Black Lives in the Stix: Caribbean Northants and Decentring ‘Black London’ on Screen, 1948–85
This article was prior published in Warwick District Council’s “British Local History and the Black Atlantic” — it comes attached to their exhibition of the same name showing in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire… Black lives outside of port/cities.
Introduction
When I tell people my family have been in Northampton since 1962, many are perplexed! Towns like Northampton and Wellingborough have had Black Caribbean people since the earliest days of the 1950s — concurrent to big cities as points of settlement in England. Likewise, smaller numbers arrived in Kettering from the 60s. These ‘new’ arrivals also mixed with locally stationed Black Americans. In Wellingborough for example, Black GIs were living at Palk Road Congregational Church during the war ( later the Victoria Centre in the 70s) — and Kettering Town.
Yet, the GIs (and Black airmen in Northampton), reportedly mixed with Caribbean and white British women. Nationally, a result of mixing were children — an estimated 1700–2000 born from the unions of GIs and white women. In the 50s and 60s, the airmen could be found in brawls with local police allegedly outside The Criterion, a pub once on what is now King Street / Bradshaw Street. Much like the cities, Northants has its own postwar Caribbean experience. Maybe due to its ‘provincial-ness’, relationships with the police in those days differed to those in London — at least as far as what I was told during interviews, juxtaposed not only to the brutality of The Met but also policing Black London on film and television.
Whilst Northamptonshire isn’t without racist policing, there was a culture of community policing that differs from mainstream discourses of Brixton and Handsworth. For example, during the 1970s Persuaders Youth Club on Claire Street (where Northamptonshire Music & Performing Arts Trust now is) used to field a youth cricket team that played local police officers. Originally, an officer called Mick acquired cricket kit for the young people as an act of kindness, which then helped foster relationships between some Black youth and local police. It helped break down many barriers.
My Creative Writing PhD uses 100+ oral history testimonies, and limited available secondary resources, including local news media, to produce a creative nonfiction thesis about the Caribbean presence in Northants 1948–85. And whilst the experiences of Caribbean people of Indian and Chinese descent are outside the scope of my thesis, it is vital to acknowledge they came to Britain too and have largely been ignored by the mainstream. This body of research has many stories, telling a history-ish of my home county, Northants, where my family have lived since 1962.
This chapter derives from a presentation of the same name I delivered at Kingston University’s Experimental Archives Symposium in January 2024 based on original interviews conducted as part of my PhD. My paper juxtaposed Black London knowledge-making enforced by media and publishing, with my research about postwar Black Caribbean Northants. Representations of Blackness, historically and now, are dominated by city-centric narratives and that must change.
Londoners can sometimes be joked about as people who do not like leaving London for the shires! Every time I visit the capital, it is as alien to me as places like the Home Counties can be to many Londoners. Yet, it seems us in provincial England know more about London than many Londoners know about our minor cities, towns, and the countryside. My research about postwar Black Caribbean Northants troubles the official history peddled in the mainstream that treats London as the centre of the universe.
Autoethnography is the study of culture that uses personal experiences to analyse cultural experience. So, in this article I use personal experiences to consider my PhD opposed to the mainstream narratives of Caribbean Black London. It is vital to decentre ‘Black London; in postwar histories of Black Caribbean communities because not everybody who arrived between 1948 and 1971 settled there, or in other major English cities. London is not the centre of the universe, so why does industry pretend that it is?
Beyond London, Beyond Tilbury
Black British films and television programmes across time periods remain fixated on English cities, notably London. Rural crime shows like the BBC’s Murder is Easy showed me the possibilities of period dramas made to unsettle the ‘green unpleasant land’. This show did more for me than Three Little Birds or even Small Axe showing the potential of Black leads in period dramas set in the postwar period where racialisation isn’t the primary focus. Despite this miniseries following a Nigerian in rural England in 1954, I saw scope for doing the same in other places that housed lone Black Caribbean individuals and communities.
During the same years that Small Axe is set, Northampton and Wellingborough had thriving Black Caribbean communities. Meanwhile, from the 60s- and into the 70s, housing developments were necessitated by large movements of people relocating from the cities to provincial areas of the Midlands. This is what led to the building of estates like Hemmingwell and Queensway in Wellingborough and The Arbours in Northampton, whose existence did not come without challenge from locals — lots of whom saw their neighbourhoods as guarded sites of belonging.
