All are welcome at our next open meeting on Tuesday 27 October. By ‘open meeting’, we mean that it is open to the public. The venue is Merton Arts Space, Compton Road, Wimbledon, SW19 7QA, and doors open at 7.15pm, for a 7.30pm start. You can register your place here.

We are delighted that Shireen Asaw, newly elected Green Councillor in Lewisham, will chair our panel focusing on London’s legacy of colonialism.

Nick Robins, historian and green investor, will take us back to the East India Company, examining how this London-based shareholder-owned corporation extracted vast wealth from India and pushed opium into China, exploring what this means for cultural activism today. Nick is the author of Reckoning with Britain’s Imperial Legacy: Time to Search for New Heroes and The Corporation That Changed the World: How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational (2012).

Fevzi Hussein, lifelong trade union activist and podcast presenter, will shed more light on the story of black migration to Britain, especially the Windrush generation, with some fascinating data and firsthand accounts from the migrants themselves. His talk will celebrate the contribution that this group of migrants made to rebuilding Britain following the Second World War.

Saqib Desmukh, Director of Insaafi CIC, will tell us a little about his work looking at local history and, in particular, those Merton residents who profited from the slave trade or the East India Company.

We look forward to extending a very warm welcome to everyone who joins us.