A little history is a useful thing

Apparently it’s something or other that there are so few black figures (we use that description because that is what the source is using) commemorated by those blue plaques stating that someone famous lived here.

Blue plaques commemorating notable black figures still make up just 2.1% of the individuals honoured across London, according to a Guardian analysis.

The scheme, run by English Heritage, was started in 1866 with the purpose of commemorating figures who have lived, worked or stayed in buildings across the capital.

More than 1,160 notable people are name-checked on the scheme’s 978 plaques.

A little history would be useful here. The enrichment through diversity of Britain - and it is indeed enrichment - is a very recent phenomenon. According to the usual Census figures about 1.5% of the population is currently of Afro Caribbean background, another 1.5% of Black African (using the Census definitions and names) for a total of 3%.

In 1939 the total black population of Britain was about 10,000 souls, perhaps a little under - 0.02%. The arrival of the still segregated American army in those war years boosted this by some 1,500%, near all of whom left again in 1945. Then came Windrush and so on but the significant growth is in recent decades.

So, what percentage would we expect in a scheme that has been running since 1866? Further, one where consideration for a plaque cannot be done until the individual has already been dead 20 years?

We’re not arguing that the past was a perfection of equal treatment and we’d not even strongly insist that today is. But a complaint that the capital has too few commemorations of people who, to a great extent, were not actually there doesn’t strike us as anything other than evidence of an ignorance about that past.

But then, you know, Guardian investigations and all that.