:00:10. > :00:20.When I first met Nicky, I just saw this beautiful woman with these
:00:20. > :00:24.
:00:24. > :00:28.great big brown gorgeous eyes. She was coming home from work and I put
:00:28. > :00:32.a lot of candles out in the lounge, and she came in and I got down on
:00:32. > :00:35.my knees and I said, I love you, will you marry me. This is Nicky
:00:35. > :00:38.Mehta's big day. The vivacious 34 year-old is getting married to
:00:38. > :00:41.Nicholas Tegg. He is the nervous- looking one waiting in Coventry
:00:41. > :00:46.registry office. They are one of thousands of mixed-race couples to
:00:46. > :00:52.get married each year. He is definitely my soulmate. I can't
:00:52. > :00:58.wait to spend the rest of my life with him. I'm here because this
:00:58. > :01:01.wedding symbolises one of the truly great changes in British life. Once,
:01:01. > :01:09.and it's not so long ago, such a relationship would leave you
:01:09. > :01:15.It now gives me the greatest of pleasure to announce that you are
:01:15. > :01:25.husband-and-wife. Would you like to seal it with a kiss?
:01:25. > :01:28.
:01:28. > :01:33.British marriages are changing. They are no longer about bringing
:01:33. > :01:37.two people together, quite often it is a mingling of two cultures. The
:01:37. > :01:40.in-laws have not just come from another part of the country. Quite
:01:40. > :01:47.often they might have started their journey in another part of the
:01:47. > :01:53.world. 100 years ago, it took far less than a marriage to have the
:01:53. > :01:56.fingers wagging. If you danced with a black man you were discriminated
:01:56. > :02:01.against, because people didn't like it. The boys didn't like it, the
:02:01. > :02:05.girls didn't like it. They came to the front door and said, where is
:02:05. > :02:10.he? Where is the ligger? And she said, he's not here, so they
:02:10. > :02:15.slapped my grandmother. Yet, through it all, mixed-race
:02:15. > :02:19.communities have not just survived, they have flourished. We had seen
:02:19. > :02:29.half of the picture of Shirley Temple, but we had to race home on
:02:29. > :02:39.Well, they measured our heads like that and like that. And colour of
:02:39. > :02:40.
:02:40. > :02:43.eyes and noted our complexion. Britain we have today, vibrant and
:02:43. > :02:51.mixed, would not have been possible were it not for the brave couples
:02:52. > :02:55.who fell in love in a much colder racial climate. I stopped and asked
:02:56. > :02:59.this boy the way to Queen Street and he said I was losing my way to
:02:59. > :03:02.the docks, and we started talking and I think we fell in love there
:03:03. > :03:06.and then. One in 10 children in this country now lives in a mixed-
:03:06. > :03:11.race family, and mixed race people are becoming one of the fastest-
:03:11. > :03:15.growing ethnic minorities. Born in Sri Lanka, I met and married an
:03:15. > :03:25.Englishwoman. This is our story, but it is also the history of our
:03:25. > :03:38.
:03:38. > :03:42.Francis and I met at university and that was over 30 years ago. And I'm
:03:42. > :03:45.not sure that we ever talked about colour or anything like that. I
:03:45. > :03:52.think when he got married we were aware of a sort of meeting of
:03:53. > :04:02.cultures. You can see that in the We've got two sons, Adam and
:04:03. > :04:08.
:04:08. > :04:15.The recent history of mixed race Britain starts in port towns like
:04:15. > :04:23.this one in South Shields. True, there were Africans in Britain
:04:23. > :04:26.since the time of the Romans. Asians settled on the shores in the
:04:26. > :04:29.1600s, and of course, there were freed slaves, but it is not really
:04:29. > :04:34.until the turn of the last century that mixed-race communities, small
:04:34. > :04:37.as they were, began to shape our collective history. Trade was the
:04:37. > :04:40.great magnetic force, a booming economy based on coal and ships
:04:40. > :04:46.sucked in workers from the Empire. Our ports, London, Liverpool and
:04:46. > :04:48.Cardiff, and others, resounded with foreign tongues. In South Shields
:04:48. > :04:52.there were Arab seamen from Aden, today's Yemen, recruited by the
:04:52. > :05:02.Merchant Navy. As residents of the British Empire and its
:05:02. > :05:02.
:05:02. > :05:09.protectorates, they were entitled They would spend months at sea,
:05:09. > :05:19.stoking the fires of commerce When they came ashore, these men
:05:19. > :05:21.
:05:21. > :05:25.were put into lodgings run by the private shipping companies. In 1909,
:05:25. > :05:27.some of the men lived here in the Leigate district in what were then
:05:27. > :05:30.boarding houses. It wasn't that they wanted to live separately,
:05:30. > :05:40.they didn't really have a choice. The seamen were not actually
:05:40. > :05:40.
:05:40. > :05:43.The reason? The age-old fear that this army of single men thousands
:05:43. > :05:53.of miles away from their families would look for company and more
:05:53. > :06:03.This is one of the last boarding houses that remain in South Shields.
:06:03. > :06:28.
:06:28. > :06:32.Friends still meet to talk over the If it didn't have one household
:06:32. > :06:35.where there was one married, they would stay at a bed and breakfast,
:06:35. > :06:39.so they used to call them boarding houses and people used to meet
:06:39. > :06:42.their as well. It wasn't just a bed and breakfast, it was like a little
:06:42. > :06:47.community cafe as well. You have to remember they were not allowed to
:06:47. > :06:51.go in English cafes. Were they not? Not when they first came. They
:06:51. > :06:55.couldn't go in there or a tea shop, so they had to set their own place
:06:55. > :07:05.up where they could meet. For years, the segregated groups of foreign
:07:05. > :07:09.
:07:09. > :07:12.workers were too small to have any great impact, but that would change.
:07:12. > :07:16.When Britain went to war in 1914, it needed sailors, lots of them, to
:07:16. > :07:20.work on its merchant ships and the Empire was the obvious pool of
:07:20. > :07:23.labour. With German U-boats picking off our ships and threatening the
:07:23. > :07:33.British supply chain, these men played a vital part in the war
:07:33. > :07:44.
