Today’s episode of Black in The City of London is a special one but a departure from the past few weeks. I am interviewing two people connected to an event that is seminal in black British history, they are founder members of the New Cross Fire Foundation, both personally affected by the tragedy but both determined to help seize control of the narrative that surrounds the event.

In 2011 I got the opportunity to cover the unveiling of a plaque to commemorate the New Cross Fire and those affected by it. It was a cathartic and important event that felt like a real stepping stone. In talking to survivors and their families, I began to get some sense of the pain and struggles they faced.

Dr Toyin Agbetu is a lecturer in political and social anthropology at University College London. He specialises in ‘race’, ethnicity, nationalism, and coloniality. Using critical pedagogy with a reparatory and social justice approach, Toyin addresses systemic racism, structural violence, and algorithmic discrimination. He is an award-winning filmmaker and museologist and promotes antiracist, inclusive practices in academia, local government, and museums. In 2024, Toyin developed the racial literacy training module for the NHS’s Integrated Training with Practice programme.

Toyin’s research interests include institutional activism, decoloniality, community resistance, structural violence and abolitionism. His doctoral research examined the governmental policies and practices used to transform cultural institutions into forums of social justice through Exhibitionary Praxis.

Tony Warner established Black History Walks in 2007. BHW explores the thousands of years of African/Caribbean history in London via 15 guided walks, bus tours, river cruises, talks, films and courses.

Black History Walks has featured on BBC, ITV, Arise TV, The Guardian, Huffington Post, Time Out and Channel 4. Tony has written and presented documentaries for Teachers TV; Conde Nast Traveller listed BHW in their Best 15 walks in London in 2018; and in 2011 the Guardian put them in their Top Ten walks.

Tony is an author on the ground-breaking ‘Pearson GCSE (9-1) Edexcel History Migrants in Britain Student Book’. This exam textbook, for the first time, introduces Black British Civil Rights at GCSE level. The book is part based on his Notting Hill Black History Walk. It sold out its first print run and is increasingly being used in schools across the country.

Here Tony talks about the difficulties and process of getting black history recognised on the curriculum and in public consciousness.

Below is a link to a petition that refers to the BFIs insensitive and inexplicable decision to remove the film programme that Black History Walks showed there.

https://www.change.org/p/save-17-years-of-black-film-history-at-british-film-institute

Check the Black History Walks website for events and information.

https://blackhistorywalks.co.uk/

Today's episode features author and historian S.I. Martin. We discuss his journey into researching and writing about black people in London in the 17th and 18th centuries, both in terms of historical non-fiction and his brilliant young adult historical fiction.

S.I. Martin 's work deals with themes of Britishness, from his debut novel "Incomparable World" to his young adult novels following the adventures of a privileged young boy from Sierra Leone being educated in London. He has also written the book Britain's Slave Trade for Channel 4 to accompany their Windrush series.

https://www.simartin.org.uk/

#history #blackhistory #harlem #oxford #decolonize #rhodesmustfallFresh from speaking at an event at Oxford University, Dr Brian Kwoba dropped in to talk about his work on researching and writing about Hubert Harrison on 6th March 2026. He also talked about Harrison's importance as a radical educator and political organiser. Dr. Brian Kwoba is an associate professor of history and Director of the African and African American Studies program at the University of Memphis. His research centers on political thought and social movements among people of African descent in the United States and across the globe.Dr. Kwoba is in the UK speaking until the middle of March 2026.For more info:

https://www.briankwoba.com/https://www.instagram.com/dr.kwoba/

This is an interview with Robin Pearson, Emeritus Professor of Economic History, University of Hull, UK. His research interests are in the field of Economic and Business History.

In this conversation, we discuss the nature of insurance policies that related to enslavement, the significance of the slave trade and associated commerce to the insurance industry during the 18th Century and the nature of the networks that underwrote the slave trade both in London and at Liverpool and Bristol.

Lloyds of London is widely considered the most august name in the world of insurance. Having grown from a small concern offering information to mariners to becoming a huge market for insurance, Lloyds of London is a fixture in the Square Mile.

While there has long been some knowledge about the involvement of many figures associated with Lloyds in the slave trade and ownership of the enslaved, in the past there has been a smokescreen put up around the data provided to researchers who sought to quantify the extent of the involvement that those at Lloyds had with slavery. This has led to the shameful narrative of access denied that Lloyds began to engage with, first with their own employees and community, then with the wider world after 2020.

In 2021, Lloyds began the process of commissioning a serious piece of arms-length research into the involvement of Lloyds members in the slave trade. This podcast is an interview with those that carried out the research. This interview was carried out after the launch of their findings in the winter of 2023.

Alexandre "Sasha" White is a sociologist and historian of medicine, race and racism, and empire. He is an assistant professor at John Hopkins University in the Department of Sociology.

Pyar Seth is now an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Notre Dame. His work lies at the intersection of Black Studies, historical and medical anthropology, and postcolonial theory, much of his research focuses on the rationalization of state violence and the abstraction and distortion of Black life and death.

In the bonus episode, we showcase some of the work of the Sankofa London Schools Project. Year 9 students from Alleyn’s School in Dulwich talk about what they have learned from talking part in the Project - a local history study that enables students to recover, explore and share the hidden histories of people of colour living and working in London 300 years ago. The study shines a light on a specific group of pioneering individuals known as ‘Freedom Seekers’ - Britain's first Black Resistance activists - men, women and children, who freed themselves from captivity by running away. Many of whom joined a global majority community in London that numbered well over 20,000 by the 1800s, a group of individuals that played a crucial, active role in the demand for Abolition.