Here's an excerpt of a book review that I found by googling:

Black Britain: A Photographic History Launched At Rivington Place
By Ali Nobil Ahmad

Published: 02 November 2007

"Paul Gilroy is regarded by many as the undisputed (black) intellectual heavyweight champion of the world. And rightly so: there are few finer books on 'race' and the modern experience of blackness in Britain and the US than his 1993 classic, The Black Atlantic.

His latest offering - a photographic history of postwar black settlement in Britain, was launched this week with a series of talks and openings, including a special event at Rivington Place, the impressive newly built East London home of InIVA (the Institute of International Visual Arts) and Autograph ABP (Association of Black Photographers). Though published by Saqi, the book is closely associated with the activities of InIVA through its Chair, legendary academic and intellectual, Stuart Hall, who has written the preface...

The book has little to do with black (or any other) art as such, despite its glossy, coffee table format and its association with InIVA. It is a no-frills, descriptive documentary account of a story that is in many ways familiar, told with black and white press photos from the Getty Image archive (taken, in all likelihood, by white photographers, who remain anonymous).

ts real achievement lies in compiling a great many rare images of considerable interest to scholars, educators and general readers seeking to enrich their understanding of black history in the UK and London in particular, where most of its drama has unfolded.

Settlement is chronologically depicted, beginning with Pre-Windrush portraits of black soldiers and elite visitors from Africa, America and the Caribbean, followed by gritty scenes of life in the 1950s that capture the poverty and discrimination which set in once mass migration from the Caribbean gathered pace.

Themes of social unrest and conflict in Notting Hill and Brixton are tempered by a triumphant set of portraits including the capital's first black policeman and traffic wardens, along with the first black resident of Brixton.*

...By rushing through the 1990s to the present, the book underplays internal divisions and stratifications within Britain's many black communities that have taken root in the last two decades, burying its head in the sand to virtually all the pressing issues which face Black Britain today.

Puzzlingly, for a scholar of his political astuteness and expertise in internationalism, Gilroy thus leaves himself open to charges of marginalising the African presence in Britain, and underestimating the importance of the transatlantic world, both of which have expanded considerably during the latest phase of globalisation.

As a documentary picture book of early postwar black settlement, Black Britain is not, therefore, in all respects, a timely offering. Still, in drawing attention to unused raw visual material on Britain's black history, it more than fulfils its stated objectives."


http://www.culture24.org.uk/history/art51738

-snip-


*There is a photograph shown in the review of Leslie King, the first Jamaican immigrant to settle in Brixton, 1952. I assume this is who the reviewer meant when he wrote of "the first black resident of Brixton.