:07:44. > :07:47.They are growing in numbers. Some of them would work in factories,
:07:47. > :07:51.but they would arrive in ports like London, Cardiff, Liverpool and they
:07:51. > :07:53.increased from a few hundred to a few thousand. It became ever more
:07:53. > :07:56.difficult to prevent social mingling, and British women, who
:07:56. > :08:06.played their part in the war effort no longer fitted the demure
:08:06. > :08:11.
:08:11. > :08:14.stereotype. I think it transformed women's lives, because they had to
:08:14. > :08:17.take on jobs that had been designated as jobs for men. Women
:08:17. > :08:19.across the class from upper-class women who previously had been
:08:19. > :08:22.chaperoned everywhere, the younger women, through to working-class
:08:22. > :08:25.women, took on all sorts of work. They were tram drivers, road
:08:25. > :08:28.sweepers. They went out and about, they went to pubs, they went to the
:08:28. > :08:31.cinema. They learned a lot not just about themselves, but also about
:08:31. > :08:37.sexuality and birth control, about things that were previously taboo
:08:37. > :08:46.for many of these women. And then relationships start happening
:08:46. > :08:50.between these foreign men and the white women. Why is that? Well, the
:08:50. > :08:53.white women have not got the usual white men to have relations with,
:08:53. > :08:56.and they found a lot of these black and Asian and Chinese men very
:08:56. > :08:59.attractive, not least because they are different, they often are very
:08:59. > :09:07.generous with money. Some of them come onshore with money to burn and
:09:07. > :09:11.are kind. A lot of them talk about how kind these men are, relative to
:09:11. > :09:21.the men they are used to. So they start having relationships with
:09:21. > :09:23.
:09:23. > :09:25.So, by the end of the war, many of these men decide to stay. In ports,
:09:25. > :09:33.you see the beginning of mixed-race communities, no longer isolated
:09:33. > :09:43.individuals, but families with local roots. There were now perhaps
:09:43. > :09:44.
:09:44. > :09:51.20,000 men from the Caribbean, the Imagine what it was like for the
:09:51. > :09:57.Tommies returning home. They found new neighbours and things seemed
:09:57. > :10:07.strange, including the women they had left behind. It goes up from
:10:07. > :10:08.
:10:08. > :10:11.fivefold from 1913 to 1919. They just find they are not speaking the
:10:11. > :10:15.same language, so they feel the gulf, that these women are kind of
:10:15. > :10:18.alien and the women, I think, resent the men and resent the fact
:10:18. > :10:22.that they want to go back to some status quo pre-war in which they
:10:22. > :10:32.got to be the good little woman in the home, or whatever. So they say
:10:32. > :10:33.
:10:33. > :10:36.You couldn't turn the clock back. Jobs were scarce. These war-weary
:10:36. > :10:40.men were bristling with resentment and then they see their women with
:10:40. > :10:43.foreigners. It is enough to tip them over the edge. In 1919,
:10:43. > :10:53.rioting broke out in the port areas around Glasgow and spread to South
:10:53. > :10:56.
:10:56. > :11:00.You've got to imagine hundreds of seamen here on the dockside, the
:11:00. > :11:10.whites easily outnumbering the Arabs. Both sides had guns, bottles,
:11:10. > :11:12.
:11:12. > :11:15.Most of the firing was into the air. Nobody actually got shot, but both
:11:15. > :11:18.groups threw their missiles at each other. A local woman called Dora
:11:18. > :11:25.Sharp who worked in one of the boarding houses was a witness to
:11:25. > :11:29.the violence. In court, she spoke up for some of the Yemenis saying
:11:29. > :11:32.she had seen a white man pointing a gun at an Arab in the heat of the
:11:32. > :11:35.right. Magnificently she declared, I wouldn't leave the Arab house for
:11:35. > :11:39.20 of you. I'm probably going to marry one of them tomorrow. Happy
:11:39. > :11:42.days! The riots spread to Cardiff, another port city that had changed.
:11:42. > :11:48.Before the war, there had been about 700 foreign seamen in the
:11:48. > :11:51.city. By 1919, there were 3,000. One summer's evening a group of
:11:51. > :11:56.these foreign men and their white girlfriends were travelling home
:11:56. > :12:02.after a day out. It was like a challenge to local masculinity.
:12:02. > :12:04.White men threw insults and then stones. It was the spark that lit
:12:04. > :12:13.the Cardiff tinderbox. Within hours, violent disorder spread across the
:12:13. > :12:23.city. The white mob split up into gangs and roamed the city,
:12:23. > :12:30.
:12:30. > :12:34.attacking black and Arab men. Even On the day of the riot, one of the
:12:34. > :12:37.neighbours ran to the front door and knocked the door and say to you
:12:37. > :12:40.better get Joe out of there because they are coming to get him. Neil
:12:40. > :12:42.Sinclair's grandmother was Agnes Jolly. She lived in Somerset Street
:12:42. > :12:46.with a West Indian husband Joe Hedley and their eight-year-old
:12:46. > :12:49.daughter, Beatrice, who passed the story on to her son, Neil.
:12:49. > :12:52.grandfather didn't want to leave the house and leave his wife and
:12:52. > :13:02.child alone, but Agnes Jolly said, they are after you, so get out. He
:13:02. > :13:02.
:13:02. > :13:10.went out of the back garden wall Apparently there were 1,000 white
:13:10. > :13:13.men in the street. They came to the front door and started banging on
:13:13. > :13:16.the front door, so my grandmother and my mother went upstairs to the
:13:16. > :13:21.landing and they could see the shadows and the lights as men broke
:13:21. > :13:27.in through the front door. And then men just ran into the downstairs
:13:27. > :13:31.and into every room and started to ransack the hall. So eventually
:13:31. > :13:34.they got up to my grandmother and were saying, where is he? Where is
:13:34. > :13:37.the ligger? She said, he's not here, so they slapped my grandmother.
:13:37. > :13:39.They left and then my mother said her mother was very distraught,
:13:39. > :13:46.because all her little china ornaments and knick-knacks in her
:13:46. > :13:56.cosy home had been wrecked. Police came the following day and they
:13:56. > :14:11.
