Newafricanleaders Contributions of Africans in Birmingham from 1950: Traditional Stories of Africans in Birmingham, United Kingdom

NEWAFRICANLEADERS

CONTRIBUTIONS OF AFRICANS IN BIRMINGHAM

FROM 1950

TRADITIONAL STORIES OF AFRICANS IN BIRMINGHAM,

UNITED KINGDOM

Selected and Retold by

Frederick Ebot Ashu

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© 2012 Frederick Ebot Ashu. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Volunteers: James Omunson, François Kayembe, Aline Afazali, Marcianne Uwimana, Adeline Sede

Text Author: Frederick Ebot Ashu

Editor: Dr Karl Woodgett

Photography: Kehbuma Gapsaga

Published by AuthorHouse 09/04/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-1390-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-1391-9 (e)

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Contents

Acknowledgement

Foreword

A history of africans in birmingham

Introduction and background

Chapter one

The context of the study: modern african migration

Chapter two 

Integration and inclusion—understanding the ways in which new migrants access neighbourhood and support services 

Chapter three

Achievements and contributions of africans in birmingham

Chapter four

Aspirations and barriers in employment and entrepreneurship for africans in birmingham 

Chapter five 

Outcomes of the study 

References 

Interview guide 

This book is dedicated to every African in Birmingham and particularly to those struggling with their professional life. This project gave me hope and taught me that there is light for all of God’s creatures.

Acknowledgement

For the time, knowledge and expertise that they have contributed to this oral history project special thanks are due to Abdirahman Ali—Impact: Afro-British Support Services; Susan Bisani—Birmingham New Community Network; Helen Lloyd—Oral History Consultancy; Mohammed Al-Rahmin—African Community Council for the Regions; Dennis Minnis-Piers—Road Resource Centre; Izzy Mohammed and Andy Green—Birmingham Archive and Heritage Service; Jenny Phillimore and Lisa Goodson—University of Birmingham.

In particular CAASS UK board members would like to thank Aline Afazali, James Omunson, Francois Kayembe, Marcianne Uwimana and Adeline Sede who enabled CAASS UK to carry out interviews and consultation meetings with so many Africans in Birmingham.

Finally, thanks are due to the Heritage Lottery Fund and our sponsors for supporting this project.

Foreword

Contributions of Africans in Birmingham from 1950

The African Heritage Initiative is a unique and innovative project sponsored by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) with the aim of inspiring and empowering members of the African community in Birmingham to learn more about their role in local history, whilst also informing both Africans and the rest of society in regard to modern African migration and the integration of Africans in Birmingham. Focusing on Africans who have arrived in Birmingham since 1950, The African Heritage Initiative has conducted extensive research to uncover and narrate the previously untold stories of African migrants: why they—or their parents—came to this country; their experiences when they arrived; their subsequent settlement experiences; and their achievements in and contributions to their adopted society, as well as their aspirations for the future.

The stories recorded in this volume are important, not just because of their ability to inspire and empower, but also because of the risk that the heritage and history they reveal may be lost. There has been no previous attempt to collate the heritage of recent African migrants in Birmingham on the scale attempted in this work. The archive that is collected here expresses the values, attitudes, and thoughts which together form the history of our past experience and it is crucial that these are recorded and preserved if we, and future generations, are to properly understand this heritage. The storytelling in this anthology, therefore, is a creative component of our experience, and in order to share these experiences with the world, and move forward, we as Africans need first to recognize the importance of our own stories.

The project’s aim was to encourage African, young and old, who are living and working in Birmingham, to share their stories in interviews, from which an historical record of modern African migration, and the integration of African migrants in Birmingham, could be developed. The project aims to build upon existing research and attempts to develop a picture of modern African migrants and their integration in Birmingham in order to enable common and divergent experiences among the African Diaspora to be identified and understood.

It is anticipated, therefore, that this anthology will help to fill in gaps in knowledge and understanding regarding modern African migration and integration in Birmingham, and that it will also help to identify areas for further research. A greater awareness and understanding of the life-stories and perspectives of Africans living in Birmingham will not only enrich the existing published literature in this field but will also provide the opportunity for readers to reflect on the potential to further enhance the on-going professional growth and development of Africans in Birmingham.

A History of Africans in Birmingham

1950s

After the Second World War there was a huge demand for labour to assist in the reconstruction of the country. A significant source of this labour came from amongst the nearly one million Africans who had fought for Britain during the war, as well as the large numbers who served in the merchant navy.

The immediate post-war migratory period was underpinned by the 1948 Nationality Act which gave members of the Commonwealth, as sovereign subjects, the same rights of entry and abode as British citizens. Initially the principles behind the Nationality Act had almost universal support amongst the political parties. Although the Nationality Act was enacted by the post-war Labour government of Clement Atlee its principles were supported by the subsequent Conservative government of Winston Churchill in the 1950s.

Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee (3 January 1883-8 October 1967) was a British Labour politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951, and as the Leader of the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955. Source:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill (30 November 1874-24 January 1965) was a British Conservative politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

This political consensus, however, was not replicated on the streets. The experience of Africans (and West-Indians, who at this time formed the vast majority of migrants) during the 1950s was characterised by routine racism and harassment. Accommodation, for example, was a major problem for migrants with landlords regularly stipulating that they would not accept black tenants. Indeed, reports at the time indicate that it was not uncommon to see signs outside properties to let stating no blacks, no Irish, no dogs, no children . . .

The demand for labour for urban reconstruction encouraged African migrants to settle in large urban centres, such as Birmingham, that had been devastated during the war. This, together with the problems of acquiring accommodation, tended to mean that Africans lived close together in some of the more run-down areas, often indeed, exploited by unscrupulous landlords and employers. In London the notorious landlord Peter Rackman extorted huge rents from vulnerable immigrant tenants using terror tactics, and this phenomenon, known as Rackmanism, was prevalent also in Birmingham.

A further consequence of the concentration of African migrants in relatively small and deprived urban areas, their lack of legal protection and their vulnerability to exploitation and abuse was that, in these areas, their presence exacerbated racial tensions. Although overall migration levels remained very small across the population as a whole, the concentration of this migration in a relatively few areas created a perception of massive change within those already deprived areas that in turn created a breeding ground for racial violence. This was exploited by groups such as Oswald Moseley’s Union Movement and the White Defence League which fed on common and stereotypical perceptions of the time in relation to criminality and sexual deviancy of blacks. Many white families displayed hostility towards black families in their areas, and this in turn developed into abuse and harassment in the streets.

The situation came to a head at the end of the hot summer of 1958 when the open hostility towards African and West Indian migrants that had become the norm through the 1950s spilled over into a wave of racist attacks on migrants in late August and early September of that year, particularly in Nottingham and Notting Hill.

1960s

The 1960s was a decade of massive social, cultural and economic change in the UK. The austerity of the post-war years began to give way to economic growth and a new confidence. By the end of the decade international travel was easier and more common than ever before and this, together with the increasing prevalence of television, encouraged a steady breakdown in the deferential social values of earlier decades. This in turn led to new social and cultural phenomena and, increasingly, a greater permissiveness that steadily transformed the UK from the rather staid and traditional society of the 1950s to a confident cultural and economic beacon to the world, reflected perhaps particularly by the success of bands such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.

The permissive 60s, however, were perhaps always rather more of an urban phenomenon than one that necessarily permeated the entire nation. Outside of the urban centres and the young the social changes of the 1960s were profoundly unsettling to many.

In some respects, therefore, the 1960s were foreshadowed by two famous statements by Harold Macmillan, the Conservative Prime Minister between 1957 and 1963. In 1957 Macmillan presaged the economic growth and confidence that would characterise the next decade with the phrase You’ve never had it so good, whilst in 1960 he signalled the beginning of the decolonisation of Africa with his famous speech in Cape Town in which he declared that The wind of change is blowing through this continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact.

Macmillan overrode the opposition of many within his own party and in the country to grant independence to most of the UK’s African colonies, a process continued by his successors Alec Douglas-Home and, for Labour, Harold Wilson.

Labour won the 1964 general election with a narrow majority of four seats, and Wilson became Prime Minister. Source: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Independence for the African colonies, however, combined with the continuing racial tension that had characterised the 1950s, began to break down the political consensus in regard to equal citizenship rights for Commonwealth citizens. With the citizens of the former colonies now citizens of independent nations rather than crown subjects the argument for equal citizenship rights appeared weaker and politicians were increasingly aware of the strength and vehemence of anti-immigrant sentiment among their electorates.

The economic growth of the 1960s, however, continued to provide a demand for migrant labour and the former colonies remained an obvious source of that labour. Governments from both the main political parties, therefore, tried to balance increasing restrictions on immigration with the need to meet the demand for migrant labour and to address the racial intolerance that was threatening political discourse and public safety. The Commonwealth Immigrants Acts in 1962 and 1968 replaced the automatic rights of Commonwealth citizens with a work permit scheme designed to place increasing emphasis on skilled labour. This was intended dramatically to reduce African and Caribbean migration, since the qualifications of even skilled Africans were generally not recognised in the UK.

By the middle of the decade the Wilson government introduced the first Race Relations Act to mitigate the increasing levels of hostility displayed to African migrants but there remained a vociferous and impassioned debate about African migration, a debate in which Birmingham was at the centre.

