A Gandhi We Didn’t Know: A Reassessment Of An Avant-Garde – OpEd

 October 2, 2024

By Debashis Chakrabarti

Mahatma Gandhi, the iconic figure of India’s independence struggle, has been enshrined in the nation’s collective memory as a paragon of non-violence, secularism, and social justice. Yet, a closer examination of his life and legacy reveals a more complex and often contradictory character. This analysis seeks to challenge the conventional wisdom surrounding Gandhi, offering a critical reassessment that draws on both historical evidence and contemporary political theory.

Mahatma Gandhi’s image, often glorified as the father of Indian independence, overlooks the more controversial aspects of his political and social ideologies. While remembered for his philosophy of non-violence and efforts to unite India, Gandhi’s views on Hinduism, race, and political compromise reveal a figure far more complex. These hidden dimensions, often ignored in popular narratives, continue to shape India’s contemporary political landscape.

Hindu Nationalism in Gandhi’s Political Vision

Gandhi’s early writings and speeches often used Hinduism as a moral framework. He spoke of Hind Swaraj—self-rule not just as political independence but as spiritual regeneration grounded in Hindu values. His insistence on the spinning wheel as a symbol of self-reliance was deeply rooted in Hindu ideals of simplicity and self-sacrifice.

Yet, Gandhi’s alignment with Hindu symbols sparked controversies. His opposition to the  partition of India in 1947 stemmed partly from a belief that a united India could thrive under Hindu moral leadership. Though he called for harmony between Hindus and Muslims, his stance often alienated Muslim leaders like Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Gandhi’s tacit support for policies such as cow protection laws, rooted in Hindu tradition, also fostered resentment among Muslims.

Today, this legacy plays out in India’s political dynamics. The rise of the **Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, hinges on an ideology of Hindutva, a form of Hindu nationalism. Though the BJP celebrates Gandhi’s contributions, it leans on his Hindu nationalism to further policies aimed at securing the interests of the Hindu majority. The contradiction is stark: Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse, was a staunch Hindu nationalist. The BJP’s use of Gandhi’s image while promoting religious intolerance shows the malleability of historical figures in political narratives.

Gandhi’s Troubling Views on Race

Gandhi’s time in South Africa, where he first engaged in political activism, exposes a more uncomfortable facet of his ideology. Though he championed rights for Indians, he showed little solidarity with Black South Africans. Gandhi’s writings from that period describe Africans in derogatory terms, depicting them as “uncivilized” and calling for Indian racial superiority.

Gandhi supported the idea of separate facilities for Indians and Africans, advocating for privileges for Indians within the framework of racial segregation. While this position reflected colonial attitudes of the time, it clashes with his later image as a global advocate for human dignity. His stance in South Africa complicates his legacy as a champion of equality.

The backlash against Gandhi’s legacy in countries like South Africa is growing. Statues of him have been defaced, and calls for reassessment are mounting. For a global audience increasingly focused on racial justice, Gandhi’s past remains a reminder that even revered leaders carried deeply flawed beliefs.

Non-Violence and Political Pragmatism

Gandhi’s strategy of non-violent resistance was groundbreaking in its ability to mobilize millions against British colonial rule. His philosophy of ahimsa(non-violence) remains one of his most enduring legacies. The Salt March of 1930 exemplified his method of symbolic protest, directly challenging British authority without resorting to violence.

Yet Gandhi’s commitment to non-violence faced practical limits. In 1922, following the violent Chauri Chaura incident where Indian protesters killed 22 policemen, Gandhi abruptly suspended the Non-Cooperation Movement, shocking many of his followers. His moral rigidity frustrated others in the movement, such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose, who saw violence as an unfortunate but necessary aspect of revolutionary struggle.

Gandhi’s compromises also reveal his pragmatic side. The Gandhi-Irwin Pact of 1931 ended the Civil Disobedience Movement in exchange for minimal concessions from the British government. Many saw this as a betrayal, questioning Gandhi’s tendency to seek gradual reforms rather than push for sweeping change. His pragmatic approach often alienated younger and more radical figures in the independence movement, widening a rift between Gandhi’s idealism and the realpolitik of leaders like Bose.

Gandhi’s Legacy in Modern India

The contradictions in Gandhi’s thought have rippled through modern India’s political, economic, and social fabric. His vision of a self-reliant, agrarian India, while well-intentioned, seems outdated in a nation that now aspires to be a global economic leader. Gandhi’s push for village-centric development opposed large-scale industrialization, a position incongruent with the economic priorities of today’s India, which seeks urbanization, technological growth, and global trade.

