are crossethnic and of general concern: generation problems, old age, dying with dignity, redemption and reconciliation. But the play also makes a significant statement regarding Britain’s current historical culture: By relating Alfred’s and Maria’s experiences, it implicitly presents Caribbean post-war migration as the beginning of a process through which Britain has found its contemporary identity as a multiethnic country. Through Alfred as a mentor figure for a new arrival from Eastern Europe, the play presents West Indian migration as a historical paradigm not only of migration, but of a contemporary society that derives (part of) its identity from the fact that it is ethnically diverse. Let There Be Love does not stage a lifeworld of the past; the history of black migration only comes to life in the reminiscences of the main character. Our next example, by contrast, is a true period piece, and it uses the musical, a theatrical genre explicitly dedicated to entertainment, to once more tell the story of the Windrush generation.

5

All page numbers for this play refer to Kwei-Armah (2009a).

6. The Windrush Story as Musical

The Big Life (2004) is not a musical in the tradition of big-budget West End shows (such as those written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and inspired by Broadway), but in its own, modest-budget style, it embodies the features that make musicals attractive for audiences: a good show for the ear and for the eye, offering song and dance, an emotionally involving and humanly engaging story usually with an up-beat ending, and spoken dialogue that makes comparatively low demands on the audience’s intellectual participation. Even where a musical addresses social and political themes or is socially committed, its primary focus is on entertainment.1 The Big Life presents the lifeworld of post-war migrants from the Caribbean as a ›ska musical‹, i.e. as theatre with retro music that is black in origin but also already appealed to whites in the 1950s and 60s2 – and still does to older as well as younger audiences, being both »culture-specific and also universal« (Müller 2006: 222). The Big Life was originally written for and produced by the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, a risk-taking theatre rooted in its local community which in 1996 embarked on the idea of developing »new musicals out of the contemporary music, known as Urban Music« (Hedley 2004: 4). One reason was the ethnic and generational composition of its East End neighbourhood:

1

For an overview of the history of the musical in Britain until the 1980s cf. Morley (1987), whose title announces the main purpose of the musical as a popular art form to »spread a little happiness«. Apart from that, Morley claims, musicals have never been about »very much« (12).

2

Also cf. the integrative and liberating function of ska music for Ruth Wiseman in Wondrous Oblivion.

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»The last census threw up some startling facts about the Theatre Royal’s locality. Newham, in which it is situated, is the borough in Britain with the highest percentage of ethnic minorities who are now in fact a majority – 61% – of the population. It has the highest percentage of young people in its population and the biggest turnover of residents of any borough. It is also one of the most deprived boroughs in the country, a position aggravated by its unaccountable exclusion from being named an inner city borough by the government. These factors combined allow Newham to claim to be on the front-line of social change. It also happens that if any area in Britain can claim to be the cradle of UK hip-hop music, then it is the East End. The Theatre Royal read the writing on the wall and so eight years ago began a process of developing the Urban Musical, while not excluding or disparaging the creation of new musicals in the classic Broadway tradition. The genre now called Urban Music represents an extraordinary range of musical forms which are continually evolving and fusing. These include R’n’B, hip-hop, rap, basement, garage and bashment among other forms. Like so much of popular music its roots are in black culture.« (Hedley 2004: 4)

This use of popular music – in the double sense of coming out of the people’s community and appealing to the mainstream – proved to be a formula for the play’s crossover success.3 The Big Life was not initially created for the commercial stage, but it was so successful at its original venue (with two sell-out seasons of the show from 22 April to 22 May 2004 and from 26 February to 12 March 2005) that it moved to the West End’s Apollo Theatre in 2005 (from 23 May to 1 October 2005). Director Clint Dyer commented on the effect which the different stages had on the actors in the following manner: »See, the wonderful thing about doing it at Stratford East is the size and the intimacy, and that you have a very good idea of your audience. But obviously it was a huge buzz doing it in the West End even though it was bigger and not as intense for

3

And not for the first time: In his introduction to the published script, Philip Hedley, who was then still Artistic Director of the Theatre Royal Stratford East, emphasises this theatre’s longstanding tradition of successful musical theatre, which dates back to Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop and Oh, What a Lovely War! (1963) (cf. Hedley 2004: 3).

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most for those involved. It was a huge buzz, because it’s a big beautiful theatre in the West End. And when it was packed, it was groundbreaking. They knew that every night they went out they were the first. That nothing like that had happened before.« (Pirker 2008: 2)

However, Dyer also noted that »we had to really fight to try and get black audiences into the West End. We also had the issue of trying to get the white audiences to think that the show was for them as well« because »there’s a prejudice [...] that if you see a black cast you think it’s for black people. You don’t think it’s a universal tale. And so that was an issue trying to overcome that barrier.« (ibid.) The barrier was overcome with great success. At the Apollo Theatre, The Big Life once more enjoyed high acclaim from broadsheet critics and audiences. The musical was even nominated for the year’s Evening Standard Theatre Award, alongside Mary Poppins and the stage adaptation of Billy Elliot (the eventual winner). Reviewers specifically noted its innovative character in the West End; Jeremy Kingston, for instance, observed in The Times: »This jolly show has been hyped as the West End’s first black British musical to be set in a black British community. There have been black musicals on Shaftesbury Avenue before, and black British musicals set in exotic islands far away, but not till now a show in W1 that presents the black experience of living on this island, here. That’s a first worth celebrating.« (Kingston 2005)

The Big Life was written by Paul Sirett, a white playwright who was, at the time, associated with the Royal Shakespeare Company as their literary manager. It was Sirett’s idea to base the musical on the plot of Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost4 and thus provide it with a comedic

4

The particular choice of this Shakespearean love comedy as a pre-text for The Big Life can be explained by its special use of groups of characters, but it may also have been inspired by Kenneth Branagh’s earlier attempt to musicalise the play (in 1940s Broadway style) in his film adaptation of 1999. Müller’s interpretation of The Big Life points out the correspondences to Shakespeare’s play in great detail (Müller 2006: 222-226). For a short reading of the musical that argues that Sirett transposes the principal axis of conflict from gender to race cf. Ritchie (2005).

