Britain's Racist Election, review: 'essential viewing'

Britain’s Racist Election (Channel 4, Sunday) told a story from the mid-Sixties that was a far cry from the exciting era of Beatlemania, miniskirts and swinging London that’s usually depicted on TV.
Smethwick, in the West Midlands, was once the centre of one of the most unpleasant chapters in the history of race relations in Britain. In a short period of time in the mid-Sixties, 5,000 immigrants, from Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, moved to the area and caused huge unrest.
While one such new arrival, Joan Richards, who moved to Smethwick from Jamaica as a young woman, felt that she had been “invited by the Queen”, local residents were not quite so welcoming. They were afraid of the foreign languages they could suddenly hear on their terraced streets, afraid of the exotic smells wafting from kitchens and, most of all, afraid of losing their jobs to a keen new workforce.
Tory MP Peter Griffiths successfully took a stand against immigration in what was previously a safe Labour seat, but maintained until his death two years ago that he was simply listening to the needs of local people.
Archive footage showed both local residents and political figures freely using words that are taboo in Britain today: so taboo that we only refer to them by their initials. Richards, now elderly and still happily living in the area, heard these terms on a daily basis when she found work in a local hospital.
Most shockingly of all to our 21st century ears, one of them was even used in a Conservative campaign slogan - “If you want a n****r for a neighbour, vote Labour” – and it was dreamt up by a schoolgirl! And this was just the mainstream, acceptable face of racial hatred; scarily, it was during this time that a Birmingham branch of the Ku Klux Klan was formed, complete with burning crosses – and yes, that’s Birmingham in the West Midlands, not Alabama.

Genuine #Tory general election poster from 1964. #BritainsRacistElection pic.twitter.com/zWeO5tKXFc

My husband’s parents were part of this very influx of immigrants to the UK, so for me the documentary made for sobering viewing. I take it for granted that our unborn son won’t be racially discriminated against as he grows up in south London, forgetting until I see powerful programmes like this that things were so different for his grandparents’ generation.
The documentary is essential viewing for anyone concerned about the current political climate – the fact that, because of a few scare-mongering politicians, an ordinary Birmingham suburb escalated into a terrifying environment of violence and hatred, in which people of all ethnicities were afraid to leave their homes, and only 50 years ago too, deserves attention.
Still, it’s reassuring that the people of Smethwick who protested so passionately at the time now appear to be harmoniously alongside the very families they used to fear, but the parallels with modern politics are obvious – and presumably the very reason Channel 4 have opted to make this unsettling programme now.



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/tv-and-radio-reviews/11472393/Britains-Racist-Election-review-essential-viewing.html