Gandhi’s emphasis on religious tolerance contrasts sharply with the increasingly divisive nature of Indian politics today. While secularists often invoke Gandhi’s ideals to argue for a pluralistic society, political factions like the BJP manipulate his image to justify their majoritarian agenda. By selectively highlighting aspects of his Hinduism, they sidestep Gandhi’s broader commitment to unity across religions.

In contemporary India, issues like economic inequality, religious polarization, and environmental degradation demand solutions beyond Gandhi’s original prescriptions. His critique of materialism resonates amid rising inequality, but his economic vision—favoring small-scale industry and self-reliant communities—falls short of addressing the demands of a globalized economy. Gandhi’s teachings on non-violence provide moral guidance, but his inability to fully engage with the complexities of modern governance limits the applicability of his ideas in tackling India’s pressing challenges.

The Gandhi We Didn’t Know

The sanitized version of Gandhi’s legacy—a symbol of non-violence and tolerance—ignores the complexities that defined his political life. His flirtation with Hindu nationalism laid the groundwork for sectarian divides that persist in India’s politics. His racial prejudices in South Africa tarnish his global image as a human rights advocate. His compromises during the independence movement underscore the tensions between moral idealism and political pragmatism.

Gandhi’s legacy remains relevant, but it requires critical reassessment in light of contemporary challenges. India, facing widening inequalities, communal tensions, and environmental crises, can still draw from Gandhi’s ideals, but not without acknowledging the limitations of his philosophy. The “Gandhi we didn’t know”—a man whose political beliefs carried internal contradictions—offers lessons both as an inspiration and as a cautionary tale.

In a world increasingly polarized by religion, race, and politics, Gandhi’s life serves as a reminder of the complexities behind revolutionary leadership. As India continues to grapple with its identity, the real Gandhi—flawed, human, and bound by the context of his time—deserves renewed attention. Understanding the full scope of his contributions and shortcomings is crucial to navigating the future of Indian democracy. 

Gandhi’s ideas may still have a role to play in guiding India forward, but the time for idolizing him as an infallible figure has long passed. It is the nuances and contradictions in his legacy that hold the greatest potential for reflection and growth.

India's Mahatma Gandhi. Photo Credit: Wikipedia Commons

Debashis Chakrabarti

Debashis Chakrabarti is an international media scholar and social scientist, currently serving as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Politics and Media. With extensive experience spanning 35 years, he has held key academic positions, including Professor and Dean at Assam University, Silchar. Prior to academia, Chakrabarti excelled as a journalist with The Indian Express. He has conducted impactful research and teaching in renowned universities across the UK, Middle East, and Africa, demonstrating a commitment to advancing media scholarship and fostering global dialogue.

 

Posts falsely blame HAARP research project for Hurricane Helene

An aerial view of damaged houses are seen after Hurricane Helene made landfall in Horseshoe Beach, Florida on September 28, 2024 ( AFP / CHANDAN KHANNA)

• Published on October 1, 2024  
• 
  
• By Natalie WADE, AFP USA

Copyright © AFP 2017-2024. Any commercial use of this content requires a subscription. Click here to find out more.

As a massive hurricane thrashed the southeastern United States in late September 2024, social media posts claimed Democrats used the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) to create the storm to prevent Republicans from voting in the upcoming presidential election. This is false; scientists have repeatedly refuted the notion that the atmospheric research initiative can manipulate the weather. 

"They are using HAARP to ensure that HURRICANE HELENE devastates the largest Republican stronghold area in Florida. This hurricane will destroy homes, displace thousands and ensure much less participation in the presidential election in November," says a September 26, 2024 Facebook post.

Screenshot of a Facebook post taken September 30, 2024

Screenshots of the claim spread elsewhere on social media. The X user who originally aired the allegation admitted September 28 that it was a "troll post," only to share a similar claim two days later.

Helene made landfall September 26 on the Florida Panhandle as a massive Category 4 hurricane, stranding residents, destroying homes and knocking out power for millions of people. The National Weather Service warned of "catastrophic and potentially life-threatening" flooding as the storm headed inland, and the death toll climbed to at least 130 on October 1.

The disaster electrified an already tense election campaign, just five weeks from the final match-up between former president Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump quickly accused the Biden administration of inaction, alleging political bias.

"He's lying," President Joe Biden responded September 30, citing the White House's ongoing response to the devastating storm (archived here).

