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Documentary, BBC Two Mixed Britannia Part 1 of 3 -1910-1939
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00:00when I first met Nikki I just saw this beautiful woman with these great big brown gorgeous eyes
00:10she was coming home from work and I am put a lot of candles out in the lounge she came in
00:18and I got down on my knees and I love you will you marry me this is Nikki Mehta's big day the
00:27vivacious 34 year old is getting married to Nicholas tag he's the nervous-looking one
00:33waiting in Coventry registry office they're one of thousands of mixed-race couples who get married
00:40each year he's definitely my soul mate I can't wait to spend the rest of my life I'm here because this
00:49wedding symbolizes one of the truly great changes in British life once and it's not so long
00:57ago such a relationship would leave you ostracized and officially condemned it now gives me the
01:06greatest of pleasure to announce that you are husband and wife would you like to see a little
01:12British marriages are changing they're no longer about bringing two people together quite often it's
01:29a mingling of two cultures the in-laws haven't just come from another part of the country quite often
01:35they might start their journey in another part of the world a hundred years ago it took far less
01:43than a marriage to have the fingers wagging if you danced with a black man you were discriminated
01:51against because the people didn't like it the boys didn't like it the girls didn't like it they came to
01:58the front door and they said where is he where is the nigger and she said he's not here and so
02:03they slapped my grandmother yet through it all mixed-race communities have not just survived they
02:10flourished we'd seen half of the picture of Shirley Temple but we have to race home on account the
02:18care for you well they measured our heads and like that like that and color of eyes and noted noted our
02:29complexion the Britain we have today vibrant and mixed would not have been possible were it not for the
02:36brave couples who fell in love in a much colder racial climate I stopped and asked this boy then the
02:45way to Queen Street and he said I was losing my way to the docks and we started talking I think we fell
02:53in love there and then one in ten children in this country now lives in a mixed-race family and mixed-race
03:01people are becoming one of the fastest growing ethnic minorities born in Sri Lanka I met and married an
03:10English woman this is our story but it's also the history of our country
03:30Francis and I met at university and that was what well over 30 years ago and I'm not sure that we ever
03:37talked about color or anything like that I think when we got married we were aware of a sort of
03:43meeting of cultures you can see that in the wedding photos we've got two sons Adam and Matthew
03:52the recent history of mixed-race Britain starts in port towns like this one in South Shields true there
04:10were Africans in Britain since the time of the Romans Asians settled on these shores in the 1600s and of
04:17course there were freed slaves but it's not really till the turn of the last century that mixed-race
04:23communities small as they were began to shape our collective history trade was the great magnetic
04:29force a booming economy based on coal and ships sucked in workers from the Empire our ports London
04:38Liverpool Cardiff and others resounded with foreign tongues in South Shields there were Arab seamen from
04:44Aden today's Yemen recruited by the merchant Navy as residents of the British Empire and its protectorates
04:52they were entitled to work here they would spend months at sea stoking the fires of commerce around
05:02the world when they came ashore these men were put into lodgings run by the private shipping companies
05:11in 1909 some of the men lived here in the legate district in what were then boarding houses it
05:23wasn't that they wanted to live separately they didn't really have a choice the seamen weren't actually
05:28allowed to stay with local families the reason the age-old feared that this army of single men thousands
05:40of miles away from their families would look for company and more among the local women this is one
05:47of the last boarding houses that remain in South Shields friends still meet to talk over the old days
05:54when we come in here from high shield is here he was bridge the bridge a bridge from high shields
06:02yeah they all back in front the old houses Arab houses and all coffee boarding house you feel it when
06:12you hear the record Arab record you feel you were in Yemen if it didn't have that one house or they
06:22weren't married but it was like a bed and breakfast if you like so they used to call them boarding houses
06:28or the Arab coughs and people used to meet there as well it wasn't just a bed and breakfast it was
06:34like a little community coffee as well you have to remember though they weren't allowed to go in English
06:39cafes when they came here no when they first came they couldn't go into it there they couldn't go into a
06:45tea shop so they had to set their own place up where they could meet for years these segregated groups of
06:54foreign workers were too small to have any great impact but that would change when Britain went to
07:04war in 1914 it needed sailors lots of them to work on its merchant ships the Empire was the obvious labor
07:11pool with German u-boats picking off our ships threatening Britain supply chain these men played
07:19a vital part in the war effort they're growing in numbers some of them also come and write work in
07:34factories but they're arriving in ports like London like Cardiff like Liverpool and yeah I mean they
07:40they increase from a few hundred to a few thousand it became ever more difficult to prevent social