:14:11. > :14:17.said to my grandmother it was her It is impossible to be certain, but
:14:17. > :14:20.something like 15,000 people were involved in the riots in 1919. They
:14:20. > :14:27.affected not just South Shields and Cardiff, but London, Barry, Newport
:14:27. > :14:30.and Hull. In all, five people were killed and they have gone down as a
:14:30. > :14:33.landmark in the history of mixed race Britain. You see, whatever the
:14:33. > :14:43.wider social and economic problems of the time, it was the sight of
:14:43. > :14:45.
:14:45. > :14:49.foreign men with white women that A letter appeared in The Times
:14:49. > :14:54.shortly afterwards. Just listen to this. "Intimate association between
:14:54. > :14:56.black or coloured men and white women is a thing of horror. It's an
:14:56. > :15:04.instinctive certainty that sexual relations between white women and
:15:04. > :15:07.coloured men revolt our very "What blame," it goes on to say,
:15:07. > :15:17."to those white men who, seeing these conditions and loathing them,
:15:17. > :15:19.
:15:19. > :15:22.I think there was deep resentment and they felt not simply that these
:15:22. > :15:25.men were taking their women, but they were taking their jobs. In
:15:25. > :15:29.fact, that wasn't true. Actually, after the war, there was higher
:15:29. > :15:31.unemployment amongst black men and Chinese men than white men. So the
:15:31. > :15:35.definers of working class masculinity, which is linked to the
:15:35. > :15:41.ab ility to get a job, the ability to get a woman, that is really
:15:42. > :15:46.being challenged. In direct response to the riots, the
:15:46. > :15:48.authorities resorted to some stringent legal measures. Laws
:15:48. > :15:53.designed to restrict German nationals during the war now
:15:53. > :15:59.covered all foreign seamen. It would limit their movements,
:15:59. > :16:09.subject them to curfew, control employment and last for decades. In
:16:09. > :16:14.You have to understand, in those days it must have been hard for the
:16:14. > :16:20.British to accept mixed marriages. We used to say foreign devils in
:16:20. > :16:27.those days. They didn't understand Chinese ways and Chinese customs.
:16:27. > :16:33.Just a foreigner come to England to Doreen and Lynne's father Stanley
:16:33. > :16:37.Ah Foo came to Liverpool back in 1912. Back then there were roughly
:16:37. > :16:42.1,200 Chinese men in the city. He fell in love with and married their
:16:42. > :16:46.mother Emily. Stanley's job on the steam ships took him away for long
:16:46. > :16:50.periods of time. But when he returned, he was king of the
:16:50. > :16:55.kitchen. Dad was a marvellous cook. Yeah, he was a good cook. And it
:16:55. > :16:58.was lovely when he came home because we had the Chinese food.
:16:58. > :17:05.Although my mother learned to cook Chinese. But my dad was special.
:17:05. > :17:11.His cooking was really good. Doreen, when he was back home, what was he
:17:11. > :17:16.like? He was always playing tricks on us. He was quite jolly. Very
:17:16. > :17:23.jolly. He'd sort of flick your hair when you were walking past. He'd
:17:23. > :17:26.jump out. We'd have real fun with him, yeah. Is that your memory of
:17:26. > :17:34.childhood then? Yeah, happy. It was a very happy childhood. It was
:17:34. > :17:40.Their carefree home life was a contrast to the restrictions that
:17:40. > :17:43.Stanley faced when he stepped outdoors. Ever since the 1919 riots,
:17:43. > :17:52.Stanley, like all foreign seamen, had had to register with the police
:17:52. > :17:55.and carry an ID card bearing a Even Emily was not immune from this
:17:55. > :17:59.humiliation. An early nationality law had a rather vicious sting in
:17:59. > :18:07.its tail. Every inch an Englishwoman, once she had married
:18:07. > :18:13.Stanley she lost her British Well, when my mum married my dad,
:18:13. > :18:19.she became an alien. Your mum, who was British? Yes, she was an alien.
:18:19. > :18:23.Here's a book that will tell you. That's my mum's. Once she married
:18:23. > :18:26.my father, she was an alien. Looking back at the thought of your
:18:26. > :18:31.mum, British born and bred, having to go and register, what do you
:18:31. > :18:35.think of it now? I think it was disgusting, really. She was born
:18:35. > :18:45.and bred in England. She was English, white. So why should she,
:18:45. > :18:46.
:18:46. > :18:52.because she married an alien, have The law was applied differently
:18:52. > :18:59.around the country. Liverpool had a curfew, and men had to report to
:18:59. > :19:08.Incredibly, these restrictions remained on the statute books until
:19:08. > :19:13.Doreen and Lynn remember the day when even watching a film was
:19:13. > :19:17.interrupted by the curfew. We'd gone before the curfew and we'd
:19:17. > :19:25.seen half the picture of Shirley Temple. And they suddenly realised,
:19:25. > :19:28.my dad and his friend, it's 8pm, we'll have to go now. It was
:19:28. > :19:38.disappointing, because we didn't see the end of the film. We had to
:19:38. > :19:39.
:19:39. > :19:49.Despite the rules and regulations, mixed communities in port towns
:19:49. > :19:55.
:19:55. > :20:00.The Yemeni enclave in South Shields, Norman and Maureen Kaier have been
:20:00. > :20:06.married for 37 years. They are both second-generation mixed-race
:20:06. > :20:10.Yemenis, though you'd be hard pushed to tell in Maureen's case.
:20:10. > :20:16.Both have Yemeni grandfather's who came to South Shields. Maureen
:20:16. > :20:19.remembers how hard the Yemeni men tried to fit in. I know when they
:20:19. > :20:24.came here they were very smart. When they changed clothes, they had
:20:24. > :20:27.to be very, very smart. They wanted to try and be like the English
:20:28. > :20:33.people. They wanted to blend in. You always seen them in a trilby
:20:33. > :20:37.hat. Lovely, immaculate shoes. Waistcoats. And it was all to help
:20:37. > :20:47.them to blend in, so that they didn't stand out. And they were
:20:47. > :20:52.One of these men was Norman's grandfather Mohamed Hussan. He
:20:52. > :20:57.married Elizabeth Taylor, a Geordie. Their love affair was all the more
:20:57. > :21:00.incredible given what was happening all around them. It would have been
:21:00. > :21:08.very difficult for them because if you were in a mixed marriage, you
:21:08. > :21:11.were called some dreadful names. You were classed as a prostitute.