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story of general appeal (and, for the initiated, an extra treat of intertextuality). The music and songs of The Big Life were composed by Paul Joseph, a local reggae musician, who understood ska not only as period music, but also as a bridge for younger members in the audience: »This show is not of course a contemporary urban musical, but interestingly it has a form of street music, ska, which has been neglected by musical theatre. Ska is the immediate predecessor of reggae, which in turn contributed much to hip-hop. The belief of course is that the music and subject matter will connect directly with older generations who remember the fifties or the ska revival of the early eighties, and the hope is too that the music will build a bridge to young people who will recognise elements of their own music in ska.« (Hedley 2004: 8)

Typical of a modern musical, The Big Life is a two-act play. It is subdivided into many short scenes, giving it a dynamic pace that complements its use of highly rhythmic music. The play depicts the lives of migrants who come to London from the West Indies in the late 1950s. It thus explores the experience of what is now called the Windrush generation and it was also expressly marketed with allusions to the Windrush as an icon of post-war migration – even though the published script does not mention the ship specifically. The programme for the Apollo Theatre, however, included a one-page essay about »The First Journey of the Windrush as a Migrant Ship«, and the production’s official website featured a telling anachronism when it claimed that the big boat that forms the set for the first scene was the Empire Windrush itself: »The Big Life tells the story of a group of friends arriving off the immigrant boat ›Windrush‹, in the post-war 1950s, all eager for a share of ›the big life‹. A funny, sad, uplifting, joyous, rip-roaring, toe-tapping, tear-jerking white-knuckle-ride, The Big Life is a gigantic emotional roller-coaster, sweeping the audience back to the days when people from the Caribbean first came to Britain in any numbers in the 5

hope of a better life.« (our emphasis)

The friends arriving in London comprise a group of young men (Ferdy, Bernie, Lennie, Dennis, Reverend and Admiral) and a group of young

5

http://www.biglife.themusical.co.uk.

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women (Sybil, Connie, Joyce, Ena) who later join forces with women already living in London: Mary, Kathy and Zulieka. Their experiences are depicted from their first sighting of the coast of ›Inglan‹, and the play follows them through their first disillusioned months in London. The opening scene introduces the characters on »the deck of a large ship somewhere at sea«. They are »all straining to get their first glimpse of England«, and their first song gives vent to their high hopes in the simple but pithy lyrics that are typical of the musical: All: Inglan … Big time – We comin Inglan – We comin Big time In Inglan Inglan We comin Motherland – We comin Inglan – We comin 6

Big time – We comin… (I.1, 29)

The men and women are looking forward to work in engineering (Bernie), as a mechanic (Lennie), secretarial work (Sybil), and a university position (Ferdy, who has studied philosophy, is writing a book about the Stoics and has corresponded with a professor in London). Dennis’s aspirations are less specific, »Ennitin man, long as me get plenty money« (I.1, 30), but he feels entitled to success because his brother fought for Britain during the Second World War: »[Takes out a medal.] My brudder in the RAF. He get killed in de war. Shoot down over de Inglish Channel. Wid dis – I can do ennitin.« (I.1, 30)7 Admiral’s line, »The Big Life!« (I.1, 33), sums up all their hopes, as does a later song with the refrain »We can« (I.1, 35f.). However, once

6

Page numbers for the play refer to Sirett (2004).

7

Cf. the significance of the war for the migrant experience in Small Island (pp. 207-225).

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they arrive in London, their dream begins to sour: The Motherland is cold, and their hopes crumble. The third scene shows the men in a tube train, struggling with the underground map and exchanging their first experiences of a country that is foreign and hostile: Ferdy: We do the right thing I hope and I pray Can’t find no room Nowhere to stay Bernie: I don’t want to be here Fed up in the smog Signs say: No Blacks No Irish and No Dogs (I.3, 52)

Eventually, some of the men find employment: as a postman (Bernie), a bus conductor (Lennie) and in a factory (Ferdy). While Mary and Kathy work in a hospital, Sybil, the qualified secretary, has to work in a laundry. Ferdy is particularly disappointed since the professor with whom he has corresponded does not even want to see him. Dennis has been pushed off a bus by a racist white and has not found a job after more than three months; the fact that his brother died for Britain in the war has not been of any help: »But nuttin. No one want to know.« (I.7, 67) Those in employment work hard but are disillusioned as is revealed at the outset of the second act: All: I feel so fed up Live a lie I feel so lonely I could cry And all the time Days pass me by All the time Life pass me by Just pass me by (II.1, 77)

This story of disappointed hope and rejection has become a topos in the popular narrative of post-war migration from the Caribbean. However,

