24 June — 58th anniversary of the day Brixton’s Coach and Horses pub was taken over by the country’s first black pub landlord, Oliver ‘George’ Berry.
Strictly speaking, it was reported in the South London Press on 25th, so 24th seems the most likely date — and perhaps this is more of a notable first than something odd, but it’s my account, so this is what we’re celebrating.
And a celebration it is, because — as you can imagine, and as this 1958 headline testifies — life had been challenging for black Britons wanting a beer before then.
It wasn’t universal, as Flamingo magazine reported in 1964…
…but it was common. The sadly now defunct Black London Histories website says Balham’s United Ex-Servicemen’s Club demonstrated how united its members were by making non-white members of its cricket team stand outside with their drinks after matches.
One response to this had been private drinking clubs tucked away in people’s houses, or “a shebeen in every other basement”, as journalist Colin McGlashan described it a decade on in the Sunday Times.
These, too, were subject to harassment. In 1964, Flamingo reported that people in these private clubs “dare not ‘twist and shout’ too loudly, for risk of finding themselves at variance with their neighbours and the police”
(Flamingo was a magazine for the “350,000 West Indians and many thousands of Africans and Asians now living here … as much a part of the British scene as the Welsh, the Scots and the Irish”…
…and had an interesting history — apparently funded by MI6 in an effort to combat potential communists in the black community, but I basically threw in this digression because of the amusing baby.)
Anyway, George Berry was joined in 1968 by Britain’s second black licensee, Martin Luther Perkins, who took over the Swiss Tavern in Peckham — and clearly had a head for PR, inviting the Jamaican Assistant High Commissioner to drink the first pint he pulled.
Not that it was plain sailing, of course. The Coach and Horses was firebombed by the National Front in 1973
…but, overall, the place thrived, “attracting a multi-cultural crowd to live music such as Chubby Mullins and his All Stars”. Berry ran it until the 1990s, according to this excellent book:
You can find out more about the history of the ‘colour bar’ in British pubs from CAMRA (among other sources), and you can still drink in what was the Coach and Horses, on the corner of Coldharbour Lane and Electric Lane.
(although that ‘Public House’ book mourns that none of its incarnations since George “celebrate its story and place in history”).
But we can all be heartened by the fact that — while there are still racist fuckwits running pubs, operating an unspoken colour bar — their numbers do seem to be dwindling.