HAARP uses the world's most powerful high-frequency transmitter to study the physical processes at work in the highest regions of the atmosphere. It has long been the subject of conspiracy theories -- including claims that it can manipulate the weather.

The latest allegations are similarly baseless.

"The tragic loss of life and widespread devastation caused by Hurricane Helene serve as a solemn reminder of the immense power of natural disasters. The research equipment at the HAARP facility is not capable of generating or amplifying such events," HAARP Director Jessica Matthews (archived here) said in an October 1 email.

Howard Diamond, director of the Atmospheric Sciences and Modeling Division at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Air Resources Laboratory (archived here), concurred.

"HAARP had absolutely no connection to the formation of Hurricane Helene, the formation of any other hurricane, or the genesis of any other natural weather event for that matter," he said in a September 30 email.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks has operated the program since 2015, when it was transferred from the US Air Force (archived here).

"Radio waves in the frequency ranges that HAARP transmits are not absorbed in either the troposphere or the stratosphere -- the two levels of the atmosphere that produce Earth's weather," the initiative says on its FAQ page (archived here).

"Since there is no interaction, there is no way to control the weather."

How hurricanes form

Global weather patterns are responsible for large-scale storms such as blizzards and hurricanes, which require specific atmospheric conditions to form.

"The genesis of Hurricane Helene, as is the case for any hurricane, formed on its own given the right conditions of sea surface temperature and upper atmospheric winds," Diamond said.

Image

Graphic explaining the formation of hurricanes

(AFP / Cléa PÉCULIER, Sophie RAMIS)

Ella Gilbert, a meteorologist at the British Antarctic Survey (archived here), previously told AFP that "heatwaves, droughts, storms and floods are all caused by a variety of different conditions in the atmosphere and are often the result of the random combination of weather events."

She said it "makes no sense" to raise the idea that technology is bringing about such extreme events.

Although the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season has been less busy than predicted (archived here), scientists say climate change and warmer-than-average ocean temperatures have likely played a role in the rapid intensification of storms.

Florida voters affected by Helene

The Florida Department of State told AFP it is working with county election officials to address damage to infrastructure and polling places, poll worker safety and availability, and mail-in ballots.

"The Florida Department of State will continue to follow up with supervisors throughout this time as their needs evolve," an agency spokesperson said in a September 30 email.

The state has taken steps to ensure ballot access after past storms.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis issued an emergency executive order following Hurricane Ian to change election procedures and expand voting options for those displaced or otherwise affected ahead of the 2022 midterms (archived here, here and here).

More of AFP's reporting on misinformation about the 2024 US election is available here.

Robert Reich: How Can Trump Be Running Neck-And-Neck With Harris? Let Me Tell You – OpEd

 October 2, 2024  

By Robert Reich

With less than 40 days until Election Day, how can it be that Trump has taken a small lead in Arizona and Georgia — two swing states he lost to Biden in 2020? How can he be narrowly leading Harris in the swing state of North Carolina? How can he now be essentially tied with her in the other key swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin? 

More generally, how can Trump have chiseled away Harris’s advantage from early August? How is it possible that more voters appear to view Trump favorably now than they did several months ago when he was in the race against Biden?

How can Trump — the sleaziest person ever to run for president, who has already been convicted on 34 felony charges and impeached twice, whose failures of character and leadership were experienced directly by the American public during his four years at the helm — be running neck-and-neck with a young, talented, intelligent person with a commendable record of public service?

Since his horrid performance debating Harris, he’s doubled down on false claims that Haitian migrants are eating pets in Ohio. He’s been accompanied almost everywhere by right-wing conspiracy nutcase Laura Loomer. He said he “hates” Taylor Swift after she endorsed Harris; that Jewish people will be responsible if he loses the election; that the second attempt on his life was incited by the “Communist Left Rhetoric” of Biden and Harris. And so on.

He’s become so incoherent in public that Republican advisers are begging him to get back “on message.”

So why is he neck-and-neck with Harris?

Before we get to what I think is the reason, let’s dismiss other explanations being offered.

One is that the polls are understating voters’ support for Harris and overstating their support for Trump. But if the polls are systematically biased, you’d think it would be the other way around, since some non-college voters are probably reluctant to admit to professional pollsters their preference for Trump.

Another is that the media is intentionally creating a nail-bitingly close race in order to sell more ads. But this can’t be right because, if anything, more Americans appear to be tuning out politics altogether.

A final theory holds that Harris has not yet put to rest voters’ fears about inflation and the economy. But given that the American economy has rebounded, inflation is way down, interest rates are falling, wages are up, and the job engine continues, you’d think voters at the margin would be moving toward her rather than toward Trump. 