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thanks to the plot line borrowed from Love’s Labour’s Lost, it is not the only, or even the main story of The Big Life. Led by Ferdy, the musical’s Berowne character, the group of men who are determined to ›make it‹ in London make a contract among themselves that they will abstain from all pleasures, especially the presence of women, for a course of three years. Ferdy, disillusioned by an unhappy love affair with an older woman that also lost him his place at the University of the West Indies, believes that women cannot be trusted and will only distract men from more important pursuits. Since the others have also suffered disappointments in love, they join in »The Contract Song«: If we are serious The time has come to act If we want betterment Then we should make a pact An agreement to work hard Save all the money that we earn To study and to be someone Fore time come to return (I.1, 43)

As in Shakespeare’s comedy, however, these ambitions are thwarted when the men fall in love with the women who are determined to prove that they are more intelligent than men and can do without them altogether: »Betta rid of – Get shot of – The lot of / Them men.« (I.2, 50) The play’s focus on the universal theme of love is underlined by two chorus characters: Eros and Aphrodite. The former is the famous statue at the centre of Piccadilly Circus – an obvious tribute to Sam Selvon’s now canonical novel about post-war migration, The Lonely Londoners (1956), which also inspired the musical’s title. The play’s epigraph cites one of several passages in Selvon’s novel that present Piccadilly Circus, bright with advertising and entertainment, as the central site of the migrants’ ambitions: »War over, and Big City begin to work on ship and travel all about. One day ship dock in London and he went to Piccadilly Circus and watch the big life. When the ship sail Big City stay behind.« (28) In the play, Eros briefly comes to life, right before the interval, proclaiming and enacting the power of love:

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You’re a lover – Not another Not a mother – Nor a brother No grandmother – Undercover You’re no other – Than a lover Now You feelin hot – And you can not Get off the spot – Be a big shot What you have got – It’s not a lot I tell you what – You have been shot The men turn around – they’ve all got arrows in their backs. (I.10, 74f.)

The second act proves Eros right. It includes a long and highly comic discovery scene (scene 5), set in Piccadilly Circus, in which the men overhear each other secretly asking Admiral, a musician, to compose love songs for them. Eros’s mother is impersonated by Mrs Aphrodite, who serves as a bridge character between the past on stage and the auditorium’s present. An elderly member of the Windrush generation, she sits among the spectators and delivers witty impromptu comments about the action on stage as well as related issues of the present. During the West End performances in August 2005, her interjections included, among others, references to Andrea Levy’s then topical »prize-winning novel« Small Island. The published script introduces Mrs Aphrodite as »a member of the audience. She offers opinions and thoughts between scenes. At the time of going to print Mrs Aphrodite’s interjections were not finalised.« (27) The idea of adding Mrs Aphrodite was that of the director, Clint Dyer, who explains his choice as an effort to include the audience in the performative situation and thus to create an atmosphere that will facilitate an understanding of the past: »I wanted to reflect back at the audience the experience of what was happening on the stage. And the best way to do it was to try and create somebody who was them: them enjoying the show, them watching the show. And in a way what it also did is that it worked as a tool to make it present day as well as past, so that it wasn’t just a pastiche musical about the sixties, fifties experience. It became a present day experience as well. So it was very modern while being very much based in the past.« (Pirker 2008: 2)

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To Fiona Ritchie, Mrs Aphrodite assumes the role of a Shakespearean chorus, but in addition, »[h]er improvised dialogue [...] ties the show in neatly with the contemporary black British stand-up comedy that is currently so popular. The audience reveled in this type of humor, which typically involves self-mockery, playing on conventional stereotypes of the British Caribbean population and offering plenty of in-jokes.« (Ritchie 2005)8 The Big Life enchants its audience with many witty effects, for instance when the Eros statue briefly comes to life, when the battle of the sexes erupts in a hilarious knitting contest between Dennis and Kathy, or when the on-stage band wears wings in an allusion to the god of love. Indeed, like in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost, personal relationships – the confusions caused by love and the differences between men and women – rather than race relations and discrimination are the musical’s most obvious theme. As Benedict Nightingale wrote in his review: »But the show isn’t an exercise in retrospective self-pity or a protest against prejudice. It’s the war of the sexes, not of the races, which is the subject.« (Nightingale 2005) Guardian critic Michael Billington remarked in a similar vein: »What makes the production remarkable […] is that it records the problems faced by 1950s immigrants without sacrificing its optimism and good nature.« (Billington 2005) Indeed, this strategy is even mentioned on the official website of The Big Life: »The result is a funny, joyous, feel-good musical, which, while not ignoring the social problems of the 1950s, is a tribute to the hopes and dreams of those immigrants who won through to a better life«.9 Apart from the typical plot complications of a romantic comedy, The Big Life offers generous doses of language and situation comedy, the latter primarily associated with the character Dennis, who experiences all kinds of funny mishaps, such as forgetting his suitcase at Waterloo station and then having to borrow clothing from everybody else. Most essentially, of course, the play’s potential to entertain its audience manifests itself in its song and dance numbers, making effective use of its genre’s great asset: »The best musicals have everything the best plays have [...]. But musicals also have music. And no matter how you slice it, words alone

8

For more insights into Black British stand-up comedy and comments on The Big Life, cf. Paulette Randall in Pirker (2009b).

9

http://www.biglife.themusical.co.uk.

