Antiquity According to the
Augustan History, North African Roman emperor
Septimius Severus visited
Hadrian's Wall in 210 AD, where he was said to have been mocked by an
Ethiopian soldier holding a garland of cypress-boughs. Severus ordered him away, reportedly being "frightened" by his dark skin colour and seeing his act and appearance as an omen: On another occasion, when he was returning to his nearest quarters from an inspection of the wall at Luguvallum in Britain, at a time when he had not only proved victorious but had concluded a perpetual peace, just as he was wondering what omen would present itself, an Ethiopian soldier, who was famous among buffoons and always a notable jester, met him with a garland of cypress-boughs. And when Severus in a rage ordered that the man be removed from his sight, troubled as he was by the man's ominous colour and the ominous nature of the garland, the Ethiopian by way of jest cried, it is said, "You have been all things, you have conquered all things, now, O conqueror, be a god". And when on reaching the town he wished to perform a sacrifice, in the first place, through a misunderstanding on the part of the rustic soothsayer, he was taken to the Temple of Bellona, and, in the second place, the victims provided him were black. And then, when he abandoned the sacrifice in disgust and betook himself to the Palace, through some carelessness on the part of the attendants the black victims followed him up to its very doors.
Anglo-Saxon England A
girl buried at Updown, near Eastry in Kent in the early 7th century was found to have 33% of her DNA of West African type, most closely resembling
Esan or
Yoruba people. In 2013, Local historians believe she was likely either a
slave or a
bonded servant.
16th century almost certainly showing
John Blanke, the only figure wearing a brown turban latticed with yellow A African musician is among the six trumpeters depicted in the royal retinue of
Henry VIII in the Westminster Tournament Roll, an illuminated manuscript dating from 1511. He wears the royal
livery and is mounted on horseback. The man is generally identified as the "
John Blanke, the blacke trumpeter," who is listed in the payment accounts of both Henry VIII and his father,
Henry VII. A group of
Africans at the court of
James IV of Scotland, included
Ellen More and a drummer referred to as the "
More taubronar". Both he and John Blanke were paid wages for their services. A small number of Africans worked as independent business owners in London in the late 1500s, including the silk weaver
Reasonable Blackman. When trade lines began to open between London and West Africa, people from this area began coming to Britain on board merchant and slaving ships. For example, merchant
John Lok brought several captives to London in 1555 from Guinea. The voyage account in
Hakluyt reports that they: "were tall and strong men, and could wel agree with our meates and drinkes. The colde and moyst aire doth somewhat offend them." During the later 16th century as well as into the first two decades of the 17th century, 25 people named in the records of the small parish of St. Botolph's in
Aldgate are identified as "blackamoors", a popular term at the time used to denote people of a
Sub Saharan African origin. In the period of the war with Spain, between 1588 and 1604, there was an increase in the number of people reaching England from Spanish colonial expeditions in parts of Africa. The English freed many of these captives from enslavement on Spanish ships. They arrived in England largely as a by-product of the slave trade; some were of mixed-race African and Spanish descent, and became interpreters or sailors. Slaver
John Hawkins arrived in London with 300 captives from West Africa. but described himself in Latin as a "
famulus", meaning servant, slave or attendant. Francis was a West African born on an island off the coast of Guinea, likely
Arguin Island, off the coast of
Mauritania. He worked as a diver for Pietro Paulo Corsi in his salvage operations on the sunken
St Mary and
St Edward of
Southampton and other ships, such as the
Mary Rose, which had sunk in
Portsmouth Harbour. When Corsi was accused of theft, Francis stood by him in an English court. With help from an interpreter, he supported his master's claims of innocence. Some of the depositions in the case displayed negative attitudes towards slaves or Black people as witnesses. In March 2019 two of the skeletons found on the
Mary Rose were found to have Southern European or North African ancestry; one found to be wearing a leather wrist-guard bearing the arms of
Catherine of Aragon and royal arms of England is thought to possibly be Spanish or North African, the other, known as "Henry" was thought to also have similar genetic makeup. Henry's mitochondrial DNA showed that his ancestry may have came from Southern Europe, the Near East, or North Africa, although Dr Sam Robson from the
University of Portsmouth "ruled out" that Henry was Black or that he was
sub-Saharan African in origin. Dr
Onyeka Nubia cautioned that the number of those on board the
Mary Rose that had heritage beyond Britain was not necessarily representative of the whole of England at the time, although it definitely was not a "one-off". It is thought they are likely to have travelled through Spain or Portugal before arriving in Britain. Among these servants was "John Come-quick, a blackemore", servant to Capt Thomas Love. Some were free workers, although most were employed as domestic servants and entertainers. Some worked in ports, but were invariably described as chattel labour. The African population may have been several hundred during the Elizabethan period, however not all were Sub-Saharan African. Archival evidence shows records of more than 360 African people between 1500 and 1640 in England and Scotland. Reacting to the darker complexion of people with biracial parentage,
George Best argued in 1578 that black skin was not related to the heat of the sun (in
Africa) but was instead caused by biblical damnation.
