Defiance

In 1972, Leicester City Council took out an advert in the Uganda Argus advising the Asian community not to come to Leicester. This advert had the opposite effect.

Commemoration service, Bradford City Hall, March 2007

Members of Bradford’s Caribbean community at the commemoration service at Bradford City Hall which marked the 200th Anniversary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act. I chose this picture as this moving event drew together all the communities in Bradford to remember a significant chapter in the history of the Britain and its relationship with the Caribbean.

Group posing in front of a 38 bus, Clapton, Hackney, October 2005

This was taken on the last day of the Routemaster buses on this route.

Mytilla’s tomb, St Lawrence Parish Church, Oxhill, Warwickshire, 2010

This image is the gravestone of an enslaved girl called Myrtilla who had lived in the parish during the early eighteenth century. The inscription reads:

‘Here lyeth the body of Myrtilla, negro slave to Mr Thos Beauchamp of Nevis. Bapt Oct ye 20th. Buried Jan ye 6th 1705.’

She represents one of the thousands of Africans who came to Britain during the period of the transatlantic slave trade. Some, like Myrtilla were enslaved, whilst many others were free men and women. Their stories represent a myriad of experiences and demonstrate the long history of an African presence in Britain dating back to the Roman occupation of the islands.