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can never have the dramatic power or intensity of emotion that music possesses.« (Miller 2007: 1) All in all, the story about migration presented in The Big Life is offered as a bitter pill in a sugar coating, and one might be inclined to think that the genre of the musical tempted the makers of The Big Life to render this phase of black British history in too popular, harmonious and ›harmless‹ terms. However, the musical as a genre does not shirk serious and important questions. It engages, as Scott Miller emphasises, with »major political and social issues just as readily as any other form of art« (Miller 2007: 3) – but through its own, highly accessible means. The Big Life employs these means to great effect, and considering that it originated in a theatre with roots in a black neighbourhood, a ›ska musical‹ can also be seen as an opportunity to celebrate the contribution of black people to British culture and particularly popular culture. The Windrush generation brought ska to Britain, and with it all the later developments in popular music that ska inspired. The Big Life thus demonstrates that the music of the Windrush generation had staying power, just like the migrants themselves, and the whole play can be read as a tribute to achievements despite discrimination: »The strength of the ending and the whole play gain much from the achievements of black history in Britain since 1948.« (Müller 2006: 225) To Paulette Randall, a stage director and television producer, The Big Life »was a great show, and it was an important one because it was about a British history, black and white, although it was mainly told from a black perspective. But it is, you know, our history that should be shared, that should be out there. It’s everybody’s history. You’re talking about a British experience, and it’s generations on now, so that’s why I think these stories are being told more and more. But it’s a universal history, it’s not just a black one.« (Pirker 2009b: 5)

Indeed, during the West End performances of The Big Life, the audience was mixed, with a significant number of black people alongside the usual West End theatregoers. Quite literally, people in the auditorium shared not only an evening’s high-class entertainment, but also a lesson in their country’s black history and hence the new historical programme of contemporary Britain. ***

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The screen and stage productions discussed in this part do not only come in different media but also in different genres and subgenres, ranging from the feature film to series episodes and TV-mini-series, from ›conventional‹ stage plays to the musical. What they have in common is an approach to black British history after the Second World War that blends history ›lessons‹ with a fair dose of entertainment. The Windrush generation and the Windrush story have been widely treated in more ›serious‹ and more openly instructional modes such as museum displays, life writing and television documentaries, some of which were placed in prominent programme slots and have also reached considerable audiences. While some of these products have received critical attention, we have focused on recent fictional modes of re/presentation because it is evident that the Windrush narrative is more suitable for fictionalisation and entertaining purposes than the narratives surrounding slavery and abolition which were at the centre of Part II. While fictional accounts of slavery, the slave trade and abolition certainly exist, they tread on difficult territory, having to account in some way or other for the shortcomings or limitedness of the perspective they can provide on this past that is so widely agreed on as a traumatic chapter of a distant past for which testimony is often lacking. In contrast, the Windrush story has been backed up by documentary narratives and many witness accounts from the late 1990s onwards, and as a consequence does not ›feel‹ like a forgotten story that can no longer be retrieved. On the contrary, it has been revived and become accessible through increased efforts of documentation, in life writing initiatives, community archives as well as government-sponsored platforms of migration history.10 In light of this available and accessible material, which also forms a pool of stories that literally invite dramatisation, an increase in fictional accounts and filmic realisations of Windrush narratives cannot take us by surprise. Despite the aptness of the story of ›arrival‹ for dramatisation and popularisation, the products analysed here are not blind to the discrimination and racism which members of the Windrush generation had to endure; their image of Britain in the 1950s and 60s is, accordingly, not an entirely posi-

10 The website www.movinghere.org.uk grants free access to an online catalogue of materials connected to the history of migration to Britain. It incorporates links to museums and local organisations as well as individual life stories and invites users to share their personal history of migration.

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tive one. However, all examples clearly convey the impression that the racist society they depict has improved in the course of time and eventually become a space in which migrants from across the Atlantic can live convivially with those who have been there before, and a space in which blacks and whites can collectively build a viable British future. Through their (often nostalgic) immersion in past lifeworlds, which are conjured up in great detail with the help of period costume, setting, music and manners, the examples discussed depict a history that belongs to Britons as their shared past, but is also clearly different from the present. It is thus implied that both the nation and its citizens have been transformed, and the black characters are often portrayed as agents and catalysts in this formative process. All of this gives reason for acclaim, but some shortcomings can be observed: While white British characters are not unequivocally presented as bad racists and attention is drawn to exceptional positive figures, black characters are often still presented in dependent positions. This position of inferiority in British society is emphasised as a phenomenon of the past, but it is at the same time perpetuated as a stereotype by being re/presented. In light of the difficult position occupied by the Windrush migrants in the past, however, their staying power and transformative potential in British society emerges as a strong component in all narratives and strengthens the iconography surrounding the Windrush with its – explicit or implicit – claim of forming the beginning of the multiethnic ›new‹ Britain. This is an interpretation of history that blends easily – and perhaps too smoothly – into the programme that drives contemporary British historical culture.

Conclusion

The case studies investigated in this book show that Britain’s historical culture has opened up to a considerable degree in recent years. It has not only become more diversified and heterogeneous in terms of allowing certain versions of and perspectives on history more space, but also by changing existing and (formerly) dominant narratives. Our book has treated one area in which this change becomes particularly clear: Aspects of a black history which were formerly neglected or at best ›tolerated‹ as ›alternative‹ or ›revisionist‹ historiography have recently been taken up in cultural products and processes which operate with strategies of popularisation. These strategies manifest themselves in the products’ marketing for general audiences, in their placement in accessible spaces, as well as in processes of cultural regulation that promote the creation of narratives and images relating to black history for a multiethnic, yet still majority white audience in the UK. Our case studies draw attention to these cultural processes, but also to the inter-procedural synergies that are at work when a book, film, play or exhibition about aspects of black British history is launched in order to add to the general consumer’s historical knowledge, and thus to make an impact on the nation’s wider historical programme. This historical programme is, as our examples have shown, strongly tied to the nation’s idea of itself. Despite the backlashes which occurred in reaction to 9/11 and 7/7, the debates surrounding the necessity to redefine Britain and Britishness for the twenty-first century have led to a widely accepted view of the United Kingdom as a heterogeneous, multiethnic and culturally diverse space. This reconceptualisation of national identity gave way to the pressing need to accord marginalised aspects and narratives of the nation’s past their due space within a newly defined historical canon.