:21:11. > :21:21.Women were known to have been spat on in the street and verbally
:21:21. > :21:31.South Shields was by no means unique. Prejudice towards mixed-
:21:31. > :21:31.
:21:31. > :21:41.In London's Docklands, home to 700 Chinese people, intolerance coupled
:21:41. > :21:42.
:21:42. > :21:47.with ignorance made for some dark Connie grew up in London's
:21:47. > :21:51.Limehouse, the capital's original Chinatown. If you look at the
:21:51. > :21:54.literature of the time, they talk about Chinatown. It was an opium
:21:55. > :22:00.den and there were nightclubs and there were strange things going on.
:22:00. > :22:08.You're laughing at me. Well, I used to read these rubbishy books when I
:22:08. > :22:13.was in my teens. And I used to go to piano lessons and I used to have
:22:13. > :22:18.to walk down these narrow turnings. And I used to look for the mist
:22:18. > :22:24.rising from the river. And these earthy people standing in the
:22:24. > :22:30.doorways. But I never ever found them. It was all fiction, was it?
:22:30. > :22:32.Yes, yes. It must have been weird, as a teenager growing up in
:22:32. > :22:37.Chinatown, reading these books about starlets coming, about drugs
:22:37. > :22:41.and so on. But you're saying it just didn't happen like that?
:22:41. > :22:51.we were just ordinary kids looking for a job after we left school,
:22:51. > :22:51.
:22:51. > :22:56.No matter. Chinatown still attracted those with a taste for
:22:56. > :23:01.the illicit. The opium dens and gaming houses, whether real or
:23:01. > :23:09.imagined. Writers and film-makers made for Chinatown, drawn to the
:23:09. > :23:12.exotic and forbidden possibilities In 1919, the American film director
:23:12. > :23:22.DW Griffith's interest was aroused after reading a story, The Chink
:23:22. > :23:34.
:23:34. > :23:37.And The Child, taken from Thomas This tale of love between an opium
:23:37. > :23:47.smoking Chinaman and a teenage white girl was initially banned by
:23:47. > :23:47.
:23:47. > :23:57.WH Smith refused to stock it because they felt it was salacious
:23:57. > :24:01.
:24:01. > :24:04.In his film version, Broken Blossoms, Griffith had to work
:24:04. > :24:13.around the unwritten rule that they could never be any kind of physical
:24:13. > :24:16.When the film was released here in 1920, the Birmingham Mail received
:24:16. > :24:21.a letter from a female reader in Edgbaston written, it's said, on
:24:21. > :24:24.behalf of herself and her friends. She described the film as nothing
:24:24. > :24:28.but the lowest type of sordid drama and she was particularly horrifying
:24:28. > :24:38.that the hero of the film was a Chinaman and the villain, an
:24:38. > :24:47.
:24:47. > :24:51.But two white women married to Chinese men wrote to the Daily
:24:51. > :24:54.Graphic challenging this type of prejudice.
:24:54. > :24:59."We women dare not take our children out because people point
:24:59. > :25:02.to us and laugh. And please remember these half-castes, as they
:25:02. > :25:12.call them, are well fed, well clothed little kiddies who are as
:25:12. > :25:20.
:25:20. > :25:23.good as most and better than many This film Broken Blossoms painted
:25:23. > :25:28.quite a kind relationship between a Chinese man and a white, very young
:25:28. > :25:36.woman. Was that real, did you think? Yes, but it was quite normal
:25:36. > :25:46.in Limehouse. You didn't think it was controversial at all? No, no. I
:25:46. > :25:47.
:25:47. > :25:52.think the Chinese liked the British In 1924, there were signs that
:25:52. > :25:56.official attitudes towards the Chinese were hardening. They were
:25:56. > :25:59.added to a list of nationalities to be avoided by potential brides.
:25:59. > :26:03.Marriage registrars were supposed to warn women that some of the men
:26:03. > :26:06.might be bigamists and not trustworthy. The original list
:26:06. > :26:16.drawn up in 1913 by the Colonial Office, already include Hindus,
:26:16. > :26:22.And pretty soon, the Home Office would join in, complaining that the
:26:23. > :26:26.Chinese men were being far too choosy. Just listen to this.
:26:26. > :26:29."It is such a pity that a Chinaman is fastidious. He will not take a
:26:29. > :26:37.battered old prostitute of the sea port, but want something young,
:26:37. > :26:40.attractive. Above all, clean and free from venereal disease." Now,
:26:40. > :26:50.even if you allow for the stilted, official language of the day, it's
:26:50. > :26:55.
:26:55. > :26:58.All this in an age of inventiveness. The wireless and the flying machine
:26:58. > :27:02.with their potential for shrinking the world were breaking through old
:27:02. > :27:09.boundaries. Science seem to have the answer to all questions, even
:27:09. > :27:15.Before long, the thoroughly scientific sounding British
:27:15. > :27:18.Eugenics Society developed a controversial theory. It ran like
:27:18. > :27:20.this. If the poorest classes could be discouraged from breeding, the
:27:20. > :27:30.sum total of intelligence and virtue in the country would
:27:30. > :27:33.increase. Eugenics saw itself as a new science for human advancement.
