Foreigners

III. Northern Lights

I remember he always used to wear a big black coat, and he was kind of hunched over. But not like life had beaten him down or anything. He just had this big black coat that seemed a bit too heavy for him. In the evenings I'd come out of where I lived on Mexborough Drive and walk down to the main road — Chapeltown Road. I'd be on my way up to my sister's place to look after her twins, and I'd meet him around about Button Hill. Near where the library and the business centre are now. Somewhere between these two. The fact is, Button Hill isn't much of a hill. Or much of a street really, more like a little alley that leads down on to Chapeltown Road. But this is where I'd meet David.

I was fourteen. Back then, we were taught that you always had to be kind to your elders and betters. We lived a sheltered church life, and so I always acknowledged David and he'd just say, 'Take care, behave yourself.' That's all. 'Take care, behave yourself.' But it happened regularly enough so that we sort of got to know each other. I thought David was something to do with the university. He had that kind of attitude about him. Like he was a very intelligent man. Judging by the way he spoke, he didn't seem to me like he was a vagrant or anything. And underneath that big black coat I think he had on a dark suit. He tended to have his hands in his pockets and he looked cold. His face used to worry me. His face always looked bruised, as if he'd been scratched. It must have been 1968 or 1969, and you know he wasn't standing upright. He was a little hunched over.

I remember one night when the police were out on the street in numbers. They had come to move David on. I asked a policeman, 'Please, what has he done? He has done nothing. He just stands here.' But there was something about the policeman — about how he looked at me — that frightened me and so I ran off. That night the police arrested a lot of people and put them in Black Marias — you know, the big black vans. That's what we used to call them, Black Marias. The police took a load of people away, including David. They'd only come to get David, but people stood up for him. The people on the street were protecting David and objecting to the police. While the police were trying to move David on and telling him, 'You shouldn't be here,' the young people gathered all around him. I mean, he wasn't doing anything, he was just standing by the wall like he always did. I thought he was such a humble man. He was polite. I couldn't see anything that was wrong with him. He just used to stand there with his big black overcoat. But, I don't think he had the same relationship with everybody. He didn't speak to other people, but he spoke to me.

After the night of the disturbance, I saw him maybe a day or so later. I could see that he had been beaten for his face was all mashed up. He wasn't standing at the bottom of Button Hill, he was walking up Chapeltown Road as if he was in pain. I was fourteen. I never saw David after that. There was no other exchange after the night of the disturbance on the street. When I saw him that final time he was dragging his feet. Something had changed. I didn't know what it was, but I knew that something was different.

I remember crying when I heard that he'd died. I felt it hard. Like I'd lost a true friend. All we'd done was exchange a few words over a period of months, but I would never dare say anything to anybody about having talked with a man. I was a Christian and I knew that it was taboo for a young girl like me to talk with a man. When I heard that he'd died I wrote a poem about David. All the feelings were locked up inside and I couldn't tell my parents. I remember that I did find a way to tell my sisters, and they understood. But I could never tell Mum that I knew somebody who'd been in trouble with the police. I could never admit anything to her about what was really going on out there on the streets, and so it was like I began to live two lives. I was angry. At the time of David's death everybody was angry. Here was a black man and you tell me, what was he doing in the river? We knew that the police were always trying to move him on, but something else was wrong. What was he doing dead in the river?

In the early seventies, the London Black Panthers began to infiltrate Chapeltown. They kept telling us that things were possible. They insisted that things could be changed, but they made it clear that we couldn't do it openly. They kept mentioning David, and they were very aware of him. Somebody put graffiti about him on a wall. It was near where we would all meet. It just said 'Remember Oluwale'. And we did. We knew that we had to have a strategy, and so we became even more angelic during the day, and then at night we'd go out and do things. His death made us brave. It made us more militant, and it gave us an increased sense of wanting to tease the police. We no longer felt the same about them. We would shout at them. We would throw stones at them and then run off down the backstreets. We knew which houses had cellars that we could dive into and hide, and nobody ever knew what we'd done, or what we were doing. But we couldn't take this rebelliousness back into our homes. It really was like being two people. Once the head of my school called me in and asked me if I would meet with the police as they were trying to become more community-oriented. I went home and told my sister and she looked at me and said, 'No way, absolutely not.' So I had to go back to school and tell the headmaster no. The police were trying to mend the community, but they'd already shown their hand and done something which let us know that our community didn't matter to them. That was how they felt about us. We'd always known it, but now we knew it for sure. We had evidence.

But David wasn't a West Indian like us, he was a West African so his death didn't galvanise the community in the way that it might have. There would have been even more trouble if he'd been a West Indian. But he wasn't. The area around St Mary's Close had a lot of African students living there. I would sometimes see him on Chapeltown Road walking from that direction down towards Button Hill, and maybe that's why I thought that he was a student. My sister lived at 276 Chapeltown Road. That was when I would see David by Button Hill. At the time she was married to a Nigerian, and he was studying in Liverpool. My brother-in-law used to take the last train to Liverpool and at nights my sister needed help with the twins, so that's when I would go up there, usually between ten and eleven. That's when I would see David. He didn't seem West Indian to look at, so I must have known that he was African. In this period we thought of most of the Africans as people who carried briefcases and who studied hard before getting ready to go back home to Africa. We, the West Indians, were mainly workers not students, and of course we also said that we were going home. But in reality we weren't going anywhere. Few of us ever went back home.

I called him David, I remember that much. I knew his name. Somebody must have told me his name, but I don't know how I knew it. He struck me as highly intelligent. Not crazy at all. You could see that he had a depth to him. Whatever it was that was inside of him he just kept it to himself. I can remember him looking at me. He had a powerful stare, but I have to admit he did look poor. I thought he was a poorer person than all of us, but as a devout Christian girl I just wanted to give him respect.

David, do you remember this girl? The fourteen-year-old girl who would walk up Chapeltown Road and see you near the bottom of Button Hill. She knew your name. Your history you kept locked up inside of you. Shut tight, out of sight. But your name, David. She knew your name, and it felt good on her tongue. She smiled and looked into your eyes, and you told her to take care of herself. You waited for her and basked in her smile, and exchanged your few words, and then you watched as she disappeared from view. And then what? She didn't know that you had nowhere else to go. Once she'd passed out of sight you didn't linger for too long. You moved on your way. Perhaps you wondered how you could ask the girl her name without the full weight of the question frightening her away. But in your heart you knew that you would never ask. Did she remind you of somebody? A sister? Your mother? Back home, a long time ago before this nightmare descended upon your young shoulders. Back home, where you spoke of your life in the future tense. Back home, this girl with fine manners and good breeding might have been your wife. You studied hard at your school under the guidance of Christian missionaries. You worked with a burning desire to escape to your future as soon as possible. Your parents loved you, but they recoiled in shame for they knew they could no longer protect you from your ambitions. In their hearts they were proud, but the books that you studied had already carried you beyond them and to a crossroads. They took their place behind you, for history had chosen you and your future was calling. You turned and said farewell to your parents, and then set out on your journey. 1949. Yoruba boy. Going to England to make a life for yourself. Eighteen-year-old Yoruba boy stowing away in the dead of night, trying to make yourself invisible in the belly of a ship bound for England. Leaving home for the rich white man's world. Dark black night. You felt the heaving and creaking of the cargo ship, the Temple Star, as it laboured away from the Lagos quayside and out into the waters that were slick with spilled oil and clogged with debris. You felt the ship rising and falling as it moved beyond this tumult and into the clearer waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Leaving home. Yoruba boy. With your dreams of being an engineer locked up in your young heart. You were unable to come out of hiding and take one final look at the line of lights that illuminated the coastline of your vanishing world. You were unable to wave to your mother. Unable to stand straight like a small, thin manboy and bid farewell to your Nigeria. Unable to promise the wind and the moon and the stars that one day soon you would return as a successful man with a twinkle in your eyes and with England tucked away in your jacket, ready to produce and display it to any who might wish to glimpse your pocketed jewel. You lay, instead, hidden in the bowels of the ship listening to the roar of the malevolent water as the Atlantic Ocean asserted its authority over the clumsy vessel, tossing its rusty bulk high and then abandoning it so that it crashed back to the watery earth with a loud slap. Yoruba boy. Young lion leaving Lagos, Nigeria, in the oil-rich heart of the British Empire. Cold and tired, chilled in your young bones, curled up like a newborn babe. A hand reached down and pushed you. You opened your eyes and saw your saviour glowering at you, disgusted that he had discovered a nigger on his ship. Yoruba boy travelling to meet his future. Please, do not look at me in this way. I desire only to reach England in safety. To travel across this terrifying water to England, and thereafter to continue with my life. But he stared down at you, didn't he, David? As though he was eager to throw you into the water that frightened you so much. Toss you away into the open mouth of the sea. But he did nothing. You uncurled your tight, stiff body and stood uneasily. Water. You asked him for water to drink. Water. But the man said nothing. He simply stared at you and watched your mouth moving like that of a fish. Water. And then many days later the water came to an end. There was no more water, there was only land, and an arrival in a moribund grey coastal town in the north of England, among a colourless clutter of wharves and barges, and cranes and container boxes. Your eyes feasted upon the grey vista of Hull at the mouth of the River Humber on the east coast of England, and you held your breath. Yoruba boy in England with a whole life in front of him. But first, prison. The policeman handcuffed you and led you down the plank to the shore while hostile eyes burned a hole in your thin body. You had imposed yourself upon them. Your heart sank, and for the first time it occurred to you that these people might cast you back upon the water and attempt to send you home. But they said nothing. They simply locked you in a cell and told you to wait. Wait. Their food would not stay in your stomach. You did not enjoy the contempt with which the guards looked at you. In fact, there was no joy to these men, to this country, to this prison, but it was too late for you had crossed the water and arrived. However, if only they would allow you to remain in their country then you felt sure that one day you might find joy. Eventually they bullied you into a courtroom and imposed twenty-eight days in prison upon you, after which they promised you that you would be permitted to enter British life. Twenty-eight days only. Twenty-eight days to freedom. But they did not take you from the courtroom and accompany you back to the familiar cell. They put you in a van and turned inland, away from the sea, away from Hull, and they travelled for fifty miles with their Yoruba cargo in the back of their vehicle. They furrowed their way towards the centre of England. Leeds. In Leeds the jail is Victorian. Its high Gothic walls are imposing and frightening. An extremely narrow gate. Armley jail. Your twenty-eight days would be spent here, away from the sea, in the heart of England. And after twenty-eight days of misshapened dreams that presented themselves as nightmares, they released you into this city of Leeds. To go back to Hull would be to suggest a return. No. You were cold. A teenager. Already a veteran of an Atlantic passage and prison. But now you were free and ready. But that was a long time ago, David. It would be nearly twenty years before you would meet the nameless girl at the bottom of Button Hill. Twenty years in which to live a life in Leeds in the heart of England. David, do you remember the girl? She did not know your history, but she knew your name. You waited for her and bathed in her smile, and exchanged your few words. And then you watched as she disappeared from view. Yoruba boy from Lagos who, on arriving in Leeds, thought only of himself in the future tense. A teenager at home in Leeds. Alone. I will stay in Leeds. No more water. No water. You decided. And then later. Imagine, a fourteen-year-old girl with manners from the Old World who showed you respect. And after she had passed you by it was time for you to leave Button Hill. You walked down Chapeltown Road towards the heart of your city. The language of hope no longer sat on your tongue. It was difficult to speak in the future tense. But the appearance of the girl gave you hope. The girl seemed to know who you were even if your city misunderstood you. But after twenty years you refused to leave your city.

The history of Leeds begins with the river; without the river Leeds would never have come into being. Thirty miles to the north-west of the present-day city, a thin trickle of water dribbles through the massive limestone cliff of Malham Cove, which is part of the brooding Pennine range that forms the knobbly spine running up the middle of England. The thin trickle of water falls and becomes a stream, and soon after the stream bursts and becomes a river named Aire. The river flows quickly, to the south and to the east through the Aire Valley and in the direction of the much mightier River Humber. When the Romans laid out a road from York (Eboracum) in the east to Manchester (Mancunium) in the west the River Aire was an obstacle that had to be crossed. Eventually the Romans decided that the road should cross the River Aire at a place near the present-day Leeds Bridge.

For 400 years the Romans occupied Britain, subduing sporadic uprisings, civilising the local people, and educating them in the ways of bathing, heating, and construction. However, before the coming of the Romans, tribal Celtic people had cleared the lush woodland of the Aire Valley. Having done so they grew oats and barley, and raised sheep, pigs, and cattle on both banks of the River Aire. They lived in circular stone huts, and ground their corn and flour in handmade pottery. Although their 'civilisation' progressed from stone to bronze, and then from bronze to iron, this evolution could not disguise their essential warlike tribal nature. They built ramparts and defences against each other, and they fought with habitual ferocity, slaughtering families and livestock. However, when the Romans arrived, under the command of Julius Caesar, and began their regimented, disciplined march through the foggy island, the tribal people soon capitulated. The Aire Valley, and the people contained therein, submitted to the iron-fisted authority of Roman rule, but the invaders knew that in order to ensure no further nonsense from these Britons it would be necessary to build roads along which Roman troops could quickly move through this uncultured land. And so Leeds was born, for one such road crossed the River Aire.

Roman Leeds (Loidis) is memorialised only by occasional discoveries of shards of pottery, or old coins. Roman Britain soon became Christian Britain, and although the Romans continued to rule they were forever battling marauding Pagan tribes who were determined to overthrow them. In AD 410 the Eternal City of Rome was herself sacked, and Anglo-Saxon tribes seized this opportunity and invaded the island of Britain. Eventually, the exhausted Romans let it be known that it was the duty of the Britons to protect their own land, including the river settlement of Loidis, and thereafter the Dark Ages descended upon Britain as the Saxons and the Jutes and the Angles swarmed across the chaotic land. Pagan tribal kings killed Christian tribal kings who in turn killed pagan tribal kings. Leeds was a Christian region which possessed a ninth-century church of some size and importance, and when the Vikings eventually invaded Anglican Britain, and set up their capital at York, they were aware of the important township to the west over which they immediately proceeded to exercise their Danish law. Leeds was growing in size, and although much of the land beyond the manorial settlement remained heavily wooded, there were some clearings that included, north of the river, such villages as Headingley, Seacroft, and Alwoodley, and south of the river the villages of Armley, Bramley, and Beeston.