Reginald Scot noted that superstitious people associated black skin with demons and ghosts, writing (in his sceptical book
Discoverie of Witchcraft) "But in our childhood our mothers maids have so terrified us with an ouglie divell having hornes on his head, and a taile in his breech, eies like a bason, fanges like a dog, clawes like a beare,
a skin like a Niger and a voice roring like a lion"; historian
Ian Mortimer stated that such views "are to be noted at all levels of society". Views on Black people were "affected by preconceived notions of the
Garden of Eden and the
Fall from Grace." In 1596,
Queen Elizabeth I issued letters to the lord mayors of major cities asserting that "of late divers blackmoores brought into this realm, of which kind of people there are already here to manie...". While visiting the English court,
Casper Van Senden, a German merchant from
Lübeck, requested the permission to transport "Blackamoores" living in England to Portugal or Spain, presumably to sell them there. Elizabeth subsequently issued a
royal warrant to Van Senden, granting him the right to do so. However, Van Senden and Sherley did not succeed in this effort, as they acknowledged in correspondence with Sir Robert Cecil. In 1601, Elizabeth issued another proclamation expressing that she was "highly discontented to understand the great number of Negroes and blackamoors which (as she is informed) are carried into this realm", and again licensing van Senden to deport them. Her proclamation of 1601 stated that the blackamoors were "fostered and powered here, to the great annoyance of [the queen's] own liege people, that covet the relief, which those people consume". It further stated that "most of them are infidels, having no understanding of Christ or his Gospel". Studies of African people in
early modern Britain indicate a minor continuing presence. Such studies include Imtiaz Habib's
Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500–1677: Imprints of the Invisible (Ashgate, 2008),
Onyeka's
Blackamoores: Africans in Tudor England, Their Presence, Status and Origins (Narrative Eye, 2013),
Miranda Kaufmann's Oxford DPhil thesis
Africans in Britain, 1500–1640, and her
Black Tudors: The Untold Story (
Oneworld Publications, 2017).