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Keeping the convergence of diverse cultural processes in mind, our primary focus in the analysis of texts, films, plays and museums has been the question of re/presentation, because it is this aspect of cultural ›programming‹ which is immediately taken in by consumers and which is likely to make an impact on the cultural memory and to contribute to its long-lasting ›archives‹. Even the ›event‹, with its apparently temporary, transitory nature, can be said to have gained a long-term component with the recent anniversary craze; and it is through anniversaries that certain aspects of a black British history have made their entrance into the nation’s wider historical programme. One decade into the twenty-first century, there can be no doubt that black history has entered the circuit of mainstream culture and, thanks to this new role in social communication, a general historical consciousness. Our approach through case studies illustrates the wide range of media and genres in which black history has recently been re/presented – and accordingly also shaped by the respective media and genre conventions (ranging from TV documentary, docudrama, feature film, theatrical performance and reenactment to museum displays and internet presences). It has also shown that in some instances, particularly when there is a thematic season or anniversary, different media readily converge and thus amplify their respective potentials for making information accessible and even available for consumption in entertaining ways. Eventually, some of our case studies have made it obvious that ›popular‹ representation does not necessarily imply a single-minded or one-dimensional representation or even an inferior quality. The examples which we have taken up all aim towards being accessible and attractive to a wider, cross-sectional audience, but some make their re/presentational choices explicit and attempt to offer multi-perspectival, ambivalent views of a complex past (for example the TV documentaries The Slavery Business and In Search of William Wilberforce, Schama’s docudrama Rough Crossings, Kwei-Armah’s theatre play Let There Be Love as well as many of the museum exhibitions we have discussed). Even products in typical entertainment formats such as the family-and-sports-film (Wondrous Oblivion), the television crime series (Jericho) or the heritage-and-war drama Small Island do not gloss over racism and discrimination as shameful aspects of Britain’s interracial past, although they also display a tendency to safely anchor these aspects in the past and claim that the present has ›improved‹. At the same time, it has to

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be noted that some products which have undisputedly reached a mainstream audience tend not to go in any significant way beyond clichéd and mono-dimensional approaches, such as the internationally distributed, almost-blockbuster film Amazing Grace and the nineteenth-century woman’s perspective adopted in Philippa Gregory’s bestseller A Respectable Trade, whose instance of ›scandal‹ is an interracial romance, but which denies the black ›object‹ of love a significant voice in the story. Aspects of a black history in Britain have been propelled into the realm of mainstream culture in some cases, but the fact that they are more frequently addressed, spread through political regulation and even ›popularised‹ does not imply that a multifaceted historiography of black Britain has yet been achieved. Britain’s mainstream culture – including the mainstream historical culture – still shows a persisting tendency to reproduce long-standing stereotypes about black subjects, black ›culture‹ and also black history. This has not fundamentally changed with the anniversaries of 1998 and 2007 – what has changed, however, is that more stories, and a greater variety of stories with an appeal in Britain’s history marketplace have come to the fore. The current politics of history has encouraged a programme for historical culture that relates aspects of a black history to the reality and experience of today’s ›multiethnic‹ society. This ›intentional‹ history has found various outlets for ›celebration‹, not only surrounding anniversaries, but also during Black History Month, which has become a fixed institution in national, regional and local cultural organisations. However, the embrace of Black History Month by a growing number of institutions also shows that there still is a need for special occasions to remember Britain’s involvement in slavery and abolition, the Windrush story and many other aspects, persons and narratives of black British history. It ultimately testifies to the fact that black British history is more present and accessible today, but not yet sufficiently interwoven with existing dominant narratives of the nation’s historical culture. Our case studies finally suggest that there are some segments of black British history that seem to lend themselves more easily to celebratory purposes than others. The popular narrative that has evolved around the now iconic Windrush offers less resistance to incorporation within a celebratory and affirmative discourse around multiethnic Britain than the narrative of the slave trade and abolition. Indeed, products about the Windrush

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now tend to emphasise its status as a foundation myth, a ›beginning‹ of a new post-war Britain, and to underscore the leitmotif of the ›staying power‹ of post-war migration which eventually brought forth a ›new‹ society. This is a story with a teleology and utopian potential, one that can be made immediately relevant for some present concerns of British society. With the 2007 anniversary, however, things became more complex. After Windrush, the bicentenary of Abolition could not be ignored, but could it really be celebrated? The underlying controversies of the celebrations and commemorations surrounding the bicentenary came to the surface immediately, already in the preparations for the anniversary. 1807 could not be communicated along the same lines as 1948 because of its many implications of an older scar and of a historical and cultural trauma which had never been addressed on a major scale or in a concerted effort by the nation and its institutions. 2007 gave rise to many debates that provided platforms for addressing precisely this circumstance, and thus it occasioned many instances of a rethinking of, and thinking about, British history. What will be done with these incentives – also regarding changes in the UK’s political programme after New Labour’s demise – remains to be seen. The development of a historical culture which appears to have become more multifaceted and inclusive must be further watched and assessed not only with respect to persisting omissions and silences, but also regarding the construction of dominating and possibly sustainable narratives, heroes and icons, and in light of shifting political agendas and directives. This book has broken some ground in this direction, but further studies are doubtless required in order to be able to critically observe the further development of Britain’s historical programme.

