Black History Walking Tours Edinburgh

Black History Walking Tours Edinburgh Walking tours exploring Edinburgh's Black history.
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Led by Lisa Williams, BA African and Asian Studies, MA Arts, Festival and Cultural Management, Honorary Fellow in the School of History, Classics and Archeology at the University of Edinburgh

Imagine coming to volunteer all the way from Belize to work as a lumberjack in Scotland during WW2! Some of the lumberja...
08/06/2026

Imagine coming to volunteer all the way from Belize to work as a lumberjack in Scotland during WW2! Some of the lumberjacks were only 16 years old. Many of them were musicians, and won the hearts of local people with their jazz and calypso bands.

First photo is of the inside of British Honduras House where they stayed when visiting Edinburgh, run as a YMCA hostel.

There was huge unemployment in the Caribbean in the 1930s and people were living in terrible conditions. The Moyne Report, commissioned by the British Government was so shocking, it was hidden until after the war so that Caribbean people would still sacrifice their lives for the war effort.

More on that tomorrow...and much more on the 14th June.

First Image: IWM (ZZZ 12723D) Imperial War Museum archives

Facilitated an anti racism dialogue session for staff at Collective art gallery yesterday. This site on top of Calton Hi...
03/06/2026

Facilitated an anti racism dialogue session for staff at Collective art gallery yesterday. This site on top of Calton Hill is an amazing location with a 360 view of Edinburgh. This has inherent bonuses and challenges situated in a public space.

I don't teach unconscious bias or anything that smacks of the individualistic twisting of an increasingly 'defanged' long anti racist struggle. It has been found to be completely ineffective, so why do people still teach it?

Very important to start by loosely agreeing on a collective working definition when talking about race and racism. Also its origins and use to bolster enslavement and colonialism.

Always look at inherited systems of structural discrimination, linked to an anti colonial stance and wider struggles of the working class, whatever ethnicity.

If there was ever a time to pull together in solidarity rather than retreating into identity politics hijacked by capitalist elites, it's now.

I don't use the term white privilege because we need to also acknowledge class discrimination in the discussion and show how race and class are interlinked and overlap.

Read the stats on the website of on life outcomes for racialized people in Scotland.

A great book to read on how narrow identity politics have been taking us backwards in recent years is Elite Capture by Olúfémi O. Táíwò

How nice to lead a tour to be the first event of Festival this evening! Check out the rest of their programme in and a...
01/06/2026

How nice to lead a tour to be the first event of Festival this evening! Check out the rest of their programme in and around Portobello.

I may have freaked people out slightly telling them Portobello is named in honour of a battle in Panama and Rule Britannia! was composed to celebrate it.
Did a small loop around the park and ended up on the beach, and it didn't even rain...

Had a great time recording a podcast with Anna and Nooren yesterday about food at the ASA Anthroplogy conference at ye...
01/06/2026

Had a great time recording a podcast with Anna and Nooren yesterday about food at the ASA Anthroplogy conference at yesterday.

We got into some delicious conversations about the history of food in the Caribbean, its meaning to the diaspora in Scotland today. Amazing to hear from other participants about family traditions from India and Kazakhstan and sharing food with folks in Scotland.

I talked about pig foot s***e (which I hate, lol!), how blood pudding got to Grenada, the role of Rastafari in starting the vegan craze and lots more. How I grew to love tamarind and plantain and how the members of the Edinburgh Caribbean Association come out once you whisper the word 'doubles'. If you know, you know, 🤣 .

And got to big up our many Caribbean chefs in Scotland!

Windrush Day is almost upon us (22 June) and my Windrush tour on 14th June will be happening again.We'll deconstruct the...
30/05/2026

Windrush Day is almost upon us (22 June) and my Windrush tour on 14th June will be happening again.

We'll deconstruct the Windrush myth that has developed around the arrival of HMT Windrush in 1948 ever since the start of the Hostile Environment and the Windrush scandal.

How did the Caribbean support Britain in WW2 with money, goods and servicepeople?

Which ships arrived in Britain from the Caribbean in the run up to the Windrush?

(check Dr Hakim Adi and Dr Gus John for more on this!)

Did you know that in the Windrush's former life as a N**i ship called the M***a Rosa, Norwegian Jews were caged below deck and sent to Auschwitz?

Why did members of the British Government panic at the imminent arrival of the Windrush arriving from the Caribbean in June 1948 with 1027 passengers?

Which PM directed M15 and Whitehall to monitor Caribbean people arriving in Britain for subversive activity?

Where in Scotland did some of the Polish passengers who were fleeing Stalin end up?

Do you know about the role of Ivor Cummings, an openly gay man and only Black official in the Colonial Office?

Cummings did everything he could to assist the families on arrival, organising accommodation in a bomb shelter until they could get jobs and suitable housing.

Cummings also came up to Edinburgh from London to assist the lumberjacks from Belize who were invited by the British Government to come to Scotland to work in 1941 and 1942.

After their unit was disbanded early due to official fears of 'race mixing' they struggled to find employment and housing. Cummings came to pressure Scottish industries not to racially discriminate against them.

Why were ex SS officers invited to live in Britain directly after the war instead?

Which female military volunteer from British Honduras (Belize) had a wonderful time in Scotland during the war? How was she involved in setting up the Notting Hill Carnival, 60 years old this summer?