17th and 18th centuries Slavery and the slave trade with her Black servant Britain was involved in the
tri-continental slave trade between Europe, Africa and the Americas. Many of those involved in British colonial activities, such as
ship's captains,
colonial officials, merchants, slave traders and
plantation owners brought Black slaves as servants back to Britain with them. This caused an increasing Black presence in the northern, eastern, and southern areas of London. One of the most famous slaves to attend a sea captain was known as Sambo. He fell ill shortly after arriving in England and was consequently
buried in Lancashire. His plaque and gravestone still stand to this day. There were also small numbers of free slaves and seamen from West Africa and South Asia. Many of these people were forced into beggary due to the lack of jobs and racial discrimination. In 1687, a "Moor" was given the freedom of the city of
York. He is listed in the
freemen's rolls as "John Moore – blacke". He is the only Black person to have been found to date in the
York rolls. of a Black woman and a white woman, identities unknown, circa 1650, by an anonymous hand. The two women, who appear to be of equal standing, are wearing
face patches, which were a fashion of the time. The painting is captioned "I black with white bespott y white with blacke this evil proceeds from thy proud hart then take her: Devill."The involvement of merchants from
Great Britain in the
transatlantic slave trade was the most important factor in the development of the Black British community. These communities flourished in port cities strongly involved in the slave trade, such as
Liverpool As a result, Liverpool is home to Britain's oldest Black community, dating at least to the 1730s. By 1795, Liverpool had 62.5 per cent of the European Slave Trade. This verdict fueled the numbers of Black people who escaped slavery, and helped send slavery into decline. During this same period, many former American slave soldiers, who had fought on the side of the British in the
American Revolutionary War, were resettled as free men in London. They were never awarded pensions, and many of them became poverty-stricken and were reduced to begging on the streets. Reports at the time stated that they "had no prospect of subsisting in this country but by depredations on the public, or by common charity". A sympathetic observer wrote that "great numbers of Blacks and People of Colour, many of them refugees from America and others who have by land or sea been in his Majesty's service were... in great distress." Even towards white loyalists there was little good will to new arrivals from America. Officially, slavery was not legal in England. The
Cartwright decision of 1569 resolved that England was "too pure an air for a slave to breathe in". However, Black African slaves continued to be bought and sold in England during the eighteenth century. The slavery issue was not legally contested until the
Somerset case of 1772, which concerned James Somersett, a fugitive Black enslaved person from
Virginia. Lord Chief Justice
William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield concluded that Somerset could not be forced to leave England against his will. He later reiterated: "The determinations go no further than that the master cannot by force compel him to go out of the kingdom." Despite the previous rulings, such as the 1706 declaration (which was clarified a year later) by
Lord Chief Justice Holt on slavery not being legal in Britain, it was often ignored, with slaveowners arguing that the slaves were property and therefore could not be considered people. Slave owner Thomas Papillon was one of many who took his Black servant "to be in the nature and quality of my goods and chattel".
Rise in population Black people lived among whites in London in areas of
Mile End,
Stepney,
Paddington, and
St Giles. After Mansfield's ruling many former slaves continued to work for their old masters as paid employees. Between 14,000 and 15,000 (then contemporary estimates) slaves were immediately freed in England. Many of these emancipated individuals became labelled as the "black poor", the black poor were defined as former slave soldiers since emancipated, seafarers, such as South Asian lascars, former indentured servants and former indentured plantation workers. Around the 1750s, London became the home to many Black people, as well as Jews, Irish, Germans and
Huguenots. According to
Gretchen Gerzina in her
Black London, by the mid-18th century, Black people accounted for somewhere between 1% and 3% of the London populace. Evidence of the number of Black residents in the city has been found through registered burials. Some Black people in London resisted slavery through escape.
