New Daughters of Africa

by Margaret Busby

  In those years, the 1950s, I felt different and I was different: never allowed to do any of the things other children did. If I looked out of the window May would be furious: “Come away from there at once!” A knock on the front door and I was rushed to the back of the house, as if I was a fugitive. A number of times I was hidden in a cupboard under the stairs and forced to stay there until the coast was clear. It was dark inside and I’d panic, even though I was given an ice cream once when I came out.

  I had one friend, Heather, the girl next door. She was five years older than me. Sometimes Auntie May and Uncle Dick would drive us to the sea, near Brighton, for an outing. On the way home, as we approached the house, May would burst out, “Get down, Susan. Get down now!”

  You’d think it was an air-raid! I would immediately duck down on the floor in the back of the car so none of the neighbours would see me. Heather told me recently that she thought this was very odd.

  It was a hidden childhood for a long time. Did I ever ask why? Not really. “Good little girls” didn’t speak up in those days. They barely even spoke. In post-war Britain, people felt lucky just to have survived. Adults didn’t ask deep questions; children certainly didn’t. I did finally find the courage to ask Uncle Dick, about my “mummy” and “daddy”.

  After a long pause he answered: “We adopted you because your real parents couldn’t look after you.”

  End of conversation. I assumed my birth parents couldn’t look after me because they were dead and I grew up firmly believing I was an orphan.

  May said to me once: “If we hadn’t taken you in, who knows where you would have been? You should be grateful.” They had saved me from the orphanage.

  From then on, I started to call Auntie May and Uncle Dick “Mummy” and “Daddy”.

  But there were gigantic elephants in the room . . . the colour of my skin! . . . the kinks in my hair! I wasn’t conscious of being black and no one ever said I was, but people must have speculated that I was probably the illegitimate child of a black man (possibly an American GI) and a white woman. Oh, the shame of being a “half-caste bastard” in white, genteel South London. No wonder I was hidden. No one in my world looked remotely like me.

  But in truth, even I had no idea what I looked like. Never allowed out without a “bonnet” covering most of my face, secured with a bow tied under my chin. Whatever I wore had to have long sleeves—my skin must never get any darker from the sun. My frizzy hair was straightened—and fell out a couple of times because of the chemicals.

  To cope with my isolation, I escaped to the library and the tennis court at the end of the road as often as I could. Girls at my convent school called me “Sooty” and I kidded myself that it was affectionate. After all, everyone was watching a popular, long-running children’s television series The Sooty Show, featuring a small, mute, cute yellow bear.

  Boys were less subtle when it came to racist taunts and called me “baked potato” to my face and “a touch of the tar brush” behind my back.

  But I was tough—cocooned by Catholicism and protected at school by Jesuit nuns who believed that women were every bit as good as men. If the abuse became too much, I fantasised an exotic back-story for myself: I was the daughter of an African prince or a powerful Arab sheikh. I would be fine until I could escape.

  Which I did—a gap year in Cameroon, West Africa, teaching at another convent school. It was there that I finally realised that I was a “daughter of Africa”. I loved everything about Africa and I still do—the heat, sounds, smells and most of all, the people. I feel completely at home wherever I am in Africa. Then I went to the University of Sussex to read English. Dick died while I was at university and after that I rarely went back to South London.

  I was working in Manchester as a television journalist, presenting and reporting on a nightly news programme. One evening, after the show, Joan rang to tell me that my adopted mother May had died.

  Her funeral was a miserable affair—blinding wind and rain on top of the South Downs. Just the three of us: Joan, her husband Rob and me. Mummy/Auntie May had no friends. Later, Joan and I sat in her cramped apartment above her failing sweet shop. Her husband Rob had gone to bed. A bottle of whiskey sat on the table between us.

  I sat silently as Joan spoke in a tone I hardly recognised.

  “I’m your real mother. May was your grandmother. You’re not adopted. You were never adopted!”

  I was shocked.

  “I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time. May wouldn’t let me. I had to go along with her. She sent me away in secret to have you and she made me give you to them. Told me to marry the person I was engaged to . . . I had no options. Your father was from Trinidad . . . in the RAF. He is Black.”

  Black? Why did I never suspect this? Suddenly the identity I had forged over more than twenty-five years was shattered. I wasn’t who I thought I was. But, incredibly, I did have a living mother and father!

  I learned my father’s name: Squadron Leader Philip Louis Ulric Cross, DSO, DFC, nickname “Black Hornet”. An RAF navigator who commanded No 139 (Jamaica) Squadron. Charismatic, gorgeous, exceptionally brave and very black. She had been in love with him. He was a war hero, recognised as probably the most decorated West Indian of World War II. He became an eminent jurist and diplomat. Not quite the prince or sheikh I had dreamt of as a child, but not far off!

  He had tried to visit me once when I was very little. Uncle Dick opened the door, took one look at him and told him never to come near his daughter, or me again. Illegitimacy was scandalous in respectable households; prejudice against black people was extreme. The combination of the two was unthinkable.

