Choosing to Challenge

This is a guest blog I wrote for Island Girls Rock…

“I have to say that challenging societal norms is my norm. By my very existence, I am ‘protest’. To put that into context… my London birth in 1965 was nestled neatly between the hate and prominence of Oswald Mosely and Enoch Powell…. The latter’s “Rivers of Blood” speech came less than 3 years after me being the product of an interracial coupling.

My dad was from Trinidad and my mother from England. I could have been the poster for all those clinging on to an ‘old England’ and the ‘good old days’, representing what they feared most... A dilution of their race. The timing of my birth meant that I experienced the tail end of a colonial-infused society and its education system. As part of the first generation of children born in the UK to ‘West Indian immigrants’ now known as the Windrush Generation… we were the first wave of black children (or what would now be called children of colour) to go through the British education system at primary school age in large numbers. Having been subjected to curious strangers on buses calling me ‘curly’ and reaching to touch my hair, to local shopkeepers, happy to take my pocket money in exchange for their sweets, but opting to put my due change on the counter instead of into the awaiting cupped palm of my infantile hand. Needless to say, we avoided that particular shop. 

Being asked by IGR to recall a time when I “chose to challenge”… got me thinking… there have been so many times over the years…. I’ve made my working career a purposeful one, challenging societal perception and discrimination. However, I thought I’d share my earliest memory of actively challenging society independently at the age of about 10. 

My best friend and I were fortunate enough to be brought up in homes that were very politically conscious, and we were immersed in black empowerment ideology from a young age. We were as close to sisters as friends can be… born within a month of one another. English mothers, and Trini dads, our families moved into a small new block of 6 flats (social housing for interracial couples who were facing discrimination from landlords at that time) in early 1970 when we were just 4 years old. It was the year of the Mangrove 9 trial, and my friend’s dad was one of the defendants, he would later become a prominent black activist in the UK. 

By the tender age of 10 my bestie and I were seasoned activists, we had been on countless demonstrations up and down the country challenging police corruption and brutality against the black community in the UK. Denim jackets were the fashion item of the day, and my friend and I both had one. I remember waiting excitedly at my friend's mum’s sewing machine watching as she customised our new jackets… carefully sewing circular patches on the back of them. I had a turquoise patch with an indignant black power fist emblazoned on it.. and my friend had a pan African coloured patch that proudly affirmed the words “Black Is Beautiful”.

I remember her mum thoughtfully positioning silver studs around the patches. This would have been sometime in the mid-70s. We were brought up to be proud of our roots in the Caribbean, but also beyond that... proud of our roots in Africa. The primary school we went to didn’t have a uniform, and so my bestie and I would later wear our new jackets, patches displayed at the centre of our shoulders. With our afros in the mix too, we were mini walking placards for black pride!

Back in those days, schoolchildren were still taught ‘Rule Britannia’ and we were expected to sing it at the end of our weekly assembly. Our peers just went through the motions, not giving it much thought, but the lyrics (which I remember to this day) just irked my friend and me. The song was a relic of a bygone era… stinking of patriotism for a nation we couldn’t relate to... We found it offensive.

One day, instead of not singing along (which we usually did), we decided to replace the word ‘Britons’ with ‘Africans’... when we got to the last line of the song we sang “AFRICANS never never never shall be slaves!” at the top of our voices, and then raised our little fists in the black power sign. It didn’t matter to us that it appeared to go unnoticed by the teachers, this made it all the more empowering. The fools didn’t even notice! We knew what we had done, and we knew our ancestors would have been proud of us. It was one for them! Our own personal protest. We are still best friends to this day, and 45 years on, I believe I speak for both of us when I say that this small act of defiance, by those two little girls, was the beginning of a lifetime of challenging and calling out discrimination to benefit those who look like ourselves and look like our loved ones, in whatever space we've since found ourselves in.”

Mia Maugé April 2021