I was born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire. I am the son of an immigrant. My father was Jamaican, part of the Windrush generation, and my mother was from Gloucestershire. I am mixed race.

You sometimes hear politicians say, they are a son or daughter of an immigrant, and they own it, like a badge of honour. But I couldn’t own it. I never bonded with my birth father. He had separated from my mother. We met a couple of times, but it’s not the same. If he had cared more, made the effort, then maybe it would have been different. He could have guided and protected me. But without that bond, I struggled to own who I really was.

Although society was changing my mother had little insight into racism. She was ‘colour blind’. Her love was tough and conditional. To her, I was like any other kid playing in the street.

She married eventually – a white man. He didn’t accept me and was a racist. I was only eight years old. I had to cope with his verbal abuse, name calling… coon, wog, blackie… only to face more of that shit when I got to school. I was full of anger and hurt, struggling in class, restless… As that man got older, I felt sorry for him, but when he died, I didn’t attend the funeral.