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Index

abolition 14, 17, 25, 29-31, 50, 52f, 57-180, 249, 253 Africa 20n5, 22, 59, 68, 71, 95, 97, 101, 106, 108n11, 127, 137, 140f, 144n10, 146, 157, 164, 169f, 172n8, 176, 216 African-American 84f, 97 Amazing Grace 50, 79, 99-114, 127, 132n13, 253 Amistad 63, 127 anniversary (culture) 14, 18, 25, 29, 33f, 121-34, 138, 252-4 apology 17, 123 archive 39, 88n5, 136-8, 146, 156f, 196, 202, 249, 252 arrival, narratives of 13, 19, 25, 27, 183f, 192, 196f, 202, 212f, 225f, 237, 249 Atlantic (topos) 59, 82, 84f, 93, 118, 146, 148, 157 Assmann, Aleida 18n2, 38f, 57, 164 authentic/-fication 49f, 70, 94, 112, 116, 125, 169, 196, 201, 224 autobiography 30-2, 59, 66, 86, 249 awards (see prizes) BBC 27, 29n18, 32, 35f, 42, 70, 81, 96, 168, 176, 199, 209f, 218n14, 224

Bean, Richard 232-4 belonging 12, 23, 172, 177f, 193, 202, 206, 237, 250 bicentenary (of abolition) 14, 17, 30, 33, 49, 57-180, 254 Big Life, The 234, 239-48 Black Atlantic (s. Atlantic) Black History Month 18f, 22, 68, 81n1, 210f, 253 black soldiers (see colonial servicemen) Blair, Tony (see also New Labour) 17, 20n6, 57, 122 Blitz 207, 213f Bristol 30, 66, 68f, 78, 105, 1224, 126f, 130, 141, 157-9, 176, 226n22 Britain’s Slave Trade 65, 68f, 73 Britishness 20n7, 25n13, 152, 167, 213, 251 Brixton 24n12 Brookes 124f, 158 calypso 196 Caribbean 13, 25, 27n15, 30, 36, 50, 68, 90, 112, 123, 127, 144n10, 154f, 157f, 165, 16870, 172, 175n12, 176, 180, 183, 186f, 189n6, 197, 202, 212, 217n12, 218n14, 226, 228, 233, 235, 237, 239, 2242, 244, 247

280 | B LACK HISTORY – W HITE HISTORY

Channel Four 32, 36, 67f churches 58, 126, 244n21 Churchill, Winston 33n30, 213f, 217n13, 218 cinema 49-51, 99-114, 179, 184, 206, 288n23, 229, 234 circuit of culture 41, 43-5, 209, citizenship 25n13, 135, 140 city tour 130 Clapham Sect 59 Clarkson, John 83f, 89-92, 94-8 Clarkson, Thomas 58-60, 83, 93f, 98, 100, 106-9, 111f, 137, 161 class 11n1, 20, 21n10, 24, 50, 66, 75, 129, 166f, 169, 187f, 191, 193f, 196, 204f, 207, 218n14, 219, 221, 224n21 colonialism 12n3, 60, 64, 72, 75, 81n1, 88, 139, 157n19, 165, 170, 172, 187, 190, 213, 217 colonial servicemen 207f, 21720, 224, 226, 228, colour/c.-blind/c.-consciousness 18, 31, 95, 188, 208, 220f, 233 commemoration 14, 17-36, 39, 60, 69f, 78f, 115, 119, 12134, 137, 142-4, 146, 156n18, 157, 160f, 179f, 214, 219f, 225f, 254 community (projects) 122, 124n4, 130, 138, 152, 157, 159, 239f, 249 cricket 165, 185-197, 232n2 crime fiction 199-206 culture of memory (see also memory) 18n2, 22, 26, 29n18, 38f, 57f, 60-4, 72f, 114f, 135, 139, 206, 225, 252 diaspora 17, 20n5, 24, 118, 163f, 175, 177f discrimination 172, 187n2, 188, 190, 194f, 226n22, 227f, 235, 247-9, 252

DNA (see also genealogy) 174-8 docudrama 52, 70, 72, 81, 94, 96, 252 documentary 32, 35f, 45, 51f, 65-98, 114-9, 164, 175-9, 183f, 181n2, 186n4, 190n8, 196, 249, 252 drama (see theatre) education 18n3, 23f, 27, 35, 65f, 97, 107n10, 122, 143f, 159, 180, 187 Elmina’s Kitchen 234-5 Empire 22, 25, 76, 81n1, 101, 151, 157, 172f Empire and Commonwealth Museum (Bristol) 123, 157f England People Very Nice 232f Equiano, Olaudah (see also Son of Africa) 30-3, 59, 65f, 98 event (culture) 24, 33, 35, 49, 67, 78, 97, 121-34, 159, 231, 252 exhibition 18, 20n5, 25n13, 30, 33f, 45, 49, 57, 63, 79, 122f, 126-8, 135-62, 183, 185n3, 212, 217, 225-9, 251f film (see cinema, television) First World War 62, 190n8, 208, 219, 226, 228n23 Fix Up 235f Foyle’s War 199, 201 genealogy 52, 161, 163-80 generation (see also Windrush g.) 35f, 159, 163-80, 183, 189n6, 208, 235-7, 239, 242 Ghana 69, 116-8, 121, 177 Gilroy, Paul 185n3 Gregory, Philippa 65, 67n2, 158, 253 Haley, Alex 63f, 164, 175n13 Hall, Stuart 23f, 45n14, 54, 66, 113