The settlement of Leeds suffered the misery of being visited by the plagues that swept Britain in 987, in 1001, and again in 1046, and the population of the township was decimated. In 1066, the Normans, under the command of Duke William of Normandy, crossed the Channel, killed the new English king and imposed their Gallic rule, but the north of England objected and rebelled. Three years later, in 1069, a frustrated William led his army on a mission to sack, destroy, and forever subdue the northern population, a campaign of action which became known as the Harrying of the North. Almost half of Yorkshire's 1,900 settlements were totally destroyed, and a significant number were cripplingly damaged, but Leeds was spared the might of the Norman hammer. The evidence of her good fortune is made clear in the Doomsday Book of 1086 which recounts that, during this period, the value of the township of Leeds, with a population of approximately 200, actually increased.

The township's simple structures were dominated by the manor house, the parish church, and the mill, and agriculture was the means by which most people made their living. The tilling of the soil, and the breeding and slaughter of beasts, took place in accordance with the changing seasons. Norman Leeds, like other settlements in the kingdom, developed a cyclical pattern of life. Nestled in the Aire Valley, and located at an important river crossing, under Norman rule Leeds quickly began to develop and dominate the surrounding villages both economically and in terms of the grandeur of her vision. Throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as Norman England gradually gave way to medieval England, the township by the river crossing continued to grow. It adhered to a model of feudalism in which land was held by the king, who stood at the apex of the system, with barons and noblemen, down to the peasants, ranged beneath him in an orderly fashion. All offered the king some form of service in exchange for their right to occupy their particular station in society.

Medieval life centred around the manor house, with its communal oven, and there was a tightly organised taxation structure so that all monies flowed back towards the lord of the manor, who owed his allegiance directly to the king. However, the manorial township of Leeds, whose manor house was located near Kirkgate, was not generating enough money to satisfy the lord of the manor so an extension of the town, centring on Briggate, was established. In this new town the freeholder of the land had no political rights, but they were permitted to build workshops and establish crafts and industries which, it was hoped, would eventually generate more income for the lord. By the fourteenth century the new town and the old manorial township had fused as one, and the influence of the old system was declining as the actual manor house itself began to fall into disrepair. Profits from usage of the land began to fall sharply, and it was becoming clear to residents and visitors alike that Leeds was an increasingly dilapidated town. This situation was made worse by the arrival, in July 1348, of the bubonic plague. However, compared to the damage visited upon other English towns, Leeds escaped quite lightly.

After the plague, Leeds sought to arrest its decline and develop an industrial base. Blacksmiths were encouraged, coal mines were sunk, mills for the grinding of corn were constructed, but most notably, the woollen industry began now to dominate the economy. Having an advantageous position on a river, and a major road connection, the burgeoning woollen textile industry was able to rapidly develop. The wool was delivered by local farmers and then sorted into proper grades, washed, and the matted fibres straightened. The straightened wool fibres were then spun into thread, and the threads woven into one continuous cloth. The cloth was wetted so that it would shrink, and then trampled upon so that the fibres would mat together. Thereafter, the wet cloth was placed on frames and stretched, then dyed and finished, which often meant raising the pile by brushing it. Leeds cloth was known as 'northern dozens', and cut to about four metres. It was taken to the Monday market in Leeds where this quality product soon developed a national reputation. Leeds men were known to be well-dressed individuals in good wool cloth, and the townspeople, including those who in the future would dress in long black coats and stand at the bottom of Button Hill, were smartly attired. The sheer quality of the cloth on the back of the town's population would ensure that this small northern town began now to swell in size, wealth, and renown.

And after twenty-eight days of darkness they released you, David. No longer a stowaway. No longer a prisoner. You had endured your punishment and you were free in your new city, and surrounded by strange white faces. It was nearly winter. You were cold, but you were determined, and you found yourself a place to sleep. Beyond Woodhouse Moor and behind the university. 209 Belle Vue Road, a tall three-storey terraced brick house, handsome in its proportions, easily divisible into living units. A room in a house. A room in an overcrowded house full of working men, but none of them African. Lonely David, all by yourself. And at night when you lay on your single mattress and listened to the sound of doors banging and voices being raised, and lovers calling out to each other with passionate indifference, you understood that you were in a new country. You curled your small shivering body tightly into a ball in an attempt to trap some heat and survive the night. And in the morning you took the bus to the central bus station, and then walked over Crown Point Bridge to the far bank of the River Aire and past the factory that made engines for trains that would soon be dispatched to India and other far-flung corners of the empire. You followed the hundreds of workers who flowed down Black Bull Street and in the direction of the bleak factories that choked the lanes and alleyways between Hunslet Road and the River Aire, and you walked briskly towards your job at West Yorkshire Foundries. You generally had to have some sort of skill to find employment in Hunslet, particularly if you worked at West Yorkshire Foundries for this was a place that made mouldings, but only for top-of-the-line cars. Smart cars, like Triumph. However, in this factory there was some low-skilled work, and they employed you, David. And then, at the end of the day, you would hear the hooter and walk out on to the windswept streets where you crossed paths with those flooding in to do the night shift. Up above your head, you could see the chimneys which continued to pump out soot and smoke into the grey sky. Aside from the one row of back-to-back houses on Sayer Road (whose occupants were always the last to arrive at work for they would not roll out of bed until they heard the hooter) you passed nothing but factories on your walk back to and over Crown Point Bridge. Row upon row of factories. Once you reached the bus station you'd wait for the bus that would take you home. To 209 Belle Vue Road and your room in a house full of foreigners with their strange food, and their strange music. The English you were already used to, for they were a part of your world in Nigeria, but many nations lived in this noisy house. If it was not a night when you had to attend college you might walk up the hill and then across Woodhouse Moor towards Chapeltown and the pubs that would accept you; pubs in which you might reasonably expect to find those in whose company you might pass some time. And once there, in a pub, you would stand with your half of beer (because you were not much of a drinker) and listen to the talk and the laughter until the man behind the bar rang the bell ('Time, ladies and gentlemen, please'). Because everybody was grateful to the man for not running a pub that operated a colour bar all drinks would be drunk quickly and then, as a group, everybody would leave the pub and you would turn to the right by yourself and begin the long trek back across Woodhouse Moor, which often involved enduring the hostility of young louts who idled on benches, or beneath trees, smoking cigarettes and eager to embrace trouble. But you ignored them and pressed calmly on your way, although sometimes you were forced to flee in your suit and collar and tie, but being young and fit you were able to fly away from your enemies and go home to 209 Belle Vue Road and pass quickly up the stairs to your room. And then you disappeared, David. And then you just disappeared.

I first saw him in the Cambridge pub on North Street. He was part of a group of coloureds who were drinking. Mainly Africans, I think. I noticed him because he was so smartly dressed. This must have been about 1950 or 1951. The Cambridge didn't have a colour bar, unlike most of the other pubs in Leeds. Most of them had big signs in the window that read 'No Coloureds, No Dogs, No Gypsies', that sort of thing. Either that, or they'd have a quota which meant they'd only let a certain number in so as not to 'spoil' the English atmosphere. Nightclubs nearly always had a quota, apart from the Mecca Ballroom in town where anybody could go and dance. But in most cases pubs just preferred to have an outright bar on coloureds. The Cambridge on North Street was different, and they didn't give anybody any hassle. That's where I first saw him. The pubs closed at 10:30 p.m. in those days, and when we all came out of the pub everybody turned to the left. David was the only one who turned to the right and he began to walk off by himself. I asked one of the others where he was going to, and they said that he lived over by the university so I assumed that he must have been a student. In those days there were two groups of Africans in Leeds. The first group were the students, and most of them lived around the university area. The second group were the working Africans and they mainly centred around the Chapeltown area. In fact, some of the workers also studied at night. During the day they might be employed in some form of engineering, but at nights they would study. But, you know, as time went by a lot of them stopped studying and they just concentrated on making money. But there were always the two groups, the workers and the students. The two groups would often converse together in the pubs without any problems, but when we all left the pub they would go their separate ways. On this particular night, the first night that I met him, the working group turned left towards Spencer Place, which was the neighbourhood that they all lived in. David turned right.

The Booma Boys

The Nigerian warriors came home from the Burma war filled by the same impatience with the past that flung their English comrades into Clement Attlee's grim embrace. Among them was a residue of restless souls whose misconduct in Lagos won them the name of 'Burma Boys'. When the late forties raced into Nigeria (as they never did to war-sodden, static, 'welfare' England), this name became 'Booma,' and the 'Boys' really boys: for a new generation of goodbad lads sprung out of the Lagos pavements, who were too young to have fought overseas but old enough to demand that the future happen quickly now. Many of these vivid scamps, innocent as rogues under twenty-three can be, were suddenly gripped by a deep urge to know the world; and as swallows do, they took off from Africa for England with nothing but a compelling instinct as their baggage, stowing away, signing on and deserting, sometimes cajoling minimal fares from rightly reluctant families. Their landfall was in the big English dock cities, and they loped ashore blithely confident that the world loved them and owed them a treasure.

Colin MacInnes, 1960

My second memory of meeting David was at a dance at the Jubilee Hall in Chapeltown. Today the place is some kind of a media centre, but it was originally built in the thirties as a Jewish social centre back when the Chapeltown area was rather grand and somewhat Jewish. The Jubilee Hall would allow us to rent rooms for dances and here, as in the pubs, the African students mixed with the African workers. With the West Indians there were actually more workers than students, but it was the other way around with the Africans. However, I do seem to remember that quite a few of the Trinidadians were doing medicine, dentistry, law, and accounting and so on. The second time I saw David was at the Jubilee Hall dance and I noticed him because he was smarter than most in his dress sense. David always wore cool suits, always a collar and tie, and when he began to dance he danced as though he had music in his soul. In fact, when David walked he did so as though he was walking to music. There was a great rhythm to his steps. The kind of music they played at Jubilee Hall dances was Hi Life and Steel Pan, and David was in his element. I noticed him that first time because he turned the wrong way. I noticed him the second time because he was such a great dancer.

I never saw David standing alone by himself either in the pub or at a dance. Aside from his living arrangements, which meant that he lived a little way off from all the others, he appeared to me to be fully integrated into the African group. In fact, sometimes the university held dances and I saw him there, and again I noticed his skill at dancing. This would have been around 1951. He was very bouncy, and very young and slim. David wasn't really a political type and he never joined in with any of that. I tried to talk to him about the racial situation, especially as I had just formed the Chapeltown Commonwealth Citizens Committee. This was a difficult time for a white woman to be seen with a group of coloured men. I would be at risk, but the greater risk would be to them. People would often say things to me — nasty things — and naturally the men would want to defend me, although I'd try to encourage them to say nothing. But it wasn't easy. The Labour Party wouldn't officially support us in our work with the coloured immigrants; some individuals within the Labour Party, yes, but not the Labour Party as a whole. We — the members of the Chapeltown Commonwealth Citizens Committee — leafleted places and tried to make them take down their discriminating signs. We postered offices and pubs, and we also went to estate agents and tried to convince them that property prices actually went up when coloureds moved in. We told them that initially some whites might want to move out, but we reminded them that the housing demand from coloureds was such that the prices would inevitably rise back up. We also tried hard to get coloureds registered to vote, and we were forever dealing with the nuisance of the police. David was interested in what we were doing, but he didn't take part. He would always ask how we thought we were going to change things, and I would try to convince him that it was worth collecting evidence of systematic racism and challenge it head-on. However, David preferred to talk about what he was doing then, which was working in engineering across at a foundry in Hunslet.

*

It was called West Yorkshire Foundries, not because of the county of West Yorkshire (which actually didn't exist back then), but because the owner was a certain Mr Wallace West. The company began in the Second World War making castings for aircraft, then it eventually got involved in car manufacture. I was the personnel officer and I remember David as a short man who smiled all the time even though he didn't seem to have much to smile about. People in the factory used to call him 'Alliwalli' and he was known for reading educated newspapers. He spoke with a thick West African accent, I remember that, and it was sometimes difficult to understand what he was on about. But I was the one who led him from his formal interview to his department in the foundry itself. We put him in Department 87, which was then run by Percy Chainey, whose employees were required to help out with any department that had a labour shortfall. If no shortfall existed, Department 87 members were expected to sweep and clean the factory in general. Oluwale would have been among the first of hundreds of immigrant workers who eventually passed through the foundry's doors. They used to queue outside the interview room, three or four deep, and the line would often stretch right down the street. We attracted immigrants because the pay was competitive, but the conditions were terrible and safety was non-existent. We always had Lithuanians, Hungarians, and Poles, then Asians and West Indians, but Oluwale was the only West African I remember. In fact, in those days we had multilingual signs in the factory, but I'm not sure it helped anybody. The day used to begin at 7:30 a.m. In fact, the hooter sounded three minutes before work was to start, and that's when the men would assemble in the streets and begin to clock in. They had an hour for lunch and worked right through until 5:30 p.m., but it wasn't easy. In fact, to many it was worse than being down the pit. Mr West liked his employees to wear 'whites', like he'd seen workers wear in India. Well, they might look nice, but they were useless as protective gear. And there were no safety shoes or anything. In the aluminium and iron foundries you'd walk in and it would be completely black except for the light of the molten metal, a white light which was dazzling. Things were pretty bad back then, and even the area around the factory was rough with no grass in sight. The river was black, like oil. You sometimes see fish in it now, but back then the only living things in it were leeches. No, it wasn't a great job with all the heat and the sheer physical graft involved. But when overtime was available hours could easy double from the forty-four-hour basic.

And so there you were, David, working in the white-hot heat of the foundry, without protective clothing, vulnerable to spills and accident, hard grown men's work that only the strong and the skilled could survive and then, at the end of the day, out again, away from the filthy black river, out on to the windswept streets lined with redbrick factories. 'Hey you, nigger boy. Did you come out of your mam's arse?' A slow journey back in the direction of Belle Vue Road and a room called 'home', and the next morning back to work where the company doctor gave you your lightning-fast check-up. After he tapped your chest and looked quickly into your mouth, he had a suggestion. 'Cheer up, sunshine. Perhaps you should try going to the cinema. That'll make you feel better. Everybody's the same colour in there.'

