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The Development of Black-Led Archives in London

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The Development of Black-Led Archives in London THE DEVELOPMENT OF BLACK-LED ARCHIVES IN LONDON Hannah J. M. Ishmael UCL Department of Information0 Studies| P a g e DECLARATION I, Hannah Josephine Mary Ishmael confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 1 | P a g e ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Without the guidance and knowledge of my supervisors: Andrew Flinn, Caroline Bressey and Jenny Bunn I would not have been able to complete this work. I will be forever grateful for their unending support and critical eye on this work, and any errors in this work are entirely my own. I also owe a huge debt of gratitude to ‘Transmission’: Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski, Etienne Joseph, Nathan Richards and especially Kelly Foster. I can’t express how much you all have been a source of incredible support, knowledge and source of inspiration. This thesis would not exist without the participants from Black Cultural Archives, George Padmore Institute and those associated with the Huntley Collection at London Metropolitan Archives. Thank you for your patience and for taking time to help me with this work. My gratitude also goes to those named and unnamed who have undertaken the often-thankless task of keeping these organisations and associated networks going, and for creating the spaces that makes this thesis possible. I would also like to thank my fellow PhD students in the Department of Information Studies who have patiently listened to me during the more difficult periods and offered advice. Lastly, but by no means least, I would like to thank my family. You all have put up with me over the last four years, working late nights and weekends without any complaints and making my life so much easier. At least it’s all over now. 2 | P a g e IMPACT STATEMENT The major impact of this work is through the creation of organisational and institutional biographies of three key Black-led archives in London. Before undertaking this work, these three organisations lacked a coherent narrative that highlights their important contribution to the creation of Black British historiography. Throughout the research I have published two articles and two book chapters, demonstrating the interest and impact of the work. These publications, along with speaking engagements, have helped to secure further research in establishing the field of Black archival scholarship. Building on research in the field of Black archival scholarship has also helped to create new frameworks for research within the broader field of archival studies. This research has helped to introduce new voices into the field and identified how their research can shift how archivists think about and enact their work. This thesis has raised key questions relating to national funding policy, a currently understudied area. Taking these questions further will help form the basis for further research that will help to shape the future of funding opportunities for the sector. Returning to work at one of the organisations, the Black Cultural Archives means that I will be able to implement some of my findings, creating more tangible benefits not only for the organisation but for the field as a whole. 3 | P a g e ABSTRACT This thesis works to recreate a framework within the archival field in which to view the development of three Black-led archives in London: the Black Cultural Archives based in Brixton, the George Padmore Institute in Finsbury Park and the Huntley Collection based at the London Metropolitan Archives. In this work I bring together the history and intellectual contribution of the Pan-African movement and Black archival thought to discuss how the key concepts of experiences and narratives have underpinned the collection of Black archival material. This thesis focusses on the work and writing of Arthur Schomburg and other key figures in the Pan-African tradition from which to draw a general theory of Black archival thought. It also traces the development and transmission of the theory during the twentieth century through networks. In this work I discuss how this Black archival canon and thought has been employed by the founders of the archives in the face of shifting racism and government policies. This thesis traces the shifts in how racism has been articulated, to examine how the development of the archives, whilst underpinned by modes of Pan- Africanism have been shaped by changing narratives of Britishness, Government policy and available funding that ultimately led to the formation of the archives as they stand today. 