BHM: Reclaiming the Narrative?

At 573 years old, the University of Glasgow is an ancient university, the 4^th oldest in the English-speaking world. Outlasting the rise and fall of the British Empire, the University has played many roles; being at the forefront of change and, at times, conservatism. As an institution that has both built up the black community, and built upon the black community, my relationship to the University as a black student and a black student representative remains complex.

When we speak of black history, everything we are known to be is too often reduced to the idea of black suffering; the idea that blackness is defined not by our shared histories, cultures, successes and excellences, but rather our proximity to an inhumane system of chattel slavery that plagued our world for far too long. Black history, is so much more, spanning nations and countries, continents and centuries, touching every single corner of the world. This Black History Month, the theme was ‘reclaiming the narrative’, a narrative which for years has been written off and silenced.

We have hopefully all heard the inspirational work of Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr., and the revolutionary fighter Malcom X and the Black Panthers, yet the stories of individual changemakers are so often made invisible as our history is oversimplified and sold back to us. Without research, I would have never heard of Andrew Watson, the first black international football player and former captain of the Scottish team, leaving our university is 1877; and whilst we all know the story of James McCune Smith and his fight for slavery abolition, little attention is paid to how he would see the University in the modern day – would he see it as ‘enough’?

We know that our black history is so much more than the pain inflicted on us by the European empires, but as a student at University of Glasgow it is hard not to harken back to our darkest days, when we’re aware that our University took between an estimated amount of  £16.7 million and £198 million  linked to the slave trade (“Donations to the 1866-1880 campaign to build the university's current campus at Gilmorehill found 23 people who gave money had some financial links to the New World slave trade.” – BBC News Article, 2018). Like our city, this very institution that allows us to grow and learn is part of the same system that held many of our ancestors down, the very streets that we walk on, built on the back of our colonial misery.

Can we really ‘reclaim our narrative’, when that history has never been claimed in the first place? Though our university continues to put a concerted effort into paying reparations for its bloody history; spending £20 million over 20 years, can that ever measure up to what our university helped entrench? Are reparations not continuous? Can we not learn from our previous immoral investments and learn in future?

When I was elected in February, I made history, becoming the SRC’s third ever black sabbatical officer and the first in my role of VP Student Support. Knowing I would lead on Black History Month, putting a black person at the front for the first time ever excited me, and reminded me why it’s important to continue reclaiming each individual narrative, reclaiming each story, and fight for a better world. The irony is, however, not lost on me, that I, as a 4^th generation child of both the empire and a colony, am allowed to claim this ‘win’ on behalf of the community. A person who ultimately is allowed a level of a privilege as compared to others in the same community, is hailed as breaking a ceiling which continues to crush so many under its weight. Whilst I get to reclaim my narrative, what happens to those who aren’t so ‘fortunate’ to reclaim theirs? To those not so ‘fortunate’ to be allowed to be part of one of the institutions that helped keep us down?

It is also not lost on me that whilst we together reflect on our University’s involvement and complicity in this system of chattel slavery and we continue immortalise the brave individuals who fought to end it, students today continue to fight against the complicity of our institution in immoral systems of oppression around the world, often to varying successes with varying levels of difficulty. If James McCune Smith walked our streets today, would he be proud of our institution? If Dawda Jawara still walked these halls, would he see our investments in arms in line with our reparations we give? if Winnie Mandela or Albert Luthuli still wore our rectoral robes, would they see this as a narrative reclaimed?

The truth about our history is that its far more complex than we are often taught. Our legacies often far more intertwined than ever discussed, our institutions complicity too soon overlooked as we put a distance between ‘then’ and ‘now’. Reclaiming our narrative means more than simply recognising the wrong done to us, it means more than shattering ceilings and recognising black excellence – to truly reclaim we must undo. We must learn from the systems of oppression we once supported, and work to tear down the new ones. We must fight to not just to reclaim our narrative, but to accurately re-tell it, decolonising our curriculum and highlighting black contributions to our ever-evolving system of education. We must not see what is the past and assume we have atoned but work nationally to ensure we’re all repatriating this colonial legacy.

Black History Month is not just a convenient demarcation point for fun facts and free food, but rather a reminder that we still have work to do, a reminder that our history must inform our future, a reminder that the University of Glasgow can, and must, do better.

Iris Duane

VP Student Support
University of Glasgow Students’ Representative Council 2024-25