I arrived in England from Nigeria as a stowaway in January 1951. Takoradi to Middlesbrough. There was one foot of snow on the ground and all I had were tennis shoes and dungarees, that's all. And a shirt with Sugar Ray Robinson drawn on the back of it. It was winter and I was freezing. I'd never been so cold, and to me it was like living in a freezer. But eventually I made my way to Yorkshire and that's where I met David. The way I see it, Yorkshire people are friendly, hard-working men. Socialists. You get the occasional problem here and there but they're generally okay. There were not many of us coloureds in those days. It was like you could basically count the number of blacks in Britain on one hand back in 1951. The only West Indians we really knew were a few ex-RAF guys with half-caste children, but there were no West Indian or African women there. We didn't mix much with the West Indians to start with; that came later. Eventually I got a job working at William Graves Foundry. We made shipping equipment. Then, around about this time, I met David. David was short and stocky-like. He looked like a jockey. He wasn't really a drinker or smoker, but he loved to dance. However, he was mostly by himself. Always alone. I never went to David's flat because I never knew where he was living. He'd say, 'Goodnight, I'll see you tomorrow', and then he'd be gone. He never invited anybody to his place, but you didn't ask him about it because you knew it would be an argument. The problem with David was he didn't understand the colour-bar situation and he would get very wound up. 'I'm from a British colony and I'm British,' he would say. 'So why do they call me "nigger"?' This was the attitude David couldn't deal with. He wasn't able to think around a situation and do something else. He was always in trouble and in conflict with the police. He wasn't crazy, he just didn't understand the system, that's all. He was a good guy. He'd never fight anybody, never draw a knife, but verbally he could be very abusive, especially against the police. He was always telling them to 'fuck off '. The only time David would cool down was when he was with his mates. On his own he couldn't handle these situations. David needed somebody to sit down and tell him what was happening to him. Some of us nearly went mad in England because the environment was new. We spoke the same language and we thought everything would be okay, but we soon found out. David really was a smart cat who could always think fast if he had to, but he was a loner who wanted to do everything by himself. The guys tried to help him, because we knew the situation, which is why we always walked out in twos or threes or fours. On your own you had to be very careful. However, David was never a troublemaker. He could be very foul-mouthed, but he wasn't a troublemaker. We knew that the police were against us because we could see it, and we had to work around them. But not David. He was determined. He never discussed his ambitions or any idea of going back to Nigeria. But then again, the majority of us didn't want to go back to Africa again.

And then David just disappeared and that was that. At first nobody thought it was unusual, for we were used to people leaving or just moving on. But after a while I remember asking people, 'Has anybody seen David?' And then I was told, 'Didn't you hear? He's been arrested.' A lot of my own work with the Chapeltown Commonwealth Citizens Committee involved having to deal with the police, who were very much in the habit of picking up people just because they were coloured. The word on the street was that one night, while walking home and minding his own business, David had been arrested and he had been sent to Armley jail. I thought okay, this is not good, but I suppose we'll see him when he comes out. But we never did. He just disappeared.

There they stand, majestic, imperious, brooded over by the gigantic water-tower and chimney combined, rising unmistakable and daunting out of the countryside, the asylums which our forefathers built with such solidity.

The Rt Hon. J. Enoch Powell, Minister of Health, 1961

You can see it from the road; a large Gothic building and a sprawling estate of outbuildings. Built in 1888, this is a deeply depressing complex. The West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum; a place of grim, Victorian nightmares set in 200 acres of land. Once you turn off the road, and pass the sign that reads 'Treatment Centre', the gloom deepens. Another sign reads 'Welcome to High Royds Hospital'. The asylum. Thereafter, the sheer scale of the place soon becomes apparent. The buildings begin to multiply and it is clear that High Royds Hospital (as it became known in 1963) is the size of a village. In its heyday over 2,000 people could be 'treated' at any one time in the dark stone buildings which huddle together beneath the sinister turrets and towers. Lights are burning in the windows but there is nobody in sight. Imagine. Inside. Dirty rooms with plastic armchairs and filthy carpets. Walls and windows stained with years of nicotine, burn marks on the floor, ashtrays overflowing with crushed fag ends. Inside ex-patients sleep in the corridors for they have nowhere else to go. Some wear daisies in their hair and bluebells for earrings. (My friend, you spent eight years from 1953 to 1961 in this asylum. Doing what? What were they doing to you? Were there any others like you?) The main building resembles a large stately home. Above it there is a clock tower which, somewhat cruelly, serves only to remind you that in this place time no longer matters. Your time has been taken away from you. Farewell time. (What were they doing to you? Were there any others like you?) Inside the front door one tiled corridor leads into another. One wing quickly gives way to another wing. A crazed maze. Neither dignity nor privacy. Eating with spoons. Male and female wander abroad. Through a double door there is a huge ballroom with a mirrorball nestled high in the ceiling. On Monday nights, the cinema. On Friday evenings, between seven and nine, the weekly dance. Male and female mixing. Just after Christmas the Annual Asylum Ball. The social event of the season. On New Year's Eve, the patients' Fancy Dress Ball, where the staff present a music-hall-style pantomime, and the asylum band play on and on. (Did you dance, David? Or did they simply sedate you into submission?) Beyond the immaculate lawns, and through the trees, one can glimpse the small Yorkshire village of Menston. Civilisation. In the grounds a truck trundles into view. The driveway curves around the bend. Deliveries? Of food maybe, or perhaps towels? Or medicine? Or needles? Or straps? Cruelly sedated and now ready for electro-convulsive therapy. One man remembered. 'It was like going to the gas chamber, you walked in and saw this horrendous cap that they put on your head and this bed that they asked you to lie on and the injection, to this day I can taste and smell it, and that was to me horrific.' (Did they sedate you into submission?) The tranquil picture must not be disturbed. Cruelly sedated. Perhaps the screams of the patients are too high-pitched for the human ear? (What, my friend, were you doing here for eight years? Really, were there others like you?)

The growth of the woollen industry, and the development of cloth manufacturing, meant that despite occasional visitations from the bubonic plague Leeds continued to expand. By the early seventeenth century, buildings now lined both sides of the River Aire and the town's leading citizens were vociferously complaining of overcrowding. In fact, according to contemporary reports, Leeds Parish Church could no longer accommodate the hordes of people who 'resorted thither every Sabbath'. This expansion was somewhat checked by the Civil War, during which Leeds was idly batted forward and backward by the Royalist and Parliamentary armies; growth was also interrupted by a particularly violent mid-century outbreak of bubonic plague that swept away a fifth of the town's population. However, by 1660, with the monarchy restored, and a new charter granted to the town, which included permission to appoint a lord mayor, things were once again looking buoyant for Leeds.

In 1700 the population was 7,000, with another 3,000 in outlying townships. In the same year, the opening of the Aire-Calder Navigation Canal allowed cloth to be transported by barge out of Leeds and directly to the port of Hull, and thereafter to London or to the large markets of Europe. As Leeds began to develop a direct relationship to the world, her sense of her own importance deepened accordingly. Around 1720, Daniel Defoe visited Leeds and described it as 'a large, wealthy and populous town, it stands on the North Bank of the River Aire, or rather on both sides of the river, for there is a large suburb on the South Side of the River, and the whole is joined by a stately and prodigiously strong Stone Bridge. . [T]he High-Street, beginning from the Bridge and running up North. . is a large, broad, fair and well-built street. . the town of Leeds is very large, and. . there are an abundance of wealthy merchants in it.' At the time of Defoe's visit the banks of the River Aire were already full of warehouses and mills, and the main street of Briggate held a twice-weekly market where everything from the town's famous cloth to pigs or fruits, vegetables or shoes, might be bought.

The Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century transformed Agrarian England into Industrial England, and even greater wealth began to be accumulated by the upper classes of society. These social changes saw the poorest of Leeds' citizens became poorer, while the richest became increasingly accustomed to, and smugly proud of, their material assets. In 1760, John Colliar, a schoolmaster from the neighbouring county of Lancashire, compared Leeds to 'a cunning but wealthy, thriving farmer. Its merchants hunt worldly wealth, as eager as dogs pursue the hare; they have in general the pride and haughtiness of Spanish dons. . the strong desire they have for yellow dirt (gold), transforms them into galley-slaves, and their servants are doubly so; the first being fastened with golden, but the latter with iron chains.' With a link to Hull in the east already established, work began on the construction of a canal that would link Leeds with Liverpool to the west, and thereby provide opportunities for exporting directly into the new markets of the Americas. Although it took until 1816 to complete, the Leeds-Liverpool Canal placed Leeds at the hub of an extensive water-borne transportation network. With rail transportation having been introduced, and the town's roads being continually improved, Leeds began to develop a reputation for ease of communication, and she was able to move her cloth swiftly both nationally and internationally.

In the eighteenth century, larger and more impressive cloth halls began to be constructed in Leeds. Public libraries, reading and assembly rooms, concert halls and theatres were also built to cater to the wealthier classes, while the working people continued to live in squalor and entertain themselves with bull-baiting, cockfighting, bareknuckle fist fights, or drinking and variety entertainment. Working-class standards of health declined, and living conditions for the poor deteriorated; inevitably, the disparity between those who had and those who had not grew ever wider. By the end of the eighteenth century this town of 30,000 people, with a further 23,000 in the outlying townships, had already developed the practice of establishing a soup kitchen for the indigent, and handing out blankets to those who could not provide for themselves. Fines levied for drunkenness and other abuses were used to help the needy, and food which was 'sold light in weight' was confiscated and given to the poor. This charity was motivated as much by goodwill as by a general fear of civil insurrection and disease.

Hundreds of poor left Leeds in the early nineteenth century and migrated to the United States in an attempt to escape ruin, while others turned to crime and prostitution. The Leeds Workhouse was always full, as was the prison. As machines began to replace men with increasing frequency, the poor and unemployed became more vocal and expressive in the manner in which they made known their discontent. After all, the daily reminders of widespread poverty and starvation meant that they had little to lose. Those who did work were always in danger of being injured in the mill, or factory, or mine, and the worst abuses were often visited upon young children who were habitually pressed into service. However, despite the travails of the working people, and the prevalence of vagrants and paupers on the streets, the town was wealthy. The mistreatment of oppressed workers who laboured intensively in dangerous conditions, and the exploitation of child labour in factories and mills, guaranteed that industry would prosper and the wealthy become increasingly affluent. Meanwhile, the area of Mabgate, which was located down by the river beside the parish church, witnessed the greatest concentration of misery, and although social problems of poverty and prostitution were neither confined to Mabgate nor to Leeds, the town was eventually forced to acknowledge that it was confronted with a serious situation.

Victorian Leeds boasted an extraordinary number of alehouses, which exacerbated the atmosphere of misery, and although many temperance societies grew up in the wake of this excessive drinking, neither church nor local government could arrest the decline in the social fabric of the town. These were dark times for Leeds, and not even the air was pure, for the toxic industrial soot blackened the lungs of the high and the low alike. By the middle of the nineteenth century the population, including the townships, had surged to 150,000 and overcrowding was endemic. In 1836 the Leeds police force had been formed and, shortly thereafter, they were armed with cutlasses and heavy batons. It was understood that the police were obliged to defend the rights of the mill owners and prevent the 'mobs' from attacking the mills, and soon after the establishment of the police force their numbers, and powers, were extended in order that they might deal effectively with growing working-class resentment. In 1847 a new borough jail was constructed at Armley to cope with vagrants and other undesirables, and during this period of rapid urban growth, the wealthier citizens quickly learned that they must vigorously monitor the underclasses for these people were not, under any circumstances, to be allowed to gain the upper hand. Aside from wealthy mill owners and industrialists, by 1845 there were over one hundred stockbrokers in Leeds, and the town enjoyed its own stock exchange. There were, in effect, two towns of Leeds, and although Mabgate bore no relationship, social or otherwise, to cosmopolitan Leeds, the underclass also wished to participate in the success story of their town. They too wished to belong, and be a part of this miraculous adventure in growth and development which had witnessed a small river crossing grow to the point where it now stood ready to make a magical transformation into a city. The disenfranchised of Leeds were refusing to go anywhere. They insisted on being heard, and they demanded that they be allowed to participate. They would not disappear. Nobody disappears. People don't just disappear. Surname: Oluwale Christian Name/s: David Unit No: 2726 Status: Informal Address: NFA Sex: Male Marital Status: Single Admitted From: St James's Hospital, Beckett St,

Leeds 9, Town Hall, Leeds (2) D of B: 8.8.30 Religion: C/E Nat. Ins. No: Zk 45 03 6 °C Admitted: 11.6.53 Section 26 Status: C(Certified)

I never saw him and I never knew him, but it's a big place. Massive. In fact, I never saw no coloured people at all. But then again it's difficult because of the drugs. They affect your memory. The medication, as they like to call it, it can make you scream and then they just look at you and that's when they remind you that you're mad and that you'll not be going anywhere. I would find myself walking up and down corridors, talking to myself, thinking who the hell is this crazy bastard in my head, and then before I knew what was happening the nurses would be all over me, holding me down, forcing more stuff down my throat. They used to talk to me like they were my friends, then suddenly they would turn on me and that would be it. All men, never any women nurses, and they would trick you into thinking that everything was fine and okay, but it wasn't like that. And slowly, you know, I think I began to get the idea of what was going on. You'd see people coming in who looked alright, like you could go up to them and ask them how things were on the outside. Then the next time you'd see them they were zombies and they didn't know you, and that's when you realised that something was seriously wrong. But like I said, I didn't see no coloureds. I didn't see anybody like David Oluwale. I decided I had to get out of High Royds, but it wasn't that easy. I must have been getting better because I saw a doctor one day, and you didn't get to see them that often. But I saw this doctor and he even smiled, and before I knew where I was I found myself in an open ward. I thought to myself, you know, this is your big chance so you better take it. And so I absconded, but they caught me in the next village, or so they said, I don't remember. In Guiseley, I think it was. They brought me back and this time they locked me in a room by myself with only a bucket for a toilet. They let me out in the morning, but kept an eye on me. I went to Occupational Therapy, which everybody called OT, and I learned a bit about printing. The females did sewing and knitting, or they made baskets, but they gave the males different things to do. I used to wish I was back in prison, because you have more freedom in prison. Also, they don't give you medication in there, so you don't twitch as much and there's less nightmares. There's plenty of coloured blokes in prison. I might have seen this Oluwale fellow in there. At night they'd take me from OT back to the room with the bucket, and they'd lock me in. After I'd gone down the drainpipe and absconded the first time I thought, I'm not doing this again. But they weren't going to take any risks now. They watched me like a hawk. I never really did see how big this place was, but it was huge, I knew that. But by now all I wanted was to get out of there. It had been years, and nobody visited anymore, and I was sick of seeing old men picking up tabs from off the floor and shuffling around like they didn't know their name or care anymore. I didn't want to be like them. They were in their seventies some of them, and I didn't want to end up like that. If somebody gave them a sweet they were so grateful they looked like they might cry, but they were the ones who gave me the will to get out. It wasn't the doctors, for I hardly ever saw them. In fact, there was nobody to talk to about how you really felt about things, so you just kept your mouth shut and pretended to behave and hoped that the drugs wouldn't make you any more mad. Eventually it worked for me because one day they didn't take me back to the room and lock me in. They put me in a Nissen hut type of place which was a more open kind of ward, and I slept in there for a while. Maybe a year, I don't know. You never really knew much about time in High Royds. This place was better, but I'd still rather have been in Armley jail, because there you definitely knew about time and you've got your wits about you. But it's hopeless once they put you in the loony bin. It's hopeless trying to hang on to anything. Before you know what's going on they turn you into a bloody zombie and there's nobody to talk to. The nurses have got their jobs to do, but they're more like guards or prison officers. And the guys in OT, they sometimes told you straight out that it would be easier training chimpanzees. Basically, you've lost control of your life, but I was lucky. Luckier than most of them, because I got called into the doctor's office and he told me that I was going to be discharged. I said nothing because I didn't believe him. Then I realised that I didn't want to go because I didn't have any connection with the world anymore. Not since I'd gone down the drainpipe then been dragged back again. I didn't know anybody. I didn't know anything about life out there and it was frightening to me. The thing is, not only had I not seen any coloureds in High Royds, I don't know if I'd ever seen any at this time, apart from when I was in prison. I was more of a country person, not a city type, and we just didn't have any. But he could have been there and nobody would have known as the place was so big. But when they eventually said to him 'You're discharged' he'd have had the same worries as the rest of us. I mean, where are you supposed to go?