I NDEX | 281

heritage 20-5, 37-9, 42f, 73, 78, 100, 135, 138, 143, 152, 160, 163-80 heritage culture 38, 139, 160 heritage film 38, 50f, 66, 102, 106, 114, 207-30, 252 hero/-ic 18, 30-2, 35, 52, 57f, 60, 69, 75, 77, 82, 84-6, 89f, 96, 99-117, 128, 132, 140, 18890, 195f, 203, 208, 214, 218, 220f, 254 historical culture 12-4, 17f, 20, 24f, 34f, 37-47, 53, 57, 62, 66, 69, 78, 85, 97, 104n8, 138, 160, 180, 194, 199, 217, 228f, 237, 250f, 253f - novel 45, 67, 164, 207 - programme 44-6, 54, 64, 179, 229, 234, 248, 251f, 254 history book 22f, 47, 49n5, 8198, 181 - politics 18, 253 Hochschild, Adam 100n4, 105, 111, 117 Holocaust 53, 63, 118, 142, 148, 185 home (see belonging) Hull 99n1, 115f, 122f, 126, 132, 136, 141, 156n18 humanitarianism 53, 82, 101-4, 107, 113 icon/-ography 25, 27f, 31f, 34, 62, 92, 113n15, 115, 118f, 126, 139, 152, 183, 195, 206, 212, 214, 229, 242, 250, 253f immigration 22n11, 169, 228, 232 Imperial War Museum 184, 225-8 imperialism 61f, 101, 107, 139, 147n12, 165f, 172, 174, 195, 223n20 In Search of William Wilberforce 115-20, 252 installation (art and video) 1469, 151f, 154

institution/-alisation 18f, 39n5, 40, 45n13, 49, 54, 68, 78, 124n4, 130, 132, 136, 140, 142f, 150, 154f, 187, 253f - institutional racism 21n8, 206n5 intentional history 38, 253, 124 International Museum of Slavery (Liverpool) 126, 136, 142, 147-9, 152, 154, 157f internet 18, 27n14, 39, 45n15, 49, 52f, 150, 163f, 168, 252 Jamaica 27f, 31, 63, 74, 83n4, 90, 106f, 115n17, 118, 123, 128, 140, 149, 154, 165-7, 172, 177, 180, 189f, 207-9, 212-8 James, C.L.R. 185n1, 190f jazz 202, 217 Jericho 199,206, 220, 229, 252 Jewish (history) 138n3, 185-98 Kay, Jackie 28n16 Kwei-Armah, Kwame 234-7, 252 Lammy, David 22f, 125, 155 Lawrence, Stephen 21n8 Levy, Andrea 62-4, 73n9, 180, 206, 207-29, 246 Let There Be Love 236f, 252 Lindo, Delroy 189n6 Liverpool 30, 68, 88n5, 97, 105, 108, 122f, 126f, 130, 136f, 140-4, 147-50, 158, 224n21, 226n22 living history 41, 49 London 17n1, 18n3, 19, 21, 24n12, 30f, 33, 42, 58, 62, 68, 73, 82f, 88, 93, 95, 97, 99n1, 102, 102, 107-9, 112f, 118, 121-62, 165, 169, 176, 185-230, 234-6, 242-5 Long Song, The 63f, 73n9 Lord Kitchener 196 mainstream 11n1, 12, 19, 24, 29n18, 30, 42, 45, 48n3, 51, 53, 81, 98, 101, 108, 111,

282 | B LACK HISTORY – W HITE HISTORY

124, 155f, 159f, 168, 179f, 183f, 186, 206, 218n14, 222, 229, 234f, 240, 252f marginalisation 79, 98, 113, 123, 142, 219, 251 market/-ing 11, 40, 47f, 97, 99, 122f, 135, 139, 180, 183, 199, 206, 234f, 242, 251, 253 memorial 33, 117f, 142, 220n17 memory (see also culture of memory) 18n2, 22, 24, 26, 29n18, 39, 50, 60-2, 85, 91, 117, 135, 139, 176, 179, 214, 218f, 224n21 migration 18, 21, 24f, 27f, 31, 35, 40n7, 62, 144n10, 165, 169, 171-5, 179, 181n2, 18397, 200, 202, 204-37, 242f, 245, 248f - post-war 13, 19, 25, 28, 25n32, 36, 50, 53, 136, 165, 172, 180, 183-250, 254 minority 18, 23, 114n16, 138n3, 193n11, 197, 234 Morrison, Paul 285n2 mother country 25, 172, 183, 223, 226 Motherland 175, 177f multiculturalism 19, 21, 27n14, 68, 137f, 140, 147n12, 165, 173 museum 18, 20n5, 28n16, 30, 42, 49, 51, 121, 123f, 126, 130, 135-62, 180, 183, 217, 249, 252 Museum in Docklands 126, 136, 151-7 music 43, 48, 70f, 74-7, 92, 115n17, 116, 118, 157, 176f, 186, 197, 206, 212, 217, 229, 233, 236, 239-50 musical 18, 47, 49, 53, 217, 232, 237, 239-50