On the 28th April 1968, at a Conservative Association meeting in Birmingham, a prominent member of the Conservative Shadow Cabinet, Enoch Powell, made his infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech in which he condemned what he perceived to be the unwillingness of migrant communities to adopt British standards and predicted that the Race Relations Act and the presumption of protecting multicultural practices at the expense, as he saw it, of integration, would provoke sooner or later large scale violence. Powell’s speech was significant not just because of his standing as a senior politician but because of its location in the Midlands. The Labour government had a tiny majority and was vulnerable, particularly in Birmingham and the Midlands, to pressure on its core vote due to anti-immigrant sentiment. A further Commonwealth Immigrants Act in 1968 made the initially temporary restrictions of the 1962 Act permanent and also further restricted the right of migration of those without clearly identifiable family links to the UK—so-called partials—in a move that was clearly designed to keep African migrants out.

1970s

By 1970 there were some 1.4 million non-white residents in the UK, compared with a just a few thousand in 1945. Many of this 1.4 million were, of course, by now second generation. The 1970s therefore represent both a period of development and one of change compared to the challenges of the 1960s.

On the one hand the 1970s were a period of economic stagnation, of rising unemployment and a general lack of economic confidence in the west. In addition, in Africa, the early euphoria of independence was being replaced by increasing instability, economic collapse, oppression and civil war. Whereas the 1950s and 1960s had been decades in which there was demand for migrant labour in the UK, firstly to enable post-war reconstruction and then to fuel economic growth (in a period where net migration was still negative), the 1970s was a decade in which the pull factor of the need for labour was replaced in part by a push factor in which instability in Africa encouraged inward migration.

This is not to say that pull factors were entirely absent. Despite the less favourable economic conditions migrant African workers were still in demand in areas of the economy in which British citizens were becoming less willing to work. The growth of generational reliance on the welfare state discouraged Britons from work in physically demanding and unappealing jobs such as manufacturing, cleaning and the care industry, and African workers frequently filled these vacancies, often working in poor conditions and with few rights.

In this context the 1970s saw the continuation of the immigration policy established by the late 1960s, of tighter immigration controls balanced by increased attention on development of legislation to improve race relations to ensure that first and second generation migrants were not subject to abuse and discrimination.

The 1971 Immigration Act further limited the right of British passport holders born overseas to migrate to the UK, unless they both had a work permit and could prove that a parent or grandparent had been born in the UK. This clearly was intended further to reduce African migration. A year later, however, a major crisis in Uganda in which the dictator Idi Amin expelled 83,000 Ugandan Asians, many with British passports, forced the government to have to admit some 28,000 in a matter of months.

Idi Amin, (c. 1924 – 16 August 2003) was the military dictator and third President of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. Amin joined the British colonial regiment, the King’s African Rifles in 1946. Source: From Wikipedia,

the free encyclopedia

In 1976 a new Race Relations Act was put before Parliament which, for the first time, made indirect discrimination illegal. Prior Race Relations Acts had prohibited incitement to racial hatred and direct discrimination (such as directly excluding Africans from consideration for jobs or accommodation) but the 1976 Act, closely modelled on the Sex Discrimination Act, went further in placing an obligation on employers to treat workers equally and to outlaw indirect forms of discrimination. The Act also had much stronger enforcement mechanisms than previous legislation.

The motivation for the act as a balance against tougher immigration controls was memorably summarised by the Labour politician Roy Hattersley who said "integration without limitation was impossible, and limitation without integration was inexcusable", but a further motivation was certainly a growing awareness of the responsibility of society to ensure that the children of migrants, born and brought up in the UK, were not excluded from opportunity.

Whilst the elections of the 1970s were dominated by the major political crises of the time—in particular the miners’ strike and the three day week in the 1974 election and subsequently the oil crisis and economic stagnation, Enoch Powell remained a very significant influence on politics and on the development of policy; his criticism of the admittance of Ugandan Asians and of the 1971 Immigration Act as too soft permeated the decade and ensured that immigration remained a significant political issue.

1980s

Although the 1970s were in reality a decade of much tougher legislation restricting inward migration to the UK, the popular perception remained one of excess immigration and racial tension and this perception was a continuing political issue constantly stoked by the rhetoric of Enoch Powell who presented himself as the voice of the people speaking out against a more liberal political consensus.

By the end of the 1970s, however, the new Conservative leader, Margaret Thatcher, had sought to reposition the Conservative Party more directly as the political voice of that popular consensus. In a television interview in January 1978 Thatcher presented the Conservatives as the party that would deliver real reductions in immigration. The Labour Government, meanwhile, had introduced virginity tests for Asian brides and its Home Secretary, Merlyn Rees, had agreed, in the same year as Margaret Thatcher’s television pronouncements on the subject that the purpose of immigration control was to stop coloured immigration.

