Contribution
I thank the Minister for her powerful opening remarks. It is a pleasure to follow my near neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler).
As we have heard, the theme of this year’s Black History Month is “Honouring Our Communities”. It is all about ordinary Black British people who have done the rarely celebrated work of building this nation: of working in our factories, in the NHS, and in so many other jobs that helped this country to grow. It is about how they stood up to everyday racism, often on a daily basis, and yet pushed on for their children and their grandchildren to be able to succeed.
I would love to tell that story today: of the black parents in Ealing Southall who refused to accept racism in schools and so sent their kids to supplementary schools to give them a fair chance in life; of the black workers who joined trade unions to fight racism at work; and of the black tenants who campaigned for fair access to housing. But, Madam Deputy Speaker, on 26 January this year we lost my constituent Eric Huntley, a giant of the black community, so it is only right that I pay tribute to him today.
Eric is not quite an unsung hero. In fact, there is a special Nubian Jak Community Trust blue plaque above his home at 141 Coldershaw Road, which he would proudly show me whenever I passed. But he is not sung about anywhere near enough, and I hope to help rectify that today. Eric and his wife Jessica, who died in 2013, were lifelong activists and educators. Eric came here from Guyana in 1957, and Jessica followed in 1962 when they had saved enough to pay for her passage over. In 1968, they founded one of the UK’s first black-led publishing companies, Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications, from a printing press in their front room on Coldershaw Road.
In 1975, they opened a bookshop specialising in black literature at 5A Chignell Place in West Ealing. Eric described it as
“an oasis in the desert of west London”
for the black community. With few other community spaces, it became an important cultural and academic hub, providing a drop-in centre for parents, students and teachers. The bookshop also offered career advice and help with job applications. It became known globally, with visits from black authors and artists from around the world.
The bookshop, however, also came under attack from the National Front, with racist graffiti, smashed windows and excrement pushed through the letter box. Jessica told the story of how the Ku Klux Klan made threatening phone calls in which they were told they had seven days to pack up the shop and leave, and were left in no doubt about the consequences if they did not. But Eric and Jessica would not be intimidated. With other bookshop owners, the Huntleys founded Bookshop Joint Action, and campaigned against racist threats in Ealing and across London, drawing national press coverage and forcing the police to safeguard the bookshop.
Eric and Jessica were key figures in the Caribbean Education and Community Workers Association, which was set up in response to the racist labelling of large numbers of black children as “educationally subnormal”. They were involved in the supplementary school system, which was almost a parallel education system that black communities were forced to set up to stop their children’s life chances being damaged by racism in the school system. They were also part of the Black Parents Movement, which campaigned against laws that allowed police to stop, search and arrest people on suspicion of intent to commit a crime, which were used disproportionately against young black people in the ’70s and ’80s.
The last time I saw Eric was at a poetry event last year run by CACE—the Caribbean and African cultural centre in West Ealing that is very much a part of his legacy. He was as full of life and opinions as ever, and I know he would have lots to say about our new Prime Minister if he were still around. Eric’s death in January, at the age of 96, is truly the end of an era, but his and Jessica’s work in building a community for black people across west London will never be forgotten—from the blue plaque on the house on Coldershaw Road where they started out, to murals of them both on the windows of West Ealing community library.
Most importantly, their spirit lives on in every young black Briton in Ealing Southall today who says, “I refuse to shut up. I refuse to go away. I refuse to accept things as they are.” I hope that this House will join me in honouring not just our communities but Eric Huntley, a true west London legend whose warmth, activism and determination continue to shape the lives of black Britons today.