The fight for black rights
STEVE MCQUEEN’S Small Axe is widely considered as one of the best pieces of TV in recent years.
The five-part drama anthology series told four true stories and one imagined on the subject of Britain’s Caribbean history between the 1960s and 1980s.
Now, two of those programmes have inspired two more documentaries, on which Mcqueen is acting as an executive producer.
The first Small Axe film, Mangrove, told the story of the titular restaurant in west London and the landmark 1971 Old Bailey trial.
Tonight’s documentary reveals how the Black Power movement came into being in the late 1960s and casts fresh light on the story of the young black people who fought against police brutality and
BLACK POWER: A BRITISH STORY OF RESISTANCE
BBC2, 9pm
racism, challenged the British establishment and helped shape the UK’S political and cultural landscape.
Narrated by Get Out’s Daniel Kaluuya, this powerful film shows how the civil rights struggle in America inspired activists to take a stand, and features rare archive of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael’s activities in Britain, as well as footage of leading UK figures.
The film describes different groups and looks at key moments in history, but at the heart of the documentary are passionate interviews with past activists
involved in the
Power movement.
Leila Hassan Howe, who had a “horrendous” time as one of only three black people in her school and faced daily racism, says: “I think Black Power said, ‘We’re not going back home. Britain belongs to us, we’re here to stay’.”
The second film, which will be arriving on our screens soon, was inspired by the fifth Small Axe film, Education.
New talent Lyttanya Shannon directs Subnormal which examines “one of the biggest scandals in British education”.
Black children were four times as likely to be sent to ESNS, which had a “profound effect and prevented many from achieving their full potential”, says Shannon.
British Black