07:47mingling and British women who played their part in the war effort no longer fitted the demure stereotype
07:54I think it transformed women's lives because they had to take on jobs that have been designated men's
08:01jobs women across the class you know from from upper-class women who previously had been chaperoned
08:09everywhere the younger women through to working class women took on all sorts of work they were tram
08:14drivers they were road sweepers they went out and about they went to pubs they went to the cinema they
08:23learned a lot about not just about themselves they learned about sexuality they learned about birth
08:28control about things that previously taboo for many of these women and then their relationships start
08:34happening between these these foreign men and the white women why is that well I mean the white
08:40women haven't got the usual white men to have relations with and I think they find a lot of
08:45these black and Asian and and Chinese men very attractive not least because they're different they often are
08:53very generous with money I mean some of them you know come come on on shore with money to burn and
09:00are kind of kind a lot of them talk about how kind these men are relative to the men they're used to and
09:08so they start having relationships with them
09:11so by the end of the war many of these men decide to stay in port you see the beginnings of mixed-race
09:22communities no longer isolated individuals but families with local roots there were now perhaps
09:3220,000 men from the Caribbean the Middle East and Asia here imagine what it was like for the Tommies
09:42returning home they found new neighbors things seemed strange including the women they'd left behind
09:50the divorce rate I mean it goes up from five-fold from 1913 to 1919 I mean they just find they're not
09:57speaking the same language and so they feel the gulf that actually these women are kind of alien and
10:03the women I think resent the men resent the fact that they want to go back to some status quo pre-war
10:11in which they got to be the good little woman in the home or whatever and so they you know say no
10:16you couldn't turn the clock back jobs are scarce these war-weary men are bristling with resentment and
10:31then they see their women with foreigners it's enough to tip them over the edge in 1919 rioting
10:39broke out in the port areas around Glasgow and spread to South Shields you've got to imagine hundreds
10:52of seamen here on the dockside at Mildan the whites easily outnumbering the Arabs both sides and guns
10:58bottles knives and stones most of the firing was into the air nobody actually got shot but both groups
11:07threw their missiles at each other a local woman called Dora sharp who worked in one of the boarding
11:12houses was a witness to the violence in court she spoke up for some of the Yemenis saying she'd seen
11:17a white man pointing a gun at an Arab in the heat of the riots magnificently she declared I wouldn't
11:23leave the Arab house for 20 of you I'm probably going to marry one of them tomorrow happy days
11:29the riots spread to Cardiff another port city that had changed before the war there'd been about 700
11:40foreign seamen in the city by 1919 there were 3000 one summer's evening a group of these foreign men and
11:48their white girlfriends were traveling home after a day out it was like a challenge to local masculinity
11:55white men through insults and then stones it was the spark that lit the Cardiff tinderbox within
12:03hours violent disorder spread across the city the white mobs split up into gangs and roamed the city
12:11attacking black and Arab men even their white girlfriends and wives on the day of the riot one of the
12:22neighbors ran to the front door and and knock the door and said you better get Joe out of there
12:26because they're coming to get him Neil Sinclair's grandmother was Agnes Jolly she lived in Somerset
12:33Street with her West Indian husband Joe Headley and their eight-year-old daughter Beatrice who passed the
12:39story on to her son Neil my grandfather didn't want to leave the house and leave his wife and his child
12:47alone but Agnes Jolly said no they're after you so you get out so he went out the back climbed over
12:54the back garden wall and hid in the toilet next door apparently there was a thousand white men in the
13:02street they came to the front door and they sat banging on the front door so my grandmother and my
13:07mother went upstairs to the landing and they could see the shadows and and lights as men broke into the
13:14front door and then men just ran into the downstairs and into every room and started to ransack the
13:20home so eventually they got up to my grandmother and was saying where is he where is the nigger and
13:29she said he's not here and so they slapped my grandmother they left and then my mother said her
13:40mother was very distraught because all her little china ornaments and her knickknacks and her cozy
13:45little home had been wrecked police came the following day and they said to my grandmother well it was her
13:58fault for manly and a black man
14:05it's impossible to be certain but something like fifteen thousand people were involved in the riots
14:13in nineteen nineteen they affected not just south shields and Cardiff but London Barry Newport and
14:21Hull in all five people were killed and they've gone down as a landmark in the history of mixed-race
14:27Britain you see whatever the wider social and economic problems of the time it was a site of foreign
14:35men with white women that lit the fuse a letter appeared in the Times shortly afterwards assistant
14:42to this intimate association between black or colored men and white women is a thing of horror it's an
14:49instinctive certainty that sexual relations between white women and colored men revolt our very nature what