Many of those who came from London had Northampton and Wellingborough ‘sold’ to them as ‘new towns’ that were cheaper to live in and were every bit London’s match as far as high street shopping experiences — a history that has been lost due to mainstream preoccupations with London.
Novels such as Lonely Londoners and Small Island are part of a canon of great writing that have been positioned by UK publishing as representative of all postwar Black Caribbean experiences. Likewise on big and small screens: from Pressure (1976), through to Babylon (1980) and Burning an Illusion (1981), Black British films almost exclusively treat London as if it’s the pinnacle of Black British experiences. Other texts include Desmond’s (1989–1994), Young Soul Rebels (1991), and The Real McCoy (1991–1996), giving rise to films like the Kidulthood Trilogy (2006–2016), Belle (2013), Rocks (2019), and Rye Lane (2023)… and as of 2024, Channel 4’s Queenie.
Northamptonshire, the site of my research, has an adjacent history going back to 1948 when Winston Nelson, a demobilised Jamaican RAF pilot came to Northampton. He married a white woman called Phyllis Turner. Their daughter Barbara, along with her siblings, were part of a generation of Northamptonians from mixed parentage who lived alongside local children of Black American servicemen and white women in the 1960s.
Nonetheless, those with executive power in TV and film continue to centralise London (largely) as the only site of ‘historical production’ of postwar Black Caribbean experiences. If we acknowledge the screen as a place where history is produced (as much as it is in publications), we may begin to understand firstly, why I am met with shock that Northampton has had a Caribbean presence since at least 1950. And secondly, the continued surprise that Black people have been in provincial England for centuries.
When Edison “Ben-Mark” left Grenada, in 1960, he left behind a very rural life. His daughters — my grandmother and auntie — told me they came from a farming community sustaining themselves on natural produce made from the land. His wife, Toylie (so my great-grandmother) with my grandmother and auntie (as children), arrived in 1962 after being sent for. Similarly, my cousin Weekes Baptiste, who came to Northampton in 1968, reminisced to me about his rural upbringing without a television in their family home, only to become obsessed with films and cinema on arriving.
For many people who came from rural areas of the Caribbean only to be thrust into big cities, there is a rural heritage within the stories of transatlantic Caribbean relocation which is at risk of being lost.
The alienating city life could possibly be one of the reasons why my grandmother’s auntie and uncle, Dina Cadore (née Noel) and John Cadore came here from London.
Likewise, Ben-Mark started in London, as did my grandfather Sarge and his brother, Albert Ventour (known as Uncle Wiseman).
Ben-Mark worked at Phipps Brewery in Northampton for years, while Toylie worked at an M1 café. During the late 60s, she also worked at St Andrew’s and St Crispin’s psychiatric hospitals as a cleaner and was victim to some of the worst white racism that has become synonymous with the British healthcare industry.
In today’s language of “misogynoir” she was abused and exploited for being a Black woman. My mom remembers her grandmother defending herself from racist white people on Northampton buses. Whilst Northants did not have the kinds of uprisings seen in many big cities, my home county is a site of Black historical production. It has nuances that articulate a Black experience of provincial England that decentres usual city landscapes.
Michel-Rolph Trouillot writes:
“We are all amateur historians with various degrees of awareness about our production … [learning] history from similar amateurs. Universities and university presses are not the only … [producers] of the historical narrative. […] Most Europeans and North Americans learn their history … through media that have not been subjected to the standards set by [higher education]. Long before [non-academics] read the historians who set the standards … for colleagues and students, they access history through celebrations, site and museum visits, movies, national holidays, and primary school books” (p19–20).
Following Trouillot’s articulation, we might observe that the history which swathes of the British public have consumed about Black Caribbean lives from the screen, is one of cosmopolitan cities. Auntie Dina just like many of her Caribbean Londoner counterparts also ran blues parties (as we saw in the BBC’s Small Axe). She was one of many Black Caribbean people living locally to Northampton in the 1960s that loved to have a good time and ran basement parties on Vernon Terrace.
Black communities in Northampton and Wellingborough curated parties in their homes because many local clubs did not want Black customers. To put it simply, they were just racist!
In Northampton, many of the pubs on Wellingborough Road practiced colour bars which created a need for the local Black community to “make our own fun”, in the words of my grandfather. They made their own fun due to racism, in some cases charging for entry, further for food and drinks. Someone would normally cook such delights as curry goat, curry chicken, plantain, rice and peas and more. Across the country, these parties were criminalised by police. In Wellingborough, some of the early parties occurred at the Co-ops on Oxford Street and Cannon Street. The Gloucester on Church Street also operated a shebeen, while Rock Street Community Centre (now the WACA Centre) held blues in the 1970s.