I look over the low fence of 209 Belle Vue Road. The garden is a riot of overgrown weeds and shrubbery. A blue minivan lies derelict in the yard. Beyond the minivan, at the end of the long narrow garden, stands the three-storey house. There are six neatly spaced windows on the top two floors, three on each. The ground floor boasts a bay window. The curtains are variations of white and green, and they don't match. The curtains that hang in the bay window on the ground floor are white, but their dignity is compromised by the fact that not only do they hang askew, they are also badly twisted. Traditionally, curtains block out all light. They block out the day. The world. But not these curtains. To the side of the front gatepost somebody has hand-painted '209'. Blue string holds the brown gate shut, but much of the fencing to either side of the gate has collapsed. The gate serves little purpose. This was David's home. The place he hoped to return to when the High Royds doctor said, 'You're discharged.' This large three-storey brick house with a crushed Marlboro packet lying discarded by the gate; a place that boasts no television aerial on the roof. Back in the thirties this must have been a highly desirable neighbourhood for the street is broad and the houses suggest grandeur and affluence. But by David's time — by the fifties — this area was full of transients and prostitutes; and little has changed. Today a woman (Miss Dorton-Smith) lives here alone, but she will not answer her door. The door remains closed. I walk around to the side fencing. The labyrinth of jungle hides two more minivans, one red and one white; and the skeleton of a motorbike. The house, the garden, the vehicles, have all been 'let go'. Abandoned.

The next time I saw David must have been six or seven years after the dance. I was walking down towards the university and he was walking up. I hesitated for a moment because he had changed. He'd put on an awful lot of weight and the bounce had gone. It was just no longer there. And the light had also gone from his eyes. David was a man who was in the habit of making strong eye contact, but I looked at him and saw that the light had definitely gone out. And then he told me that he'd been in hospital, and I thought 'oh shit'. Around this time people were beginning to become conscious that Armley jail wasn't the only place that could brutalise these men. We stood together by Woodhouse Moor and talked for a while, and I just assumed that he still lived at Belle Vue Road where he'd been living before. But it was only later that my husband explained to me that David probably appeared strange because he was so pumped up with drugs. After this meeting by Woodhouse Moor I met him next at a dance at Jubilee Hall where he was a bit more talkative, and I seem to remember he was mixing in quite a lot. And then one of the Ghanaians confirmed everything for me, and he told me that David had been drugged while he was in the mental hospital and that's why he'd been behaving a bit strangely of late. And then after a few months or so, David disappeared again into Armley jail. By this stage I'd already decided that I was going to watch out for him. Armley jail had a fearsome reputation, for the wardens and officers often had fascist pins on the inside of their lapels, and they'd flick them at you if you were visiting a coloured prisoner. But they didn't frighten me. I wouldn't let them.

When David came out we started seeing a lot more of him, especially around Chapeltown. But the truth was although he still wore a suit and tie he was beginning to look a little unkempt. He had a bit of a wispy beard, not like the straggly one he had towards the end, but he wasn't really holding it all together as well as he'd done in the past. The Hayfield pub in Chapeltown was now our regular hangout, and he'd sometimes come into the pub, but David was never much of a drinker. I mainly saw him in the street, and he always gave me the impression that he knew where he was going. However, it was only after two or three years that I realised that when David left us after a night in the Hayfield he was, in fact, going to sleep in shop doorways. Things were getting worse for David, and in those days he was always getting himself arrested, but mind you it was never his fault. I would go to the cells and try to get him a solicitor and arrange for bail, but it was clear what was going on. Once I went to court and David was in the dock with a bruised right eye, yet they were convicting him of assaulting a police officer if you can believe it. I mean, you only had to look at the size of the police officer and then look at the size of David to see how ridiculous this was. The other charge that they habitually brought against David was that he had been drunk, but everybody knew that David was not a major drinker, but the situation was hopeless. The police did whatever the police wanted to do, particularly when it came to vagrants, and especially when it came to coloured people. David, being the only coloured vagrant in Leeds, was in a bad situation.

My husband and I always looked out for him, and if we ever heard that he was in a particular shop doorway we would always go out and try to find him. The white vagrants slept in the city centre underneath the railway arches, but whenever I went down there looking for David they would say 'He's not here' and 'We don't want that type around here'. I mean, the cheek of them. We tried to get David into the shelter at St George's Crypt, but they said that he was a drunk and that he was too loud, but what they didn't say was that he was too black. The Salvation Army would often take him in for a couple of days, but then he'd get racially abused and he'd answer back and that would be the end of that for they'd want to get rid of him. You know, that was half the problem, that David wouldn't take any abuse from anybody. And he was an easy target. In the early days, the lonely walk back home across Woodhouse Moor from a night's drinking in Chapeltown, or from the Mecca, always left him exposed. I'd never realised just how much of an easy target he was, but he'd never take any abuse from anybody, including the police. They would always tell me that David had failed the 'attitude test', but that was because he wasn't prepared to be anybody's victim. Some of the other Africans tried to help him, but you know it was a very busy time with lots of activism. People's energies were being used up all over the place. It was, after all, the beginning of the Black Power movement for one thing, and the local community were actually succeeding in their efforts to close down racist pubs. People were busy and so they didn't always realise that David was no longer on the scene.

I think David suffered a lot in silence. I'm sure that the first time they took him into Armley jail he wouldn't take any abuse from the screws, and that's why they sent him to the asylum where they treated him like a schizophrenic and tried to drive him mad. Oh, they have their stupid reasoning, telling you that he gets aggressive and that they can't understand him, but it's a cultural thing for heaven's sake. Rather than add another adverb or clause, West Indians and Africans tend to raise their voices or use their hands to speak. Jews do it as well, and that's not madness that's culture. But by sending him out of Armley jail and to High Royds they deliberately made David 'slow' when he was never, ever, slow before. I mean, when he emphasises with his hands they say he's aggressive, and so they pump him full of drugs. Like anybody, David could be lippy if you insulted him, but ninety-nine per cent of the time he was extremely gentle and polite, and very protective. I remember that once when we were out somebody swore in a pub, and David just looked at the offender and said, 'Ladies', meaning, 'Stop that because ladies are present.' After David came out of the hospital he was very, very quiet. On a few occasions the police actually phoned my house. Not all the police were bad apples. There were some good ones, and if they found him sleeping rough anywhere near my house they might call me up and David would come here and spend the night. In the morning he'd wake up, read the Guardian, then have some breakfast and go off. Before David left the house my husband would often ask him, 'David, shall we go and look for a flat for you?' but he would always say, 'No, I'm fine. I'm going to meet somebody.' He never wanted help. He was too proud. In fact, as soon as I even got close to saying that I'd get him a flat, or a rented room, he didn't want to discuss it. He was a man of great personal dignity. He used to have such high hopes for his future, but the sad thing was he came to recognise that all of that had gone. In the old days he used to wonder what he'd do once he qualified as an engineer. That's all he used to think about. But this new David didn't want to be pitied. Not by anybody. But I should also say that there were others who helped a lot more than I did. Other Africans were always looking out for him. If they saw David wasn't doing well they would offer to give him money, or help him in some way. I remember one Ghanaian who sold crockery, and who had a crockery warehouse. This man always left the side door of his warehouse open in case David needed somewhere to sleep, but David didn't want to bother anybody. He didn't want to be a burden or cause trouble for anybody. This was his way.

These days the typical black admission is young, in his twenties, loud, paranoid, resisting strongly — you need to get him sedated to restrain him, and the doctors don't know what's going on — he's usually brought in by the police, therefore the doctor hasn't got a clue as to his history — and as with men generally they would be more aggressive, you would be more frightened of them and you would put them on more medication.

National Health Doctor, 2002

In 1858 the Empress of the British Empire, Queen Victoria, came to Leeds to open the newly constructed town hall. Boasting Corinthian columns, and guarded by large stone lions, Leeds Town Hall was one of the largest civic buildings in Europe. The words around the vestibule — 'Europe — Asia — Africa — America' — reminded the people of Leeds that, only one year after the Indian Mutiny had been put down, the globe remained Britain's true sphere of influence. Leeds was perfectly positioned to take advantage of this fortuitous fact. Clothing was no longer the town's main business, and Leeds was becoming better known as the 'workshop of the world'. Hundreds of factories produced bicycles, cranes, nails, sewing machines, bolts, train rails, locomotives, axles, bricks, and much more. There were scores of furnaces burning every day, and the sky was choked with chimneys and pollution. Glassworks and tanneries, skinworks and breweries, every type of industry was represented. Leeds was a hive of productivity and entirely dependent upon the labour of the poor and the young.

Thousands of little children, both male and female, but principally female, from seven to fourteen years of age, are daily compelled to labour from six o'clock in the morning to seven in the evening, with only — Britons, blush while you read it! — with only thirty minutes allowed for eating and recreation. Poor infants! Ye are indeed sacrificed at the shrine of avarice, without even the solace of the negro slave; ye are no more than he is, free agents; ye are compelled to work as long as the necessity of your needy parents may require, or the cold-blooded avarice of your worse than barbarian masters may demand! Ye live in the boasted land of freedom, and feel and mourn that ye are slaves, and slaves without the only comfort which the negro has. He knows it is his sordid, mercenary master's interest that he should live, be strong and healthy. Not so with you. Ye are doomed to labour from morning to night for one who cares not how soon your weak and tender frames are stretched to breaking! You are not mercifully valued at so much per head; this would assure you at least (even with the worst and most cruel masters) of the mercy shown to their own labouring beasts. No, no! your soft and delicate limbs are tired and fagged, and jaded, at only so much per week, and when your joints can act no longer, your emaciated frames are instantly supplied with other victims, who in this boasted land of liberty are hired — not sold — as slaves and daily forced to hear that they are free.

Richard Oastler, Letter to Leeds Mercury, 29 September, 1830

During the nineteenth century, cloth continued to occupy a special place in the Leeds economy, and with the onset of Jewish immigration it achieved something of a revival. The first Jew arrived in Leeds in the 1820s and was listed as a voter in 1832. By the late 1840s a small community of middle-class German Jews had established themselves in Leeds, but the Jewry that followed in their wake was largely comprised of poor Jews from Eastern Europe, often Polish or Russian in origin, who were fleeing pogroms, particularly those that followed the murder of Tsar Alexander II. They would arrive at Hull and make their way west to Leeds in the hope of finding some kind of occupation in the clothing industry, for many were skilled tailors. As their numbers increased they settled in their own ghetto near North Street in conditions familiar to most workingclass residents of Leeds. But this was now their city — their new home — and they had no intention of going anywhere else, despite the well-displayed signs that let them know that Jews were not welcome. By the end of the nineteenth century, the vast majority of the 8,000 Jews in Leeds were employed in one of the 98 Jewish tailoring sweatshops where the conditions were often indescribable.

The thousands of Irish immigrants to Leeds, who arrived in the wake of the great famine of the 1840s, lived in conditions at least as intolerable as those of the Jews. They congregated in the east end of Leeds in slums of unimaginable depravity where crime and prostitution were rife, and these Irish Catholics often embarrassed their English co-religionists with their supposed debauchery. However, what was beyond dispute was the fact that conditions for the poor in Leeds were among the worst in Britain. The water supply was putrid and contaminated with effluence from the sewers, and hundreds of people were often forced to share one privy. Disease was rife, and these overcrowded places were devoid of either daylight or fresh air. Understandably, life on the street was, for some, a much more palatable option. With the introduction of horsedrawn, and then electric, tramways, by the end of the nineteenth century some workers were able to move out of the centre of Leeds and they began to commute to work from the suburbs. However, the vast majority of the poor were trapped in squalor and therefore unable to enjoy civic improvements in education, transport, and the opening up of public spaces for parkland.

At the end of the nineteenth century, Leeds formally became a city and it boasted a population of nearly half a million. However, despite the city's affluence, problems of pollution and overcrowding continued to blight the lives of the working population. Fears of contagious diseases such as tuberculosis were real, as were Jewish concerns about anti-Semitism. Despite the fact that over 2,000 Jews volunteered for service during the First World War, Jews continued to be regarded as 'foreigners'. In 1917 fighting between Christian and Jewish men in the city escalated into a full-scale riot which resulted in many Jewish properties in the Leylands area being destroyed. The city's resistance to perceived 'outsiders', no matter how long they have been resident in the city, has always bedevilled Leeds. This antipathy easily crossed over into the twentieth century, and its virulence was fuelled by the well-known capacity of the people of Leeds for drinking and gambling.

The economic depression of the early twentieth century meant that there was no shortage of people to fill the poorhouses and workhouses of the city. Although new council-owned houses were being built to house the working classes, those who lived below a certain economic level had little choice but to live in slums that remained mired in a depravity reminiscent of the early Victorian years. During the great depression of the twenties and thirties it was once again the clothing industry that saved Leeds. Firms such as Burtons, Hepworths, John Collier, and Jackson's began to corner not only the national, but the international market in ready-made 'smart' clothes. Employment opportunities began to grow, and eventually slums began to be cleared. By the Second World War, Leeds was becoming surprisingly progressive in her civic attitude towards ongoing difficulties in housing and education, but the city's often hostile attitude towards 'outsiders' continued to be a deeper and more impenetrable problem.