John Ystumllyn (c. 1738 - 1786) was the first well-recorded Black person of
North Wales. He may have been a victim of the
Atlantic slave trade, and was from either
West Africa or the
Caribbean. He was taken by the Wynn family to their
Ystumllyn estate in
Criccieth, and christened with the Welsh name John Ystumllyn. He was taught English and
Welsh by the locals, became a gardener at the estate and "grew into a handsome and vigorous young man". His portrait was painted in 1750s. He married local Welsh woman Margaret Gruffydd in 1768 and their descendants still live in the area. It was reported in the Morning Gazette that there was 30,000 in the country as a whole, though the numbers were thought to be "alarmist" exaggerations. In the same year, a party for Black men and women in a
Fleet Street pub was sufficiently unusual to be written about in the newspapers. Their presence in the country was striking enough to start heated outbreaks of distaste for
colonies of Hottentots. Modern historians estimate, based on parish lists, baptismal and marriage registers as well as criminal and sales contracts, that about 10,000 Black people lived in Britain during the 18th century. Other estimates put the number at 15,000. and Marcus Richard Fitzroy Thomas by
Joshua Reynolds In 1772,
Lord Mansfield put the number of Black people in the country at as many as 15,000, though most modern historians consider 10,000 to be the most likely. The black population was estimated at around 10,000 in London, making black people approximately 1% of the overall London population. The black population constituted around 0.1% of the total population of Britain in 1780. The Black female population is estimated to have barely reached 20% of the overall Afro-Caribbean population in the country. Marcus Thomas is thought to have been brought at that time from Jamaica as a young boy by the Stanhope family, working as a servant in their home, being baptised age 19, and later joining the
Westminster Militia as a
drummer. Discrimination In 1731 the Lord Mayor of London ruled that "no Negroes shall be bound apprentices to any Tradesman or Artificer of this City". Due to this ruling, most were forced into working as domestic servants and other menial professions. In 1787,
Thomas Clarkson, an English abolitionist, noted at a speech in Manchester: "I was surprised also to find a great crowd of black people standing round the pulpit. There might be forty or fifty of them." There is evidence that Black men and women were occasionally discriminated against when dealing with the law because of their skin colour. In 1737,
George Scipio was accused of stealing Anne Godfrey's washing, the case rested entirely on whether or not Scipio was the only Black man in Hackney at the time.
Ignatius Sancho, Black writer, composer, shopkeeper and voter in
Westminster wrote, that despite being in Britain since the age of two he felt he was "only a lodger, and hardly that." Sancho complained of "the national antipathy and prejudice" of native white Britons "towards their wooly headed brethren." Sancho was frustrated that many resorted to stereotyping their Black neighbours. A financially independent householder, he was the second Black person of African origin to vote in parliamentary elections in Britain, in a time when only 3% of the British population were allowed to vote. Sailors of African descent experienced far less prejudice compared to Black people in the cities such as London. Black sailors would have shared the same quarters, duties and pay as their white shipmates. There are some disputes in the estimation of Black sailors, conservative estimates put it between 6% and 8% of navy sailors of the time, this proportion is considerably larger than the population as a whole. Notable examples are Olaudah Equiano and
Francis Barber. and his family pictured with their Black child servant
Abolitionism With the support of other Britons, these activists demanded that Blacks be freed from slavery. Supporters involved in these movements included workers and other nationalities of the urban poor. Black people in London who were supporters of the abolitionist movement include Cugoano and Equiano. At this time, slavery in Britain itself had no support from common law, but its definitive legal status was not clearly defined until the 19th century. was the first black person of African origins to vote in parliamentary elections and became a symbol of the humanity of Africans and immorality of the
slave trade.
Olaudah Equiano During the late 18th century, numerous publications and memoirs were written about the "black poor". One example is the writings of
British-Nigerian Olaudah Equiano, a former enslaved man who wrote a memoir titled
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. In 1786, Equiano became the first African person to be employed by the British government, when he was made Commissary of Provisions and Stores for the 350 Black people suffering from poverty who had decided to accept the government's offer of an assisted passage to Sierra Leone. The following year, in 1787, encouraged by the
Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor, about 400 melanated Londoners were aided in emigrating to
Sierra Leone in West Africa, founding the first British colony on the continent. They asked that their status as
British subjects be recognized, along with requests that they be given military protection by the
Royal Navy. However, even though the committee signed up about 700 members of the Black Poor, only 441 boarded the three ships that set sail from London to Portsmouth. Many black Londoners were no longer interested in the scheme, and the coercion employed by the committee and the government to recruit them only reinforced their opposition. Equiano, who was originally involved in the scheme, became one of its most vocal critics. Another prominent Black Londoner,
British-Ghanaian Ottobah Cugoano, also criticised the scheme.
