The City Of London: Slave Trade Money Trail Tour, with Darrel Blake

Prefer to listen? Go to the audio blog

There are parts of London I have walked through so many times, without really seeing. Streets I think I know. Buildings I assume I know and understand. And then yesterday something shifted my perspective entirely.

The Royal Exchange. Layers of wealth, power and history beneath today’s glimmering towers.

Yesterday, a group of Homa tutors spent the afternoon on a walking tour of the City of London with researcher, historian, activist, public speaker and CEO of Black Rooted Darrel Blake, tracing the "slave trade money trail” through the City. It was fascinating, absorbing and deeply uncomfortable.

The experience will stay with me for a long time, not just because it was shocking in so many ways, but because it brought things I thought I knew and understood into a much more immediate, embodied focus. It shifted my knowledge from something abstract and intellectual into something felt and relational. I learned so much more about the City of London and about those who built vast fortunes through the trade and empire it controlled. Wealth from coffee, cotton, sugar, tobacco and tea, made possible only through the enslavement of African people and still shaping the world we live in today.

How we tell the story of empire, and what we leave out.

Darrel is a compelling story teller. He didn't just teach us about the history. He traced it through the streets and buildings with a grounded, passionate presence that drew us in and engaged us deeply, even when it might have felt more comfortable to look away. Darrel shares his depth of knowledge about the histories of empire and slavery with care, humour and generosity, while maintaining a clarity that never softened the truth.

We stood in places that I have passed countless times, grand buildings, quiet, dark alleys, polished institutions and I began to see them differently. The wealth, the power, the architecture, the legacy of the City: all of it tied, in ways both visible and hidden in plain sight, to the transatlantic slave trade and the British Empire. Not abstractly. Not distantly. But materially, structurally and unavoidably.

Coffee houses where the Empire’s wealth was discussed, financed and made real.

What struck me most was how much of this history is all around us and yet how little we are taught or maybe even want to see it. Perhaps because to really see it demands something of us: to ask questions about the foundations of this country, about empire, about wealth, about power and those are not easy questions to sit with, particularly for those of us who benefit from that legacy.

Darrel shared with us the story of his ancestor Sarah, enslaved from Nigeria, taken to Barbados, whose life is part of what brings him to this work. That thread of personal history runs powerfully through the tour. It’s not just about the past in a distant, academic sense, it’s about memory, inheritance, legacy and the weight of what is carried across generations, about what Dr Aileen Alleyne* describes as “intergenerational hauntings” and the act of choosing to speak out and tell the truth.

One of the things (among many) that has stayed with me is this: Darrel does this work not only because it matters, but because he cares deeply about it and about sharing it. There is something hopeful in that, in the act of telling these stories, of inviting people in, of making space for learning, even when it’s uncomfortable for us as learners and heavy for Darrel as our guide and teacher.

I left feeling both dicomforted and more awake. More in touch with the city I live in and of the histories it holds. And I am so grateful for Darrel's time, for his knowledge and honesty and for the reminder that understanding where we are means being willing to look honestly at how we got here.

Next year Darrel will be taking our Year 2 trainees on this walk as part of the Race, Power and Privilege module. We are very grateful to be able to include the tour as part of the work we do as a group.

If anything in this post has struck a chord, you can find out more about Darrel's work here: Eventbrite, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube

I’d encourage anyone who can, to put on their walking shoes and join him for a deeply moving walk into the past and a clearer understanding of the world we’re living in now.

*Aileen Alleyne, The Burden of Heritage: Hauntings of Generational Trauma on Black Lives (Routledge, 2023).