In 1933 the Leeds Jewish Refugee Committee began to help German Jews escape from the brutal anti-Semitism of their own country, and by 1939 some 700 German Jews had found refuge in Leeds. However, upon arrival they soon discovered that local golf clubs banned Jews, and that the tea rooms and dance halls openly advertised their 'English only' policy. Jews were treated as pariahs and often subjected to physical attack, or swastikas being painted on their shop windows. But this was now their home; modern Leeds. A city of half a million people with one of the most robust economies in Britain; a city made up of migrants who had all come to settle on the banks of the River Aire. Like the Irish before them, the Jewish population of Leeds refused to move on. They were going nowhere. This was their home. And then others arrived.

In fact, these 'others' had been appearing in Leeds for some time. In 1791, the famous African writer Olaudah Equiano visited Leeds while promoting sales of his influential autobiography, and he later wrote a letter to the Leeds Mercury under his adopted name, Gustavas Vassa. In December 1859, Frederick Douglass delivered a speech in Leeds Town Hall at a meeting of the Leeds Anti-Slavery Society, and the third edition of his autobiography was actually printed in Leeds. And later still, in 1901, the black composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor composed a choral cantata for the Leeds Triennial Music Festival. However, aside from these visitors, there is precious little evidence of a significant black presence prior to the Second World War. The occasional individual does turn up in the records, such as Abraham Johnson, who was born in Zanzibar in 1848 and who, during the second half of the nineteenth century, worked for a while at John Marshall's Flax Mill in Leeds. Or Pablo Fanque, a black man who owned and operated a circus in late Victorian England, and who is buried in Leeds. The small pre-Second World War black population in Leeds consisted almost entirely of domestic servants, theatrical performers, or industrial workers, and they existed as isolated individuals in an otherwise homogeneous white society.

After the Second World War many 'demobbed' colonial soldiers, aircrew, and seaman from Africa and the Caribbean 'stayed on' in some English cities. In 1945 the black population of Leeds largely consisted of such persons but, in common with the rest of the country, the numbers were negligible. However, by the mid-fifties the nation had begun a programme of massive recruitment of Caribbean labour in order that the post-Second World War infrastructure of Britain might be maintained, particularly in health and transport. As a result, dark strangers began to appear in far greater numbers on the streets of Leeds. According to the 1951 census, there were 107 West Indians and 45 Africans living in the city. Ten years later, in 1961, there were 2,186 West Indians and Africans, which included carpenters, masons, tailors, mechanics, painters, and electricians. These newcomers of African origin were visible and vulnerable on the streets of Leeds, but they no longer needed to think of themselves as being isolated. A community was being formed.

Chapeltown's history is written into its architecture. Its huge semi-detached and terraced houses, built for the prosperous, Christian new middle classes in the early 1900s, its two parks and its wide, tree-lined streets are now interspersed with buildings which were once synagogues, and Asian-owned mini-markets selling the produce of the world. Halfway up Chapeltown Road there's a wall which, throughout the seventies, bore the inscription REMEMBER OLUWALE in huge white letters. Near that wall there's an ugly vacant lot which, until recently, was the site of the elegant country club built in the twenties for those prosperous Christians. The club became Chapeltown's most notorious pub. White Leeds imagined that inside the Hayfield every type of black sinner was making mischief. A curious corollary of this fantasy was that the Hayfield became a kind of 'black space', where whites only entered if they accepted the rules laid down by the black men who played dominoes, drank, sold a little weed and checked the ladies. Since these rules were easy to accept — mutual respect and toleration, whatever status the outside world conferred upon you — lots of adventurous whites found themselves at home there. It's said that David Oluwale frequented a similar place in Chapeltown, a nightclub called, in his day, the Glass Bucket, but I'm pretty certain the early evening would have found him in the Hayfield. The Hayfield was erased from the map around 2004 — yet another sign of the city's inability to deal properly with its black citizens.

Dr Max Farrar, Leeds Metropolitan University, 2006 The Chapeltown Enterprise Centre stands at the bottom of Button Hill. The centre features the Best Fade Unisex Salon. Across the road is the Silver Tree Club which, these days, is a bricked-up, burned-out building. Chapeltown has changed. Chapeltown no longer boasts good manners. It is becoming derelict and infested with drug dealers. Garbage lies piled up in the streets, and there is a paucity of civic pride. Modern Chapeltown is home to a lost generation. A young woman shouts at me. 'Hey you, black man.' Her voice is raw and flat. A broad Yorkshire voice. As she crosses the street and walks toward me I can see that she is swathed in a big black coat. 'Hey you, black man.' Her eyes are wet with drugs, and she promises me that she will do anything. 'Black man.' I quicken my steps. I glance back at the Best Fade Unisex Salon. I want to tell the people in the enterprise centre that they are right to try, but they should look around themselves. There is no real enterprise. No real business, beyond survival, in this faded Chapeltown. And across the street, where the Hayfield pub would have stood, there is now nothing. Nothing at all. It is gone. (Like you, David. Gone.) The bottom of Button Hill is empty.

The dark 'others' began to arrive in Leeds in the fifties. But what kind of a city was this that expected these newcomers to live like animals in abandoned bombed-out slums? The emigrants had heard rumours that the English often set fires in their houses, but until they reached England and felt the sharp bite of their first winter they did not fully understand. But they soon learned. However, what they never learned to understand, or accept, was the racism which confined them to filthy rooms. Landlords, including Leeds City Council, seemed intent upon extracting money from them in exchange for rooms in which it was barely possible to turn around; rooms which one had to share with mice and fleas and rats, where water ran down the walls when it rained, and thereafter snails crawled up them; rooms where the nearest bathroom was your handbasin, and your one toilet bowl was in the next street and had to be shared with 200 others. The mother country was welcoming her citizens at the front door, and then quickly ushering them out through the back door crying, 'No Blacks', crying, 'No Coloureds', crying, 'Go back to where you come from'. And David heard these shouts, but he wanted an education in order that he might make something of himself in England, and so he redoubled his polite efforts to learn. He worked harder, and studied harder, but still they took him to Armley jail, and then on to the asylum where they changed his personality. And when they released him back into the world, David soon discovered that he had lost his damp, cold room at 209 Belle Vue Road. Even this dismal place had slipped through his fingers, but he still possessed his city of Leeds on the banks of the River Aire. David still had his city.

I have to say that by the later stages I believe some fatalism had begun to creep into David's spirit. He expected to be arrested, so he didn't bother to try and hide. He just kept going back to the heart of the city centre and staying there where he knew that he would be very visible. It was as though he was challenging them to remove him from the city. They would beat him and arrest him, but his attitude was clear: 'I'll just do what I want to do and I won't disappear. I won't be invisible.' It was all very rational to him. He knew the consequences, but he continued to defy people. As I said, he could have slept every night in the back of his Ghanaian friend's warehouse if he'd have wanted to. He could have had a flat, or he could have been safe and invisible in different parts of the city, but he didn't want to disappear. He wanted to be seen, and Leeds was his battleground — his home — and he wasn't going to leave his home. In the later stages he sometimes gave the outward signs of being a shambling, slow-witted, slow-walking man, but he always knew where he was going. He knew Meanwood, Hyde Park, and Chapeltown; he understood the streets. He knew the safe areas, but he also knew that if he took Step A then Step B would follow. He made a rational decision to take Step A, which was to go back into Leeds city centre and claim his right to be in the city. Step B was to be beaten, arrested and then carted off to Armley jail. First Step A and then Step B, but he wouldn't give up. During this time there was, to my memory, no other black person from Africa or the Caribbean who was homeless and on the street. In the sixties, David was the only black man sleeping rough on the streets of Leeds.

My father was a military-minded man. Being an army sergeant, he was dominant in the family and he was difficult. My joining the police force was his idea and he said it would make a man of me. My mother was silent on the matter, as she was on most things. She was ten years younger than my father, and she didn't get a look in when it came to decisions. At the age of nineteen I thought I'd give it a crack and join the Leeds police force and see if I could get my father on my side. Initially I liked Leeds, and I liked the life on The Headrow. I was stationed in the centre of Leeds. Millgarth Station covered a nonresidential area. Issues at Millgarth were mainly to do with crime, vagrancy, revellers in the pubs, drug users, and there was supposed to be a 'problem' with students. I was very friendly with the tradesmen on my patch, but what I didn't do was make friends with anybody in the force. Not one single person. This caused me problems because the police service in Leeds was like a closed club. I remember being told to choose my friends from within the force, and not from outside it, and this was a sticking point for me. I had been seen by someone in a pub in Wetherby with my old school pals and I was on the carpet for that. I was up in front of an inspector and he said, 'Who are you mixing with outside duty hours?' I remember thinking this wasn't actually going to work for me. On duty or off duty, you had to stay within the group of officers, but I didn't really have any friends in the force. But, at least to begin with, I did enjoy working in the centre of Leeds. There were some black people that would turn up in the centre, and they didn't have an easy time. You might find somebody who'd been out drinking and hadn't caught the bus home, or somebody who was trying to get into a hotel, or somebody who was separated from their group of friends. But generally speaking, black people and mixed-race people were rare sights in Leeds city centre at that time in the sixties. I patrolled mainly around the area of Vicar Lane, The Headrow, and then going down towards the river area and around the open market. The business people — café owners, restaurant owners, shop owners — they all regarded the police as people who could do no wrong. And the police were fiercely proud of this and so there was a very strong feeling that the police were there to serve the incumbent business people. I befriended quite a few café owners, you know, people that you could go and chat to, and who made you feel that you were part of the community. Now in the daytime, that was all very nice and it was all very cosy. In the night it was a different place. The streets were deserted, people had gone home, and the police, what were they to do? What was their job then? Well, it was to check property. To scour about and make sure that they didn't find broken windows around entrances at the rear of properties. At night the city centre, instead of being the business people's place, became very much the Leeds of the authorities and of the policemen. And that's really an important thing — the change of the city from day to night. On my patch I befriended quite a few dossers and I used to go and chat to them. There was a tea stall in the open market which may or may not still be operating, and it used to open at about five in the morning, and I would always drop in. And you'd get a mixed bunch of people and they accepted me. I used to take my hat off and chat with them. In fact one officer said that I had the attitude of a social worker to the job, which was not thought to be a good thing. But I did, I used to take my hat off. I was in a very difficult position. Life with my father was greatly improved, but I soon realised that I didn't like some of what was going on in Leeds. I was very concerned because it was becoming obvious that there were some difficulties for a certain individual. I was in a terrible state of moral dilemma. If anybody was still about in Leeds city centre after the late night taxi queue it was very rare. A couple of times I did find a drunk, but it was very rare. In the two years I worked the patch, I can't remember finding a person at say four o'clock in the morning. I never did. Only David. I never found another dosser sleeping out anywhere. The other dossers might have had somewhere they knew they could go; to the crypt or whatever. I can't remember exactly when I first saw David, but I know I saw him on my foot patrol in the Millgarth area. He would go into the deep shops. I know the Bridal House was one that he went into. Yeah. He'd be in there. But he'd be in other ones on Vicar Lane as well. He tried to get into the deep shops. The ones which have got two entrances. He was always alone. I never saw him with anybody, and he wouldn't be at the café in the morning. Some of the other dossers would be at the café, but not him. I used to wonder where he got his food from. I saw him quite a lot, but he never ran away from me. He wouldn't enter into a conversation with a policeman, he just wouldn't talk. But he didn't run away. Whereas, if he saw Inspector Ellerker or Sergeant Kitching he would run, and he would shout. But he wouldn't run from me.

*

The prison sits on the high ground of Armley, its massive Victorian exterior and castellated towers dominating the horizon like a medieval fortress. Constructed in 1847 of stone from local quarries, its purpose was to both punish and to intimidate. Ninety-three people have been hanged at HMP Leeds, the last in 1961; the gallows were eventually dismantled in 1965. Today, the prison is no less intimidating. I stand in the reception area and look at the noticeboard. On the wall there is a picture of the Race Relations Management Team. Three white faces, including the governor of the prison. 'HMP Leeds is committed to the elimination of harassment and discrimination in all areas of work.' Times appear to have changed. 'No single racial group will be allowed to dominate any activity to the unfair exclusion of others.' I enter the prison itself. The chapel is now the multi-faith centre. On all four wings I see different races, and out in the exercise yard the faces are an advert for multi-racial Britain. The warder smiles at me. 'Today we cater for all different religious foods and practices, except Jewish. Roman Catholic and Muslim are the main ones.' I look again at the prisoners sprawled on the ground trying to soak up the weak rays of the sun. 'Back then they had to walk in circles for an hour. But it's different now.' The warder thinks for a moment. 'Easier for them, I suppose.'

I saw Oluwale on a number of occasions and I note, by looking at the hospital case papers, that when I saw him on 25 October, 1965, he complained to me about the police and I asked him what he was in prison for and he said, 'Fighting with the police.' After further questioning I deduced that he had been fighting with the police in Albion Street on 13 October, 1965, he said, 'A policeman removed his hat and grasped his [sic] throat.' He alleged that this had occurred because he had been sleeping in an empty house in Albion Street and was about to enter the house at 7:30 p.m. when two policemen accosted him and he added, 'They took me to Leeds Town Hall.' My assessment of Oluwale's intelligence is that he was a 'dullard'.

Denis Power, Senior Medical Officer at HMP Leeds 1962–7

The last time I saw David was a few months before he died. It was dark and wintertime, and my husband and I were coming back from some university dance. David was by the public lavatories at Hyde Park Corner. There were shrubs and bushes there, and a bench. It was the sort of place that was used for 'cottaging'. Well, David was sitting on the bench, and my husband went over to the chip shop and got him a bag of chips, which he took. David said that he didn't want to go home with us. He insisted that he had somewhere to go, and so we left him sitting by himself on the bench. At the dances that David used to come to after he first arrived, he never paired off or chatted up women. He was very solitary. But, as I said, he was a marvellous dancer. And he liked church singing. You know, he used to look in the papers to see if any West Indians had died so that he could go to the funeral, but it had to be in a church that would accept black people. The Anglicans discriminated against the blacks, but the Methodists were cooler. David wasn't a practising Christian, but he was educated by Christian missionaries, that much I do know.