From the early 60s, ska reached Northampton and there were ska parties in The Mounts (later morphing into reggae). One of my elder aunties told me that during the 1960s, she would “dance the night away” every weekend! At these parties you may have heard the sounds of the Skatalites, Prince Buster, Toots & The Maytals, Millie Small, Desmond Dekker, and more. Sometimes, neighbours complained to the police leading to raids. Often, police would tell partiers to turn the music down. Granddad Sarge recalls some officers could be reasoned with, and won over by drink or food!
These parties in Northamptonshire were in places that were in closer proximity to the rural — more fields than masses of buildings. Further, there were fewer cars on the road then. Those who came to Northants as children in the 1950s and 1960s and/or grew up locally in that era into the early 1970s talked to me about how they would go to youth clubs, scrumping, “nyam sweeties”, and go on bike rides. These descriptions remind me of the Kids-on-Bikes genre storytelling of the day: everything from The Goonies and Close Encounters, to Stephen King’s Stand By Me.
Nikki Taylor saying “Young people now, know lots about the world, but have little freedom in it” exists juxtaposed to the experiences of Black children in 50s, 60s, and early 70s Northants. Descriptions of childhood from Black people who grew up in the area during these years appear no different to the texturally white palette of 80s YA adventure films. In many ways, their descriptions speak against the assumptions modern audiences have made about Black experiences of those who lived outside of the cities. The way people punch down on the 50s, 60s and early 70s, especially some my age, is quite dismissive of the fact we are largely still fighting many of the same problems — particularly on the grounds of discrimination.
Concurrently, many of my generation regularly talk to me about ‘modern times’ as ‘more enlightened’ because ‘it’s not old’ — I find this very challenging. In the early days, Abington was where many of Northampton’s Black Caribbean community lived, so it was much harder for white racism to present itself without being challenged, especially the among youth. By the 1980s, social youth groups were increasingly mixed, and racism was not tolerated. In many schools, anybody caught doing it, got beaten up. Racism was pervasive in Northants but was not free from consequence.
Yet, for many Black people who were not in Abington or in town life could be much harder. Areas like Duston, Kingsthorpe, Delapré, and Far Cotton were described as places where Black people were fewer in number and less protected, while white racism was empowered. These were also areas that had a National Front presence, as the headquarters was in Rushden. At Delapré School in the late 1960s, June-Elizabeth White-Smith Gulley described being chased through Far Cotton Recreational Ground (a park known as Far Cotton Rec) by a mob of white boys chanting the N-Word.
Living in the Northampton area in the late 40s Phyllis Turner (Barbara Nelson’s mom) was spat at by white people for having children with a Black man. A Black Mixed-Heritage woman I spoke with recalls her white mother telling her about being sent to a reform home by her own father (so her grandfather) for being “wayward and uncontrollable” (he did not like her dating Black men). Similarly, Mary Clarke as a Black Mixed-Heritage child in the late 60s / early 70s, recalls at four years old being chased through Kingsthorpe by white children holding shiny objects (probably knives).
Her mother, Pat Heasman, had stones thrown at her by white people while pushing Mary’s brother in a pushchair.
The stories of racism I have been told across 100+ hours of interviews range from being infantilised to being infirmed. Yet, many who grew up between 1955 and 1975 recall having wonderful childhoods. The racism they experienced was mainly tolerable due to unofficial solidarity networks. And for lots, they say racism is worse now since there’s less community and the fighting spirit that manifested in the school playground and in local pubs in the face of racism has been domesticated out of us!
Stranger Things
Terms like ‘rural’, usually conjure images of diddly chapels, rolling hills, bowls, cricket, pubs, fêtes, cows, sheep, and locals chasing outsiders with pitchforks! Going to school in the stix as I did, my early school days were more akin to the whiteness of those Edwardian children’s novels like The Railway Children than the Black aesthetics of Rocks or Desmond’s.
Although some may argue towns like Northampton and Wellingborough are not ‘rural’ in the traditional sense, Londoners in those days considered them as ‘country’. Many of the housing estates we now have were fields — some people who are old enough to remember Northants before the those developments, refer to them as ‘bush’ like Queensway in Wellingboro.