The easiest explanation has to do with asymmetric information. 

By now almost everyone in America knows Trump and has made up their minds about him. Recent polls have found that nearly 90 percent of voters say they do not need to learn more about Trump to decide their vote.

But they don’t yet know Harris or remain undecided about her (more on this in a moment).

Trump is exploiting this asymmetry so that when it comes to choosing between Trump and Harris, voters will choose the devil they know.

This requires, first, that Trump suck all the media oxygen out of the air so Harris has fewer opportunities to define herself positively. 

Americans who have become overwhelmed by the chaos are tuning out politics altogether, especially in swing states where political advertising is nonstop. And as they tune out both Trump and Harris, Trump is the beneficiary, because, again, he’s the devil they know.

In other words, Trump is running neck-and-neck with Harris not despite the mess he’s created over the last few weeks but because of it. 

Trump’s strategy also requires that he and his allies simultaneously flood the airwaves and social media with negative ads about Harris, which are then amplified by the right-wing ecosystem of Fox News, Newsmax, and Sinclair radio.

Trump’s campaign has given up trying to promote him positively. The Wesleyan Media Project estimates that the Trump team is now spending almost zero on ads that show him in a positive light. There’s no point, because everyone has already made up their minds about him.

Instead, the ads aired by Trump and his allies in swing states are overwhelmingly negative about Harris — emphasizing, for example, her past supportfor gender transition surgery for incarcerated people.

Researchers on cognition have long known that negative messages have a bigger impact than positive ones, probably because in evolutionary terms, our brains are hard-wired to respond more to frightening than to positive stimuli (which might explain why social media and even mainstream media are filled with negative stories).

Finally, Trump’s strategy necessitates that he refuse to debate her again, lest she get additional positive exposure (hence he has turned down CNN’s invitation for an October 23 debate, which she has accepted).

Behind the information asymmetry lie racism and misogyny. I can’t help wondering how many Americans who continue saying they “don’t know” or are “undecided” about Harris are concealing something from pollsters and possibly from themselves: They feel uncomfortable voting for a Black woman.

Having said all this, I’m cautiously optimistic about the outcome of the election. Why? Because Trump is deteriorating rapidly; lately he’s barely been able to string sentences together coherently. 

Harris, by contrast, is gaining strength and confidence by the day, and despite Trump’s attempts to shut her out, more Americans are learning about her. As she gets more exposure, Trump’s “devil-you-know” advantage disappears.

Perhaps it’s more accurate to say I’m nauseously optimistic, because, to be candid, I go into the next five weeks feeling a bit sick to my stomach. Even if Harris wins, the fact that so many Americans seem prepared to vote for Trump makes me worry for the future of my country. 

What do you think?

• This article was published at Robert Reich’s Substack

Robert Reich

Robert B. Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies, and writes at robertreich.substack.com. Reich served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written fifteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock", "The Work of Nations," and"Beyond Outrage," and, his most recent, "The Common Good," which is available in bookstores now. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary, "Inequality For All." He's co-creator of the Netflix original documentary "Saving Capitalism," which is streaming now.

Black History Month: 12 forgotten Black heroes who defined and redefined modern Britain

For Black History Month, Patrick Vernon offers 12 Black Britons from history who deserve our attention

Patrick Vernon and Angelina Osborne
1 Oct 2024

THE BIG ISSUE

The statue of Mary Seacole outside St Thomas's Hospital in London is the first statue of a named Black woman in Britain. 

The role of Black men and women in the United Kingdom is often overlooked in the history books. As recently as 2001, the BBC commissioned a poll of the greatest Briton ever, spawning a television series and the votes of more than 1.5 million people for the final list of 100. There was not one Black or Asian face among them.

The arrival of people from the Caribbean to Britain on the Empire Windrush in 1948 has been mythologised as the defining moment that changed Britain from an exclusively white population into a racially diverse one; the beginning of a constant Black British presence in this country.

Yet there is substantial evidence of an African presence in Britain since the Roman period, and a constant presence since the sixteenth century, living far more integrated lives in British communities than previously understood.

Black History Month, from 1 October, has become an important event in the UK calendar to recognise the economic, cultural and political contributions of people of African heritage.

Patrick Vernon, who co-authored 2020’s 100 Great Black Britons with Angeline Osborne, picks out 12 Black Britons from his book who everyone should know about.

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Queen Charlotte – wife and consort of George III (1744–1818)

Jamaican American historian JA Rogers dedicated his life to challenging racist European and American scholarship which denied that people of African descent had a history worth writing about.

