UCL Historian Gives Evidence to Select Committee at Westminster

On Tuesday, 20 February 2024, Dr Michael Collins of UCL History appeared as an expert witness in the House of Commons, giving evidence to the Select Committee for Culture, Media, and Sport Committee (CMS). Along with fellow ICEC Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket commissioners, Dr Collins answered MPs' questions relating to the Commission's report, Holding Up a Mirror to Cricket, published in June 2023. The report documented widespread and deep-rooted racism, classism, and sexism in English cricket.
 
In this clip, Dr Collins highlights the historical injustices suffered by the African-Caribbean community in England, from their media treatment in the 1970s to the closure of Haringey Cricket College in the 1990s, and the lack of improvements made since the ICEC report publication in June 2023. Dr Collins argues that 'equity' means a recognition of past underfunding and mistreatment and that the structural inequalities they have produced require remedy in the present.

“We requested an apology, but an apology is only a starting point. We also referenced the ECB's [England and Wales Cricket Board] own commitment to set up a black cricket action plan ... nine months on, there's no evidence of that happening.

His work with the ICEC commission and evidence at the Select Committee build on Dr Collins' Windrush Cricket project, exploring black African-Caribbean cricket, culture, and identity in England after World War II. His book, Windrush Cricket: Caribbean Migration and the Remaking of Post-war England, will be published by Oxford University Press soon and will draw this research together in book form. In addition, Dr Collins is working with colleagues Montaz Marche and Leah Lovett at the Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) to create 'memory maps' that allow African-Caribbean communities and cricket clubs to narrate and curate their own community histories online.

Watch the clip of Dr Collins at Westminster