Peter Fryer is best-known for writing Staying Power which is about Black communities in Britain and race relations

A former Highgate resident has been honoured with a blue plaque as part of Windrush 75 celebrations.

The plaque for historian and journalist Peter Fryer was revealed today (26th June) at 11am at one of his former addresses on Shepherd’s Hill, where he lived while writing the bestseller Staying Power.

The plaque, created in a partnership between Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing and the Nubian Jak Community Trust, celebrates the life and work of Fryer, who published his best-known work under Pluto Press. In Staying Power, published 1984, the former Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) member wrote of how Africans were in Britain before the English, and uncovered Black British history which then was little-known – the lives of figures like Mary Seacole and Olaudah Equiano.

Fryer died seventeen years ago, but his book is still Pluto’s bestseller today.

The Fryer Family said: “Peter’s children remember him showing them a blue plaque for the first time. They said one day he might have one of his own. How we all laughed! Peter spent his life both as political activist and writer exposing and resisting all forms of fascism and racism. As a family, we are delighted and proud that his life and work are being publicly recognised in this blue plaque.”

Dr Jak Beula, CEO of Nubian Jak Community Trust, added: “I remember when I first started researching information for the board game Nubian Jak, it was to Staying Power that I turned. It remains, still, one of the most important books ever written about the Black presence in Britain”.

David Castle, editorial director of Pluto Press, said: “It has been a huge honour for Pluto Press to be the custodian of Peter Fryer’s massively influential, pioneering work on the history of Black people in Britain for almost 40 years. It has been wonderful to hear firsthand from so many people who have had their eyes opened to a largely hidden side of British history through reading Staying Power, both from hundreds of ordinary readers and from a more recent generation of distinguished writers who have been inspired by Fryer’s work, like David Olusoga, Paul Gilroy, Stella Dadzie and Gary Younge. It is fantastic that Fryer is now being formally recognised for the outstanding historian that he undoubtedly was through this blue plaque organised by the Nubian Jak Academy”.

No news is bad news

Independent news outlets like ours – reporting for the community without rich backers – are under threat of closure, turning British towns into news deserts.

The audiences they serve know less, understand less, and can do less.

If our coverage has helped you understand our community a little bit better, please consider supporting us with a monthly, or one-off donation.