Some of the men forced into the French army were in effect slaves. ibid.
In early November 1913 in Istanbul, the capital of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, a new web was unveiled: it would spread the First World War far beyond the borders of Europe … This was how the Ottoman empire would enter the First World War: not just with a declaration of war but with a declaration of jihad: Holy War. David Olusoga, The World’s War: Forgotten Soldiers of Empire II: Martial Races
As the War spread it would draw in millions of diverse people of every race, every colour and every religion from all over the world. They fought alongside their European comrades and they died in terrible numbers. ibid.
Lettow-Vorbeck and his Askari troops set off on a thousand-mile journey. Armies from South Africa, and the British, Belgium and Portuguese colonies all set off in pursuit, and he drew them deeper and deeper into East and Central Africa … leaving behind them a trail of famine, disease and death. ibid.
The biggest man-made structure on Earth … That’s what the Western Front was: a vast twentieth-century military city of encampments and trenches and dug-outs and barbed-wire. With its complex infrastructure of roads, railways, ammunition dumps, factories, hospitals, brothels and morgs, the Western Front was a linear city extending 450 miles from the Swiss Frontier to the English Channel, and with a population to match. By 1917 this was the most culturally and ethnically diverse place in Earth. ibid.
Something of a love affair developed between France and black America … The American military viewed this love affair with mounting horror … The music had to stop. ibid.
They’re going back in time through fifty years of black British history, starting in 1948 they’ll discover how past-war Caribbean immigration changed the way we all live. Back in Time for Brixton, BBC 2016
How it all started in one London suburb: Brixton … ‘the Windrush generation’. ibid.
Families needed to find somewhere to live; this was easier said than done. ibid.
1956 was the year of peak immigration from the West Indies to Britain: over 26,000 would make the journey that year. ibid.
These Georgian terraces in the heart of London convey a forgotten chapter in Britain’s history: a new study of a government archive from the 1830s reveals that many of these houses were once the homes of Britain’s slave owners … These records transform our image of the slave owner; they reveal that thousands of them lived all over Britain, and they show how the profits from slave ownership ran deep in British society. David Olusoga, Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners I: Profit & Loss, BBC 2018
A huge sum of money was raised by the British government: that money – the modern equivalent of £17 billion – was paid out in compensation not to the slaves but to the slave owners. ibid.
Their money helped lay the foundation of our modern world. ibid.
1834: These are the files from the Slave Compensation Commission: they record all the claims for compensation. ibid.
46,000 slave owners came forward. ibid.
The slave system was ruthlessly enforced right from the start. ibid.
It details the slave owners’ reprisals for acts of resistance. ibid.
It was system based on terror; it was a system that was medieval in its mentality. ibid.
Women accounted for more than 40% of the slave owners found in these records. ibid.
A nation as addicted to cheap sugar as it was to the profits of slavery. ibid.
Above all the slave system made Britain wealthy. ibid.
For 200 years slavery was a powerful engine that drove the British economy. It allowed Britain’s slave owners to amass extraordinary personal wealth. The abolition of slavery in 1834 is often remembered as a great triumph of British liberalism. But new research based on a vast collection of documents at the National Archives is revealing a darker side to the story of abolition. David Olosoga, Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners II
The slave owners lived all over Britain … Britain’s slave owners waged a decades-long battle against the forces of abolition. ibid.
The slaves hurled themselves into the struggle for freedom. ibid.
The slave owners had lost the moral argument. They were facing defeat and economic ruin. So they turned to their other argument – compensation. ibid.
The slaves themselves – they would receive no compensation. ibid.
This is a very bureaucratic process imposed on society. ibid.
Something grubby about this part of the process. ibid.
The Slave Compensation Records also show how slave generated wealth built many of the great estates that shape our countryside. ibid.
The profits from slavery helped build modern Britain. ibid.
Slavery is part of our national story. ibid.
Thousands of Caribbean and African women whose contributions down the years has largely gone unnoticed. The have helped create and sustain the NHS for sixty years. They looked after us even at the expense of caring for their own families. The nation has much to thank them for. Black Nurses: The Women Who Saved the NHS, BBC 2016
The country needed help to repair the damage of war. ibid.
‘There were not enough nurses to do the job.’ ibid.
‘Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me!’ ibid.
‘That’s who I am: a black woman who happened to be a nurse.’ ibid.
A background of racial violence and abuse. ibid.
Many black nurses and midwives found life easier when they gravitated to the inner cities. ibid.
‘Work hard, play hard, you get on with life.’ ibid.
In 1979 a football match was played at the Hawthorns, home of West Bromwich Albion. On one side eleven white players, on the other eleven black players. Whites vs Blacks? Yes really. Stranger still, back then it all felt rather progressive. Now the very thought of it makes you wince. Adrian Chiles, White vs Blacks: How Football Changed a Nation, BBC 2016
So how does this tell us about how things were back then for black people? ibid.
My black heroes were subjected to the vilest abuse. ibid.
There was fear and ignorance in equal measure. ibid.
Black players – we had three of them. ibid.
He [Laurie Cunningham] was the first player of colour to play for Real Madrid. ibid.
The United States is home to 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s prisoners. Think about that. 13th, Obama, 2016
A prison population of 2.3 million. ibid. critic
The Birth of a Nation confirmed the story that many whites wanted to tell of the civil war and its aftermath. ibid.
Both races will be destroyed in such a movement. ibid. KKK bloke
Civil rights activists began to be portrayed in the media and among many politicians as criminals. ibid.
In the 1970s we began an era that’s been defined by this term ‘mass incarceration’. ibid.
Hundreds of thousands of people were being sent to jail for simple possession of marijuana. ibid.
‘The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black.’ ibid. John Ehrlichman
US prison population 1970: 357,292; 1980: 513,900; 1985: 759,100; 1990: 1,179,200; 2014: 2,306,200. ibid.
The so-called war on drugs was a war on communities of colour. ibid.
FBI Chief Calls Martin Luther King ‘The Most Notorious Liar in the Country’. ibid. Washington Press International report
The role of CCA within Alex began a series of bills … CCA had a hand in shaping crime policy. ibid. critic
Corporations are operating in prison and profiting from punishment. ibid.
They’re too poor to get out. ibid.
97% of those people who are locked up have plea-bargained. ibid.
Ferguson: this pattern of mass criminalisation and mass incarceration. ibid.
All along George W Bush had been telling everybody I’m gonna carry Florida. American Blackout, dude on news, 2006
They’ve tried to turn people away and it’s not right. ibid. disenfranchised black Florida voter
If all the votes had been counted in Florida and if all the African-Americans had had an opportunity to caste their vote, George Bush would never have been president of the United States. ibid. dude #3
Somebody has a formula. ibid. dude #4
I was on my way to vote: there was a roadblock. ibid. woman #1