14:57blame it goes on to say to those white men who've seen these conditions and loathing them resort to
15:03violence I think there was deep resentment and they felt not simply that these men were taking their
15:13women but they were taking their jobs although in fact that wasn't true actually after the war was
15:18higher unemployment amongst black men and Chinese men than these white men so sort of the definers of
15:24of working-class masculinity which I think you know linked to the ability to get a job the ability to get
15:30a woman that is really being challenged in direct response to the riots the authorities resorted to some
15:38stringent legal measures laws designed to restrict German nationals during the war now covered all foreign
15:46seamen it would limit their movements subject them to curfew control employment and last for decades in
15:54short the foreigners were blamed you have to understand in those days must have been hard for the British to
16:05to accept you know I mean like mother just used to say foreign devils in those days because they didn't
16:11understand Chinese ways and Chinese customs they're just a fun to come to England to live
16:20Doreen and Lynn's father Stanley our foo came to Liverpool back in 1912 back then there were roughly
16:281,200 Chinese men in the city he fell in love with and married their mother Emily Stanley's job on
16:35the steamships took him away for long periods of time but when he returned he was king of the kitchen
16:41dad was a marvelous cook yeah it was a good crew and it was lovely when he came home because we had the
16:47Chinese food although my mother learned to cook Chinese but my dad was special you know when his cooking
16:56was really good Doreen when he was back home what was he like he's always cracking he's always playing
17:04tricks on this yeah it was quite jolly very jolly and yeah we'd sort of flick your ear when you walking
17:12past and you know you jump out and we'd have we'd have real fun with him yeah is that your memory of
17:18childhood then happy yeah it was a very happy channel yes their carefree home life was a contrast
17:28to the restrictions that Stanley faced when he stepped outdoors ever since the 1919 riots Stanley
17:36like all foreign seamen had had to register with the police and carry an ID card bearing a photograph
17:42even Emily was not immune from this humiliation and earlier nationality law had a rather vicious
17:50sting in its tail every inch an English woman once she'd married Stanley she lost her British nationality
17:57well when my mum married my dad yeah she became an alien your mum who was British yes she was an alien
18:08looking back at the thought of your mum British born and bred having to go and register what what do
18:22you think of it now well I think it was disgusting really she was born and bred in England she was
18:28English white so why should she because she married an alien have to give up everything
18:38the law was applied differently around the country Liverpool had a curfew and men had to report to
18:47the police every week incredibly these restrictions remained on the statute books until the 1970s
18:57Doreen and Lynn remember the day when even watching a film was interrupted by the curfew we'd gone before the
19:07curfew and we'd seen half of the picture of Shirley Temple and they suddenly realized my dad and his friends
19:15well it's 8 o'clock we'll have to go now you know it was disappointing because we didn't see the end of the
19:23film but we have to race home despite the rules and regulations mixed communities in port towns were still
19:36growing the Yemeni enclave in South Shields for example was about 3000 strong Norman and Maureen Kader have
19:51been married for 37 years they're both second-generation mixed-race Yemenis though you'd be hard-pushed to tell in
19:59Maureen's case both have Yemeni grandfathers who came to South Shields Maureen remembers how hard the
20:07Yemeni men tried to fit in I know when they came here they were very small when they changed clothes
20:14they had to be very very smart they wanted to try and be like the English people who wanted to blend in
20:21you're always seeing them in a trilby hat and lovely immaculate shoes waistcoats so and it was all to
20:30help them to blend in so that they didn't stand out and they were always very very well mannered
20:37one of these men was Norman's grandfather Mohammed Hassan he married Elizabeth Taylor a Geordie their
20:45love affair was all the more incredible given what was happening around them it would have been very
20:52difficult for them because Sam if you were in a mixed marriage you were called some dreadful names you were
21:00classed as a prostitute and women were known to have been spat on in the street and verbally abused the
21:09white women yes South Shields was by no means unique prejudice towards mixed-race families was pervasive
21:22in London's Docklands home to 700 Chinese people intolerance coupled with ignorance made for some dark
21:30myths about the community Connie grew up in London's limehouse the
21:38capital's original Chinatown if you look at the literature of the time they talk about Chinatown and
21:45it was an opium den and there were nightclubs and there were strange things going on you're laughing
21:51at me well I used to read these rubbishy books when I when I was in my teens and I used to go to
22:01piano lessons and I used to have to walk down these narrow turnings and I used to look for these mist rising
22:11from the river and these earthy people standing in the doorways but never ever found them it was all
22:20fiction with it yes yes yes but it must be weird as a teenager growing up in Chinatown reading these
22:26books about starlets coming and the kind of drugs and so on yes but you're saying it just didn't happen
