ANYONE would be forgiven for thinking that the “hostile environment” that is at the heart of the Windrush scandal began with the utterances of Theresa May when she was home secretary in May 2012.

Some may even believe that the hostile environment goes back to the racist “rivers of blood” speech by Enoch Powell in Birmingham in April 1968. Others may point to the slew of racist attacks that became a fact of everyday life for the black community after the arrival of the Empire Windrush at Tilbury docks on June 21 1948.

All of these share common themes, which I touch on below, but I want to go back to the year 1919 to talk about a strangely under-told period of a hugely hostile environment created for the significant black communities in Britain as well as the US.

What became known as the “red summer” of 1919 was an outbreak of racist violence towards the black community on both sides of the Atlantic.

In the US, racists attacked black people in their homes and communities in around 60 towns and cities across the country after white military personnel returned home after World War I to what they regarded as competition for jobs.

It was a similar situation in Britain where, in port towns in particular, such as London, Liverpool, Cardiff, South Shields and Glasgow, black communities also came under attack.

Rather than bringing in legislation to tackle the behaviour of the racists, the British government decided to bring in legislation to blame the victim.

The year after the series of vicious and sometimes deadly attacks, the government introduced the 1920 Aliens Order which had the explicit aim of curbing immigration to the country.

The Order gave powers to the police to arrest anyone they deemed to be alien to the country (code for black people) without a warrant, and also the authority to close the black clubs and restaurants that were springing up around the country because black people were barred from many so-called white establishments.

Black people were also required to register with the police and, similar to the Pass Laws in South Africa, had to show their registration when the authorities demanded it — or be arrested.

Black people also had to carry an up-to-date passport with them at all times so that they could prove their immigration and nationality status on demand.

Five years later, in 1925, the Special Restriction (Coloured Alien Seamen) Order was passed to further restrict the number of black seamen in the country.

If this period does not represent a hostile environment for black people in Britain then I really don’t know what does.

It would be easy not to attribute any agency to the black community during this period and to believe that people just sat back in the hope that someone would just do the right thing.

Firstly, politicians or, for that matter, large swathes of the labour and trade union movement, rarely just do the right thing. They are usually forced by collective movements to take positions removed from an easy compliance with the status quo.

And secondly, black people self-organised in their communities and in workplaces where they had sufficient numbers to do so.

The zenith of these organising efforts was the British section of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association in the early 1920s, and during the 1930s, the formation of the League of Coloured Peoples, the Colonial Seamen’s Union and the Coloured Film Artistes’ Association.

The latter group even tried to affiliate to the TUC but was rejected on what can only be described as racist grounds when one reads the verbatim notes of the meeting which can be seen at the Warwick University Modern Records Centre where the TUC archives are held.

None of this is to say that the current iteration of the hostile environment is less important than what has gone before.

My point is that while what we have now is harsh in its own right, it is far from the first example of black lives having virtually zero importance to those in power except when they want cheap labour to come into the country to carry out tasks that nobody else wants to do.

Having had to run the gauntlet of racist abuse on my way to and from school every day as a five-year-old just months after Powell’s speech was made just nine miles away from where I was born and raised means I could never undervalue what it took to get through that hostile environment.

Having to ask whether or not there were any black people already in any particular workplace where you thought of applying to fill any vacancies was recognising the prevailing hostile environment.

Or, if you did get into these workplaces, realising that racism was likely to stop you from advancing within the organisation, no matter how good you might be.

Of course, there was the hostile environment of football grounds in England, particularly during the 1970s, which meant for many years I decided to stop seeing my beloved Aston Villa play because I couldn’t deal with the monkey chants or bananas thrown at black players.
 
I remember often being told that it wasn’t about me because my team loyalty apparently meant that I was one of them.

I could also never forget the hostile environment that caused more than one racist during my time living in Oxford since May’s comments, to wind down the window of their car as they drove past, calling me the n-word before throwing eggs at me.

I could go on, but at no stage do I ever remember there not being collective resistance to racism and a black demand for racial justice.

Radical organisations such as the Labour Party Black Sections, Black Workers for Justice (UK), Newham and Southall Monitoring Groups, the Society of Black Lawyers, and more recently Barac UK, to name but a few, sprang up to lift every black voice and to embolden white anti-racists.

One of the lessons from the Windrush scandal that I believe we must learn is the need to strengthen our commitment to black self-organisation in our communities, trade unions and political parties.

I believe that black people are stronger and better equipped to work with white allies to let the politicians and others in power know that there will be consequences to their racist words and deeds — as there still needs to be over the Windrush debacle.

Follow Roger on Twitter at @RogerAMck.