Overcoming the odds
Kenyah Sandy stars as Kingsley in a drama highlighting the discriminatory practices of the UK education system in the 1970s
For those with Caribbean roots, London could be an unforgiving city in the years between the late 1960s and the mid-1980s. And yet, as a new anthology series from Steve McQueen (Hunger, 12 Years A Slave) explores, this was also an era in which the capital’s West Indian population established itself, often succeeding in the face of racism and discrimination.
The five dramas in the Small Axe season celebrate lives that may seem ordinary at first glance, and which illuminate themes still pertinent today. ‘Education’, for instance, focuses on schoolboy Kingsley (Kenyah Sandy), who is called to his headmaster’s office for being disruptive in class. There, he learns he’s to be sent to a ‘special needs’ school. Cue an intervention by a group of West Indian women who realise there’s an unofficial segregation policy within the capital’s education system.
‘Alex Wheatle’ tells the story of a writer who found his voice in the wake of the Brixton riots, while ’Red, White and Blue’ focuses on Leroy Logan (John Boyega of Star Wars: The Force Awakens fame), a copper who challenged racism in the Met from within.
Already on iPlayer are the romance ‘Lovers Rock’, and ‘Mangrove’, which charts the story of the Mangrove Nine, who were unjustly tried for inciting a riot following repeated police raids against a Notting Hill restaurant.