Shadows of a Forgotten Past: Unveiling the Truth of White Nanny, Black Child

In the 1950s, white British families adopted numerous African children in a practice commonly known as ‘farming’. With outstanding depth, a documentary on farming by Andy Mundy-Castle explores how for some of those children, what appeared to be a well-meaning initiative resulted in significant harm and life-long scars.

Written by Jamila Pereira

Feb 27, 2024

Photo collage by Wale Lawal / The Republic; photo sourced from promotional posters of the ‘White Nanny, Black Child’ documentary.

When the Windrush was celebrated last year, marking its 75 years, it showed the need to equally highlight the cultural and social contributions of West Africans and their offspring to Britain and how Britain has moulded these relationships today. Despite sitting amongst the shadows of migration stories, fostering of Black, African children by white Britons was a common and normalized practice in the UK for almost 50 years. Over 70,000 West African children were taken into white, British, and most working-class families, on a practice known as ‘farming’. Once adopted, many African children were forced into silence while coping with the everlasting scars of such a problematic and contentious policy.

EXPLORING THE PAST

Shortly before the independence of many African nations, under British rule, the colonial office introduced a policy granting African married students the possibility to study in the UK—what they perceived as the ‘motherland’—alongside their spouses. Under the premise of a new life in the motherland, African students were often lured to the UK but instantly, fell in deep shock when understanding that their lives were heading to a foreign and unknown path.

With the pressure of studying, maintaining a household, without any family support and the rise of white supremacist groups such as the National Front, the UK eventually became known as a place where distressed African immigrants, particularly Nigerians, who aimed to study, found themselves trusting white families to raise their children. By this, I mean privately fostered their children, as young as under-five, without adequate arrangements, while the students attended to lives that seemed somewhat difficult to pursue with a child under their belt.

As soon as the first advert was released, created by a Nigerian family, in the Nursery World journal in 1955, the demand blew up and the practice became widely known in many British households. Not even a year later, the journal introduced a Homes Wanted section in their classified advertisements, which was predominantly dominated by Nigerian families, too.

According to 1991 research by Laurie Joshua and Hale G. Longtep, from 1956 to 1988, roughly 15,971 adverts were placed under that section. Still, Joshua claims that these statistics were perhaps solely a glimpse of the private fostering arrangements and emerging trends. Consequently, it also makes us wonder about the high probability of informal arrangements being dealt with through word of mouth...

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This story features in our print issue, 'African Feminist Manifesto'.

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About the Author

Jamila Pereira

is a Bissau-Guinean culture journalist, writer, poet and international relations graduate, based in Leeds. Pereira's works can be found in Portuguese and English, through platforms such as Black Ballad, The Republic, Bantumen, and Open Democracy.

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