Ancestry In 2007, scientists found the rare paternal
haplogroup A1 in a few living British men with Yorkshire surnames. This clade is today almost exclusively found among males in
West Africa, where it is also rare. The haplogroup is thought to have been brought to Britain either through enlisted soldiers during Roman Britain, or later via the modern
slave trade. Turi King, a co-author on the study, noted the most probable "guess" was the West African slave trade. Some of the known individuals who arrived through the slave route, such as
Ignatius Sancho and
Olaudah Equiano, attained a very high social rank. Some married into the general English population., celebrated circus owner and performer in Victorian Britain , 1839
19th century In the late 18th century, the British slave trade declined in response to changing popular opinion. Both Great Britain and the United States abolished the
Atlantic slave trade in 1808, and cooperated in liberating slaves from illegal trading ships off the coast of West Africa. Many of these freed slaves were taken to Sierra Leone for settlement. Slavery was abolished completely in the British Empire by 1834, although it had been profitable on Caribbean plantations. Fewer Black people were brought into London from the West Africa and West Indies. Abolition meant a virtual halt to the arrival of Black people to Britain, just as immigration from Europe was increasing. The Black population of Victorian Britain was so small that those living outside of larger trading ports were isolated from the Black population. The mentioning of Black people and descendants in parish registers declined markedly in the early 19th century. It is possible that researchers simply did not collect the data or that the mostly Black male population of the late 18th century had married white women. In the 1880s, there was a build-up of small groups of Black dockside communities in towns such as
Canning Town, Liverpool and
Cardiff. ,
Yoruba princess and goddaughter to
Queen Victoria. Orphaned in warfare, given as a "gift" to Queen Victoria. Despite social prejudice and discrimination in Victorian England, some 19th-century Black Britons achieved exceptional success.
Pablo Fanque, born likely to
West African parents as William Darby in
Norwich, rose to become the proprietor of one of Britain's most successful Victorian circuses. He is immortalised in the lyrics of
The Beatles song "
Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" Thirty years after his 1871 death, the chaplain of the Showman's Guild said: "In the great brotherhood of the equestrian world there is no colour line [bar], for, although Pablo Fanque was of African extraction, he speedily made his way to the top of his profession. The camaraderie of the ring has but one test – ability."Another great
circus performer was equestrian Joseph Hillier, who took over and ran
Andrew Ducrow's circus company after Ducrow died. From the early part of the century, students of African descent were admitted to British Universities. One such student, for example, was the African American James McCune Smith, who travelled from New York City to Glasgow University to study medicine. In 1837 he was awarded a medical doctorate and published two scientific articles in the
London Medical Gazette. These articles are the first known to be published by an African-American medical doctor in a scientific journal. An Indian Briton,
Dadabhai Naoroji, stood for election to
parliament for the
Liberal Party in 1886. He was defeated, leading the
leader of the Conservative Party,
Lord Salisbury to remark that "however great the progress of mankind has been, and however far we have advanced in overcoming prejudices, I doubt if we have yet got to the point of view where a British constituency would elect a Black man". Naoroji was elected to parliament in 1892, becoming the second Member of Parliament (MP) of Indian descent after
David Ochterlony Dyce Sombre. , 'Nurse Ophthalmic' at
London Hospital In 1881,
Annie Brewster joined the staff of the
London Hospital as a nurse and rose to become known as ‘Nurse Ophthalmic', in charge of the ophthalmic wards.
20th century Early 20th century On
Christmas Day 1901 Aston Villa beat Everton 3-2 at Goodison.
Villa's
Willie Clarke became the first Black player to score in the English
First Division. According to the Sierra Leonan barrister and writer,
Augustus Merriman-Labor, in his 1909 book
Britons Through Negro Spectacles, London's Black population at the time did "not much exceed one hundred" people and "to every one Negro there, there are over sixty thousand whites". , professional footballer and mixed-heritage British Army officer, pictured with fellow officers on the
Somme, September 1916. All of the men pictured were Afro-Caribbean people who volunteered to fight for the
British Army.