As far as I remember he just called at the hostel and asked for accommodation. [Between 17 April and 4 July, 1968] I do not think he was sent there by any social-work organisation. . He did not mix with the other men in the hostel and he had no friends that I knew of. As far as I can remember he left the hostel of his own accord. About May, 1969, nearly a year later, the police. . asked me to identify a body that they had found in the River Aire. I was unable to make a positive identification as the face was badly distorted. As far as I know, Oluwale never attacked anybody in the hostel and certainly never attacked my wife. He did ask my wife to live with him in a room away from the hostel, but she told him not to be stupid and ignored his remark. I never spoke to Oluwale about the suggestion he made to my wife. The type of man we usually get in the hostels are capable of making such suggestions and my wife and I have learned to ignore them.

Raymond Bradbury, officer in charge of Church Army Hostel, 53 The Calls, Leeds

I heard the word on the street that David had drowned. I knew that he had been systematically badly treated by the police over a number of years, but I didn't put two and two together even though I was still running the Chapeltown Commonwealth Citizens Committee. Then, over a year after we lost David, Austin Haywood, who was the new chief constable, took me into his office and said that two of his officers were going to be charged and tried for manslaughter. I nearly fell over, but in my heart I knew that it made some kind of sense. It was almost unbelievable, and it produced a rising tide of anger, not just in me, but in everyone. We all felt that we should have done more, for we did know some things. However, everybody also felt that David had a right to live his life as he pleased, and that he should be able to exercise the dignity of deciding if he needed our help or not. But there was a feeling of responsibility. After all, I'd made many, many complaints against the police. In fact, over 400, but there was no getting away from the fact that it was a nightmare in this city for young black men. The police were out of control. It wasn't just a hard-core minority of people in Leeds who didn't want foreigners, it was also the police. With David's death it became obvious that if things didn't change in Leeds then David was simply going to be the first of many dead black men.

To me, David was a fighter for freedom. He was not another victim. You see, his life and death affected a whole generation. His life led to the full emergence of the Black Power movement in this city, and to black and white people finally saying 'enough'. David made it possible for a demonstration to be a thousand people, not just two or three. His death was a warning to all society, including white society. I wanted all the white institutions to wake up and realise that there was danger around them. That there was no such thing as a racist joke. If it's racist then it's not a joke. In the wake of David's death the police invited citizens in to help them with the training of the police in this sensitive area. And I became one of the teachers.

He would always hide in doorways so he was easy to find. I mean, as a young policeman, I knew little back alleyways and ginnels that he could have gone up. But he didn't do that. He just went in the doorways, which left him vulnerable. But I don't remember exactly which ones. They were down Vicar Lane as well as The Headrow. Inspector Ellerker and Sergeant Kitching had a fascination for David. He would always run away from them, and yet he would sleep in those doorways on their patch. Why? God knows. Sometimes he would go away for a while and things would calm down. We would hope, well I would hope, that he wouldn't come back. But then he would come back. Ellerker and Kitching always wanted to find him, but if I saw David I did not report that I'd seen him. This is the only good thing that I did. So I think that in some ways by always coming back he was actually just being courageous and not letting them have what they wanted. Because he never used to plead with them. He would run away but he never pleaded with them. He actually remained a problem for them. It was as if he was pushing them, you know. As if he wasn't going to let them have the satisfaction. I was inside the van when they did have a go at him. And it was terrible, it was just unbelievable. Absolutely dreadful. I was driving the van. They would look for him, and they would find him. Then they would go through the motions of arresting him. And then, when he was inside the van, they would beat him, but he kept his dignity. He never asked them to stop or pleaded with them, or anything. It was as if they were machines, and it was just a job of work. It was like that, and they would beat him. There was one occasion when it was like this, and then there were other occasions when I saw them chasing him, but I actually didn't see the business. Once they beat him with a rubber torch and the torch all fell apart. All the glass — merciless, merciless. I remember when they were hitting him they were very careful not to hit his face, because then there would be no evidence when they went into the court. They had ways of doing stuff, and the ethos of rank was very, very strong. Some of the police officers at that time had come in from the army, and they were what was known as old school. They were people who had been sergeants or privates or whatever. I can't say for definite, but I believe that Kenneth Kitching had been somebody who had come in that way. He was an older man. My experience was that a young PC could not approach a senior officer for any reason. He would only take orders, and that was the job — to take orders and not ask questions.

Personally, I didn't know what Oluwale did. I was a West Indian community leader then, as I am now, but I couldn't say that I knew him that well. However, it did create a very bad feeling in the West Indian community when we found out that he had been killed. You see, the David Oluwale that I remember was a man who used to keep himself to himself, but he was present at most of the functions that we used to have. Social dances and so on at the Astoria Ballroom. Oluwale liked dancing and he used to go to the African Hi Life dances. The music and the singing preserved us, and I think that without it we'd have been wiped out. At that time West Indians had pride in their dress and wore three-piece pinstripe suits, and Oluwale was the same. He liked to dress. But later on I remember seeing him just standing by the side of the road crying. It was very painful when we heard how he was hunted like a fox by the police. Apart from the colour angle, you just couldn't believe what you were hearing in a British courtroom. That kind of treatment of a human being was unacceptable, and the truth was it just made things go worse with the police. We used to tell them right out, if they wanted another Oluwale then they were not going to get one from us. We now knew exactly what we were dealing with when it came to the British policeman.

We heard about it at the station, obviously. And I remember at the time that when the other police officers talked about it they didn't talk about it as a tragedy. It was talked about as 'the balloon's gone up'. You know, it's out now. It was that kind of conversation. It wasn't talked about from the point of view of David Oluwale's position at all. It was just, you know, 'Oh well, we're in for trouble now' sort of thing. I'd go home. My father and mother must have seen the information about the trial on the television. In fact, I was on the television. I was there and they included remarks that Ellerker had made about me on the tele vision to try and discredit me as a witness. My mother and father would not discuss this matter with me. My father didn't want to know. He would hear nothing said against the police force. So I got no support there. My relationship with my father went back downhill, ice-cold again. I was very confused about the situation. I was feeling isolated, and I was also thinking about David's isolation. I found myself thinking a lot about what had happened to him. And since then I've had these flashbacks about that. The worst feeling of all is that the tragedy was predictable, and no one, including myself, prevented it. Obviously, I left the police force. When I went to the court I met some other officers who had left the force as well, and who'd been giving evidence. So I realised that I wasn't alone. I had a feeling of guilt then and I've got it now. We shouldn't have let it happen. I'd even thought about getting David in my car and driving him away myself. You know, doing something like that, and trying to get him away from it. But I had my own trouble with Ellerker and it was all terrible. I didn't speak to anyone about it, but I hoped that it would be a conviction for manslaughter. I didn't know what had happened on the night David died but I thought that there must have been other police officers around at the time. There wouldn't have been just the two of them, so I wondered about that. And I thought that the evidence given by witnesses to assaults on David must have been powerful, and that my own evidence must have been powerful. So I thought that manslaughter was the best we could get.

The trial concerning the death of David Oluwale took place in November 1971. It opened on 11 November and lasted thirteen days, concluding on 24 November. The judge was Mr Justice Hinchcliffe (seventy-one). Prosecuting for the Crown was Mr John Cobb (forty-eight) and the barristers for the two defendants were Mr Gilbert Gray (forty-three) representing former Inspector Ellerker, and Mr Basil Widoger (fifty) representing Sergeant Kitching. The jurors included two women and one coloured man. The first defendant, Sergeant Kenneth Mark Kitching (forty-nine) of Blakeney Grove, Hunslet, was born in 1922. Sergeant Kitching had joined the police force in August 1950. He was married, but without children. He was described as an 'old time' sergeant who was proud of the fact that he chose to wear a helmet as opposed to a peaked cap. He stuck to a regular routine, which usually involved rising at lunchtime, having a few pints of beer in a 'police' pub, returning home for a meal and some sleep before reporting to Millgarth Station for the night shift. He was known to be Ellerker's right-hand man and confidant. His co-defendant was former Inspector Geoffrey Ellerker (thirty-eight) of Church Lane, Horsforth. Born in 1933, former Inspector Ellerker had joined the police force in December 1956. He was married with two children, a boy and a girl. He was made a sergeant in 1964, but in April 1968 he was promoted to uniformed inspector and put in charge of the night shift at Millgarth Station, overseeing the south section of the city centre. Between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. he was the highest-ranking officer on duty, but he harboured a well-known ambition to be a non-uniform inspector and was somewhat frustrated in his career. Both men were, at the time of the alleged crime, serving in the A Division of the Leeds City Police Force. Both men were charged with the manslaughter of David Oluwale. At the time that the charges were brought in April 1971, Geoffrey Ellerker was in Lincoln jail. In December 1969 a seventytwo-year-old lady was knocked down and killed by a car that was driven by a superintendent of police. Ellerker attempted to cover up for his fellow officer, claiming that he could smell alcohol on the breath of the victim. It later transpired that the victim was teetotal. Ellerker was found guilty of misconduct as an officer of justice and he received a nine-month prison term. Already discredited as a former police officer, the David Oluwale case would thrust Ellerker, together with the middle-aged sergeant, back into the limelight for it was claimed that the pair of them had 'hounded and tormented' Oluwale before he drowned in April 1969. They enjoyed, what they called, 'tickling' the Nigerian vagrant with their boots, and on one occasion it was alleged that Oluwale was actually lifted off the ground, within the confines of Millgarth Station, when Ellerker kicked him hard between the legs. It was claimed that such incidents were habitual pastimes for the two officers who made it their business to terrorise a defenceless man. The case had come to light because a little over a year after the death of David Oluwale in April 1969, an eighteen-year-old police cadet, Gareth Galvin, overheard rumours of what had really happened to the Nigerian vagrant. He informed his sergeant at the cadet training school, who in turn passed on young Gareth Galvin's concerns to his own superiors. Eventually police headquarters at Scotland Yard in London became involved and the 'Oluwale Squad' was set up on the third floor of Leeds' Westgate Police Station. The squad was established with great secrecy, and under very tight security, with the investigation being led by Detective Chief Superintendent James Fryer and Detective Chief Inspector Len Shakeshaft, both of Leeds Criminal Investigation Department. They set about interviewing every policeman and woman, and every traffic warden in Leeds; in the end they interviewed 1,170 men and women, including Kitching and Ellerker. During interrogation, Kitching denied giving anything other than the odd slap to David Oluwale, but he went on and said, 'I can only describe him [Oluwale] as a wild animal, not a human being.' As the concerns of the 'Oluwale Squad' deepened a new post-mortem was ordered. A Home Office pathologist travelled from London to Leeds, and it was shortly after he had completed his work that Sergeant Kitching and former Inspector Ellerker were charged with manslaughter.

At the trial the defendants' lawyers sought to 'characterise' David Oluwale. They presented him to the jury as a man born in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1930 as a member of the Yoruba tribe. He was, according to them, possibly a fisherman. He had stowed away to England in 1949 and arrived as an illegal teenage immigrant in Hull. He was sentenced to twenty-eight days in jail for this crime, and he began his sentence at Armley jail on 3 September, 1949. As far as the defence was concerned, Oluwale was 'not quite educationally subnormal', but he was certainly not 'bright'. Variously known to the police as 'Ollie', 'Ali', 'Uggi', or 'Lone Duckie', he was a loner with not many friends. His mental health problems allegedly began in 1953, and he entered High Royds Hospital in Menston where he was a patient for the next eight years. The defence called Dr Richard Corty, who was the consulting psychiatrist at High Royds. The doctor stated that, 'at times [Oluwale was] completely withdrawn and inaccessible and on other occasions aggressive, noisy, violent, and disturbed. . He was hallucinating — he saw animals, lions with fish's heads and said these animals were going to kill and eat him. . He bit people, spat, but his condition gradually improved so that he was no longer giggling and talking to himself in a confused or childish manner. Originally he would defecate and urinate in the ward. He had two jobs but lost them through fighting and stealing.' The defence then called a staff nurse, a Mr Eric Dent, who described Oluwale as 'built like a miniature Mr Universe and [he] could take more punishment than Cassius Clay'. Mr Dent went on to assert that Oluwale was 'like a savage animal'.

The defence claimed that during his twenty years in England, Oluwale had been imprisoned on numerous occasions for assault on police, disorderly conduct, and 'walking abroad'. He had often been picked up under Section 4 of the Vagrancy Act, 1824, which empowered the police with the right to stop anyone they suspected of committing an offence. According to the police, Oluwale had often been violent to those who had crossed his path, and he habitually used newspapers for sheets and a duffel bag for a pillow. He was no more than a 'dosser' who didn't work, and he was not acceptable as an inmate of a hostel. All Ellerker and Kitching wanted was a 'clean city' and, with this in mind, Oluwale was a problem. The defence argued that this was a man who drew social security payments so that he might simply spend them on alcohol. According to former Inspector Ellerker, 'Oluwale was a small, chunky man, filthy in his personal habits. He was not the sort of man one wanted to grapple with too long or too close. . His language was dirty, and he was fluent in the use of four-letter words. . when Oluwale became excited he would set up a highpitched screaming noise — although nothing was happening to him. He would scream and shout before being spoken to.' Chief Superintendent Leonard Barker appeared for the defence and reminded the court that Sergeant Kitching had recently been presented with a Humane Society Award for rescuing a man who had fallen into the River Aire.

The prosecution presented a somewhat different version of events. They spoke of the continued harassment that Oluwale had been subjected to since arriving in England as a teenager, and how this harassment became more systematic and malicious between August 1968 and his death in April 1969. During this eight-month period David Oluwale was relentlessly hounded by Sergeant Kitching and former Inspector Ellerker. On 27 September, 1968, David was jailed for six months for alleged assault on the police and Sergeant Kitching told a colleague, Police Constable Yeager, that he could not wait for Oluwale to come out because 'there wasn't another one like him'. David was released from prison on 10 April, 1969 and eight days later, on the morning of 18 April, he drowned in the River Aire. The court was told that Sergeant Kitching and former Inspector Ellerker had made it clear that they did not want David Oluwale within the boundaries of the city of Leeds. Any sighting of David Oluwale was to be reported directly to them, and an officer was once reproved by them for dealing with Oluwale directly.

It became well known at Millgarth Station that if ever Oluwale was sighted within the town a message had to passed through for them [Kitching and Ellerker] to go out and deal with him. They were off in quick pursuit as soon as the message was received.