22:32like that no no we were just ordinary kids looking for a job after we left school going to work coming
22:39home no matter Chinatown still attracted those with a taste for the illicit the opium dens and gaming
22:50houses whether real or imagined writers and filmmakers made for Chinatown drawn to the exotic and forbidden
22:58possibilities of this place in 1919 the American film director DW Griffith's interest was aroused after
23:09reading a story the chink and the child taken from Thomas Burke's book Limehouse Nights
23:15this tale of love between an opium-smoking Chinaman and a teenage white girl was initially banned by
23:34libraries WH Smith refused to stock it because they felt it was salacious and corrupting
23:44in his film version broken blossoms Griffiths had to work around the unwritten rule that there could
23:58never be any kind of physical intimacy between the races when the film was released here in 1920
24:07the Birmingham Mail received a letter from a female reader in Edgbaston written it said on behalf of her
24:13herself and her friends she described the film as nothing but the lowest type of sordid drama and she was
24:21particularly horrified that the hero of the film was a Chinaman and the villain an Englishman
24:27but two white women married to Chinese men wrote to the daily graphic challenging this type of prejudice we women dare not take our children out because people point to us and laugh and please remember these half-castes as they call them are well-fed well clothed little kiddies and
24:33who are as good as most and better than many of the children about here
24:39and
25:01this film broken blossom painted quite a kind relationship between a Chinese man and a white very young woman was that real do you think yes but it was quite normal in limehouse
25:08you didn't think it was true you didn't think it was controversial at all no I think the Chinese that they like the British way of life
25:21I think the Chinese that they like the British way of life
25:27in 1924 there were signs that official attitudes towards the Chinese were hardening they were added to a list of nationalities to be avoided by potential brides marriage registrars were supposed to warn women that some of the men might be bigamists and not trustworthy
25:42the original list drawn up in 1913 by the colonial office already included Hindus muslims and negros
26:03and pretty soon the home office would join in complaining that the Chinese men were being far too choosy just listen to this it's such a pity that a Chinaman is fastidious he will not take a battered old prostitute of the seaport but want something young attractive above all clean and free from venereal disease
26:30now even if you allow for the stilted official language of the day it's still pretty shocking isn't it
26:45all this in an age of inventiveness the wireless and the flying machine with the potential for shrinking the world were breaking through old boundaries
26:53science seemed to have the answer to all questions even about race
26:57before long the thoroughly scientific sounding British eugenics society developed a controversial theory
27:06it ran like this if the poorest classes could be discouraged from breeding the sum total of intelligence and virtue in the country would increase
27:16eugenics saw itself as a new science for human advancement influential writers like HG Wells George Bernard Shaw
27:26cabinet ministers like Winston Churchill they all thought it would save Britain from moral and physical decline
27:33there were similar movements in America and Scandinavia and in Germany there was the charmingly named racial hygiene society
27:45at a meeting in London in 1919 the chairman of the British society then a Darwin son of Charles announced that they would also look at race
27:54what is urgently needed he said is a thorough scientific study of the mental and physical characteristics of mixed races
28:02Mrs. Sibyl Gotto the society's general secretary at the time agreed saying
28:09although I'm quite ready to look upon the colored races as our brothers I do not want to look upon them as our brothers in law
28:17the inference of course was that they were inferior if they were proved right the logical conclusion would have been for Britain to introduce laws banning mixed race relationships
28:29following where others had led some American states had laws dating back to 1661 preventing whites marrying Native Americans and African Americans
28:41in southern Rhodesia a law was passed in 1903 that made it an offense to have sex outside of marriage between native males and white females
28:51and in Australia the state had recently begun a policy of removing so-called half-castes from their parents to imbue them with European values and I quote
29:08breed out their color many of them are half Japanese daughters of pro fishing fathers and aboriginal mothers many again are almost white
29:17so the British eugenics society decided to investigate families of what they called mated Chinese and English or Irish and mixed race children with black fathers to test the theory that racial mixing led to inferior stock
29:37the unfortunate mixed race children of Liverpool would be the first guinea pigs on which the theory would be tested
29:44eugenics seeks to apply the known laws of validity so as to prevent the degeneration of the race and improve its inborn qualities
29:51everybody sound in body and mind should marry and have enough children to perpetuate their stock and carry on the race
30:00just listen to the language they use they talked of mated and stock the kind of words you'd use to describe animals
30:07the survey comprised just 15 families and 45 children
30:14at its head a welsh anthropologist Professor Herbert John Fleur
30:20along with his colleague Rachel Fleming he began to measure the shape and size of the children's' heads their noses their ears even the fold on their upper eyelids