:27:33. > :27:35.Influential writers like HG Wells, George Bernard Shaw, cabinet
:27:35. > :27:41.ministers like Winston Churchill, they all thought it would save
:27:41. > :27:44.Britain from moral and physical decline. There were similar
:27:44. > :27:53.movements in America and Scandinavia. And in Germany, there
:27:53. > :27:56.was the charmingly named Racial At a meeting in London in 1919, the
:27:56. > :28:02.chairman of the British Society, Leonard Darwin, son of Charles,
:28:02. > :28:05.announced that they would also look "What is urgently needed," he said,
:28:05. > :28:12."is a thorough scientific study of the mental and physical
:28:12. > :28:14.characteristics of mixed races". Mrs Sybil Gotto, the society's
:28:14. > :28:18.general secretary at the time, agreed saying, "Although I'm quite
:28:18. > :28:26.ready to look upon the coloured races as our brothers, I do not
:28:26. > :28:30.want to look upon them as our The inference, of course, was that
:28:30. > :28:32.they were inferior. If they were proved right, the logical
:28:32. > :28:40.conclusion would have been for Britain to introduce laws banning
:28:40. > :28:42.mixed-race relationships. Following where others had led. Some American
:28:42. > :28:50.states had laws dating back to 1661 preventing whites marrying native
:28:50. > :28:53.Americans and African Americans. In Southern Rhodesia, a law was passed
:28:53. > :29:03.in 1903 that made it an offence to have sex outside marriage between
:29:03. > :29:06.
:29:06. > :29:09.And in Australia, the state had recently begun a policy of removing
:29:09. > :29:17.so called half-castes from their parents to imbue them with European
:29:17. > :29:20.values and, I quote, "Breed out COMMENTATOR: many of them are half
:29:20. > :29:30.Japanese. Daughters of pearl fishing fathers and Aboriginal
:29:30. > :29:32.mothers. Many again are almost So the British Eugenics Society
:29:32. > :29:35.decided to investigate families of what they called mated Chinese and
:29:35. > :29:44.English or Irish, and mixed race children with black fathers, to
:29:44. > :29:46.test the theory that racial mixing led to inferior stock. The
:29:46. > :29:56.unfortunate mixed-race children of Liverpool would be the first
:29:56. > :29:58.
:29:58. > :30:02.guinea-pigs on which the theory Eugenics seeks to apply the laws of
:30:02. > :30:06.heredity to examine the race. Everybody sound in body and race
:30:06. > :30:10.should marry and have enough children to perpetuate their stock
:30:10. > :30:15.and carry on the race. Just listening to the language they use,
:30:15. > :30:20.they talk of native and stock, the kind of words you would use to
:30:20. > :30:27.describe animals. The survey comprised just 15 families and 45
:30:27. > :30:31.children. At its head was a wealth anthropologists -- Welsh
:30:31. > :30:36.anthropologist. Along with his colleague he began to measure the
:30:36. > :30:40.shape and size of the children's heads, noses, they years, even the
:30:41. > :30:46.fold on their upper eyelids. They made careful notes of the colour of
:30:46. > :30:50.the skin, their hair and the eyes. They were being treated as if they
:30:50. > :30:59.were some so -- sort of exotic specimen. They were just boys and
:30:59. > :31:06.girls, sons and daughters, all rooted in the local community.
:31:06. > :31:12.is a period when many people, including scientists, geneticists,
:31:12. > :31:18.etc, believed that Inter racial relations between races who were
:31:18. > :31:26.deemed to be very far apart. That would become detrimental and would
:31:26. > :31:31.lead to degeneracy. We looked in a mixed-race family and think, well.
:31:31. > :31:41.It is beautiful and energetic and flamboyant. They thought exactly
:31:41. > :31:43.
:31:43. > :31:53.the opposite. The word degeneracy was widespread. They thought people
:31:53. > :31:58.
:31:58. > :32:01.would be inferior in every sense. They look to see if there was a
:32:01. > :32:09.relation between physicality and intellect. They were subject there
:32:10. > :32:18.in this poor house. They had rooms upstairs and we were told to go to
:32:18. > :32:24.the rim. Ladies measured us and took our photographs. They asked us
:32:24. > :32:30.questions. When you say measured, what did they do? They measured our
:32:30. > :32:35.heads like that and like that. They looked at the colour of the eyes
:32:35. > :32:39.and noted our complexion. That sort thing. When the results were
:32:39. > :32:44.published the sample included the children of black fathers. The
:32:44. > :32:52.professor was in for a surprise. Perhaps even disappoint. Did the
:32:52. > :32:58.results support the basic idea that this was a bad thing to have?
:32:58. > :33:04.interestingly, the so-called yellow-white hybrids produced
:33:04. > :33:07.children of high intelligence. was a bit of a shock. But the black
:33:07. > :33:12.and white hybrids, they were problematic, because they said the
:33:12. > :33:18.children inherited the worst of both, inherited a happy-go-lucky,
:33:18. > :33:24.carefree, lazy - and these were the words they used - of the Father,
:33:24. > :33:29.and the slovenly, immoral nature of the mother, because it was assumed
:33:29. > :33:35.the women were keen to prostitutes, if not prostitutes. They also came
:33:35. > :33:38.to another conclusion about mixed race children. They wanted to see
:33:38. > :33:43.to what degree they could pass as English, but the implication was
:33:43. > :33:48.that none of the children could ever be English. In the first case,
:33:48. > :33:51.even if they could pass, there might be 2% that could pass, but
:33:51. > :34:01.given that their parentage was not English and their fathers were not
:34:01. > :34:04.
:34:04. > :34:07.English, they could never truly be And if that flirtation with science
:34:07. > :34:11.did not come up with all the answers they expected, they were
:34:11. > :34:15.still good old-fashioned prejudice. -- there was still good old-
:34:15. > :34:20.fashioned prejudice. You could depend on that. Even the Civil
:34:20. > :34:25.Service was not immune. You would search in vain for its renowned
:34:25. > :34:29.detachment when it came to matters of race. A memorandum in 1925 from
:34:29. > :34:32.the Home Office to the Foreign Office summed up the feelings. "the
:34:32. > :34:36.Negro is said to be more largely developed than the white man and a
:34:36. > :34:42.woman who has been with a negro is said to find no satisfaction with
:34:42. > :34:46.anything else. Those already inclined to resent them were goaded
:34:46. > :34:51.on by newspapers. One reported that certain white women here in the
:34:51. > :34:55.district were say that black men were better at six and white men.
:34:55. > :35:00.As it happened, one group of white women seem determined to prove the
:35:00. > :35:05.civil servants and newspapers right. The genie of Inter racial relations
:35:05. > :35:15.was well and truly out of the bottle, and as the 20s roared on,
:35:15. > :35:17.