Areas like Lings, Standens Barn, The Arbours and others which expanded Northampton to the east were built to cater for those labelled as the official yet stigmatising ‘London Overspill’ — many moved for jobs and cheaper housing. In the 70s, there was a lot of discontent from “Northamptonians” to Londoners coming to live here that could be compared to village tribalism. Many locals saw Londoners as an infringement on ‘their way of life’. Northampton was a town, but its mentality was so rural like a bad parody of an English village — very Midsomer Murders!
Between 1950 and the early 1970s, if somebody Caribbean came to Northampton, everybody knew: ‘Who are you?’, ‘Where are you from?’ and ‘Who’s your family?’ Newcomers were met with curiosity and suspicion, whether from overseas or from another city or town. This is why I find myself relating to many of the village period dramas more than films made about Black Caribbean people living in London. Seeing village suspicion and the eventual welcome of Luke Obiako Fitzwilliam, from Nigeria, in Murder is Easy (2023), brought me joy. Similarly, how Georgiana Lambe, a Bajan is scrutinised in Sanditon (2019, based on Jane Austen’s unfinished novel) reminded me of my childhood rural schooling and cricket matches.
As a child, I would visit many of my school friends. Childhood sleepovers were never in the more diverse Northampton; it was Sywell, Horton, Yardley Hastings, Gayton… an interloper to the country even though Black people have existed in the countryside for centuries. However, these rural areas are spaces that have been conceptually claimed by ‘our’ white overlords as sacred to them. The existence of groups like Black Girls Hike and Stroud Against Racism remind us of the racism inherent in who is conceptually allowed to belong in the countryside. Black hikers and pubgoers, for example, in these spaces, are still seen as outsiders.
When I talk about my experiences of growing up and going on long walks in Brixworth Country Park with my Jamaican godmother and her family, my Black colleagues who grew up in big cities are aghast in disbelief. This became more apparent during my undergrad.
At university Black students from north and south London asked me where I was from, they couldn’t believe I grew up in Northampton. Let alone a childhood of nature walks and camping that was entirely normal to my family’s way of life. Yet, in hindsight I can say my family were always the only Black family in these environments. Whilst in Northampton, I was also socialised by the stix. I love the rural, as I rediscovered going to Cumbria for the first time in November 2023.
Though there is ‘rural racism’ this is much easier to deal with to me, and I think this is why I have more ease with rural whiteness than white spaces in big cities.
As students from London have started coming to study at my local university over the last decade, the same ‘fear’ of Londoners that occurred in the 70s in some cases has resurfaced, aimed at students from local residents. Being victim to that type of geographical ‘othering’ is something I experienced as a “townie” going to village school. It is a reminder that representations of Black history on screens must account for other British geographies since London is not the centre of the universe. There will be differences to how ‘other’Black Caribbean communities present, but also how Black Caribbean individuals are seen when surrounded by the whiteness of the Home Counties and Middle England. Very different to their experience of the whiteness that pervades major cities.
One of my participants, a Jamaican who moved to South London as a child, encountered this, when she moved to the village of Bozeat in 1980 and was the only Black woman in the village for a while. Living in white Bozeat, she used to have to go to Northampton, Wellingborough, or London for cultural stuffs, like events, foods, and hair appointments. She was often going back to the capital. But many did not, in fact many made their own fun.
For Black youth in Northampton, Matta Fancanta on Sheep Street was a unifying force — a self-organised and self-managed space that provided activities and professional development for youth. It was an alternative to the local youth service, which was really aimed at white children.
BabyloNN: A Local History
In 1975, a group of Black men drove from Knights Hill in London to The Gambia in Africa. One of these men was Lee Bryant, who had come to London as a child from Jamaica in 1959, moving to Northampton in the early 1970s as a motivated and inspired young adult. In The Gambia, he was inspired by young Black people on a beach. None of them were older than eighteen years old, but they were running a youth centre.
His experiences changed his perceptions of what responsibility can look like. If they could run a centre, why couldn’t Black youngsters do that in Northampton? This is in-part what led to Matta Fancanta, developed through many conversations in people’s houses. For example, on his return, Lee’s house in Lumbertubs and then Palmerston Road was filled with people for weeks wanting to know about Africa. It was then suggested by a Black American man called Julian that they could squat a place.
In 1977, Black Caribbean youngsters conducted a forty-eight-day squat of the old Salvation Army Citadel on Sheep Street in town. People like Lee, Ras Jabulani, Pedro Samuel, Ira Moven, Jobe, and others were part of the original squatters crew. Jobe used to sleep there overnight, as undercover police disguised as homeless people tried to coax him out under false pretences. In the night, the police would cut off the power and the water, and send Alsatian dogs in! That first night, these kids — most of them were — did battle with the police and really every night until they stopped!