30:30ears even the fold on their upper eyelids they made careful notes of the color of the skin the
30:36hair and the eyes they were being treated as if they were some kind of exotic specimen in fact
30:43they were boys and girls sons and daughters all of them rooted here in the local community
30:54this is a period when many people including scientists geneticists etc
31:00believed that um interracial relations between races i'm using some inverted covers who were deemed
31:08to be very far apart was kind of detrimental that would lead to degeneracy isn't this weird actually
31:14i mean this is a bit of an aside but i come from a mixed race family and we look at our kids and
31:18think wow you know yeah this kind of mixture yes it's beautiful and it's energetic and flamboyant
31:25exactly but they thought exactly the opposite exactly yes and they they they felt it would
31:29lead there's no this word degeneracy was very widespread at the time and they felt it would
31:33it just meant you that the population would be full of these peoples who would be inferior in every sense
31:40the eugenicists methods made for some pretty crude science they tested children to see if there was
31:46a relationship between physical appearance and intellect eventually the tests were carried out
31:52in limehouse and nine-year-old connie and her friends were the subjects there there was a big restaurant
31:59in west india dot road that had wounds upstairs we were told to go to this room and there was these
32:05ladies they just measured us and took our photographs and i think they asked us questions i'm not quite sure
32:13when you say measured you what did that actually yeah so well they measured our heads and like that and
32:20like that and color of eyes and noted noted our complexion and that sort of thing when the results
32:29were published the sample included the children of black fathers professor fleur was in for a surprise
32:36perhaps even disappointment did the results support their their basic idea that this was a bad thing
32:43to have well what is race relationship no interestingly so-called yellow white hybrids produced kids of of
32:52higher intelligence and so that you know i think a lot of people that was a bit of a shock but but the black
32:58white hybrids they said well they were problematic because they said that the children inherited the worst of
33:04both inherited happy-go-lucky um carefree lazy in these alternatives attitude of the black father
33:12and the slovenly um immoralness because it was assumed the women must be akin to prostitutes if not actual
33:18prostitutes they also came to another conclusion about mixed-race children
33:28they wanted to see to what degree they could pass as english but the implication was that none of
33:33these children could ever be english in first you know in the first case they didn't look english
33:38but also even if they could pass that had the implication and there might be a two percent that
33:42could pass but of course given that their parentage was not english their father's not english they
33:47could never truly be english
33:48and if that flirtation with science didn't come up with all the answers they expected
34:02there was still good old-fashioned prejudice you could depend on that even the civil service was not
34:09immune you'd search in vain for its renowned detachment when it came to some matters of race
34:15a memo in 1925 from the home office to the foreign office summed up the feelings the negro is said to
34:25be more largely developed than the white man and a woman who's once been with a negro is said to find
34:31no satisfaction with anything else and those already inclined to resentment were goaded on by some
34:37newspapers one of them reported that certain white women here in the district were saying that black
34:42men were better at sex than whites as it happened one group of white women seemed determined to prove
34:50the civil servants and newspapers right the genie of interracial relations was well and truly out of the
34:57bottle and as the twenties roared on it was the upper classes leading the way
35:02in 1928 nancy cunard the writer and heir to the cruise line was scandalizing high society with her
35:16relationships with black men at one lunch party margot asquith the wife of the former liberal prime
35:24minister henry is said to have greeted nancy's mother with the words well maude what's nancy up to now
35:30is it dope drink or niggers
35:49and it worked the other way too in 1930 this mosque in woking surrey was where one of the richest men on
35:56earth the sultan of johor married a scottish divorcee she was the latest in a long string of wives
36:07incredibly the mosque had been built in the 1800s and was patronized by british aristocrats who had
36:13converted to islam it was the venue for marriages between upper and middle class white women and asian or arab men
36:26in thomas
36:28shortly after the ceremony here the sultan and his latest wife helen wilson traveled to johor in malaysia
36:34where she was crowned sultana
36:36the world's press formed over the Sultan
36:44even when he ditched the unfortunate Helen for someone new
36:47upper-class license and foreign wealth
36:53seemed to free them of the social taboos
36:55there were limits though
36:59I cannot speak enough of his content
37:06it stops me here it is too much of joy
37:10and this and this the greatest discourse be
37:16that air our hearts show me
37:18on the 19th of May 1930 on this very stage
37:23Paul Robeson the African-American singer and actor
37:26came to play Orthello here in Britain
37:29if it were now to die
37:33it were now to be most happy
37:35for I fear my soul hath a content so absolute
37:39that not another comfort like to this
37:41succeeds in unknown
37:43and who was this Desdemona?
