More than half of Britons know so little about Black British history that they cannot name a single historical figure, a survey has revealed.
The researchers found that the UK knows “shockingly little” about Black British history. While 75% of British adults surveyed acknowledged that they did not know “very much” or “anything at all” about the subject, more than half (53%) could not recall any Black British historical figures and only 7% could name more than four.
Guardian report 26th October 2023
Survey Commissioned by Bloomsbury Publishing
William Cuffay: leader of London Chartism in 1848
William Cuffay was born in Gillingham in the Medway Towns in 1788, the son of a local woman and a former slave from St Kitts who had made his way to Britain by working on a Royal Navy ship. Many of those aboard Navy vessels in the late eighteenth century were black.
We know that by 1819 Cuffay was in London and had learnt the trade of a tailor.
No doubt Cuffay would have been exposed to the radical working-class politics of London in the 1820s and he was certainly involved in the strike called by the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union in 1834.
Cuffay went on to become, by the end of the 1830s, a leader of a group of London Chartist tailors.
In 1840 Cuffay was 52- very old for a Chartist activist at that time- and he became a central and trusted figure in London Chartism.
The best way to understand him is as the key ‘backroom’ organiser of Chartism in the Capital- raising money for jailed Chartists and being appointed to oversee the funds of the Chartist Land Bank.
By 1842 Cuffay had been elected from London to the national Chartist Executive. These positions were fiercely contested, so Cuffay will have had a considerable constituency of support.
Details of Cuffay’s work in this period can be tracked in the Chartist paper, the Northern Star, which is now available in digital format free on-line.
Martin Hoyles book on Cuffay has also revealed that during this period Cuffay was performing as a singer on the London stage.
Cuffay was the organiser of the great Chartist demonstration on Monday 10th April 1848.
Chartists gathered at various points across London and marched south to rally at Kennington Common. The idea was then to proceed back across Blackfriars Bridge to present a giant petition for the vote to Parliament.
It was a strategic mistake- it’s unclear what part Cuffay played in deciding the venue for the rally. Police and soldiers blocked the way back over the River Thames and the national leader of Chartism Feargus O’Connor agreed with the police that the Chartists would not try to march.
Cuffay was understandably very annoyed at this decision and is reported as arguing that the march should go ahead.
We now know that there was hand to hand fighting between Chartists and troops on the south side of Blackfriars Bridge but a heavy April shower caused the attempt to be abandoned.
Later in the year, in August 1848, Cuffay was arrested for his part in an alleged revolutionary conspiracy at Seven Dials, Covent Garden. Arms were found in Cuffay’s house. His precise role in the events is unclear but it is very likely that as the London Chartist leader he was at the very least aware of what was planned.
Tried at the Old Bailey, Cuffay was sentenced to 21 years transportation to Australia.
Arriving in Hobart Tasmania, now over 60, Cuffay could have been forgiven for retiring from political activity. He did not. Instead he was active in a range of radical causes in the earliest years of the Australian labour movement. He was pardoned after 3 years but remained in Australia, dying in 1870.
Modern interest in Cuffay can be traced back to a chapter in Staying Power by the late Peter Fryer which recovered much of the history of black people in Britain.
Cuffay left no diary, autobiography or papers, but research to uncover details of his life and activity is continuing. There has been considerable effort in Australia and in Britain there were plans to erect a blue plaque for Cuffay in the Strand, so far frustrated.
The Times in 1848 referred to Cuffay and the Chartists as ‘the black man and his party’ and we can now see that this was not hyperbole but a recognition that the London organisation of the world’s first working class movement was led by the son of an ex-slave from St Kitts.
Indeed while there was an element of racism about media reports of Cuffay, there was also I suspect an understanding that he was a good deal more militant than the largely middle-class Chartist leadership.
He was in favour of confrontation with the Government to win the vote. He made clear in a speech to the Chartist delegate Assembly gathered in London after April 10th that he didn’t think memorials to the Queen or complaints to the press about how it reported Chartism were worthwhile. Rather political action was needed.
In the issue of the Northern Star (26th October 1848) that covered Cuffay’s trial Fergus O’Connor paid a front-page tribute to Cuffay as a thoroughly honest and decent man who had been trusted with highly responsible roles in the Chartist movement.
O’Connor however implied that Cuffay was no political strategist and thinker and had allowed himself to be drawn into a network of Government spies determined to urge on confrontation so as to be able to arrest them for illegal acts.
Cuffay was no spy and he did have a different strategy to that of O’Connor. Was he naively draw in by agents provocateurs? We cant be sure, but we do know he was a vastly experienced activist who one would think would have been aware of such pitfalls.
Cuffay came from the imperial diaspora to challenge imperialism at its heart in London to find himself exiled to another part of the British Empire in Australia as a reward for his efforts
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