Micheal and Amarah-Jae in Lovers Rock.
Small Axe, created and directed by Steve McQueen
Director: Steve McQueen. Review by Rebecca Hardy
Artist-turned-filmmaker Steve McQueen has built a career out of truth-telling. Moving from his acclaimed art, which earned him a 1999 Turner Prize, to his celebrated film work, the west London-raised son of Caribbean parents has always been drawn to depicting the truth, the raw truth and nothing but the truth. Sometimes this goes in some surprising directions – witness Deadpan (1997), in which he reenacted a famous stunt by Buster Keaton. Other times it is disturbingly raw. His groundbreaking 12 Years A Slave (2013) made him the first black director of an Academy Award-winning best picture (2014), and earned plaudits for its unflinching look at slavery.
In his latest work, the TV series Small Axe, McQueen manages to depict the tough, eroding experiences of everyday racism in the communities he grew up in. Part-exposé, part-celebration of his Caribbean roots, Small Axe takes an uncompromising stare at the challenges facing many black people in modern Britain. Like many Friends, I’ve been educating myself about black history; this series has been a satisfying part of that.
The five short episodes chronicle the everyday lives and struggles of black British people from the late 1960s to the mid 1980s. In Steve McQueen’s own words, they explore ‘the journeys that my parents and the first generation of West Indians went on to deliver me here today, calling myself a black British person’. The generation he portrays is not the Windrush generation, he has stressed, but ‘a later generation who were already established here’.
The first episode ‘Mangrove’ begins in 1968, the year of Enoch Powell’s famous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech. It shines a spotlight on something that should be underlined in our history books but, tellingly, isn’t: The Mangrove Nine’s landmark Old Bailey trial is one of those pivotal but unsung moments in British history when justice was finally seen to be done, yet this is the first time the case has been dramatised. With luminous camerawork and stellar acting from an impassioned cast, we witness local Notting Hill man Frank Crichlow as he builds up his restaurant The Mangrove, only to have it routinely trashed by the local police force. That the authorities chose to target such a place had a particularly cruel significance, as The Mangrove was the well-loved hub of the immigrant community, with regulars including young Darcus Howe and the British Black Panther leader Altheia Jones-LeCointe. Even Bob Marley occasionally dropped in.
The title Small Axe is taken from a Bob Marley song, and describes those seemingly small moments of racism that culminate in giant acts of cultural vandalism and oppression – the small axes that hack away at a person’s life chances and self-esteem, and at the fabric of the communities themselves. This is what we see in ‘Mangrove’, as the police’s relentless harassment drives Crichlow to despair. Facing racist bullying on a regular basis (the premises were raided twelve times on spurious grounds, between January 1969 and July 1970), the community eventually comes together to peacefully protest. On 9 August 1970, 150 people marched to the local police station where they chanted the name of the racist officer Frank Pulley who they said had been abusing them for years. The protesters are subsequently charged with ‘inciting a riot’ for which nine of the supposed antagonists are taken to trial. In a brilliantly-realised court drama, ‘Mangrove’ brings to life the machinations, humiliations and triumphs of the trial, until eventually the Nine are cleared of their charges.
Crichlow’s character arc is one we see often in this series, with four of the episodes based on real life and one imagined. It shows people valiantly attempting to rise above their daily humiliations, and live out their lives in a near-constant racist backdrop, until the abuse overwhelms them and they can no longer look the other way.
We see this in the straight-up-and-down work ethic of Leroy Logan, as he comes into collision with the prejudices of his police peers. ‘Red, White and Blue’ shows the struggles of this real-life forensic scientist, who has to endure the twin challenges of surviving as the only black officer in a majority-white force, and the alienation he faces at home. In a community that has learnt to link the police only with random violence, and with a father, Kenneth, set on taking the police to court for beating him up, Leroy struggles to be accepted even on his home turf.
