If we are celebrating black history, why does Lambeth Council ignore Brixton, 1981?

October has been designated Black History Month. Ask me not when and by whom it was ushered into being. I am certain, though, that it was borrowed from the black movement which unfolded in the US in the 1960s and 1970s. The trouble with such an import is that black people have been making history in the US for more than half a millennium. Not so in the UK. We have been here in numbers significant enough to create history only over the past 50 years or so.

The interpretation of what is black history is as varied as the brands of chocolate on the market. A friend's daughter said her school would join the celebration. Each class would contribute to an international food day. She could think of nothing other than blackberries, black pudding and chocolate cake.

Lambeth Council's Black History Month began with the unveiling of a blue plaque for that intellectual giant, C L R James, at his last address in England, 165 Railton Road, Brixton. In fact, I had been talking to English Heritage for the past three years or so about a plaque, and was completely taken aback when the council hitched its wagon to the star. But all are welcome in these celebrations. What is more important is the council's failure to appreciate some truly historic moments in this country. For example, its programme contains not a single note about the 1981 revolt of black youths against police oppression within that very borough (the Brixton uprising).

Likewise, Lewisham Council's calendar fails to record how thousands demonstrated against the murder of 13 black youngsters in the 1981 New Cross Fire. Nor does anyone mention the Grunwick strike, or the Imperial Typewriters strike, or the Mangrove demonstration in August 1971 and the trials of the Mangrove Nine which followed at the Old Bailey.

Yet I find it more and more difficult to delineate history as black, outside what has taken place in other areas of society. Can we speak about the development of the Notting Hill Carnival as black history without recognising that it was, in part, inspired by the penchant for festivals of celebration which was spreading through society at the time of the carnival's development? And can we separate the actions of that young man, who squeezed the trigger of his pistol to kill a child on the streets of Nottingham the other day, from the carnage that is taking place in Iraq? After all, his peers describe him as a soldier and the young girl's death as collateral damage.

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