What was the architect of the NHS, arch anti-communist Clement Atlee covertly promoting in the Caribbean after WW2?

After this famous trip from the Caribbean, the Windrush went on to take British troops to put down the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya where they set up concentration camps.

How did Mau Mau resistance influence Rastafari in Jamaica?

Come and find out on tour on Sat 14th June. You won't hear these stories anywhere else in Scotland!

I love Paris more than I can tell you, but the more you know about old statues it's hard not to be annoyed at the sight ...
28/05/2026

I love Paris more than I can tell you, but the more you know about old statues it's hard not to be annoyed at the sight of them. The statue outside the Louvre is of King Louis XIV and each time I passed it I muttered in disgust.

King Louis signed the Code Noir, or Black Code in 1685. This document of terror had no less than 60 articles set up to cofify as property, legally terrorise and exploit enslaved people of African descent.

The first article also declared the expulsion of Jews from French colonies.

When were these laws officially repealed? Just today in the French National Assembly, 250 votes to 0!

The first abolition of slavery in the French Caribbean was in 1794, after pressure from the Haitians who had abolished enslavement themselves the previous year, just 2 years after the beginning of the revolution.

Napoleon came into power and brought it back in the French Caribbean except for in Haiti whose soldiers beat off his military.

The second was in 1848, precipitated by resistance in Martinique.

If only the negative legacies could be swept away so easily...

Had such a brilliant student group from the USA organised by with this week, firing some great questions at me. How mu...
27/05/2026

Had such a brilliant student group from the USA organised by with this week, firing some great questions at me.
How much of 18th century Enlightenment writings consisted of footnotes?
Is sugar considered an invasive species and creating problems like in Hawaii?
What jobs did white indentured servants do after the Barbados Slave Codes?
Have I read Thomas Thistlewood's diary?
Was wool sent to the plantations?
How was the Knight v Wedderburn ruling different from the Somerset v Stewart one in England?
Why were African Americans heading for London after the Revolution?
Is this taught in Scottish schools?

Nearly off the crutches, but not quite sprinting yet...

Ticket sales for Portobello part of and now Leith as part of on June 14 are going well. Good times...

Small but very enjoyable group out in yesterday's sunshine. Brought in some of the Irish connections like Montserrat, an...
25/05/2026

Small but very enjoyable group out in yesterday's sunshine. Brought in some of the Irish connections like Montserrat, and Robert Burns' romantic crush on a woman whose father had mercilessly put down a war of resistance there by the enslaved. Linen exports for enslaved people in Virginia and Jamaica routed through Ireland, or Irish indentured servants creating a threat to an early Barbados plantation system.

Had a very interesting and long discussion after comparing public history and heritage in France and Scotland relating to the Caribbean. French King Charles X stayed in Edinburgh twice, before and after he insisted Haiti pay a ransom of 120 million francs, something not even Eurpean nations can afford. Haiti was still paying this off to French and American banks in the 1960s.

Also how Edinburgh Council managed to pull off some stunning misses with their first two official commemorations of the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition.

Held on August 23rd to mark the start of the Haitian Revolution, the first year they used a portrait of the wrong woman as their backdrop, and the second had no Caribbean people involved in planning, performing, speaking or even supplying the food. This is probably the only place in the world where this has happened. There are 5K people of Caribbean heritage in Scotland so how is this remotely acceptable?

Tomorrow's tour 2pm-4pm, in addition to our usual rich stories connecting places in Edinburgh with the Caribbean and Afr...
23/05/2026

Tomorrow's tour 2pm-4pm, in addition to our usual rich stories connecting places in Edinburgh with the Caribbean and Africa, we'll touch on how Scotland connects to Bermuda.

How does George Street in the New Town connect to Mary Prince's story of her enslavement in Bermuda and eventual freedom? Mary Prince was made a Bermuda National Hero in 2012.

Did you know Bermuda became a British Crown Colony under King Charles II back in 1684? Or that Oliver Cromwell sent Scots there as indentured servants? Or that it has a Caledonian Society?

Edinburgh graduate Edgar Gordon who was integral to the university's pan-African movement went on to become a doctor in the Scottish Highlands, and play a huge role in dismantling Bermuda's racial segregation in the 1950s and 60s. Schools were only integrated in Bermuda in 1971!

Should have nice warm weather too...

The Black History Walking Tour of Porty on 1st June is sold out! Thanks!Just added another one for Sunday 12 July 2-3:15...
21/05/2026

The Black History Walking Tour of Porty on 1st June is sold out! Thanks!

Just added another one for Sunday 12 July 2-3:15pm

Come and hear about why Portobello is named after a place in Panama, the Jamaican bride revived by an Edinburgh military man and brought to live in Porty, and the large mixed heritage Jamaican family living on the High Street 200 years ago.

We have the story of the widow of a vicious overseer from the Highlands, who returned to live in Bath Street from the tiny Caribbean island of Carriacou whose son became a famous poet with a scandalous life.

Hear about the performers from Somalia living on the beach over 100 years ago, why there was a funeral for N**i airmen during WW2 and lots more! Sign up via this link before this one sells out too. Dogs are welcome too :)

www.blackhistoryscotland.com/upcoming-tours

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St. George's Is The Capital Of Grenada.
Saint George's

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07429540849

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