The latest race row involving Buckingham Palace could hardly have come at a more difficult moment for Prince William and his wife on their visit to the USA. He distanced himself from the whole issue by affirming that it was right for Lady Susan Hussey to resign as there is no place for racism in Britain.

There certainly should be no place for racism in Britain. Nevertheless, I cannot help feeling some sympathy for this lady whom I do not know, but from my personal experience, I could hazard a guess why she might have been making such an enquiry. 

White Britain

People in their 80s and 90s can remember Britain when the whole population was white. There were no people of colour in Britain in the 1930s other than a few in the Bristol and Cardiff areas who were descendants of those brought here in the old days of colonial slavery. I grew up in London and I never saw a black person in the whole of my childhood and youth. The only black people I saw were men serving in the forces of the American army who were here prior to the invasion of France on D-Day.

The first black people I ever met was when I began my ministry in a church in West London in 1952. I was fresh out of university, and I had little or no knowledge of our British colonial history, so I began a steep learning curve to be able to cope with my new neighbours and members of my congregation. The new migrants all came from different parts of the Caribbean, mainly Jamaica and Barbados. At that time the big move to Britain of Asian immigrants had not yet started.

I greatly enjoyed working among the migrants and I made many lasting friendships, among them Oliver Lyseight, the founder of the New Testament Church of God.

From Trinidad…

In 1961, just months before Independence Day, I was sent on an official good will visit by the British Council of Churches to Barbados, Trinidad, and Jamaica. In Jamaica I was welcomed by Prime Minister Bustamante, given a social worker and driver to take me on a prolonged tour of the island meeting community leaders in different areas, and given a police escort in the slums of West Kingston where it was dangerous for a white man – especially in the months prior to Independence Day. My role was particularly to establish links between churches and communities in Jamaica and similar leaders in Britain.

… to Tottenham

Soon after that visit I moved to a church in Tottenham where we rapidly became the largest multiracial congregation in Britain and I became a member of the Commonwealth Immigrants Committee set up by the Government and I used to do a regular weekly broadcast for the BBC Caribbean Service, among others.

One of the great challenges we faced in our church was in relationships between Africans and Caribbeans.

One of the great challenges we faced in our church was in relationships between Africans and Caribbeans. In the 1960s there were no African worker migrants in Britain – those who came were students and mostly from quite wealthy and prestigious families. They refused to have any relationships with the Caribbeans, whom they quite openly despised as the children of slaves.

Africans and Caribbeans

Sadly, this prejudice still remains today in places, and can be seen in the segregation between churches of Africans and churches of Caribbeans. The African churches have large congregations and are usually quite wealthy, in contrast to the Caribbean churches, which have declined heavily since their heyday in the 1960s and 70s.

The Caribbeans have not, in the main, been able to maintain the Christian allegiance of their second and third generations. I have just published a book on this subject, ‘The Shades of Black: The Origins of Colour Consciousness in the Caribbean’. One of the chapters in the book deals with the issue of the different generations and their different aspirations from the original ‘Windrush Generation’ of the 1950s.

The Africans come from a patriarchal background, whereas the Caribbeans come from a matriarchal background. This is a devastating legacy from colonial slavery.

The central issue lies in the cultural difference between Caribbeans and Africans. The Africans come from a patriarchal background, whereas the Caribbeans come from a matriarchal background. This is a devastating legacy from colonial slavery where marriage was impossible, and after the banning of the slave trade in 1807, the strongest black men were encouraged to produce as many babies as possible as the supply of labour from Africa ceased and the demand for sugar in Europe was highly profitable. In fact, most of the British economy had links with colonial slavery, which was why the abolition movement was so bitterly fought in Parliament until 1833.

Asking questions

All this has relevance for the questions asked by Lady Susan Hussey. People of her age know that you need to understand the cultural background of people to be able to communicate clearly with them. Lady Susan’s question in itself was quite valid, and if I had been in her position, I would have asked something similar to inform a meaningful conversation. As a pastor, I would have needed to know whether her heritage was Caribbean or African. Her name certainly is not Caribbean, where virtually all names in Jamaica and Barbados come from British plantation owners who deliberately destroyed every trace of African heritage in their slaves and gave them British names.

Lady Susan’s question in itself was quite valid, and if I had been in her position, I would have asked something similar to inform a meaningful conversation.

As a pioneer in race relations in Britain – my first book was called ‘Black-and-White in Harmony’ published by Hodder’s in 1958 – I would always want to know whether someone I was talking to was of African or Caribbean heritage so that I could understand their background and be able to communicate with them clearly.

Nevertheless, I feel it was an invasion of privacy for Lady Susan to press her questioning in the way she did when Ngozi was clearly reluctant to answer. It was unfortunate for Lady Hussey that the person she was talking to is a campaigner for equality rights. This was a gift for her publicity! I believe this whole incident has been blown up in the press because there is great ignorance of the background of black people in Britain today.