British Imperial History, Black Chartists & Prison Hulks
The Daily Mail amongst other hard right media outlets has recently headlined that the Government plans to move asylum seekers from hotels to military bases and possibly a very large ‘barge’.
The main reason why asylum seekers are in hotels is because the Government has slowed down the process of application to a crawl. Most who apply are genuine and accepted- eventually.
Asylum seekers cannot be detained as prisoners are but in practice they have nowhere else to go as they can’t legally work.
The tradition of keeping people on barges or hulks as they were known dates back to at least 1776. The use of decommissioned ships was authorised by Parliament for two years in the wake of the US War of Independence.
As often with temporary measures the hulks were not that temporary and lasted for 80 years or so.
Conditions on them were appalling and prisons were built. One was at Millbank on the site of what is now that Tate Gallery. It was operational from 1818.
It was to Millbank that the black leader of London Chartism William Cuffay and others were despatched after a trial at the Old Bailey for their alleged part in a Chartist rising at Seven Dials in central London in August 1848.
Its not known if Cuffay was ever kept on a hulk. He and other Chartist prisoners were at some point despatched to Wakefield Gaol from where he wrote a letter in July 1849 prior to being transported to Tasmania.
However two other black men associated with Chartism David Anthony Duffy and Benjamin Prophett who had been held at Millbank for their supposed part in a riot after a Chartist meeting at Camberwell Green in March 1848, were transferred to the prison hulk York in December 1848.
The York had been built at Rotherhithe in 1807 and was decommissioned at Portsmouth in 1817. It became a prison hulk in 1820 and could hold 500 prisoners, again in appalling conditions. There was a riot on the York in 1848 but before the two above named Chartists moved there.
It is reminder that the British Imperial State has a long history of disciplining and punishing those who are seen not to fit. All part of Britain’s Island Story.
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