Based on a true story, the dramatisation highlights an issue rarely seen on mainstream television: how black communities terrorised by racist policing can start the painful, slow journey to regain trust in the institutions that have for so long ground them down. As the Metropolitan Police moves to come good on the target for forty per cent of new recruits to be from ethnic minority backgrounds, the question has never felt more timely.
McQueen often retreats from showing the full horror of racial violence, but creates an atmosphere of threat and unease. In one scene Logan walks into a changing room and finds ‘Dirty Nigger’ scrawled on his locker. It carries as much emotional punch as a scene showing brute force. In Alex Wheatle, we see how the eponymous real-life activist suffered abuse at white hands in a south London care home, years before his involvement in the 1981 Brixton uprising, for which he was imprisoned.
You can see why all this truth-telling could take a toll on McQueen. ‘It’s about putting oneself in places that are not going to be comfortable,’ he told The Guardian, ‘but, by going there, you might uncover the truth of what is actually going on. Basically, my attitude is: we’re all going to die anyway, so let’s just go for it.’
The London of McQueen’s youth shines through these pieces, and we see his clear affection. ‘Education’ is perhaps the most personal episode for the filmmaker, showing twelve-year-old Kingsley labelled a ‘disruptive influence’ and packed off to an ‘educationally subnormal’ school in a racially-biased system that is stacked against him. McQueen’s own school experiences include, at thirteen, being placed in a class for children who were considered to be academically struggling. This was definitely ‘informed by class and race and privilege’, he has said. ‘Absolutely. No ifs or buts or maybe about it.’
These episodes don’t just portray hard knocks and challenges, however. They are also full of joy, love and hope, revelling in British-Caribbean culture: ‘Mangrove’ brings to life the happy camaraderie that Frank Crichlow created in his West Indian restaurant, so clearly redolent of the swinging sixties. ‘Lovers Rock’ is a music-lover’s joy, telling the story of a young couple meeting at a party. With the kind of attentive eye usually born from close experience, the piece is a loving homage to the west London house parties of the late 1970s and early 1980s – you feel you are gyrating to the blues music yourself and feasting off the goat curry stew. The films are beautifully shot and so intimate you feel the heat of the dance floor prickling under your skin. The scene where, for four joyful minutes, everyone on the dance floor sings to Janet Kay’s 1979 hit ‘Silly Games’ is spell-binding television.
The programmes are also full of the kind of insight that only someone from the community can show. Over dinner in ‘Red, White and Blue’, as one woman’s chicken is praised, she admits to adding sugar to the sauce, to which another female relative sniffs that she would never add sugar. It’s a beautifully-observed detail, bringing to life the richness and complexity of these familial relationships of which we hear so little. The episodes abound with details like this, delivering you into the heart of these underrepresented communities.
Similarly, in ‘Lovers Rock’, we are plunged into the heady thrill of being adolescents, sneaking off for an illicit night-out. As the young woman sets off on top of a double deck bus she notices a passer-by carrying a white cross. The image repeats a while later, but it isn’t until the programme’s final scene, as she crawls into bed, that we realise its allure. As her mother calls her down for church, we spot the white cross hanging above her bed and realise her religious upbringing and the significance of these secret nights out full of hedonism.
The episode also highlights the microaggressions and power plays that make up everyday racism. There’s a moment when a posturing young black man, eager to impress his new girlfriend, is brought back to life with a bump when his cocky white boss catches them in the garage. The unequal dynamic plays out: the machismo of the young boss eager to humiliate his black employee a subtle reminder of those half-unseen moments of condescension and social one-upmanship that are only visible to those who have to endure them on a daily basis.
These rich, evocative stories stay with you a long time. For me, they were an eye-opening depiction of the daily struggles these communities have endured for years. How far these slights and battles stretch back, and how deep the damage must go, affects not only the remedy, but the depths of reparation that they are owed. For Friends keen to broaden and bring to life their understanding of black British history, they are an excellent tool.
Rebecca is the journalist at the Friend.