His books made the assertion that Charlotte Sophia Mecklenburg-Strelitz, queen consort of George III, had African ancestry. Rogers said this could be explained by the significant numbers of Black people in German nobility, “some of them with crowns and others as cardinals and bishops”, and as indicated in their coats of arms and family names such as Mohr and Moringer, derivatives of the word Moor.

Born in Mecklenburg-Strelitz, a northern German duchy in the Holy Roman Empire, Charlotte married George III aged 17 and bore him 15 children, 13 of whom survived. The city of Charlotte in North Carolina is named after her, she is credited with founding Kew Gardens, and she won public affection for her loyalty and devotion to the king as he struggled with mental illness.

Historian and genealogist Mario de Valdes y Cocom thinks it’s probable that Charlotte had Black ancestors, given her connections to the Portuguese royal family. She was directly descended from Margarita de Castro y Sousa, a fifteenth-century noblewoman nine generations removed, who traced her ancestry from the thirteenth-century King Alfonso III and his mistress Madragana, reported to be a Moor, a term used to describe people of African descent.
John La Rose – poet, writer, publisher, political and cultural activist (1927–2006)

John La Rose was one of Britain’s leading Black British public intellectuals; Linton Kwesi Johnson called him the “elder statesman of Britain’s Black communities’”. For 40 years, through education, culture and politics, La Rose fought to change the world .

La Rose was born in Arima, Trinidad, the son of a teacher and cocoa trader, He was an executive member of the Youth Council of Trinidad and, by the age of 30, had helped found the Workers Freedom Movement and West Indian Independence Party.

He arrived in Britain in 1961, at a time when Black communities were beginning to organise politically in defence of their interests. In 1966 he founded New Beacon Books, the UK’s first specialist Caribbean publisher, bookseller and international book service, and co-founded the Caribbean Arts Movement, a forum for artists and writers living in England. Through talks, discussions, conferences, recitals and art exhibitions, the movement provided an opportunity to explore new directions in Caribbean arts and culture, and had a major impact on Caribbean cultural identity in Britain.

La Rose was a prime mover in the Black education movement of the 1960s and 1970s, campaigning against the practice of placing disproportionate numbers of Black children in schools for the educationally subnormal (ESN), and establishing the George Padmore supplementary school, the first of its kind. He was a co-founder of the Caribbean Education and Community Workers’ Association, which drew national attention to the ESN school crisis by publishing Bernard Coard’s influential and ground-breaking book How the West Indian Child Is Made Educationally Subnormal by the British School System.


In 1975, La Rose co-founded the Black Parents Movement after a Black schoolboy was assaulted by police outside his school in Haringey, with the aim of combating the brutalisation and criminalisation of young Blacks and campaigning for decent education. The Black Parents Movement’s alliance with the Race Today Collective and the Black Youth Movement put La Rose at the forefront of the most powerful cultural and political movement organised by Black people in Britain, which campaigned for better state education, against police oppression and supported the Black working-class struggle.

La Rose was chair of the George Padmore Institute, established in 1991 as an archive and library that could house materials relating to the Black community of Caribbean, African and Asian descent in Britain and Europe. Many talks and presentations were given at the institute, featuring prominent Black figures, postgraduate students and early career researchers. Often, they were presented and chaired by La Rose himself.

John La Rose saw culture as an essential tool to be put to use for enlightened engagement. He once said: “At the heart of my own experience is the struggle for cultural and social change in Britain, across Europe, and in the Caribbean, Africa and the Third World.”
Ira Aldridge – actor (1807-67)

Ira Aldridge was the first major Black Shakespearean actor in Europe, and one of the greatest actors of his day. No other performer travelled as widely, enacting the plays of Shakespeare throughout Europe and as far as Moscow, Kiev and St Petersburg.

Aldridge’s life and career are remarkable in ways that today are still not fully appreciated. Of his own volition, he transcended the roles that, as a Black man, he would have been expected to play. He was the first Black man to play white roles in Shakespeare’s plays – roles that are considered the ultimate test for an actor – and performed bilingual productions when he toured Europe and Russia.

Aldridge was an African in a race-conscious society, who was not expected to attain excellence in artistic interpretation, but did.

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Winifred Atwell – musician, entertainer, broadcaster (1914-83)

In the 1950s and 1960s, Winifred Atwell was known as ‘The Queen of the Ivories’, one of Britain’s most popular entertainers, with a string of boogie-woogie and ragtime hits.

