We go, many of us, as children, to heritage sites where we have explained to us how those mills work. We learned about spinning jennies and water frames and Factories Act and child labour. But it's also a story that's been edited out, in lots of ways, of British history.įor example, when we talk about the Industrial Revolution, we often talk about the way the factories and the mills worked. The great Jamaican British philosopher and academic Stuart Hall once said, 'We are here, because you were there.' These are the stories that make sense of why there were people like me in Britain, black British people.

The African story, the story of black people, is part of that complicated mix that's created the country we are today. And the reason I think it's important is because these are the stories and this is the history that explains why Britain looks the way it does today, why the faces that you see when you walk through the streets of our cities are so varied.

I think it's Britain's relationship with Africa and Africans, both here in Britain, in the Caribbean and in North America, and also in Africa itself. It tends to mean the story of black people in Britain, but I think it means something much bigger than that.

Black British history has meant lots of different things at different times.

Black and British by David Olusoga