John Cobb, Crown Prosecutor

The prosecution called Police Constable Cyril Batty who testified that in May 1968 he had witnessed Sergeant Kitching urinating on David Oluwale in Lands Lane in the centre of Leeds. Former Inspector Ellerker was holding a torch, but at the time Police Constable Batty chose to say nothing in order that he might protect his career.

Kitching and Ellerker were pushing Oluwale like a plaything, backwards and forwards, with the flat of their hands. Oluwale was clasping his duffel bag, containing all his worldly possessions.

John Cobb, Crown Prosecutor

They told him [Oluwale] to get up. He was on his hands and knees and the sergeant and the inspector kicked them away, causing him to fall. The inspector started to beat him about the head and shoulders with his duffel bag.

PC Seager

On another occasion, on 7 August, 1968, the two defendants radioed a call to Police Constable Keith Seager. Upon arrival, Seager was instructed by Sergeant Kitching and former Inspector Ellerker to drive them, plus David Oluwale, to Bramhope village on the outskirts of Leeds. Once there Police Constable Seager was instructed to stop outside of the Fox and Hounds public house and David Oluwale was ordered to get out and knock on the door of the pub and ask for a cup of tea. It was four o'clock in the morning. Police Constable Seager drove his fellow officers back to Leeds city centre and left David Oluwale in Bramhope.

The entry [in my notebook] which Ellerker told me to make was not true. I told him I did not like the idea.

PC Seager

The prosecution asserted that on other occasions David Oluwale had been driven by the defendants to Middleton Woods in South Leeds and left there in the middle of the night. Police Constable Phillip Ratcliffe and former Police Constable Hazel Dalby both saw the defendants kick Oluwale so hard in the groin that he was lifted off the floor. They saw David Oluwale crying silent tears of pain and emitting no noise.

I have never seen a man crying so much and never utter a sound.

PC Phillip Ratcliffe

Police Constable Kenneth Higgins testified that the defendants made David Oluwale bump his head hard against the floor. He heard Sergeant Kitching claim that both he and former Inspector Ellerker made David Oluwale bow down before them, and he heard Sergeant Kitching say, on reading the report of Oluwale's death, that 'it looks as though we shall have to find a new playmate now'. When Oluwale's body was found, PC Seager remembered Sergeant Kitching reading a teleprinter message about the death. 'He looked at me and said: "I wonder how he got in there." It was in a jovial sense; he was smiling.' Police Constable Frank Atkinson fainted after giving evidence that he had seen Oluwale beaten up at the police station.

I have made a search of prison records in respect of a man named David Oluwale or Oluwole or Uluwale or Oluwuala or Uluwle.

Marjorie Whitaker, Executive Officer in the Discipline Office at HMP Leeds

1. Admitted 2.9.49 Sentence Stowaway — 28 days imprisonment. Discharged 30.9.49

2. Admitted 27.4.53 Sentence 1. Assault Police — 2 months imprisonment. Sentence 2. Wilful Damage — 1 month imprisonment concurrent. Sentence 3. Disorderly conduct — 28 days concurrent. Discharged 6.6.53 to St James' Hospital.

3. Admitted 22.9.62 as Oluwole. Malicious Wounding — 6 months imprisonment. Transferred to Hull 25.10.62. Released 2.2.63

4. Admitted 13.4.64 Disorderly Conduct — 28 days. Discharged 6.5.64 (fine paid)

5. Admitted 16.10.64 Drunk and Disorderly — 14 days. Plus 28 days on Lodged Warrant for D&D. Discharged 16.11.64

6. Admitted 13.10.65 Hospital Order, transferred to Menston 11.11.65

7. Admitted 29.8.67 as Olowuala. Wandering Abroad. Discharged 23.9.67

8. Admitted 27.10.67 Wandering Abroad. Discharged 1.12.67

9. Admitted 26.12.67 1. Wandering Abroad. 2. Indecent Exposure — 3 months imprisonment. Transferred to Preston Prison 3.1.68. Released 29.3.68

10. Admitted 4.9.68 Assaulting a Police Officer. Transferred to Preston Prison, 10.1.69

11. Admitted 13.1.69 Disorderly Conduct. Discharged 23.1.69

12. Admitted 27.1.69 Disorderly Conduct. Discharged 5.2.69

13. Admitted 24.2.69 Disorderly Conduct. Discharged 8.3.69

14. Admitted 12.3.69 Trespass Railway. Disorderly Conduct. Discharged 10.4.69

On 10 April, 1969 I was on early reception duty. One of my duties would have been to restore personal clothing, property and money to prisoners being discharged. . One of the prisoners discharged on 10 April, 1969 was a coloured man named David Oluwale. I can say that he was handed the following items of property and clothing: one blue shirt, one plastic cup, two reels of cotton, one hymn book, one form U/140, one leather purse, one form EC4, one leather wallet, one form P45, two photos, one out-of-date bank book, one rosary and one ballpoint pen. All these items were in a plastic bag. I can verify when released, Oluwale was wearing the following clothing: one brown check cap, a green check single-breasted overcoat, a grey striped check waistcoat, a green fancy necktie, pair of brown suede rubber-soled shoes, black fancy socks, green check trousers, elastic braces and a plastic belt. . Most of his clothing was in poor condition.

William Edward Swapp, Prison Officer, HMP Leeds Records state that on 10 April, 1969 I interviewed David Oluwale. . and he was later paid £4 cash.

Phillip Davies, Executive Officer at DHSS

Date of discharge: 10.4.69.

Private cash: £1. 17. 1

Discharge grant: –

Offence: Trespassing, disorderly conduct, times two.

Sentence: 30 days.

Last discharge: Leeds 8.3.69

Address: Living rough.

Any relevant reports (Probation, Children's Officer); any domestic problems: states nil.

Notes and comments of Prison Welfare Officer, 13.3.69

Several prison sentences. Released 8 March. Had not worked for some time. No job on release. Single, NSA. Nowhere to go on release. Will probably go to a hostel or some furnished accommodation. Rapidly becoming a social problem (so reports).

Pre-release interview.

This man has been released after a sentence of 30 days. Latterly he had been coming to prison every month or so. It is increasingly obvious that he is completely unable to function on the outside.

Mr Hoyle was present during the interview and it was quite impossible to get through to him. He seemed schizoid to me, one wonders whether or not he was capable of knowing what the discussion was all about. It is certain, however, that he had nowhere to live and no job to go to.

It is doubtful if he is capable of making a sustained effort at any job. He was told that if he reported to Mr Hoyle on discharge he would be given every assistance possible.

Plan: Will go to Leeds to look for lodgings. Will sign on at Ministry of Labour. May contact probation and/see officer.

Clothes: –

(Signed) W. H. Halla, Prison Welfare Officer

The Leeds Probation Office.

The Leeds Probation Service, 10.4.69.

At the Office.

Discharged from Leeds Prison today.

He was not excitable, and it was almost impossible to understand him. He said that he had £1. 19. which was his own money and that he would have no difficulty in finding an address if he gets some more. Gave him a letter to the MOSS at St Paul Street and told him to go straight there. Phoned the manager, Mr Denison, and explained the situation, and he said they would do what they could to help him so that he will have some money to put down for lodgings. Letter written by a senior probation officer to Mr W. Hoyle at the Department of Health and Social Security, 10 April, 1969.

Dear Sir,

Re David Oluwale. This man was discharged from Leeds prison this morning. I understand that he has £1. 19. He had lived in lodgings in Leeds previously and said that he would have no difficulty in finding lodgings again if he has the money.

He is a somewhat difficult man to place in lodgings and I see no alternative but allowing him to find his own.

I should be obliged, therefore, if you will take an application from him for assistance so that he can find lodgings.

As I said, I was a young police officer, but I remember. He seemed to be very small. I saw him when he was sleeping and I didn't wake him up. I saw him when he was walking about, and I saw him when he was dealing with Ellerker and Kitching. I did not see someone who was weak and all sort of jellyish. I saw somebody who was doing his business. He was going about his routine, despite the harassment, and he would still choose to go into that same Bridal House. He would still be there. And so, what I saw was somebody with some sort of courage. But, I mean, weird. I did sense that he'd got mental health problems. Because the other dossers generally were drinkers, and you know, they'd be drunk, very drunk sometimes, but not David. I sensed that his issues were different from that. I guessed that he'd been in some sort of psychiatric care. Yeah I definitely guessed that, and that's one of the things that makes it so poignant. It was the isolation, the fact that he didn't seem to be a user of any sort, and that generally speaking he was just a mild, quiet person. And I just thought, why does this have to be happening to him? The injustice, you know, that it had to be him. Somebody who didn't have anybody to help him. But I saw that the man had some dignity. I think he was really pissed off. That's what I think. He was absolutely pissed off. That's what I believe, but that's only a feeling. I think he was really, really pissed off with what had gone on.

At 3 a.m. on the morning of 18 April, former Inspector Ellerker and Sergeant Kitching found David in the doorway to John Peters' furniture shop on Lands Lane in the centre of Leeds. They 'moved him on'. ('I heard the sound of blows being struck. I saw Oluwale run out of the entrance [of the shop] covering his head with his arms. . I have not seen Oluwale since that time.' PC Seager) A little over an hour later the two policemen discovered David elsewhere in the city and they chased him. ('We dragged him to his feet and I booted his backside. I did not kick him too hard, just enough to wake him up. He screamed but then he always screamed when I dealt with him.' Sergeant Kitching) David ran down Call Lane and in the direction of Warehouse Hill. David Oluwale was never again seen alive. He entered the River Aire at the foot of Warehouse Hill, just by Leeds Bridge. On 4 May, 1969, Leeds police frogman Police Constable Ian Haste recovered David Oluwale's body from the River Aire some three miles east of the city centre at a point near Knostrop Sewage Works.

I received a telephone call from the Information Room, to the effect that there was a body in the River Aire at Knostrop and that I was required to go there and recover the body. . the body appeared to be lodged on some obstruction. I put my frogman equipment on and swam to the body. I saw that it was the body of a man, who appeared to be coloured. . I pulled the body from the obstruction by its feet and pushed it downstream. . I returned along the bank. . PC Sedman turned the body over and I recognised it as a coloured man called David Oluwale who I knew from my police service in the city centre. . a vagrant who used to doss down in John Peters' doorway in the city centre. I used to move him on when I worked from Millgarth Street but I have never arrested him for anything. He was just another of the city characters. I can never remember him causing me any sort of trouble.

PC Ian Haste

Police Constable Francis Sedman helped to recover the body from the river. He noticed a large lump on David's forehead, bleeding from an eye, a bruise on the right upper arm, and the fact that David's lips were cut. Inspector Leonard Bradley was also at the scene, where he searched Oluwale's pockets, providing the following list of items:

National Health Medical Card

2 Photos

Income Tax Form (P₄₅)

2 After Care forms

2 Leeds City Magistrate Receipts

6 Forms 103

Irish Information Centres in England card

A Blue bead necklace with a crucifix on

A felt pen

2 ballpoint pens

A toothbrush

Comb

Post Office savings book

I accepted the body into the mortuary and cut the clothing from it because it was rotten. . I put the number '451' on the legs and the name 'Oluwale' on the body, and put it in the refrigeration unit. . Later, some uniformed officers came to the mortuary and identified the body to me as Oluwale. There was no conversation other than someone saying, 'It's Oluwale.'

Reginald Fricker, mortuary attendant at St James' Hospital

Dr David John Gee, Senior Lecturer in Forensic Medicine at Leeds University, examined David Oluwale's body on 5 May, 1969. He concluded death by drowning, and observed that David Oluwale had received a blow to the forehead before entering the water.

In the case of the deceased, Oluwale, diatoms were found in the lungs but not beyond them and therefore the tests do not provide conclusive proof that he met his death by drowning, but in the absence of any gross injuries or natural disease I formed the opinion the death was due to drowning. . The bruise on the forehead of Oluwale was purple and swollen. The purple colour indicates that the bruise was sustained within about one or two days before death or a similar period after death. The fact that the bruise was swollen indicates in my view that it is most likely that it occurred during life though it is possible but less likely for such a bruise to be caused after death in a body immersed in water. . I did not see a large bruise on Oluwale's upper right arm. . Oluwale's lips were swollen and the skin in parts of the face were separating due to putrefactive change. These putrefactive changes could give the inexperienced eye the appearance of injuries such as cuts and bruises especially when in the body of a coloured person such as Oluwale. .

Dr David John Gee

David Oluwale was buried in a pauper's grave at Killingbeck Cemetery — plot B5850A — courtesy of Leeds Corporation's Welfare Department. He was buried with nine strangers.

*

Before the last day of the trial, Justice Hinchcliffe ordered the manslaughter charge to be dismissed. He concluded that there were no witnesses to the charge and therefore no evidence. On 24 November, 1971 the jury returned a verdict of guilty of three charges of assault against Sergeant Kitching, who received a twenty-seven-month sentence, and a verdict of guilty of assault relating to four charges against former Inspector Ellerker, who received a three-year sentence. Justice Hinchcliffe's summing-up contained the following plea: 'Policemen are members of a fine and splendid profession, and without them there could be anarchy and chaos. But you must not allow the fact that the two accused were police officers to influence you one iota. You do get black sheep in every flock.'

The way I see it, the legacy of Oluwale in this city is that a man had to lose his life to get people to sit up and notice what was happening. It's a high price to pay, especially when things are worse now than they were then for my West Indian community. Today there is still a high percentage of black people in prisons and mental homes. The one with the briefcase is a smokescreen. And people still care if they have to sit next to you on the bus, and we can't walk some streets without feeling like a novelty, and the concept of us is still low. Mr Oluwale paid a high price, but sometimes when I drive down Chapeltown Road and see the lack of discipline, and children having children, and what we've allowed ourselves to become, then I feel bitter. Parents have lost control of their kids and England has taken them. David Oluwale paid a high price to get people's attention, but for what?

27 Church Lane, Horsforth, Leeds 18. By a church. A small estate of respectable semi-detached and detached brick homes. Built in the sixties for the upwardly mobile middle classes. Safe. Neat. Shrubbery. Trees. The estate oozes civic pride. I watch an old man edge slowly out of a door on his Zimmer frame. Another old man, a neighbour (with his shirt off), puts the hose over his plants and trees. They've all worked and lived together. Now they are retired together. Closed community. Protecting each other. There is a blue saloon car parked outside number 27. Neat white net curtains in the windows. The house overlooks the church. Quiet peaceful house. Net-curtained respectability. A TV aerial on the roof. Two teenage schoolboys in white shirts and long black trousers, ties flying in the breeze, backpacks hanging off one shoulder, lollop by with cans of Coke in their fists. There is a burglar alarm to the side of the house number. It is yellow. From the back of the house there is a spectacular view of the Aire Valley. A panoramic view over the city of Leeds. Enjoy your retirement, former Inspector Ellerker. Black sheep.