After studying with celebrated concert pianist and teacher Alexander Borovsky she gained a place at the Royal Academy of Music, London, where she was the first female pianist to be awarded the highest grade in musicianship. She went on to sell more than 20 million records, was the first artist to have three million-selling records, and; she had eleven top-ten hits in the UK singles charts between 1952 and 1960.

She was the first Black artist to have a number one hit, one of the first African Caribbeans to become a television star, and at the height of her fame her hands were insured for £40,000 as she made numerous television appearances with her own shows on BBC and ITV.

Although she became famous for playing popular music, classical music was her first love. The advent of rock and roll contributed to the decline of her popularity in Britain, but she remained extremely popular in Australia and undertook her first tour there in 1958. She eventually made Australia her home, where she died in 1983.
John Blanke – trumpeter (16th century)

John Blanke’s presence in history is now quite well known but his life remains a mystery. His last name is an ironic joke, his first name an English one; did he have an African name? The documents tell us he was one of eight royal trumpeters who played at the funeral of Henry VII in May 1509 and at the coronation of Henry VIII in June that same year. In 1511 he played at the special tournament in Westminster to celebrate the birth of Henry’s first son.

While Blanke’s presence aligns with the trend for European royalty to employ Africans as musicians, entertainers and servants, Africans were not only living in Tudor England as immigrants. Many were born here, occupying positions varying from household servants to dignitaries for overseas territories. They lived and were baptised, married and buried here. Africans were locals, part of their communities, buried alongside white residents with their information duly recorded by officials in the same way.

The documents also suggest Blanke had agency – he petitioned the king to permit him to take the position of a deceased trumpeter and to double his wages from 8 to 16d per day. He complained his current wage was ‘not sufficient to mayntaigne to doo your grace lyke service as other your trompeters doo’, and asked that his ‘true and faithfull service’ be considered.

He was the first African recorded to have his wages doubled; and when he married in 1512, Henry presented him with gifts: a gown of violet cloth, a bonnet and a hat. The glimpses into Blanke’s life are part of the fascinating stories of people of African descent; that he was one of many who made a life and a place for himself in 16th century England.


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Betty Campbell MBE – community activist, headteacher (1934-2017)

Betty Campbell was a Welsh community activist and race education champion who put Black history in the Cardiff curriculum.

In 1971, Bernard Coard’s polemical book How the West Indian Child is Made Educationally Sub-normal in the British School System was published. Caribbean students were being mistreated and placed in educationally subnormal environments based on culturally biased IQ tests. Coard recommended that schools employed more Black teachers, that Black Studies should be taught in school to make the curriculum more inclusive, and that the ill treatment of Black pupils needed to be addressed by the local education authorities.

Campbell made it her mission to develop a curriculum that included the histories of Black people, reflecting the diverse histories of the students of Mount Stuart Primary in Llanrumney, where she held her first teaching post. Inspired by the history of civil rights activism during a trip to the United States, particularly by the extraordinary life of the nineteenth-century abolitionist Harriet Tubman, she was determined to “enhance the Black spirit and Black culture as much as I could”.A statue has been unveiled in honour of Betty Campbell, Wales’s first Black headteacher. Image: Cardiff Council

She introduced the history of the Caribbean, enslavement and its legacies to her pupils, and taught about the ways Black people contributed to British society. She ensured that subjects such as apartheid in South Africa were included in the curriculum. When it was suggested to her that it might be a difficult topic for children, she responded with “Go ask the Black kids in South Africa if it’s too difficult”.

Her school became a template for multicultural education, and as an expert on race in education Campbell was invited to be a member of the Home Office’s race advisory committee and the Commission of Racial Equality. Campbell also served as councillor for Butetown and advocated fiercely for its residents. She became known outside of her community as a leading academic and education specialist, and taught workshops on the history of Butetown’s diverse communities. Campbell’s commitment to care for her students through education inspired many of them to rise to achieve great things, proving many people wrong, as she had.
John Edmonstone – taxidermist (1793?-1833?)

Like all great scientists, Charles Darwin relied on sources of inspiration from people often overlooked and uncredited for their contribution. John Edmonstone, brought to Scotland as a slave from what is now Guyana, is one such individual, almost lost to history, who was hugely influential on Darwin’s thinking regarding the fixity of species.

John Edmonstone was ‘owned’ by the Scottish slave owner and wood merchant Charles Edmonstone, who had a timber-cutting estate at Mbiri Creek, on the west side of the Demerara River. In 1817, John accompanied Charles and his family back to Scotland and by 1823, he was living as a free man in Edinburgh, where records indicate he lived until at least 1833.

