THE summer of 1919 was as red in Britain as it was on the other side of the Atlantic in the US. It was a year of international unrest and fear at the same time as being a time of excitement, hope and radicalism, springing from the new world that had been ushered in by the 1917 Russian Revolution.

Much of Britain’s 1919 black population was made up of seafarers, dock workers and colonial troops returning from doing their duty in World War I.

This should not be taken to conclude that black workers only arrived in Britain after World War I. Far from it. There has been a sizeable black population in Britain since Roman times when soldiers of African descent were sent to guard Hadrian’s Wall. But 1919 witnessed a new phenomenon — organised attacks on a community in Britain based on race.

Prior to World War I trade unions in Britain took the principled position of resisting moves by employers to pay black workers, African or Asian, less than their white counterparts. But this principled position disappeared after the war even though unions in the colonies sought to forge an alliance with them against these racist employer practices.