contingent

Black Americans, as a people, deeply understand and carry this history and lived experience and the knowledge and burden of democracy as contingent and imperiled in our collective bodies, psyches, and memories.

Whether this spurs Hamas to get more serious in cease-fire negotiations—or, for that matter, whether the Doha contingent has any influence over the militia’s fighters in Gaza—is hard to say.

The youngest contingent was also an emotional moment, in a different way from the ranks of grey-haired ex-military marchers.

For them, the idea of liberty pointed to the tangible abolition of slavery and racial hierarchy; reform represented the persistent human action required to achieve liberty through moral, social and political processes; and progression suggests a practical commitment to the possibility of effecting positive political change and acknowledges the potential for future improvement to be contingent rather than inevitable.

Eddy said: "He was required to board the Empire Windrush, which was a ship taking a large contingent of demobilised Caribbean men back home," and later his father helped the men find work in Britain.