  I was also shocked when she told me I had met my father when I was teaching in Cameroon during my gap year. I remember at the time being told someone “very important” from the government wanted to meet me. I was taken to a house and introduced to the most extraordinary man I had ever met. I wrote to Joan to tell her. I named him and explained how handsome and captivating he was—sadly he was married. Airmail letters took a long time to fly between Africa and the UK especially back in 1963. I received an almost instant reply: “Whatever you do, keep away from this man. I was engaged to him once. Don’t have anything to do with him!” There had been a strong connection between the then Attorney General of Cameroon and the teenage gap-year student. I had never understood why he insisted on meeting me. And now I was being told that he was my father.

  I was stunned and the whiskey bottle was almost empty.

  I told my mother that the lies had to stop, and if she didn’t tell her family the truth, then I would. To her credit, she did so. Her husband, Rob, didn’t take it well, but her children were unsurprised.

  * * *

  Suddenly the baby alarm went off with a jolt. My grandson had woken up and needed feeding. Abby turned off the tape recorder. I’d only told her half the story. I hugged her and the baby and drove home, emotionally exhausted.

  That conversation with Joan happened almost fifty years ago but it had a profound effect on my life. I had grown up feeling “out of place”. I had no sense of identity, race or culture. I knew I wasn’t white, it didn’t occur to me that I was black, and the word ‘bi-racial’ was unknown. I never understood why I felt so at home in Africa or when I was surrounded by people of colour. It was a huge relief to know the truth.

  Thankfully, the shame and guilt of illegitimacy that existed more than sixty years ago when I was a child has virtually disappeared from Britain. Racism has not, but to be bi-racial in London today is not unusual and it’s not a scandal. The town I grew up in is now brimming with people of colour, many of whom look like me.

  I try to forgive my mother and grandparents for hiding me away, but it’s difficult. I understand they were a product of their time, but I’m not sure I can entirely forgive. Our past is our future, and part of me will always be the black child called Sooty at school, whose identity was erased because of white people’s shame. I shall always carry some of that t
oxic guilt. And I know I’ve also handed some of it down to my three daughters, however hard I tried not to. A painful, heavy burden I carry. Mothering is hard when you haven’t had much yourself. I am proud that they are strong, confident, feminists and I hope they will be able to forgive me. We don’t communicate enough because I still find it so hard talk about my past. They have a right to know my story.

  Postscript

  In time, I traced my father, Mr Justice Cross, and met his extended family. We became close, and he was an adoring and much loved “Grandpa Ulric” to Abby and her sisters. We all love his daughter, my sister Nicola—“Auntie Nicky”. I also found a son Ulric didn’t know he had: my half-brother Richard, who is just three weeks older than me!

  It was a long, sometimes painful journey. And there are many more rich stories left to tell . . . for another time and place.

  1950s

  Diane Abbott

  Born in London to parents who were Jamaican migrants to Britain in the 1950s, she has built a distinguished career as a parliamentarian, broadcaster and commentator. After attending Harrow County Grammar School, she went to Cambridge University where she obtained an MA in history in 1973, and subsequently worked as a journalist. She was a Home Office trainee, Race Relations Officer for the National Council for Civil Liberties, a reporter with TV AM and Thames Television, Public Relations Officer with the GLC and head of Lambeth Council’s Press Office. Active in community politics, including OWAAD (Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent) and the Black Media Workers’ Organisation, in 1987 she became the first black woman ever elected to the British Parliament, as Labour Party MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington. Her 2008 speech on civil liberties won The Spectator magazine’s “Parliamentary Speech of the Year” award and further recognition at the 2008 Human Rights awards. She has served on a number of parliamentary committees and held shadow ministerial positions. She is founder of the London Schools and the Black Child initiative.

  The Caribbean

  2 December 2004

  Diane Abbott (Hackney, North and Stoke Newington) (Lab): I am grateful to have an opportunity to speak in this important debate . . .

  As someone who has been a Member of the House since 1987, I want to begin by saying that there is no doubt that since the mid-’80s the Caribbean region has slipped down the Government’s agenda. That is to take nothing away from the indefatigable efforts of former Ministers in previous Governments and this Government or the indefatigable efforts of Baronesses Amos and Scotland, friends of mine who have worked very hard in the other place [the House of Lords] to represent the interests of the region. Whatever Heads of Government tell Ministers over cocktails, they tell everyone else that over the past two decades the region has slipped down the agenda.

  I do not blame any particular Government for that. There are historic trends; the end of the Iron Curtain and of the Cold War meant that regions that were once cockpits of the Cold War fell from the attention of the United States, and to a lesser extent that of the UK. With the rise of the Asian tigers and the emergence of the massive economies of Taiwan, China and Korea, our economic focus has moved. The importance of Eastern Europe and Russia has led attention, capital flows and economic interest away from the region to other parts of the world.

  Undoubtedly, the Department for International Development’s otherwise laudable emphasis on helping the very poorest countries has been at the expense of allegedly middle-income countries such as Caribbean countries. It is regrettable that the region has dropped down the Government’s agenda. It is regrettable philosophically because of the historic links between the region and Britain and because of the existence of large and passionately engaged Caribbean communities in all our great cities. It is also regrettable practically.