:35:17. > :35:22.it was the upper classes leading In 1928, Nancy Cunard, the writer
:35:22. > :35:27.and heir to the cruise line was scandalising high-society with
:35:27. > :35:31.their relationships with black men. At one lunch party, Margot Asquith,
:35:31. > :35:35.the wife of the former Liberal prime minister Henry was said to
:35:35. > :35:45.have greeted Nancy's mother with the words, well, what is Nancy up
:35:45. > :36:04.
:36:04. > :36:07.to now? Is it dope, drink or Was one of the sultans of door
:36:07. > :36:15.managed a Scottish divorce. She was the latest in a long string of
:36:15. > :36:18.whites. -- wide eaves. Incredibly the mosque had been built in the
:36:18. > :36:23.1800s and was patronised by British aristocrats who had converted to
:36:23. > :36:33.Islam. It was the venue for marriages between upper and middle-
:36:33. > :36:35.
:36:35. > :36:40.class white women and Asian or Arab Shortly after the ceremony, the
:36:40. > :36:48.Sultan and his latest wife, Helen Wilson travelled to Malaysia where
:36:48. > :36:54.she was crowned the Sultana. The World Press fawned over the Salton,
:36:54. > :36:59.even when he ditched the unfortunate Helen for someone new.
:36:59. > :37:05.-- the Sultan. Upper-class licence and foreign wealth seem to freedom
:37:05. > :37:14.of social taboos. -- free them of social taboos. But there were
:37:14. > :37:22.limits. I cannot speak enough of this containment. It stops me here.
:37:22. > :37:31.It is too much a Tchoyi and this, and this, the greatest discord that
:37:31. > :37:37.our hearts shall meet. On 19th May, 1930, Paul Robison that the African
:37:37. > :37:43.American singer and actor came to play her fellow here in Britain.
:37:43. > :37:50.to play a fellow. If it were now, I would be most happy, and might
:37:50. > :37:55.heart would be so absolute that not another night succeeds unknown.
:37:55. > :38:02.who was Desdemona? She was a rather sheltered middle-class 23-year-old.
:38:02. > :38:09.And her name was Peggy Ashcroft. That song tonight will not go from
:38:09. > :38:16.my mind. I have much to do but to go all but one side and sing it by
:38:16. > :38:21.-- like Paul Barber. In rehearsals, fear of public reaction made Paul
:38:21. > :38:25.Robeson and comfortable. After all, his father had been a slave. That
:38:25. > :38:29.girl could not get near to me, he said later. I was backing away from
:38:29. > :38:39.her all the time. I was like a plantation hand in the parlour.
:38:39. > :38:42.
:38:42. > :38:47.On that opening night, Peggy Ashcroft got rave reviews and the
:38:47. > :38:53.audience, well, they were just ecstatic giving Paul Robeson at no
:38:53. > :38:57.less than 20 curtain calls. But the sight of a black actor actually
:38:57. > :39:03.kissing a white woman, well, that was rather too much for one
:39:03. > :39:07.newspaper editor. He just walked out. Paul Robison himself told the
:39:07. > :39:11.New York Times," I would not care to play those scenes in some parts
:39:11. > :39:16.of the United States. The audience would get rough. In fact it might
:39:16. > :39:21.become very dangerous. ". One at Southern paper agreed. He knows
:39:21. > :39:24.what would happen, and so do the rest of us. And who knows what
:39:24. > :39:32.would have happened here if they knew what was actually going on
:39:32. > :39:36.offstage between the a fellow and his Desdemona. What the press and
:39:36. > :39:41.public did not know was just how close the pair had become. 50 years
:39:41. > :39:46.later, Peggy Ashcroft said that what happened between Paul and
:39:46. > :39:51.myself was possibly inevitable. How could one not fall in love with
:39:51. > :39:56.such a man. The whole episode was, she said, more than a theatrical
:39:56. > :40:06.experience. It put the significance of race straight in front of me and
:40:06. > :40:19.
:40:19. > :40:29.Hundreds of miles away in Cardiff, some have already made their choice.
:40:29. > :40:31.
:40:31. > :40:35.Racial mingling, as some called it, was crying. -- growing. By the mid-
:40:36. > :40:42.thirties, Tiger Bay was home to around 3,000 foreign sailors,
:40:42. > :40:50.mainly Africans and Arabs. Many of them had been born and bred in
:40:50. > :40:54.Cardiff, but were still treated as Nonetheless, they and their
:40:54. > :41:01.descendants would go on to create one of the country's most proud
:41:01. > :41:11.League mixed communities. My dad had just opened at the Cafe, not
:41:11. > :41:15.long, and he happened to be standing outside on the front door.
:41:15. > :41:19.And my mother, she was a nurse at the time. She had been to the
:41:19. > :41:27.cinema. And she was trying to get back to the Cardiff Royal Infirmary.
:41:27. > :41:32.That was where she lived. That was where her accommodation was. Olive
:41:32. > :41:37.was 15 years old when she moved from the small town of -- a small
:41:37. > :41:41.town in the Rhondda Valley to train as a nurse in Cardiff. I stopped
:41:41. > :41:46.and asked this boy eat the way to Queen Street, and he said I was
:41:46. > :41:54.losing my way to the docks and we started talking, and I think we
:41:54. > :42:01.fell in love. The boy she met and asked for direction was a young it
:42:01. > :42:11.Yemeni working as a chef in his own cafe. We got married when I was 16
:42:11. > :42:11.
:42:11. > :42:19.and three weeks, actually. I had five children before I was 21! We
:42:19. > :42:24.got -- had 10 children, five boys and five girls. When I got married
:42:24. > :42:31.there was a great need to stay at home because the priest from the
:42:31. > :42:41.church even came to say I was marrying the heathen. There was
:42:41. > :42:48.
:42:48. > :42:52.I used to go in the Cairo cafe, and in the back they had a little Arab
:42:52. > :42:55.school. Many of the kids used to go to the Arab school, even though we
:42:56. > :43:04.were not Arabs or Muslims, but because your friends were going,
:43:04. > :43:14.you wanted to go along. But we were a very integrated community. What
:43:14. > :43:22.
