In March 2021 I was invited by Windrush Defenders Legal C.I.C.'s codirector Anthony Brown to document the funeral of Elouise ‘Mama’ Edwards.1 Born in Guyana, Mama Edwards travelled to England in 1961 to join her husband Beresford Edwards, and is widely celebrated for her community work in Greater Manchester. Held by the drums of the Abasindi Cooperative, multi-faith minister Reverend Malaika led a socially distanced service within Manchester Central Cathedral. I had never met Mama Edwards however I grew to learn about her through the stories her family and friends told at the pulpit; the patterns on her dress worn in photographs; and driving to her burial site past people waving outside homes, community centres and businesses across the city. In the programme notes, I noticed a reference to her archive collection within the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah (AIU) RACE Centre at Manchester Central Library [GB3552.5]2 dating from 1969 to 1999. Five large boxes of materials mark events of social joy and damage, from newspaper cuttings of the Moss Side riots3 against state racism in 1981 – to a statement in a pamphlet where Mama Edwards expresses her intentions for co-founding the Nia Cultural Centre for Black Arts in 1991. Between the intimate rituals of the funeral ceremony, and the material of her archive collection, Mama Edwards inspired reflections on my own practice and, in her words, the importance of “recording our impact in Britain”.

In December 2019 I had recorded a dialogue with Anthony Brown who arrived in England from Jamaica in 1967 aged six as a Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies (CUKC). He had made the journey with his mother, two brothers and two sisters, to join his father who had been recruited as a civil engineer. This recording now forms part of an emerging Burning Work archive collection. At the Windrush Millennium Centre in Moss Side, Manchester, I listened to Anthony describe how despite the fact successive Home Secretaries have claimed he is British ‘in all but legal status’, he had been threatened with deportation from the United Kingdom in 1983. The materials of Mama Edwards’ archive, and her use of language within pamphlets, depict her legacy of resistance against the discriminatory laws and associated policies that are today recognised by the state to have caused ‘serious harm’.