37:46well she was a rather sheltered middle-class 23 year old
37:51and her name was Peggy Ashcroft
37:53that song tonight will not go from my mind
37:57I have much to do but to go hang my head all at one side
38:02and sing it like poor Barbara
38:04in rehearsals fear of the public's reaction had made Robeson uncomfortable
38:11after all his father had been a slave
38:15that girl couldn't get near to me he said later
38:19I was backing away from her all the time
38:22I was like a plantation hand in the parlour
38:25that clumsy
38:25well on that opening night Peggy Ashcroft got rave reviews
38:37and the audience well they were just ecstatic giving Paul Robeson no less than 20 curtain calls
38:43but the sight of a black actor actually kissing a white woman
38:49well that was rather too much for one newspaper editor
38:53he just walked out
38:55Robeson himself told the New York Times
38:59I wouldn't care to play those scenes in some parts of the United States
39:03the audience would get rough
39:05in fact it might become very dangerous
39:08one southern paper agreed
39:11he knows what would happen and so do the rest of us
39:14and who knows what would have happened here
39:18if they knew what was actually going on off stage
39:21between Othello and his Desdemona
39:23what the press and public didn't know
39:28was just how close the pair had become
39:3050 years later Peggy Ashcroft said that
39:34what happened between Paul and myself
39:37was possibly inevitable
39:38how could one not fall in love with such a man
39:42the whole episode was
39:45she said
39:45more than a theatrical experience
39:48it put the significance of race
39:50straight in front of me
39:51and made my choice of where I stood
39:54hundreds of miles away
40:11in Cardiff
40:12some had already made their choice
40:14racial mingling as some called it
40:17was growing
40:17by the mid-thirties Tiger Bay was home to about 3,000 foreign seamen
40:30mainly Africans and Arabs
40:31many of them had been born and bred in Cardiff
40:38but were still treated as foreigners
40:40nonetheless they and their descendants would go on to create one of the country's most proudly mixed communities
40:50my dad had just opened up the Cairo Caf
40:55not long
40:56and he happened to be standing outside on the front door
41:03in Butte Street
41:05and my mother
41:07she was a nurse at the time
41:09she'd been to the cinema
41:10and she was trying to get back to the Cardiff Royal Infirmary
41:15where she lived
41:17you know
41:17the accommodation was there
41:19Olive Salomon was 15 years old
41:23when she moved from the small town of Penadraig in the Rondha Valley
41:27to Cardiff to train as a nurse
41:29I stopped and asked this boy then
41:32the way to Queen Street
41:36and he said I was losing my way to the docks
41:38and we started talking
41:41and I think we fell in love there and then
41:43the boy she met and asked for directions was Ali Salomon
41:49a young Yemeni working as a chef in his own cafe
41:52we got married when I was 16 in 3 weeks actually
41:57I had five children before I was 21
42:02we got to
42:06we had ten children
42:08five boys and five girls
42:09of course when I got married
42:15there was a great stir at home
42:16because the priest from the church
42:20even came and told my mother
42:21that marrying an Arab
42:23I was marrying a heathen
42:25there was quite a stir at home
42:28I used to go in the Cairo cafe
42:40and in the back of the Cairo cafe
42:42they had a little Arab school
42:43and I used to go to the Arab school
42:44and many of the kids used to go to the Arab school
42:47even though we weren't Arabs or Muslims for that matter
42:49but because your friends were going
42:51and you wanted to go along
42:52but we were like a very integrated community
42:55Tiger Bay was home to many different races
43:16they all came together though
43:18to celebrate festivals like Eid
43:20the end of Ramadan
43:21you'd wake up and you might hear a sound
43:26Hillelowia, Hillelowia
43:29and you'd go, oh it's Arab Christmas
43:30so you ran out there
43:37and you looked through your friends
43:39and all the people of the Arab community
43:41and they'd be in their native dress
