What Future for Black Londoners?

Urban Renewal has enriched patricians and policy makers but bypassed Black Londoners in deprived social housing areas. On the 50th anniversary of the invited Black presence in Britain, a Heritage Centre is proposed to highlight the triumphs and travails of Black Diasporans, or African Caribbean peoples, and their contributions to British life.

Who are London's Black Diasporans?
On 22 June 1948 the ship SS Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury Docks with 492 Caribbeans on board. They were the first contingent recruited to rebuild the health, transport and essential services of postwar Britain. Now after a half-century of large-scale migration a major proportion of London's half million people of African Caribbean descent live in the residential backwaters of the metropolis. Municipal social housing areas earmarked for regeneration, like the dock side quarters of Deptford, demonstrate major problems of exclusion in housing, employment and education.

Who is accountable?
Urban policies and programmes initiated by insensitive bureaucrats, planners and policy makers are the prime culprits. Black residents complain about the lack of social and physical facilities, inadequate health and educational provision, and the lack of transport and access to new job markets. Racial discrimination and harassment of Black youth are also evident in an increasingly hostile urban environment.

What are the likely solutions?
On the broadest front, campaigners urge the new Labour government, business and professions to make urban regeneration compatible with the needs of Black communities. Leading experts call for tougher measures against discriminatory practices in housing, job, and education. At the local level, regeneration in Black districts like Deptford must release the collective energies and creativity of Black Diasporans. Specific procedures should aim to mobilise their full involvement in beneficial urban change into the millennium.

What future for urban Black Diasporans?
Deptford is located near Greenwich, the focus of Britain's Millennium celebrations. But London's policy makers and patricians have yet to accept that Deptford has a special place historically for Black people. Centuries ago, long before the coming of the Windrush, Deptford was the chief metropolitan port of the African and Caribbean commercial and slave trade. Deptford is the oldest point of Black and white encounters in Britain. More importantly, it is a potent symbol of diasporic movements for slavery abolition, colonial liberation, and Pan Africanist principles of self-determination, self-respect, and self-reliance.

These attributes of the Black Presence in Britain will be highlighted by Black artistic and cultural personalities in 1998, the 50th anniversary of the Windrush. Furthermore, campaigners seek to establish a Heritage Centre, in association with millennial celebrations, as a permanent showcase of Black Diasporic contributions to British life.