World War I saw a small growth in the size of London's Black communities with the arrival of merchant seamen and soldiers. At that time, there were also small groups of students from Africa and the Caribbean migrating into London. These communities are now among the oldest Black communities of London. The largest Black communities were to be found in the United Kingdom's great port cities: London's
East End, Liverpool, Bristol and Cardiff's
Tiger Bay, with other communities in
South Shields in
Tyne & Wear and
Glasgow. In 1914, the Black population was estimated at 10,000 and centred largely in London. or 30,000 Black residents had for the most part emigrated from parts of the British Empire. The number of black soldiers serving in the British army, (rather than colonial regiments,) prior to World War I is unknown but was likely to have been negligibly low. One of the Black British soldiers during World War I was
Walter Tull, an English professional footballer, born to a
Barbadian carpenter Daniel Tull and Kent-born Alice Elizabeth Palmer. His grandfather was a slave in
Barbados. Tull became the first British-born mixed-heritage infantry officer in a regular British Army regiment, despite the 1914 Manual of Military Law specifically excluding soldiers that were not "of pure European descent" from becoming commissioned officers. Colonial soldiers and sailors of Afro-Caribbean descent served in the United Kingdom during the First World War, and some settled in British cities. The South Shields community—which also included other "coloured" seamen known as lascars, who were from South Asia and the
Arab world—were victims of the UK's first
race riot in 1919. Charles Wootton (also recorded as Wooten or Wotten), a Black seaman and First World War veteran, was killed by a white mob in Liverpool during the unrest. Soon eight other cities with significant non-white communities were also hit by race riots. In that first postwar summer, other racial riots of whites against "coloured" peoples also took place in numerous United States cities, towns in the Caribbean, and South Africa. They were part of the social dislocation after the war as societies struggled to integrate veterans into the work forces again, and groups competed for jobs and housing. At Australian insistence, the British refused to accept the
Racial Equality Proposal put forward by the Japanese at the
Paris Peace Conference, 1919. The West African Students’ Union (WASU), founded in London in 1925 by Ladipo Solanke and Herbert Bankole-Bright, became an important organisation supporting African students in Britain and campaigning against racial discrimination and colonial rule. It played a significant role in linking Black political activism in Britain with anti-colonial movements in West Africa and provided a base for political discussion and organisation among African students.
World War II student pilot Jellicoe Scoon from
Trinidad, standing at
Parliament Square in London, 26 March 1942 World War II marked another period of growth for the Black communities in London, Liverpool and elsewhere in Britain. Many Blacks from the Caribbean and West Africa arrived in small groups as wartime workers, merchant seamen, and servicemen from the army, navy, and air forces. For example, in February 1941, 345 West Indians came to work in factories in and around Liverpool, making munitions. Among those from the Caribbean who joined the
Royal Air Force (RAF) and gave distinguished service are
Ulric Cross from Trinidad,
Cy Grant from Guyana and
Billy Strachan from Jamaica. The
African and Caribbean War Memorial was installed in
Brixton, London, in 2017 by the
Nubian Jak Community Trust to honour servicemen from Africa and the Caribbean who served alongside British and Commonwealth Forces in both the First World War and Second World War. By the end of 1943, there were 3,312 African-American
GIs based at
Maghull and
Huyton, near Liverpool. The Black population in the summer of 1944 was estimated at 150,000, mostly Black GIs from the United States. However, by 1948 the Black population was estimated to have been less than 20,000 and did not reach the previous peak of 1944 until 1958. merchant seaman eating
maatjesharing in London,June 1943
Learie Constantine, a West Indian cricketer, was a welfare officer with the
Ministry of Labour when he was refused service at a London hotel. He sued for
breach of contract and was awarded damages. This particular example is used by some to illustrate the slow change from racism towards acceptance and equality of all citizens in London. In 1943,
Amelia King was refused work by the Essex branch of the
Women's Land Army because she was Black. The decision was overturned after her cause was taken up by Holborn Trades Council, which led to her MP,
Walter Edwards, raising the matter in the
House of Commons. She ultimately took a placement in Frith Farm,
Wickham, Hampshire and had lodgings with a family in the village.