National Maritime Museum (Greenwich) 136, 143-6, 151, 154f National Maritime Museum (Liverpool) 126, 136, 140-5, 147 New Labour (see also Blair, Tony) 13, 20f, 44, 254 newsreel 28, 169, 187, 196, 201f, 205 nostalgia 38, 51, 186, 250 Notting Hill 27, 199-206 Notting Hill Carnival 27, 35n35, 123f, 130, 210 Parliament 17, 58f, 77, 103-7, 110-4, 116, 119, 127f painting 73f, 88n5, 89, 136, 150, 160 Phillips, Caryl 97, 175n13, 184n2, 186 Phillips, Mike 27, 29n17, 35f, 140, 183, 196 Phillips, Trevor 21n9, 27, 29n17, 35f, 64, 68, 125, 183, 196 photography 26, 49, 136, 139, 169, 196, 217n12, 225, 227 plaques (commemorative) 30, 33, 149, 169 police 194, 197, 200-4, 235 popular (culture) 12-4, 17-54, 61-5, 67, 81-98, 101f, 104, 108, 111, 114f, 132, 135, 139, 142f, 157, 159-61, 16380, 186, 188, 191, 197, 199f, 206, 211, 213, 218, 229, 231f, 234, 236, 239n1, 240, 244, 247-9, 251-3 postcolonial/-ism 132, 135, 165, 187, 190f post-war 51, 183-250, 254 post-war migration (see migration) prejudice 31, 95, 189n6, 211, 233, 241, 247

I NDEX | 283

prizes 64n10, 208f, 215n11, 235, 241 race/-ism 21, 62, 112, 124, 132, 140, 142, 144n9, 147n12, 174, 185-7, 192, 194f, 200, 204-7, 219, 223-6, 233, 241n4, 249, 252 - relations 12n3, 35n32, 44, 62, 221, 247 reenactment 41, 45, 49, 52, 69, 73, 81, 93f, 127f, 148, 158, 177, 252 representation 41, 45, 47-54, 58, 62-5, 99, 138, 159, 179, 249f, 252 Respectable Trade, A (film) 65-7 Respectable Trade, A (novel) 67, 253 »Respectable Trade, A« (exhibittion) 158f Robeson, Paul 20n5, 62 Rough Crossings (docudrama) 52, 79, 81-98 Rough Crossings (play) 97 Royal Air Force (RAF) 203, 208, 216, 219, 243 Royal Mail 30, 126 Royal Mint 124-6 Roots (novel and tv series) 36f, 164, 175n13 Rüsen, Jörn 37, 39 Sancho, Ignatius 30, 32n25, 127, 144n10 Schindler’s List 63 Schmidt, Siegfried J. 43f Seacole, Mary 31-5, 81n1 Second World War 13, 29n17, 36, 165, 169, 187, 193n11, 199, 203, 206f, 213f, 217, 219, 225f, 228f, 243, 249 Schama, Simon 52, 79, 81-98, 110, 112, 137n2, 252 Selvon, Samuel 245

Sharp, Granville 30n20, 58f, 60, 82f, 88f, 92, 98n8 Sirett, Paul 241 ska 192, 197, 239, 242, 248 slave trade 16f, 17, 22, 29f, 52, 57-180, 249, 253 slavery 14, 19, 25, 29n18, 30, 53, 57-180, 249, 253 Slavery Business, The 70-9, 98, 129n10, 147, 252 Small Island (tv drama) 50, 67n3, 206-30, 252 Small Island (novel) 64n10, 180, 207-30, 252 Smith, Zadie 164f, 167f, 170, 174, 177, 210n6 Somerset case 58, 60n7, 82f, 88 Son of Africa, A 65f sport (culture) 185, 197, 206, 252 state-of-the-nation play 231f stereotype (racial) 132, 205, 232f, 236, 247, 250, 253 Stuart, Moira 115-8, 168-71, 175 television 11f, 18, 28n16, 30, 32, 35f, 38, 42, 45, 47, 49-53, 64-98, 101f, 114-20, 123, 129n10, 137, 147, 158, 16380, 183f, 199-230, 234f, 248f, 252 - drama 66f, 81-98, 207-30 testimony (see also witness) Thatcher, Margaret 20f, 38, 50f, 142n7 theatre 49, 122, 183, 229, 231-50 trauma 29, 57, 84, 94, 146, 164, 179, 186, 201, 206, 223, 249, 254 travel 31, 142, 164, 167, 201, 216, 245 USA, US-American 61f, 85, 99, 127 victim/-isation 18, 57n1, 60f, 64, 67, 73, 75, 77, 103n7, 113, 117, 122, 126, 132, 142n7,

284 | B LACK HISTORY – W HITE HISTORY

148, 152, 177, 179, 189n6, 194, 219 visual arts (see installation, painting and photography) Victoria and Albert Museum (London) 20n5, 155f, 132n12 Walvin, James 72, 78, 166f, 129n10, 147 War of Indepedence 82-4, 90f Wedgwood medallion 61, 103, 117n18, 124f, 137, 140, 152 White Teeth 164f, 167f, 170, 174, 177, 210n6 Who Do You Think You Are? 52, 115, 167n6, 168, 171-6 Wilberforce, William 30n20, 5860, 76-9, 94, 99-120, 127, 137 Wilberforce House Museum (Hull) 123, 126, 132, 136f, 141, 155f Winder, Robert 27, 58, 83n4, 174f, 193n10, 200, 218f, 221 Windrush, SS Empire 13, 19, 258, 183f, 196, 226, 228, 242 Windrush 35f, 45, 65-80, 196 Windrush anniversary 13, 18f, 36, 65 - generation 36, 169, 180, 183, 189n6, 196, 206, 228f, 236, 242, 246, 248f, witness 30, 49, 59n4, 69f, 77, 94, 104n8, 106, 112, 116, 136f, 146, 149, 227, 249 Wondrous Oblivion 50, 185-97, 200, 205f, 217, 220, 229, 239n2, 252