:43:22. > :43:30.Tiger Bay was home to many different races. They all came
:43:30. > :43:35.together to celebrate festivals like the end of Ramadan. We would
:43:35. > :43:45.wake up and you might hear the sound of chanting. You would think,
:43:45. > :43:45.
:43:45. > :43:51.So you ran out there, and you look for your friends and all of the
:43:51. > :43:54.people of the Arab community, and they would be in their native dress.
:43:54. > :44:04.They would parade in their street with flags in one hand and we would
:44:04. > :44:20.
:44:20. > :44:24.follow along the parade and be part Then, when it came to the food,
:44:24. > :44:27.they would off either foot or you could run home and actually get a
:44:27. > :44:37.part and you would get curry and rice and you could take home --
:44:37. > :44:38.
:44:38. > :44:43.Britain's mixed-race families were sharing each other's customs and
:44:43. > :44:52.making their own rules. It was genuinely multicultural, but that
:44:52. > :44:58.It was like that for Norman Kaier's mother Margaret in South Shields,
:44:58. > :45:03.who was married to a Yemeni seaman, Abdo. My mother, she wasn't a full
:45:03. > :45:06.practising Muslim, if you like. She still held a lot of the beliefs.
:45:06. > :45:13.would your mother have run the house as if it was a Muslim house
:45:13. > :45:19.as far as eating pork and that kind of thing? My father never ever ate
:45:19. > :45:22.pork. My mother, on the other hand, to a certain degree... Why are you
:45:22. > :45:27.giggling away? There's a little secret going on here. A lot of the
:45:27. > :45:31.English women would eat pork when their husbands were out. When they
:45:31. > :45:36.were out at sea or something? when they actually left the house.
:45:36. > :45:39.Oh, really? During the day. For me, it was different because my mam
:45:39. > :45:43.would eat what she wanted. So we had a separate frying pan, which
:45:44. > :45:48.she had to keep in a separate cupboard from my father. You
:45:48. > :45:54.couldn't use that. And he knew that. And he would often swear in Arabic
:45:54. > :45:59.if he had seen the frying pan out. Because she had been cooking bacon
:45:59. > :46:07.and that. But, the same as what Norman's mam did. But your mum was
:46:07. > :46:14.These couples were makng it up as they went along, sharing some
:46:14. > :46:18.customs and quietly ignoring those that didn't work for them. It was,
:46:18. > :46:24.if you like, a delightful free for all and that just didn't suit some
:46:24. > :46:32.people. In Cardiff, one man above all wanted to put a stop to this
:46:32. > :46:34.The City's chief constable, one James Wilson, was becoming
:46:34. > :46:38.increasingly concerned about Tiger Bay's reputation for immorality and
:46:38. > :46:40.mixed-race marriages. And he reported his worries to his local
:46:40. > :46:50.police committee saying that coloured men were coming into
:46:50. > :46:53.contact with the female sex of the Their progeny, he said, were half-
:46:53. > :47:03.caste with the vicious hereditary taint of their parents. Not one to
:47:03. > :47:03.
:47:03. > :47:10.The picture the Chief Constable painted of the area was very
:47:10. > :47:15.different from the reality. It had a bit of a reputation because there
:47:15. > :47:21.was a lot of street gambling that used to go on. Being a port, there
:47:21. > :47:30.was prostitution and that. But the actual people from Bute Town, they
:47:30. > :47:35.were the nicest people you could When the Cairo Cafe was in its
:47:35. > :47:40.heyday, we employed a lot of the women that lived in the Bay. They
:47:40. > :47:50.came to work in the Cairo Cafe. And some of them would be babysitting
:47:50. > :47:51.
:47:51. > :47:55.My mother was also, believe it or not, chairman of the Conservative
:47:55. > :48:05.Club in the docks. Which caused great problems amongst the
:48:05. > :48:08.
:48:08. > :48:13.In 1929, James Wilson started to call openly for a new form of
:48:13. > :48:15.social control. Anti-miscegenation laws similar to those which have
:48:15. > :48:25.been introduced in South Africa, banning sexual contact between
:48:25. > :48:27.
:48:28. > :48:30.He was playing the race card and he put all his cards on the table.
:48:30. > :48:34."The time may come," said the chief constable, "when public opinion
:48:34. > :48:38.will awake to the fact that our race has become leavened with the
:48:38. > :48:44.colour strain. Someone must have the courage to strike a warning
:48:44. > :48:54.note." And he clearly thought of himself as the man to do it. The
:48:54. > :48:56.
:48:56. > :49:01.The issue erupted onto the front pages and many journalists actually
:49:01. > :49:05.supported the chief constable. With one of them writing, "I feel that,
:49:05. > :49:14.in the interests of our town's purity, it would be a good thing if
:49:14. > :49:17.our swarthy friends were given the For the mixed-race communities, it
:49:17. > :49:23.was an explicit attack on their families and their whole way of
:49:23. > :49:28.life. The newspapers would say things, this promiscuity between
:49:28. > :49:34.blacks and whites. Obviously, the white women could not be women of
:49:34. > :49:37.good repute. They had to be women of ill-repute. They had to be
:49:37. > :49:40.prostitutes or immoral women, which was quite untrue of my grandmothers
:49:40. > :49:44.and many of the matriarchs of the old Tiger Bay community who made us
:49:44. > :49:54.go to Sunday school, made us go to church, dress up on Sunday and so
:49:54. > :49:56.
:49:56. > :50:01.on. And visit our aunties and In the end, Britain avoided the
:50:01. > :50:04.kind of draconian measures the chief constable had in mind. Calmer
:50:04. > :50:09.heads recognised that a law banning sex between races would be
:50:09. > :50:12.impossible to enforce. And, ironically, the prospect of an
:50:12. > :50:18.angry reaction in the Empire, those lands full of foreigners, played a
:50:18. > :50:26.part too. Never again would Britain consider the idea of an outright
:50:26. > :50:30.So, by the mid-1930s, Britain's mixed-race communities were pretty
:50:30. > :50:33.well established. They had proved that they could defend themselves
:50:33. > :50:37.and support themselves. And, crucially, they had seen off the
:50:37. > :50:46.threat of those anti-miscegenation laws. In short, they were here to
:50:46. > :50:56.Britain had played with science and flirted with repression but,
:50:56. > :50:59.