Post-war '' is extremely important within Black British history; in 1948 it carried the first large wave of Jamaican immigrants to the United Kingdom. In 1950, there were probably fewer than 20,000 non-White residents in Britain, almost all born overseas. Following the Second World War, migration to Britain increased from the Caribbean and from parts of West Africa, driven by labour shortages and facilitated by imperial and Commonwealth connections. While Caribbean migration—symbolised by the arrival of HMT
Empire Windrush in 1948—formed the most visible early wave, migration from West Africa also expanded through students, professionals and later family settlement, particularly during and after the decolonisation of the 1950s and 1960s. In the post-war period, particularly during the 1950s to 1970s, thousands of West African children in Britain were privately fostered with other families, a practice sometimes referred to as “farming”, often reflecting the circumstances of migrant parents balancing work and study commitments, and in some cases continuing into later decades. After World War II, the largest influx of Black people occurred, mostly from the
British West Indies. More than a quarter of a million West Indians, the overwhelming majority of them from
Jamaica, settled in Britain in less than a decade. In 1951, the population of and African Caribbean-born people in Britain was estimated at 20,900. In the mid-1960s, Britain had become the centre of the largest overseas population of West Indians. This migration event is often labelled "Windrush", a reference to the , the ship that carried the first major group of Caribbean migrants to the United Kingdom in 1948. "Caribbean" is itself not one ethnic or political identity; for example, some of this wave of immigrants were
Indo-Caribbean. The most widely used term used at that time was
West Indian (or sometimes
coloured).
Black British did not come into widespread use until the second generation were born to these post-war migrants to the UK. Although British by nationality, due to friction between them and the White majority they were often born into communities that were relatively closed, creating the roots of what would become a distinct
Black British identity. By the 1950s, there was a consciousness of Black people as a separate group that had not been there during 1932–1938.
Late 20th century in
Dalston, London, which sells Afro-Caribbean music, textiles, and food including goat meat, yams, mangos and spices In 1961, the population of people born in Africa or the Caribbean was estimated at 191,600, just under 0.4% of the total UK population. Activists such as
Paul Stephenson, who led the 1963 Bristol Bus Boycott, played a key role in challenging racial discrimination in Britain and contributing to wider pressure for change. In 1975,
David Pitt was appointed to the
House of Lords. He spoke against racism and for equality in regards to all residents of Britain. In the years that followed, several Black members were elected into the
British Parliament. By 1981, the Black population in the United Kingdom was estimated at 1.2% of all countries of birth, being 0.8% Black-Caribbean, 0.3% Black-African, and 0.1% Black-Other residents. Since the 1980s, the majority of Black immigrants into the country have come directly from Africa, in particular,
Nigeria and
Ghana in West Africa,
Uganda and
Kenya in East Africa,
Zimbabwe, and
South Africa in Southern Africa. Nigerians and Ghanaians have been especially quick to accustom themselves to British life, with young Nigerians and Ghanaians achieving some of the best results at
GCSE and
A-Level, often on a par or above the performance of white pupils. By the 1991 census, the Black population of Great Britain was recorded at 890,727 (1.6% of the total population). This included 499,964 people in the Black Caribbean category (0.9%), 212,362 in the Black African category (0.4%) and 178,401 in the Black Other category (0.3%). London contained the largest concentration, with around half a million Black residents, and an increasing proportion were British-born. Even with this growing population and the first Black MP's elected to Parliament, many argue that there was still discrimination towards, and a socio-economic imbalance in London, among Black people. In 1992, the number of Black MPs in Parliament increased to six, and in 1997, they increased their numbers to nine. There are still many problems that Black Londoners face; the new global and high-tech information revolution is changing the urban economy and some argue that it is driving up unemployment rates among the Black population relative to the non-black population,
Street conflicts and policing in London, 1981 The late 1950s through to the late 1980s saw a number of mass street conflicts involving young Afro-Caribbean men and British police officers in English cities, mostly as a result of tensions between members of local Black communities and whites. The first major incident occurred in