He earned his living stuffing birds, a skill he had picked up accompanying expeditions in Guyana, at the National Museum and teaching taxidermy to the university students. Charles Darwin, who was living with his brother Erasmus at 11 Lothian Street, came to Edinburgh to study medicine, which he hated, in 1825. More interested in the natural world, he hired John to give him lessons on bird taxidermy, paying him one guinea per lesson.

Darwin had hours of conversations with John about Guyana and its tropical rainforests, plants and animals, firing his imagination and his growing interest in tropical regions.

“I used often to sit with him, for he was a very pleasant and intelligent man,” Darwin wrote to his sister.

In 1831, Darwin secured a position as a naturalist on the HMS Beagle on its voyage to chart the South American coastline. Tasked with investigating the geology of the region and making natural history collections, he undoubtedly utilised the techniques he learned from John Edmonstone when he preserved the Galápagos finches.

Edmonstone’s mentorship and teaching had a profound impact on Darwin and, in 2009, a small plaque was mounted on Lothian Street to commemorate John Edmonstone’s contribution.

Olaudah Equiano – abolitionist, writer (1745-97)

When Equiano wrote his Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, he presented the story of the life of a truly remarkable man. Published during the emergence of a national campaign to abolish the British slave trade, it provided British readers with an insight into slavery in the Americas, revealing the horrors of what was taking place on the plantations and on slave ships. The book helped shift public opinion on slavery and made Equiano the most famous and wealthiest Black man in Britain.

The Narrative recounts the life of a man who was not meant to thrive or even survive at a time in history during which millions of Africans became victims of the largest-ever forced migration, made to toil on Caribbean plantations in order to help develop a culture of consumption in Europe with products such as sugar, rum, molasses, indigo and pimento. These commodities meant that by the mid-eighteenth century, slavery was an accepted part of the social and economic structures that sustained Britain and other European nations – the source of their wealth and power.

Born in the Igbo kingdom of Benin (present-day Nigeria), Equiano spent most of his life at sea, giving him a unique position to witness how slavery functioned on different islands. He had become a committed abolitionist from the time of his manumission in 1766, anxious to return to England to begin his campaign against slavery and the slave trade.

He became part of a growing Black community in London which historian James Walvin, noted “formed one branch in the Atlantic network for information, gossip and news from Africa, the slave ships and slave colonies”.

Equiano led several Black delegations to Parliament to listen to the debates and the examination of witnesses. He drew on his experience and knowledge of enslavement to refute claims made by its defenders, which were widely published.

Through the book he established himself as an African who spoke with authority on the subject of enslavement, as well as a Briton, and showed that the two identities could exist within the same person. In the telling of his life, readers, from the eighteenth century to the present, are introduced to a remarkable person who made a major contribution to the abolitionist cause.
Claudia Jones – radical intellectual, journalist, activist, communist, feminist (1915-64)

Claudia Jones is credited with being one of the most important Black radical thinkers, activists and organisers in African diasporic history.

In Britain, she committed herself to campaigning on behalf of the Caribbean community: she used journalism as community activism by establishing the West Indian Gazette, Britain’s first Black newspaper, giving form to the Black British community’s political voice; and by founding the London Carnival, forerunner to the Notting Hill Carnival, which tackled racial hatred through cultural expression and celebration.

Arriving in London in December 1955, Claudia Jones gave a succinct summary of the main reasons for her deportation: I was deported from the USA because, as a Negro woman Communist of West Indian descent, I was a thorn in [the government’s] side in my opposition to Jim Crow racist discrimination against sixteen million Negro Americans in the United States . . . for my work to redress these grievances, for unity for Negro and white workers, for women’s rights and my general political activity.Claudia Jones was a stalwart campaigner for the rights of Black people in the UK and founder of what became the Notting Hill Carnival. Image: Graham Tiller/Flickr

After Jones arrived in London, she became acutely aware of the poverty, alienation and discrimination that Caribbean immigrants were experiencing. Almost immediately after her arrival, Claudia Jones began organising the London Caribbean community; one of the major tools of mobilisation was the West Indian Gazette, which she founded in 1957 and launched in March 1958.

Jones conceived the idea of a carnival as a way to heal the community through its common African ancestry. She envisaged it as being held indoors, and in January 1959 it took place in St Pancras Town Hall, London, and was televised by the BBC. Subsequent carnivals were held in various halls until 1966, when it became an outdoor event.