:50:59. > :51:02.thankfully, never followed the path On the night of January 30th, 1933,
:51:02. > :51:12.a huge torchlight parade marked the appointment of the new Chancellor.
:51:12. > :51:16.
:51:16. > :51:19.Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, his blueprint for the Third Reich, that
:51:19. > :51:29.race mixing was not only an affront to national identity and culture,
:51:29. > :51:31.Soon, so called race scientists in Germany obsessed with the idea of
:51:31. > :51:34.keeping the national bloodline pure, would begin visiting schools and
:51:34. > :51:44.youth clubs in the Rhineland where many French African troops have
:51:44. > :51:45.
:51:45. > :51:53.For the scientists, the very existence of mixed-race German
:51:53. > :51:57.children threatened to contaminate The children were identified and
:51:57. > :52:07.then taken to a local hospital where at least 385 of them were
:52:07. > :52:10.
:52:10. > :52:14.You've got eugenics taking this rather sinister route in Germany.
:52:14. > :52:20.That doesn't happen in Britain. We don't have race laws flowing from
:52:20. > :52:23.eugenics. Why is that? Why are we different? One would like to think
:52:23. > :52:26.it's because we're much more tolerant society and clearly,
:52:26. > :52:31.Britain claims to have a history of liberalism and fighting for human
:52:31. > :52:36.justice. But, on the other hand, we have a different relationship to
:52:36. > :52:44.the presence of black peoples, because they are a small minority.
:52:44. > :52:47.They weren't seen as kind of There may not have been a threat to
:52:47. > :52:53.white culture, but there were places that were genuinely mixed
:52:53. > :52:57.race. Take Liverpool in 1939. A young English novelist and
:52:57. > :53:03.playwright arrived in the city. He'd been travelling through the
:53:03. > :53:06.country to take stock of industrial and rural England for a new book.
:53:06. > :53:15.The author's name was JB Priestley and, amidst all the paranoia about
:53:15. > :53:19.racial mingling, he found cause for In Liverpool, he came across a
:53:19. > :53:23.local primary school. He said all the races of mankind were there
:53:23. > :53:33.wonderfully mixed. In fact, he described it as being like a
:53:33. > :53:35.
:53:35. > :53:44.miniature League of Nations The children, he said, were all
:53:44. > :53:47.shades with Africa and Asia peeping In his book, English Journey,
:53:47. > :53:52.Priestley is clearly moved by what he found in the mixed-race
:53:52. > :54:00.community in Liverpool. His writing helped to create a new version of
:54:00. > :54:09.The tolerance he so admired in Liverpool was in stark contrast to
:54:09. > :54:12.COMMENTATOR: Who are these men in flannels? West Indians of African
:54:12. > :54:16.descent. They are keener and better cricketers than any, except a few
:54:16. > :54:21.teams of European origin. Certainly better than any team of Scotsman or
:54:21. > :54:23.Dutchmen, for example, who are much closer to the English than they are.
:54:23. > :54:33.So, you see, all this Aryan nonsense and race superiority
:54:33. > :54:41.
:54:41. > :54:43.business of Hitler's just isn't When the full extent of the horrors
:54:43. > :54:53.of Hitler's final solution were discovered, the British followers
:54:53. > :55:12.
:55:12. > :55:22.Our dalliance with race science was All I know is, the Tiger Bay
:55:22. > :55:23.
:55:23. > :55:26.experience taught me what it was to be a true human being. The pseudo-
:55:26. > :55:29.scientific studies measuring the size of our heads to see if we had
:55:29. > :55:32.the right intelligence, brain size, what have you, these were fascist
:55:32. > :55:42.concepts. And it has no bearing on how people come together and live
:55:42. > :55:45.
:55:45. > :55:47.When I started looking at all of this, I thought, like most people,
:55:47. > :55:50.but Britain's mixed-race communities only really began in
:55:50. > :55:55.the late 1940s or so with the arrival of immigrants from the
:55:55. > :55:59.Caribbean. But, in fact, as we have seen, you've got to go back much
:55:59. > :56:02.further to those years before and after the Great War when some white
:56:02. > :56:07.women, perhaps only a handful at first, allowed their hearts to rule
:56:07. > :56:17.their heads. And, in so doing, felt the full wrath of so-called
:56:17. > :56:18.
:56:18. > :56:21.I've been thinking quite a lot about those women. Just imagine how
:56:21. > :56:27.brave they had to be. Not just brave but free-spirited and open-
:56:27. > :56:30.minded. And I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that women like
:56:30. > :56:40.Olive Saloman here in what was Tiger Bay were heroic pioneers of
:56:40. > :56:45.And, because of those women, many mixed-race people grew up with a
:56:45. > :56:50.unique British identity which prospers today. I've always felt
:56:50. > :56:53.very strongly about my colour. And I've always defended it. And I've
:56:53. > :56:59.never ever pretended I was anything other than a half-caste Arab. And I
:56:59. > :57:02.am quite proud of the fact. I'm an Arab. I can't get away from that.
:57:02. > :57:05.And I'm proud of the fact. I class myself as an Arab Geordie really.
:57:05. > :57:14.Geordie with an Arab heart. Geordie with an Arab heart. Yes.
:57:14. > :57:24.If I had my life again, you know, honestly, I was so happy being in a
:57:24. > :57:27.
:57:27. > :57:30.mixed family. I'd like to do it And what of James Wilson, the Chief
:57:30. > :57:32.Constable of Cardiff who wanted to ban into racial sex and had once
:57:32. > :57:42.described mixed race children as half-castes with the vicious
:57:42. > :57:44.
:57:44. > :57:47.Well, in 1946 he was knighted. But after the horrors of Nazi Germany
:57:47. > :57:56.were made public, he was soon saying something very different
:57:56. > :58:01.about Tiger Bay. He now held it up as a symbol, a good example of
:58:01. > :58:04.Which is just as well, because what Sir James Wilson could not have