4 | P a g e LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AMBH: ARCHIVES AND MUSEUM OF BLACK HERITAGE BAF: BRIXTON AREA FORUM BASA: BLACK AND ASIAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION BCA: BLACK CULTURAL ARCHIVES CASBAH: CARIBBEAN STUDIES BLACK AND ASIAN HISTORY DCMS: DEPARTMENT OF CULTURE MEDIA AND SPORT DTA: DOCUMENTING THE ARCHIVES FHALMA: FRIENDS OF HUNTLEY ARCHIVES AT LONDON METROPOLITAN ARCHIVES GLC: GREATER LONDON COUNCIL GPI: GEORGE PADMORE INSTITUTE HLF: HERITAGE LOTTERY FUND LMA: LONDON METROPOLITAN ARCHIVES MCAAH: MAYORS COMMISSION ON AFRICAN AND ASIAN HERITAGE MLA: MUSEUMS, LIBRARY AND ARCHIVE COUNCIL NBB: NEW BEACON BOOKS RHAG: RALEIGH HALL ACTION GROUP 5 | P a g e Table of Contents 1. Introduction 8 Terminology 11 Research Methodology 11 Sites 15 Methods 17 Positionality 23 Thesis Structure 35 2. Literature Review 37 Ephemera 51 3. Re-constituting an ‘archive’ 64 Pan-African Movement 65 Arthur Schomburg 68 Jamaica 77 Garveyism 78 Queen Mother Moore 81 Len Garrison 82 Trinidad 83 Elma Francois 83 CLR James 84 George Padmore 86 Claudia Jones 87 John La Rose 89 British Guiana (Guyana) 90 Eric and Jessica Huntley 90 Walter Rodney 91 6 | P a g e 4. Changing Narratives 95 Black Power 99 How the West Indian Child is Made Educationally Sub-Normal 106 Supplementary Schools 110 Len Garrison and ACER 111 5. Culture Shifts 115 Greater London Council 116 African People’s Historical Monument Foundation 119 The Book Fair 126 6. Culture ‘Drift’ 132 ‘Windrush’ 134 BASA 138 AMBH 142 End of AMBH 154 Huntley Collection at LMA 157 George Padmore Institute 169 Road to Raleigh Hall (BCA) 173 7. Monuments and Beacons 192 Origins and Metaphors 196 Life Experience in Britain 203 Black Cultural Archives’ Collections 205 George Padmore Institute Collections 220 Huntley Collection 229 8. Whiteness in the Archive 240 Diversity 241 Cataloguing 245 Conclusion 256 Reference List 264 7 | P a g e 1. Introduction This thesis emerged from the time I spent at Black Cultural Archives (BCA), an independent archive in Kennington, South London, where I started working in early 2012. I was initially employed as the Assistant Archivist, with funding for the post coming from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) as the organisation was in the midst of a capital project to renovate a large Georgian property a few miles away in Brixton, Lambeth (see chapters five and six). Working at BCA also brought me into the orbit of the other two organisations that serve as sites of study for this thesis, the George Padmore Institute (GPI) based in Finsbury, North London and the Huntley Collection held at London Metropolitan Archives. During my time at BCA I became aware of a lack of organisational history and found myself becoming increasingly interested in how and why the organisation developed, and its relationship to GPI and the Huntley Collection. In 2014 I left BCA to pursue the opportunity to undertake a PhD at University College London to investigate the development of these organisations by answering the main questions of ‘why did these organisations develop?’ and ‘how did they develop?’. Underpinning these questions, the development of the organisations also raises the questions of ‘what is a Black-led archive?’ and how far does the developmental history of the organisations speak to the rationale that underpins them. In order to answer these main questions this thesis also addresses: • the historical frameworks in which they developed; • the political frameworks in which the founders of the organisations were operating; • the role of individuals and networks within the development of these organisations; • the development of Black Archival Thought. In setting out to answer these broader questions of ‘how and why did these organisations develop?’ I was, and am, specifically interested in the ‘archival impulse’ 1 that led three separate, albeit connected, organisations to establish archival collections within a relatively short space of time.2 Art critic Hal Foster describes the ‘archival impulse’ as the need to ‘make historical information, often lost or displaced, physically present. To this end they 1 Hal Foster, ‘An Archival Impulse’, October 110 (Autumn 2004), p. 3. 2 Ibid. 8 | P a g e elaborate on the found image, object, and text, and [favour] the installation format as they do.’3 Foster goes on to write: these sources are familiar, drawn from the archives of mass culture, to ensure a legibility that can then be disturbed or detourne; but they can also be obscure, retrieved in a gesture of alternative knowledge or counter- memory.4 […] Finally, the work in question is archival since it not only draws on informal archives but produces them as well, and does so in a way that underscores the nature of all archival materials as found yet constructed, factual yet fictive, public yet private.5 As will be illustrated in this thesis, Foster’s description of the ‘archival impulse’ can be mapped onto the activities of the founders of the three Black-led archives in their attempts to create archives but also to disturb historical narratives about the Black communities in Britain. Foster’s description of the ‘archival impulse’ maps closely to the desire of the founders of the archives to use their collections, and the practice of collecting, to disrupt the creation of historical narratives.
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