Claudia Jones’s death at the age of forty-nine ripped a hole in the fabric of Caribbean society. In the eight years she lived in England she had her finger on the pulse of British society, using her remarkable gifts to create unity and strength within the early Black British communities.

Dr Harold Moody – physician and activist (1882-1947)

Life for Black and Asian Britons in the early 20th century was profoundly affected by racial discrimination. They found it tough to obtain decent jobs and accommodation, and were prevented from participating in many aspects of life, from fighting for British boxing titles, to joining the armed services, to serving in positions of authority. Racist legislation was enforced, people were refused entry in restaurants, hotels and public houses; racial politics was a prominent aspect of life in Britain that was nearly impossible to overcome.

It was within this context that Harold Moody, a Jamaican-born doctor living in Camberwell, south London, founded the League of Coloured Peoples in 1931 with the aim of improving conditions for Black people in Britain.

Through his leadership of the league, Harold Moody became one of the most influential Black men in Britain. By 1943 the league was the most important organisation working for improved race relations in Britain, addressing racism in the armed forces and the Colonial Office. Moody had been instrumental in the setting up of two commissions: the Asquith, concerning the development of higher education in the colonies; and the Elliot, to consider the development of universities in West Africa. In all of his actions and campaigns, Moody was led by his strong belief that education was the key weapon to combat racism and the colour bar.
Mary Seacole – nurse, war heroine (1805-81)

Although Mary Seacole is celebrated today as a heroine of the Crimean War and a pioneering nurse and doctress, greatly admired in her lifetime for her service, immediately after her death in 1881 her name and exploits slipped from public memory.

Approaching a century and a half after her death, though, she has achieved iconic status; her experiences make her an impressive woman in any century. In 2004, Seacole topped the poll as the Greatest Black Briton and, in 2016, a statue of her likeness was unveiled in front of St Thomas’ Hospital after many years of campaigning. The first statue of a named Black woman in Britain, it is a recognition of Seacole’s many contributions to medical advancement and as a nurse.

When Britain, France and Turkey declared war on Russia in 1854, many of the soldiers based in Jamaica were transferred to Europe. Seacole was excited to follow but, rejected because of the colour of her skin, she resolved to travel to the Crimea independently.

Mary Seacole’s bright personality lit up the war zone and brought comfort to the men under her care. What she had aimed to do by travelling to the Crimea was to be of some use to the soldiers and to discharge her strong sense of duty. Her interest was not in advancing hygiene in war zones, but to give comfort and solace, and to use her skills to heal the sick and injured. Mary Seacole was more than a nurse; she was an adventurer. She was celebrated by Punch magazine as ‘our own life-line for suffering soldiers’; she was both ahead of her time and made history on her own terms, and was literally a self-made woman.
Paul Stephenson OBE – civil rights campaigner, (b. 1937)

In 1963, Paul Stephenson forced the Bristol Omnibus Company to abandon its racist recruitment policy designed to exclude African Caribbeans from working as bus drivers or conductors. In so doing, he helped pave the way for Britain’s first race relations laws. The boycott marked the beginning of a lifetime of activism for Stephenson, who would challenge racist policies in all areas of life and dedicate his time to working to unify Black and white communities throughout the world.

In the 1940s and 1950s, a steady stream of Caribbeans arrived in Bristol; by 1963, six thousand Caribbean people lived there and new arrivals were subjected to racial discrimination, finding it difficult to find well-paid jobs, and were only able to find affordable homes in the heavily bombed areas of St Pauls and Easton. In this period, Bristol became a de facto segregated city, with whites closing ranks against Caribbeans.

Stephenson organised a boycott among the city’s Caribbean contingent against the city’s most powerful employer, the Bristol Omnibus Company, which prevented Caribbeans from working as drivers and conductors.

The boycott heavily influenced the 1965 Race Relations Act, which was passed by the Labour government after meeting with Stephenson and his co-organisers. It forbade discrimination on the grounds of colour, race or national origins, and was expanded three years later to include both housing and employment. In 1976 the Act was amended to include direct and indirect discrimination. Harold Wilson himself conceded that without Paul’s efforts, it would have been difficult for the Labour government to introduce these law

Paul Stephenson has received many awards for his campaigning work in Bristol, including the Freedom of the City. In 2009 he was awarded the OBE for his services to equal opportunities, and in 2017 he was the recipient of the Pride of Britain Lifetime Achievement Award.

This is an edited extract from 100 Great Black Britons by Patrick Vernon and Angelina Osborne, available now in paperback and hardback