43:44and they'd parade in the street
43:47with flags and what have you
43:49and we'd follow along in the parade
43:51we'd be all part of it
43:52then when they came to the food
44:13they would offer you the food
44:16or you could run home and actually get a pot
44:18and you'd get curry and rice
44:20and you'd be able to take it home
44:22Britain's mixed-race families
44:31were sharing each other's customs
44:33and making their own rules
44:35it was genuinely multicultural
44:39though that's not what people called it then
44:41it was like that for Norman Cader's mother
44:44Margaret in South Shields
44:46who was married to a Yemeni seaman, Abdo
44:49me mother, she wasn't a full practising Muslim
44:54if you like
44:54she still held a lot of the beliefs
44:57so would your mother have run the house
45:00as if it were a Muslim house
45:01as far as for example eating pork
45:03and that kind of thing?
45:06there is
45:06me father never ever ate pork
45:09me mother on the other hand
45:11to a certain degree
45:13why are you giggling away?
45:15there's a little secret going on here
45:17a lot of the English women
45:19would eat pork
45:21when the husbands were out
45:23when they were out at sea or something?
45:25no, when they actually left the house
45:27oh really?
45:28do you have an idea?
45:29for me it was different
45:30because my mum would eat what she wanted
45:31so we had a separate frying pan
45:34which she had to keep in a separate cupboard
45:36from my father
45:39you know, you couldn't use that
45:41and he knew that
45:42and he would often swear in Arabic
45:44if he had seen the frying pan out
45:47you know, because she'd been cooking bacon
45:49and that
45:50but a lot
45:51the same as what Norman's mum did
45:52but your mum was doing it in secret
45:54yes
45:54these couples were making it up
46:00as they went along
46:01sharing some customs
46:03and quietly ignoring those
46:05that didn't work for them
46:06it was, if you like
46:11a delightful free-for-all
46:12and that just didn't suit some people
46:15in Cardiff
46:16one man, above all
46:17wanted to put a stop
46:19to this sweet chaos
46:20the city's chief constable
46:26one, James Wilson
46:27was becoming increasingly concerned
46:29about Tiger Bay's
46:30reputation for immorality
46:32and mixed-race marriages
46:34and he reported his worries
46:36to his local police committee
46:37saying that coloured men
46:39were coming into contact
46:40with the female sex
46:42of the white race
46:43their progeny
46:44he said
46:45were half-caste
46:46with the vicious
46:47hereditary taint
46:48of their parents
46:50not one to pull his punches
46:51the picture
46:56the chief constable
46:57painted of the area
46:58was very different
46:59from the reality
47:00it had a bit of a reputation
47:04because
47:05there was a lot of street gambling
47:07used to go on
47:08and
47:08being a port
47:10there was prostitution
47:12and that
47:13but
47:13the actual people
47:15from Butetown
47:16they were the nicest people
47:18you could ever come across
47:19when the Cairo Caf
47:24was in its heyday
47:25we employed
47:26a lot of the
47:27the women that
47:28lived down
47:29in the bay
47:31they came to work
47:32in the Cairo Caf
47:33and
47:35some of them
47:37would be babysitting us
47:38as we were
47:39youngsters
47:39and what not
47:40my mother
47:43was also
47:44believe it or not
47:46chairman
47:47of the conservative club
47:48in the docks
47:49which caused
47:52great problems
47:53amongst the community
47:55in 1929
48:01James Wilson
48:02started to call
48:03openly
48:04for a new form
48:05of social control
48:06anti-miscegenation laws
48:09similar to those
48:10which had been introduced
48:11in South Africa
48:12banning sexual contact
48:13between whites
48:14and non-whites
48:15he was playing
48:18the race card
48:19and he put
48:19all his cards
48:20on the table
48:21the time may come
48:23said the chief constable
48:24when public opinion
48:26will awake to the fact
48:27that our race
48:28has become
48:29leavened
48:29with the colour strain
48:31someone
48:32he said
48:32must have the courage
48:34to strike
48:34a warning note
48:35and he clearly
