‘Understand past to shape the future’

I WRITE regarding the forthcoming film depicting life in the pottery industry in the 1920s – and wishing to embrace diversity ‘because it was around in those days.’

Some readers have expressed concerns over its potential for historical inaccuracy in exaggerating the proportion of the non-white pottery workers employed at the time.

I would go further than that, inasmuch as if the film portrays a racial mix that didn’t exist in the 1920s, then it will ignore the ethnic tensions that existed at the time and, by implication, under-acknowledge and perhaps negate the long, painful battle for diversity and inclusivity that coalesced over the following decades.

It is up to the film-makers to buttress their claim that diversity was a force in the 1920s – and they may wish to adopt the position that all historical commentary is subjective.

However, scattered evidence suggests that what I shall term a quiet insularity was perceptible in Stoke-ontrent for many years.

In 1914, the visit to Hanley of the black pugilist Jack Johnson was cancelled.

Reading the newspaper reports at the time, it is not emphatically clear whether the intended sparring exhibition was pulled on account of morality issues surrounding boxing, betting or the colour of Jackson’s skin, but the Mayor’s statement that ‘he was determined to stop this black man from coming to the borough’ is unlikely to sound too clever to today’s society.

One Sentinel letter writer observed in 1942 that three words were in constant use in the Potteries – ‘nesh’, ‘sneaped’ and a pejorative word for black people with which I shall not trouble readers of this page.

There was also an episode at a Burslem pub in 1963 where a landlord attempted to impose a colour bar – later revoked.

We cannot change the past – but if we endeavour to understand it, warts and all, we may be able to shape the future.

MERVYN EDWARDS WOLSTANTON