Steve McQueen has set out to tell the untold stories of the West-Indian community and their relationship with England through his five films Mangrove; Lovers Rock; Red, White and Blue; Alex Wheatle; and Education. In an industry where the black experience has typically been depicted with slave biopic after slave biopic (no, I am not forgetting 12 Years a Slave) it was more than refreshing to see underrepresented parts of black familial history played out on screen. As a mixed-race woman, I was filled with a sense of pride watching our community’s history played out on screen in such a thoughtful and three-dimensional way. These five films foregrounded an important part of British history that has at best been neglected, and at worst re-written. In giving us this series of films about the West-Indian experience in London across 1969 to 1982, McQueen writes the events and experiences many of us raised in these communities know well into history.
Through his collection of films, not only does McQueen tell the stories that have been historically neglected by the larger conversations, he also reveals a Black British identity that has seldom been shown in television and film. What I loved so much about Small Axe as a BAME viewer was the variation in the type of characters that were reflected throughout the five films. Rather than the stereotypical characters that have often come to characterise black identity across film and television, Small Axe rightly shows us the varying spectrum of Black British identity, from the shy sweetness of Alex Wheatle when he first arrived in Brixton to the smooth and confident protagonists in Lovers Rock.
Against the backdrop of historically significant moments of racial tension which include the Brixton riots, brutal police harassment and the consequent trauma of systematic racism, McQueen simultaneously shows us the duality of black pain and black joy, something unique and unprecedented on the BBC. As racial tensions simmer throughout the series, we are shown tender moments of refuge through friendship, love, family and music; themes that appear across all five films as safe havens for black joy to flourish and the pain to be momentarily shut out. It is a stark reminder for many of us in the diaspora that whilst there often exists pain in the way society treats us, there is always joy and love to be found in our own communities.
Throughout the series McQueen aims an illuminative spotlight on the historical and systemic racism that runs through British society. Whether it’s through the legal system in Mangrove, the ‘special centres’ in Education, or the brutal care system that Alex Wheatle is subjected to throughout his childhood, one thing is for sure: Steve McQueen is unforgiving in revealing the dark and insidious racism that pervades through our society. This was particularly poignant in a year where the whole world watched America in shock and horror as another black life was so cruelly cut short at the hands of the American Police force. And just like clockwork, as our American brothers and sisters marched for their lives, on this side of the Atlantic the age-old trope of ‘well at least we aren’t as bad as America’ reared its ugly head once again, as it often does. But Small Axe offers us a tonic. Through each film, Steve McQueen is able to project one clear message: that the UK is not innocent. Each film highlights – sometimes with subtlety, and sometimes with brutal obviousness – the varying ways that racism impacts the lives of the West-Indian communities at the heart of each story.
A powerful example of this is the dedication to those young lives which were cut painfully short as a result of the New Cross Fire Massacre of 1981. A racially fuelled murder, which Google still labels as an accident. This is yet another reminder of the ways in which Black British history is constantly rewritten by the powers that be. Small Axe gives McQueen the opportunity to give a true account of what has occurred over the years, forcing its viewers to face the systemic racism head on, with nowhere to hide.
Whilst these five films are a tender love letter to those who laid the path before us in the West-Indian community, they also serve as a reminder to the British establishment that they cannot rewrite our history. As long as our stories exist, we will find a way to tell them. We will never forget the struggle that our ancestors faced to carve out their and our places after them in British society, nor will we remain silent about the current struggles we face with our Black British identity.