We know about the laws and riots. What about the spaces and intimate relationships communities carved out to survive?
I’ve long respected the principle that, as a Black gay man in Britain, I owe the relative security and increasingly more tolerable environment that I enjoy to those who came before me. It’s just over 20 years ago that the footballer Justin Fashanu – who endured media storms and intrusions into his private life – killed himself. Now, the kind of explicitly homophobic and racist media vilification that Justin faced is unthinkable – even if, of course, homophobic and racist media still persist.
The idea of the past as host to revolutionary struggles that mapped out a better world for Black Britons is at the core of Black History Month, as well as major cultural events such as Notting Hill carnival. An American import, Black History Month was first celebrated in the UK in October 1987 thanks to the work of Akyaaba Addai-Sebo, who had been a special projects officer at the Greater London Council. In more recent years, Black Britons have accelerated our criticism of the outsized role the US plays in Britain’s Black History Month, with author Yomi Adegoke writing in 2017 that “calls for a British focus during October’s celebration are not new, but they are now louder than ever”.