In this political climate it was no surprise therefore that the subsequent Conservative government introduced further legislation in the form of the British Nationality Act, 1981. This Act redefined British citizenship, significantly weakening the residual citizenship rights of Commonwealth citizens and thus further reducing the opportunity of many Africans to migrate through family or work connections with the UK.

As in the 1970s, the 1980s saw relatively low levels of inward migration but the severe recession of the early part of the decade, combined with the hostile political rhetoric, provided the context for an explosion of discontent among the black urban youth. In 1981 severe riots in Brixton in London, and Toxteth in Liverpool were matched by riots in Handsworth, and Handsworth was also the scene of a major riot in 1985. In each case unemployment and perceived victimisation of ethnic minorities by police were significant factors in the discontent.

The effect of the riots during the first half of the 1980s, however, was to focus the Conservative government on the need to support urban regeneration, and reduce racial tensions and distrust of the police. To this end, through the recommendations of the Scarman Report into the riots, the Urban Regeneration initiatives championed by the Conservative minister Michael Heseltine, and the reforms to police procedure in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, concerted efforts were made to support the integration of and the creation of opportunities for African and Caribbean migrants and their children.

1990s

The 1990s saw the start of a major shift in migration patterns from Africa. For much of the 1970s and 1980s inward migration to the UK from Africa was in the low thousands annually, but the numbers of African migrants increased significantly during the 1990s (to between 10,000 and 20,000 a year).

For a number of African countries—such as Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo—the 1990s were a decade of large scale civil war. These wars, together with economic crises and famine, were a significant factor encouraging migration.

The 1990s, therefore, were a decade in which asylum and refugee migration became a major issue in a way that they had not previously. Prior migration from Africa had been principally work related but the combination of war and the increasing availability of international travel allowed refugees to seek asylum further afield and the UK, with its established migrant communities, was an obvious destination.

Refugee migration provoked increasingly vitriolic rhetoric in the popular press during the decade and was a major issue in the 1997 election with the Labour Party keen to portray itself as equally tough as the Conservatives in their proposed responses. This rhetoric became a constant backdrop to the decade, with an associated rise in far-right anti-immigrant groups such as the British National Party and with continued concern over institutional racism towards black citizens, revealed most strikingly in the MacPherson Report into the police investigation into the death of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence.

Despite the frequent negative portrayal of asylum based migration, refugee communities, although often having less historic affinity with their host nation, have demonstrated a resilience and a community spirit that provides a positive model of self-help in constrained times.

In Birmingham the Sudanese community, for example, formed a community church linked with the Balsall Heath church centre and have organised a charity called Sudan Emergency Relief to assist the famine stricken area in Southern Sudan. Members of the community were also involved in the Midlands Refugee Council that is today known as the Refugee Council.

Birmingham, therefore, offers a striking example of the positive contribution that recent African migration has been able to bring to the city.

2000s

The wave of refugee migration which began in the 1990s intensified further in the early 2000s, reaching a peak of 30,500 in 2002. In the period from 1998 to 2007 there were some 171,500 asylum applications from African refugees. This level of refugee asylum clearly resulted in massive political pressure on the Government, particularly in the context that the popular media was portraying asylum seekers as bogus on an almost daily basis.

The story of migration in the 2000s, however, is not solely one of asylum. As the economy entered an unprecedented period of economic growth and as the Government invested significant sums in enhancing public services, especially the NHS, the demand for migrant labour that had reduced during the 1970s and 1980s was once again significant. In addition to the need for unskilled workers, there was a new demand for doctors and nurses to staff the expanding NHS.

Furthermore, the 2000s saw a rapid growth in student migration from Africa. UK universities were actively encouraged to seek fee paying students from overseas.

The new levels of migration were not solely the result of UK based demand, however. Africa itself was changing rapidly during the early years of the 21st Century. Economic and social development has led to a new age of aspiration for the young of the continent. Whereas migration from Africa in earlier decades was typically males seeking work, (often, prior to the restrictions of the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, with the intention of returning home), recent years have seen a new trend in migration. Now, non-refugee migrants are likely to be educated and seeking skilled work (often more highly educated than the UK average); and migrants are at least as likely to be female as male. One of the consequences of the trend towards the social emancipation of females across Africa is that females are both themselves likely to be educated, and likely to be seeking further education, as a gateway for future careers and self-determination either abroad or back home in Africa.

As a consequence of these trends the number of people from Africa with work permits increased steadily from some 4000 in 1997 to a peak of 15,700 in 2002, with still 10,000 annually by 2007. Similarly, there are now many thousands of students from Africa enrolled on higher education courses in the UK—the majority in Masters Courses.

The story of migration in the 21st Century, therefore,