Middleton Woods. South Leeds. Beyond Hunslet and Beeston. Close to Belle Isle. David was dropped in wilderness and found himself surrounded by dark, inhospitable nature. The nearest one might approach to a jungle of untamed land on the southern edge of Leeds. Go back to nature, black boy from Lagos. Go back to the jungle. Come, let me take you there. And today, thirty-five years later, one can see houses decorated with Union Jacks on the fringes of these same dark woods. And a church which flies the cross of St George. Smashed cars litter the streets. Unmarried teenage mothers push babies in second-hand prams around the perimeter of the dark woods. Houses sprout satellite dishes of various sizes. When I walk down the street, parka- and trainer-clad youths stare hard at me. They bare teeth that are a gated yellowish entryway into their spotted faces. Ten o'clock in the morning and already these youngsters are waiting for the pub to open. They have nothing else to do with their time except loiter around the boarded-up off-licence. In the daytime this is a zone of deprivation and depression. Every other house displays a 'For Sale' sign. At night, to be dumped and abandoned in the heart of the woods. Imagine it. No 'For Sale' signs. No humans. No light. In the heart of the woods. A terrifying hell, to be lost in a wood whose expanse is the size of a small town. Nothing in Middleton Woods is really tamed or sculpted. There is no human hand. Sergeant Kitching and former Inspector Ellerker taking the nigger back to nature, depositing him in fascist South Leeds. Sometimes they would take him deep into the heart of Middleton Woods and abandon him. Sometimes.

The Fox and Hounds is a stone building; the type of building that is imitated by those who insist on 'stonecladding' their otherwise ordinary homes. The inscription '1728' by the door suggests the pub's vintage. The village of Bramhope is a well-to-do suburb of Leeds, some ten miles beyond the city centre. Stone detached houses with neatly trimmed lawns. Closed minds. The pub itself is in the village square at the top of a short steep hill. The monitor for the car park CCTV is in the bar so that the barman can stand behind the bar and, as he pulls his pints, he can watch what is happening outside. Clearly there has been a recent problem with hooligans. In the bar itself there are neatly framed pictures of hounds and horses which suggest history and tradition. This is England. Hand pumps. Slate floor. Old clocks. Policemen might drink in a pub like this on their day off. Older policemen might be lucky enough to retire to a village like Bramhope and occasionally come to this pub for Sunday lunch. I sit and look around. I am sure that Sergeant Kitching and former Inspector Ellerker had a quiet contempt for this village and its people. Its 'well-to-do' people. By the back door there is a low stone wall. On the wall there is a sign which reads 'For Patrons Only'. It refers to the car park, but it could be the village motto. Smug village, with its small village square, and its proud little Village Bakery. Four o'clock in the morning. Go on, Sambo. Knock on the door and ask for a cup of tea. They've never seen anything like you. They'll be furious. They'll abuse you. And then you'll have the problem of trying to get back to Leeds city centre where we don't want you, understand? David had to walk back through the village. Then out into the open countryside. Miles to walk before the houses began to once more congregate by the side of the road. They laughed at David. 'Go on, nigger. Knock.' In the Fox and Hounds everybody is asleep. Four o'clock in the morning. Where are the hounds? The dogs on two legs. The animals in blue trousers. A lonely fox harming nobody.

Underneath the arches. Huge Dickensian arches beneath Leeds City Station. The river rushes right through the arches with a loud cascading roar. On stepping out again into the bright light one can hear the announcements of the train station. Once upon a time this was a vast filthy cavern full of homeless people. It's different now, underneath the arches. They have been 'redeveloped' (and renamed — Granary Wharf) into a pleasant new shopping complex, featuring Afrodisia — an Afro-Caribbean and French cuisine restaurant — and the Casablanca bazaar, which sells pots, bowls and baskets, and a stripped-pine furniture shop. All huddled underneath the arches, but the truth is this place cannot be reclaimed. It remains dark and forbidding. It resists redevelopment, and whispered stories linger in this dank air. Today, pedestrians use the arches of Granary Wharf as a short cut through to the city centre. They hardly ever break step for the place still reeks of abandoned lives and quiet desperation. They hurry through these arches, which once rejected David. 'He's not here and we don't want that type around here.'

By the Knostrop Sewage Works. Here the River Aire and the Aire-Calder Navigation Canal move side by side. The river rushes with a strong current, and flows away from the city centre. The canal lazily swirls and eddies. I watch swans floating on the canal. They have no desire to pursue a journey and travel through to Hull. Around nine o'clock in the morning the sun suddenly breaks through the clouds and casts a blinding light into my face. Still rising in the east. Don't look too closely. Don't look. I walk the narrow path between the river, with its fast-flowing water, and the languorous canal. The river bore you out of the heart of the city that you made your own. It carried you past the tall brick mills that stared in your direction; it carried you away from Leeds Parish Church and out towards the sewage works. The canal continues to lap quietly. A peaceful place where one can hear both the odd cry of a bird and the low hum of traffic somewhere in the distance. And then church bells begin to peal. On the hour. And then the stripe of sunlight on the water widens as the clouds part further. The glare is too much to bear, but the swans don't mind. They simply upend themselves and fish. And then one swan tries to rise in a gawky pantomime of flight that betrays the gracefulness of their residence on the water. These canals attract weeds. The shoreline is choked with effluence; empty pop bottles and abandoned packets of crisps. The washed-up scum of bad eating and living. Rubbish. Effluvium of an ignorant city. Back then, all those years ago, the hot machinery of Leeds stamped out brand-spanking-new goods for colonial use and dumped the waste into this water. Small-gauge trains to transport sugar cane in the Caribbean. Larger engines to India. Waste into the water. Back then, during the final spasm of empire. Back then, when it was still considered acceptable to furiously burn both industrial fuel and human dreams. White dreams and black dreams. Flat caps and woolly hair. Pull of a cig. Knock back a pint. Tuck the paper under your arm. Tramp your way to the bookies. Go home to the missus. Have your tea. What's the divvy? Go down the pub. Go on, go down the pub, dreamer. No colour bar in here, mate. I have come to your country to work. Go down the pub, mister. Go on, go down the pub. The river flows quickly. Down the river towards the sewage works. Rush away from your city, David. Over the tumbling weir and down into the tranquil part of the River Aire where you will eventually become snarled up in the undergrowth. Rest with the water. Spent. Knostrop Sewage Works on the bank of the river. The end of your journey. Betrayed by the water. Carry him further beyond the sewage works. Don't stop now. Carry him beyond this place. More respect, please. More respect.

Question by Detective Superintendent Fryer; answer by Sergeant Kitching. 27.10.70

Q: Where have you kicked his [Oluwale's] behind? [In] What doorways have you kicked his behind?

A: Under Leeds Library in Commercial Street. In the dark doorway next to the Wine Lodge in Bond Street. Brills in Bond Street, Bakers in Trinity Street, in John Peters in Lands Lane. Bridal House in The Headrow, the Empire Arcade in Briggate, and Trinity Church in Boar Lane.

David, you wandered hungry and sick through the heart of a city that has now pedestrianised itself. Today there are no cars. It is all reserved for pedestrians, like you. But back then it was different. 3 a.m. 18 April, 1969. Clutching old newspapers that kept you warm on cold Yorkshire nights. You are sleeping in the doorway of John Peters Furniture Shop on Lands Lane. Sleeping peacefully in the heart of your 'clean city', and again these two men come and begin to abuse you. They shout and they kick you. They are forever moving you on from this place, and tonight they are very angry. Will they urinate upon you again? No, this time they merely shout and beat you, but you escape and run up Lands Lane towards the main street, The Headrow. Leeds' grand avenue. You turn right into The Headrow and run down the hill towards the doorway of the Bridal House where you often like to sleep. The only shop doorway on The Headrow that is illuminated, a place where everybody can see you. 397 The Headrow. Opposite the Odeon Cinema (which has now closed down). Today, in the window of the Bridal House, there are two white plastic models with silver decorations on their heads. The fully garbed female models flaunt themselves in the window, and female pedestrians stop and smile and look beyond your open-air bedroom. David, if only you had turned and gone up The Headrow and away from the city centre they might not have discovered you. But you came to where you knew they would find you at the Bridal House, and you squatted on your little stone step on The Headrow. The most open place in town. Fully illuminated. Just a short way up The Headrow from Millgarth Police Station, and on every policeman's route home from work. They pass by your bedroom without mirrors, and you are not hiding. Just sitting quietly in the heart of your city trying to stay warm and out of harm's way. Today the 'H' on the sign 'Bridal House' is hanging askew. But your house has not fallen down. Three doors away there is now the Housing Advice Centre for the homeless. Through the window I can see some black faces; miserable thin faces looking for shelter, people who are eager to be rescued. The window boasts a sign: 'We might just have what you're looking for.' Tracksuited, sleepless, desperate men. Asians, blacks, whites. Next door is Big Lil's Saloon Bar for broken drunks who are down on their luck, and beyond Big Lil's is William Hill the bookies. Sad new world. You did not need these places. You did not fail. You stayed in the doorway of your Bridal House. You eventually curled up next to happiness. You slept with the joyful brides, but once again they found you, and attempted to beat the life out of you, and so you ran and instead of going straight down The Headrow towards Millgarth Police Station you turned right into Vicar Lane and you ran for your life in the direction of Call Lane, but still they chased you, and you knew that this time they would kill you, and so you ran furiously, but they came closer, and closer. Twenty years in England had taken some wind out of your sail and you could hear them pounding the pavement behind you, and so you ran straight from Vicar Lane into the narrow entrance to Call Lane but they were getting closer and your legs could no longer carry you and then, as Call Lane turned to the right, you saw a narrow gap between the warehouses and you passed into this gap. It was five o'clock in the morning and you ran into the gap, my friend. You ran into Warehouse Hill. You ran towards the river, their hot, desperate, breath on the back of your neck. You ran.

*

Warehouse Hill is little more than a narrow gap between tall warehouses. A short cobbled hill of perhaps thirty yards that quickly dead-ends at the river. To the left is Warehouse Road and more warehouses. To the right is Leeds Bridge, where the city was born. In front of you is the River Aire. You did not jump, David. There is no evidence that you could swim. You did not jump. Today there is a safety barrier which is four feet high. A black metal barrier to prevent people from accidentally falling in. But not then, my friend. Back then you could fly down the thirty yards of Warehouse Hill, miss the cobbled turn to the left into Warehouse Road, and get very wet. But not you, David. You did not jump. Today, on the wall, there is a sign. It reads: 'Aire-Calder Navigation. Before the railway age, the making navigable of the River Aire importantly made Leeds an inland port connected directly to Hull. Cheap water carriage was vital for the successful export of the cloth marketed and finished in the town. Opened 1700.' Perhaps, David, the river tried to carry you away to the east and back in the direction of Hull. Twenty years in Leeds is a long time. Perhaps the strong current, down here at Leeds Bridge, was intent upon carrying you all the way back to Hull, and then back to the safety of Africa. Away from your home.

'Remember Oluwale'.

Graffiti on the wall by the Hayfield pub on the corner of Reginald Terrace and Harehills Avenue.

*

I was living in Sheffield when the case went to trial and I thought, 'Goodness, I know that guy.' It was David. I was outraged that the police would target him in the way the newspapers said they did, and behave with such unbridled brutality. Obviously they had a personal vendetta against him, but the David I knew was stubborn and was never a man to back down. I knew he would have refused to play second best to these people. David and I first met when we were about fifteen. We were part of the same group of about six to ten guys who ran together in Lagos. At Christmas and Easter we used to dress up in fancy dress; you know, a cowboy on a bicycle or something like that. We called ourselves the Odunlami Area Boys' Club and our dream was to escape to England, for the war had 'officially' educated us about that place. Olu had an uncle who ran a hotel called Ilojo Hotel in Tinubu Square, and sometimes we would meet there. Then eventually, one by one, we all sought out ships to stow away on and we made our way to England. I was lucky for my captain let me work my passage painting the ship, and when we docked in Birkenhead he handed me over to the immigration officer but he told the man that I'd worked my passage. Eventually I made my way to Yorkshire where I'd heard there were good jobs, and I got work at the Hatfield Steelworks. I couldn't believe it but Olu was also working there. David had the same no-nonsense attitude about him, and I was really very happy to see a face from Lagos, but I worried about him. He wouldn't let anything go. Nobody was going to do this or that to him, and his attitude was always getting him into trouble. If a foreman said something wrong to him, it would be 'fuck off ' and there really wasn't any point in talking to him. I tried. I would say, 'Hey, Olu,' but he was a stubborn, fighting man who simply found it impossible to back down and work the system. I worried about Olu. We all had strong heads as youngsters in Lagos, but maybe Olu's head was a little stronger. When I heard about the case I felt sick. I was shocked to hear that he had been reduced to sleeping in the street, but I knew that Olu would never back down and let these people humiliate him. Maybe that's it; he was a little stronger and more determined. But I didn't know that he was sleeping in the street. I just didn't know.

Killingbeck Cemetery is ludicrously overcrowded. The cemetery equivalent of a ghetto. Its location opposite St James' Hospital suggests that somebody is in possession of a strange sense of humour. The cemetery sits on York Road. The old Roman road to York. On this desolate patch of land trees have been planted as though they were a hurried afterthought. To the east of the cemetery houses are clustered tightly together behind flimsy wooden fencing. Children wander through the cemetery, using it as a short cut on their way home from school. The cemetery lacks gravitas. Abandoned flowers are dying on stone slabs. The children are oblivious of the significance of what lies all about them. They laugh. And then I see it. Your tombstone. It stands at the crest of a hill and lists slightly to the right. You are at the top of a hill, but 'David Oluwale' appears at the bottom of a list of ten names. And why a Roman Catholic cemetery for you? Was there something in the pocket of your wet coat that suggested this? Your blue bead necklace with a crucifix? Your grave is full. There are nine others. In death you have fulfilled a promise made at birth. Here at Killingbeck Cemetery there is no more land for graves. Soon there will be no more burials in this place. Everybody can rest peacefully. You have achieved a summit, David. Climbed to the top of a hill, and from here you can look down. You are still in Leeds. Forever in Leeds.