  I come to this debate having spent the morning at a conference on gun crime organised by the Metropolitan police. I am sure that Ministers appreciate that in a globalised world we face globalised crime and globalised social disorder. Ministers cannot pursue policies in relation to trade liberalisation, and the so-called modernisation of the public sector, which will inevitably lead to job losses in the region, without that having an impact on security and crime issues right here in Britain.

  If people sneeze in west Kingston, we catch a cold in Hackney. The criminals are as globalised as any multinational company. I regret that for all the energy that Ministers put into security, crime and drug issues, they do not link it to their trade liberalisation policies and modify them accordingly. Of course change has to come—to bananas, to sugar and to the whole region—but the pace of change and the ability of the countries to draw down funds to manage that change is crucial if this is not to result in social disorder and dislocation in that region, which directly impacts on us here in London.

  I am sure that Hon. Members will forgive me if I return to sugar, because it is a major issue. People are very unhappy with how things have developed . . . These new proposals on sugar—whether they are in technical breach of the Cotonou agreement or not, they certainly breach its spirit—specifically reconfirm the importance of preserving the benefits of the sugar protocol.

  Although I may not say this over cocktails with Ministers, as far as the region is concerned, the new proposals on sugar and the precipitate slashing of the sugar price are a breach of faith . . .

  People were promised money and aid in relation to bananas, but until now they have not been able to draw down even a fraction of that money, nor do they want to repeat that experience with sugar.

  For Ministers, trade issues are in some sense abstract, as they have to fit in with a wider Government agenda. Perhaps Ministers think it is enough to say that change must come, but I remind Hon. Members of the economic, social and psychological importance of sugar to the region. We are, after all, talking about sugar islands that were the jewels of the British Empire precisely because of sugar production. The structures of the societies on those islands—their economies and internal social relations—are still based on the world that sugar made. Those economies are still major employers of unskilled and semi-skilled labour.

  The Minister will probably tell me about diversification, but I want to know how an unskilled sugar cane worker in Portland, Jamaica, is going to diversify and become a computer programmer. That is the reality that people across the region face, not just in Jamaica, but in St Kitts and Nevis and elsewhere. Ministers talk too glibly about diversification without considering the reality of the work force that they are trying to diversify and the work available.

  Ministers must also remember, when they glibly talk about diversification, that there is no major political party in the sugar-producing islands of the region that does not have its political base in the sugar unions. What politicians are being asked to do is turn to their bases and say that an economic structure and source of work and prosperity that has been relied on since the beginning of those island societies is going to go, and go much more rapidly than anyone anticipated at the time of Cotonou.

  Let me remind Ministers that those sugar industries were originally constructed as suppliers to the metropolitan market. Unlike British beef producers, they do not enjoy sizeable domestic purchasing bases, which is one of the things that makes the current price proposal so untenable. Let me also repeat that most countries want to diversify. They do not want to rely on the same economic and social relationships that existed in the eighteenth century.

  There is sufficient surplus land and labour to diversify, albeit not at the expense of the industry. Having been a Member of the House since 1987, I have seen Ministers with responsibility for the Caribbean come and go, but there is a list of large-scale experiments that the Caribbean islands have entered into in an attempt to diversify their agricultural production for the large and lucrative US market. Many of those experiments have failed, owing to all sorts of structural difficulties.

  When Ministers talk about diversification, they also ignore the fact that in most islands the structure of the econ
omy, small populations and underdeveloped internal and international transport militate against the establishment of new businesses. Where there are communications structures, people have realised that they could, for instance, move out of bananas and into other crops. But guess what—up to now, how would they have transported those new crops to Europe and America? The answer is on a banana boat. If we smash up the banana industry, we also smash up the transport infrastructure with which the agricultural produce of those islands could be moved about as a whole.

  There is a lack of joined-up thinking among International Development Ministers about diversification. Ministers also need to remember that the economic pressures affecting sugar are also hammering other industries, such as bananas and citrus.

  . . . When pressed on the sugar question, Ministers will tell us that it is all about British consumers and that they want them to have cheaper sugar. Consumers in Hackney call me for lots of reasons, but they do not call for cheaper sugar. Let us be clear: consumers in Britain or Europe will not benefit from lower sugar prices. The main beneficiaries will be an oligarchy of sugar producers in Brazil and the large sugar-using industrial manufacturers.

  What will be the social consequences of a precipitate collapse of the sugar industry?

  The people in the precise categories of the labour market that the sugar industry employs are not those who will find it easy to diversify into new industries. They will not just grow ganja—if they were growing ganja alone, that would be one thing—but we will see an accelerated drift of young men from the rural areas of St Kitts, Jamaica and elsewhere to the big cities, where they will find themselves involved in criminality and then fan out into international crime between New York, London and the region. That is the consequence of trade liberalisation if sufficient thought is not given to the transition.