1958 in Notting Hill, when roaming gangs of between 300 and 400 white youths attacked Afro-Caribbeans and their houses across the neighbourhood, leading to a number of Afro-Caribbean men being left unconscious in the streets. The following year, Antigua-born
Kelso Cochrane was murdered by being set upon and stabbed by a gang of white youths while walking home to Notting Hill. During the 1970s, police forces across England increasingly began to use the
Sus law, provoking a sense that young Black men were being discriminated against by the police The next newsworthy outbreak of street fighting occurred in 1976 at the
Notting Hill Carnival when several hundred police officers and youths became involved in televised fights and scuffles, with stones thrown at police, baton charges and a number of minor injuries and arrests. The
1980 St Pauls riot in Bristol saw fighting between local youths and police officers, resulting in numerous minor injuries, damage to property and arrests. In London, 1981 brought further conflict, with a perceived racist police force after the death of 13 Black youngsters who were attending a birthday party that ended in the devastating
New Cross Fire. The fire was viewed by many as a racist massacre and
Flag of Ghana flying together from a property in
Moss Side,
Manchester in 2023 Despite the recommendations of the
Scarman Report (published in November 1981),
Early 21st century . In 2011, following the shooting of a mixed-race man,
Mark Duggan, by police in Tottenham, a protest was held at the local police station. The protest ended with an outbreak of fighting between local youths and police officers leading to widespread disturbances
across English cities. Some analysts claimed that Black people were disproportionally represented in the 2011 England riots. Research suggests that race relations in Britain deteriorated in the period following the riots and that prejudice towards ethnic minorities increased. Groups such as the
EDL and the
BNP were said to be exploiting the situation. Racial tensions between Blacks and Asians in Birmingham increased after the deaths of three Asian men at the hands of a Black youth. In a
Newsnight discussion on 12 August 2011, historian
David Starkey blamed "Black gangster and rap culture", saying that it had influenced youths of all races. Figures showed that 46 percent of people brought before a courtroom for arrests related to the 2011 riots were black. During the
COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom the first ten healthcare workers to die from the virus came from Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) backgrounds, prompting the head of the
British Medical Association to call on the government to begin investigating if and why minorities are being disproportionally affected. Early statistics found that Black and Asian people were being affected worse than white people, with figures showing 35% of
COVID-19 patients were non-white, and similar studies in the US had shown a clear racial disparity. The government announced that they will be launching an official inquiry into the disproportionate impact of coronavirus on Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities with
Communities Minister Robert Jenrick acknowledging that "There does appear to be a disproportionate impact of the virus on BAME communities in the UK." A social media campaign in response to the
Clap for our Carers campaign, highlighted the role Black and minority health and key workers and asking the public to continue their support after the pandemic gained more than 12 million views online. 72 per cent of NHS Staff that died from COVID-19 were reported as being from Black & Minority Ethnic groups, far higher than the number of staff from BAME backgrounds working in the NHS, which stood at 44%. Statistics did show that black people were significantly over-represented, but that as the pandemic progressed the disparity in these figures was reducing. Reports discussed a number of complex contributing factors including health and income inequality, social and environmental factors were exacerbating and contributing to the spread of the disease unequally. In April 2020, after his sister's partner died from the virus,
Patrick Vernon set up a fundraising initiative called "The Majonzi Fund" which will provide families with access to small financial grants that can be used to access bereavement counselling and organise memorial events and tributes after the social lockdown has been lifted. After
Brexit, EU nationals working in the health and social care sector were replaced by migrants from non-EU countries such as
Nigeria. About 141,000 people came from Nigeria in 2023. In 2024,
Kemi Badenoch became the first Black leader of any major UK political party to lead the Conservative Party. ==Demographics==