Interview with Rev Canon Christian Weaver CBE
- Title
- Interview with Rev Canon Christian Weaver CBE
- Description
- Rev Canon Christian Weaver CBE moved to the UK in 1960 having previously served as a police officer in Antigua where he was born. Many West Indians travelled to Britain for work, while others came to further their education. Christian enrolled as a student at the Leicester College of Art and developed his skills as an artist with an eye for landscape.
- Associated dates
- 1960
- interviewee
- Rev Canon Christian Weaver CBE
- Location
- Antigua
- Collection
- Travelling to Britain
- Provenance
- This oral history excerpt has been drawn from the three-year AHRC-funded project ‘The Windrush Scandal in a Transnational and Commonwealth Context’.
- Rights
- This material, including photograph, cannot be reproduced without permission.
Transcript:
-
"When I decided I was going to leave the police force and come to the United Kingdom, I came by air. I wanted to be a portrait and landscape painter and I wanted to train at colleges. And interestingly enough that kind of journey took me through the English countryside, which I was always charmed by. Seeing England for the first time, I was driving through those rural areas going to Leicester, where I lived. Antiguans, Black people actually, lived in the Highfields area of Leicester, so if you were to see a Black person outside that Highfields area they would be not in the right place. So I could notice that. I noticed that. This racial attitude, racist attitude, rather, was very noticeable in those sorts of environments."
"When I decided I was going to leave the police force and come to the United Kingdom, I came by air. I wanted to be a portrait and landscape painter and I wanted to train at colleges. And interestingly enough that kind of journey took me through the English countryside, which I was always charmed by. Seeing England for the first time, I was driving through those rural areas going to Leicester, where I lived. Antiguans, Black people actually, lived in the Highfields area of Leicester, so if you were to see a Black person outside that Highfields area they would be not in the right place. So I could notice that. I noticed that. This racial attitude, racist attitude, rather, was very noticeable in those sorts of environments."