What became known as Movement or MFM (Matta Fancanta Movement), was a self-managed space for youth activities and professional development — alternative to state youth provisions.
Before MFM opened, a white man called Tom ran Steps Youth Club on Kingswell Street, which was attended by many young white and Black people. When Steps folded, many that used it transitioned to MFM.
After the establishment stopped threatening Movement, they gave them some money in the form of grants to run classes in electronics and reprographic printing. A Jamaican called Herbert McKenzie, who had trained in printing at the local paper The Chronicle & Echo, ran the printing press (that was owned by MFM). Electronics was run by Phil “White Phil” who taught electronics to many Black guys for several years.
These professional development opportunities allowed young people to upskill themselves, many of whom had already been failed by local schools. With many MFM members being Rastafarian, they faced discrimination in employment and from elders. This was worsened by racist schooling, illustrated in the work done by the West Indian Parents Association (WIPA) founded in 1974.
Before the founding of WIPA, in 1973 Sarah Berry (a white woman) came to Northampton to work for the Community Relations Council (which was the predecessor organisation of Northamptonshire Rights & Equality Council — previously Race Equality Council). Her boss was a Black man called Bernard Gibbs (from Grenada). Growing up on a farm between Market Harborough and Corby, she witnessed her parents’ activities in the anti-apartheid movement. Soaking up this kind of politics, including the left, she later worked at the UK Immigrants Advisory Service in Manchester and Preston Community Relations Council before circling back to Northants.
In Northampton, she did a lot about racism at work and in education. She was part of a collective, that conducted a survey on Black student aspirations. The construction of WIPA followed the ESN scandal where during the 60s and early 70s lots of Black children were being called “educationally subnormal.” Likewise, many able kids in the area were targeted by ESN, including the white working-class — it was a state-created racist logic, but as we know white supremacy devours its own in the process. This occured at schools like Weavers in Wellingboro and Billing Brook in Northampton. The ESN Scandal lead to the formation of WIPA in 1974, including the convening of local Caribbean Saturday Schools.
So, the founding of MFM by young Rastas was viewed as antagonistic to the white establishment (namely policing and council), in addition to Black organisations who saw Rastas as criminals and drug-dealers — as many of their parents arrived in Britain in the 50s and 60s with colonised minds — no doubt born out of trauma colonialism inherited from their foreparents.
These young people were victims of local police, further to security in the new shopping complex — the Grosvenor Centre. In that era, police already targeting Black people (predominantly young men) had those actions greenlit by the state with the introduction of Sus Laws in the 80s. Matta Fancanta existed in a time where white supremacy pervaded mainstream employment and education and stunted Black progression.
This organisation was activist inspiring others, including Punjabi youths in Leicester who went on to squat the Moat Boys’ School in around 1982–83 as an alternative to local authority youth services and Asian organisations based around religion and dominated by old(er) men.
Movement was freedom from oppression, as many of their elder parents had arrived in England with colonial mindsets. Rastafari became identifiable with many youth experiences. MFM held many activities, including a magazine, fashion shows, arts and crafts, film exhibits, sports teams, African dancing workshops, Rasta education, Sound System, and Caribbean dances. This centre became a point of engagement for many young people and a hub for any young person who wanted in.
White in Black
Although cities like London have similar yet different Black Caribbean histories to counties like Northamptonshire, friends and colleagues in my vicinity have frequently reminded me of the importance of my localised research. To see the place you call home written and talked about with same enthusiasm that broadcasters give Black London has brought belonging — both to white and Black people.
Nuances exist in many of the stories, including the relationship between Persuaders Youth Club and police in the 70s and 80s. This would not have happened in many cities — the same era as uprisings in Brixton and Lewisham in London, Moss Side in Manchester, and Handsworth in Birmingham. Though my local police are not beyond criticism, the Met’s style especially, is very specific to London and has its own history.
With films like Babylon (set in London) and ITV’s Three Little Birds (set in Dudley), I observe a familiar representation of racist policing. In provincial 70s Northampton, we too had those scenarios along with a community policing that has its own story. Image-making remains influential to tell stories, but current film and television depictions of postwar Black Caribbean life centralises the city. For producers and production houses, it would do them well to consider other stories that existed from the earliest days of the 50s when many Caribbean people settled in places like Aylesbury, Gloucester, Doncaster, Leighton Buzzard, and High Wycombe.
