And my own daughter, the fifth generation, faced a racist onslaught on social media after she appeared on a TV programme last year.
Photograph: Michael BoyleĪs I stood at the airport, my nationality being questioned, I thought of these generations – each one facing race discrimination, with no end in sight, no matter how settled black people are in this country. Michael Boyle’s parents, Joseph and Rachel Boyle at their wedding in 1942. The company’s explanation was: “They have to avoid upsetting their American passengers on board their ships.” The fact that he worked in the engine room, where no passengers would ever see him, made no difference. Like his father before him, my father, Joseph Boyle, was a merchant seaman: he once recalled how in 1966, after the national seaman’s strike, he visited the Cunard shipping company’s offices in Liverpool seeking employment only to be told that they did not employ “black fellers”. On another occasion she recalled how a Catholic priest at her parish church tried to have her removed from the Women’s Confraternity because she was black. She talked about how she was alone in the house while my grandfather, chief petty officer Edward Rigby, was away in the Royal Navy fighting at the battle of Jutland (in 1916). At the time the area was predominantly white and my grandmother was the only black woman living in the street. I remember my mother’s mother recalling how some of her neighbours organised a petition to “get the black woman out of Tagus Street” in Liverpool’s Toxteth area. They all spoke graphically of the degree of racial prejudice shown to them throughout their lives as mixed-race couples. I was lucky enough to have been able to discuss with both sets of grandparents what life was like for mixed-race couples in 19th-century Britain.īoth my grandparents, and my own parents – who met in the 1930s – faced one ugly, ever-present reality. He met and married my grandmother, Margaret Ann Dearden, who was white and whose family had also come to Liverpool from Ireland. My father’s father, Arnold Augustus Boyle, was born in Barbados and came to Liverpool as a ship’s cook in the merchant navy before the first world war. On my father’s side of the family the sea is again the link. In Liverpool, he met and married my maternal grandmother, Mary Margaret Goodwin, who was white and whose family had settled in Liverpool from Ireland. But the white crews would not take orders from a black captain, so throughout his career at sea he sailed as first mate. He then went on to settle in Liverpool and eventually qualified as a ship’s captain. My maternal grandfather, James Barroncloth Boyce, was from Sierra Leone and was educated in Edinburgh. Photograph: Michael Boyleĭuring Black History Month I am reminded to reflect on my own family history. Michael Boyle’s great-grandfather, James Barroncloth Boyce, circa 1886/7. Our history can be traced back to the Roman occupation, which witnessed black soldiers as part of the Roman army, and even an African-born emperor, Septimius Severus. But the passengers who disembarked were not Britain’s first black settlers. Yes, people can be forgiven for thinking that the black presence in Britain began with the docking of the Empire Windrush in June 1948, bringing British Caribbean citizens to the UK. This historical amnesia has resulted in marginalising the contribution black citizens have made to Britain’s social and economic landscape. Yet still I have to face passport officers who doubt my nationality.īlack people’s presence in Britain is often seen as a fairly recent phenomenon. I represent the fourth British generation of my family, who’ve lived here since the 1800s. In fact, not only am I black British, but so were my parents, my grandparents, and my great-grandparents. But I’m black, you see, so my nationality always seems to be under question. I’m a 73-year-old retired university lecturer, born and raised in Liverpool. At passport control I was asked where was I born? I replied, Liverpool, and joked “doesn’t my accent give me away”, to which the officer replied aggressively: “That’s no guarantee you were born there”. I n September 2017, I had just landed at Manchester airport after a visit to New York.