It’s challenging to see how Black British history films and TV shows represent white folks like every individual white person in the 50s and 60s was a card-carrying racist! It also makes it individual, and forgets how there were also white people who were seen as ‘race traitors’ and allied themselves with Black struggle and resistance. In Northants, this is how Wellingborough Oral History Group was founded in 1987. It was a mixed affair, including a public meeting that saw Staying Power author and historian Peter Fryer speak at The Victoria Centre on Palk Road.
Whilst London had people like (Prof) Sally Tomlinson working against the ESN Scandal, alongside figures like (Prof) Gus John, Eric and Jessica Huntley, and New Beacon founders John LaRose and Sarah White, Northants also had many equally committed characters. You have already heard about Sarah Berry. White historians like Dr Julia Bush and activists like Paul Crofts played vital roles in the origin story of Northamptonshire Black History Association, with many others — Black and white.
End
My communities have incredible stories going back decades that could well be put to screen. London has long been presented as the Black British knowledge centre, but maybe it’s time to explore beyond its borders into provincial England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. In mainstream representation about Black England, cities eclipse the narrative, notably London and other port cities like Bristol and Liverpool — while other geographies have been wilfully ignored. Here, tales like that of my family history (and others), trouble Britain’s small island story and notions of Black London as universal. There are many Black British histories.
All we need do is look.
This article is based on interviews done as part of original PhD research.
Further Reading
Aspinall, P and Caballero, C (2018) Mixed-Race Britain in the Twentieth Cenutry. London: Palgrave.
Bailey, M (2010) They aren’t talking about me… Crunk Feminist. https://www.crunkfeministcollective.com/2010/03/14/they-arent-talking-about-me/
- (2021) Misogynoir Transformed. NY: University.
Bland, L (2019) Britain’s Brown Babies. Manchester: University.
Boston, N (2021) Some of the most interesting Windrush passengers were Indo-Caribbean — yet their stories remain untold. Independent https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/windrush-day-indo-caribbean-britain-b1869704.html
Chakroborti, N and Garland, J (2004) Rural Racism. London: Routledge.
Coard, B (1971) How the West Indian Child Is Made Educationally Subnormal In the British School System. London: New Beacon.
Fowler, C (2020) The Green Unpleasant Land. Leeds: Peepal Tree.
Goffe, T (2021) Scratching the Surface: A Speculative Feminist Visual History of other Windrush Itineraries. In: del Pilar Kaladeen, M and Dabydeen, D. The Other Windrush: Legacies of Indenture in Britain’s Caribbean Empire. London: Pluto.
Habib, I (2008) Black Lives in the English Archive. London: Routledge
Lafhaj, S (2023) Windrush stories of the Indo-Caribbean community. Museums of London. https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/windrush-stories-indo-caribbean-community
Levy, A (2004) Small Island. London: Review.
Lowe, H (2014) Oromonde. London: Hercules
Selvon, S (1957) The Lonely Londoners. London: Allan Wingate.
Tre Ventour Ed (2024) “Wi Likkle, But Wi Tallawah”: Northampton Town Blacktivism + Matta Fancanta Caribbean Youth, 1970–95. YouTube https://youtu.be/4XtCH7Ih8eU
Trouillot, M-R (1995) Silencing the Past. MA: Beacon.
Wolstenholme, L (2023) Indo-Caribbeans in the UK: ‘Our stories are yet to be heard’. BBC News https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-66267574
Film and Television
Babylon. Dir Franco Rosso. 1980
Belle. Dir Amma Asante. 2013.
Burning an Illusion. Dir Menelik Shabazz. 1981.
Desmond’s. Channel 4. 1989–1994.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Dir. Steven Spielberg. 1977.
The Goonies. Dir. Steven Spielberg. 1985.
Kidulthood Trilogy. Dir Noel Clarke. 2006–2016.
Murder is Easy. BBC. 2023.
Pressure. Dir Horace Ové. 1976.
Rocks. Dir Sarah Gavron. 2019
Rye Lane. Dir. Raine Allen Miller. 2023
Sanditon. ITV. 2019.
Small Axe. BBC. 2020.
Stand By Me. Dir. Rob Reiner. 1987.
Stranger Things. Netflix. 2016–2024.
Subnormal: A British Scandal. BBC. 2021.
The Real McCoy. Channel 4. 1991–1996.
Young Soul Rebels. Dir Isaac Julien. 1991.