48:36thought of himself
48:37as the man to do it
48:38the defender
48:40of the white race
48:41the issue erupted
48:49onto the front pages
48:51and many journalists
48:52actually supported
48:53the chief constable
48:54with one of them
48:55writing
48:55I feel that
48:57in the interest
48:57of our town's purity
48:59it would be a good thing
49:01if our swarthy friends
49:02were given
49:03the order
49:04of the boot
49:04for the mixed race
49:09communities
49:09it was an explicit
49:11attack on their families
49:12and their whole way
49:13of life
49:14the newspapers
49:17would say things
49:18that this promiscuity
49:19between blacks
49:21and white
49:21and obviously
49:22the white women
49:24could not be
49:25women of good repute
49:26they had to be
49:27women of ill repute
49:28they had to be
49:29prostitutes
49:30or immoral women
49:32which was quite untrue
49:34of my grandmothers
49:35and many of the matriarchs
49:37of the old Tiger Bay community
49:38who made us go to Sunday school
49:40made us go to church
49:41dress up on Sunday
49:43and so on
49:43and visit all our aunties
49:45and uncles
49:45they were normal families
49:46in the end
49:50Britain avoided
49:51the kind of draconian measures
49:52the chief constable
49:53had in mind
49:54calmer heads
49:57recognised
49:58that a law
49:58banning sex
49:59between races
50:00would be impossible
50:01to enforce
50:02and ironically
50:03the prospect
50:04of an angry reaction
50:05in the empire
50:06those lands full
50:07of foreigners
50:08played a part too
50:09never again
50:11would Britain
50:12consider the idea
50:13of an outright ban
50:14on sex
50:15between the races
50:15so by the mid-1930s
50:20Britain's mixed race
50:21communities
50:22were pretty well
50:23established
50:23they'd proved
50:25that they could
50:25defend themselves
50:26and support themselves
50:28and crucially
50:29they'd seen off
50:30the threat
50:31of those anti-miscegenation laws
50:33in short
50:34they were here to stay
50:36Britain had played with science
50:40and flirted with repression
50:42but thankfully never followed the path
50:44chosen by Germany
50:45on the night of January the 30th 1933 a huge torchlight parade marked the appointment
50:59of the new chancellor
51:00Adolf Hitler
51:02Adolf Hitler
51:04Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf
51:10his blueprint for the Third Reich
51:12that race mixing
51:13was not only an affront
51:15to national identity
51:16and culture
51:17but a sin against God
51:19soon so-called race scientists
51:23in Germany
51:24obsessed with the idea
51:25of keeping the national bloodline pure
51:27would begin visiting schools
51:29and youth clubs
51:30in the Rhineland
51:30where many French-African troops
51:33had been stationed
51:33after World War I
51:35for the scientists
51:39the very existence
51:40of mixed race German children
51:42threatened to contaminate
51:44the Aryan race
51:45the children were identified
51:48and then taken
51:49to a local hospital
51:50where at least 385 of them
51:54were secretly sterilized
51:55you've got eugenics
52:02taking this rather sinister route
52:04in Germany
52:05that doesn't happen
52:07in Britain
52:08we don't have race laws
52:10flowing from eugenics
52:12why is that?
52:13why are we different?
52:15one would like to think
52:16it's because we're a much more tolerant society
52:18and clearly Britain has had a
52:19claims to have a history
52:20of liberalism
52:22and fighting for human justice
52:24but on the other hand
52:25you know
52:25we have a different relationship
52:27to the presence of black peoples
52:29because they are a small minority
52:32they weren't seen
52:33as kind of threatening
52:34to white culture
52:35there may not have been
52:39a threat to white culture
52:40but there were places
52:41that were genuinely mixed race
52:43take Liverpool
52:45in 1939
52:47a young English novelist
52:48and playwright
52:49arrived in the city
52:50he'd been traveling
52:52through the country
52:53to take stock
52:54of industrial
52:54and rural England
52:55for a new book
52:56the author's name
52:59was J.B. Priestley
53:00and amidst all the paranoia
53:02about racial mingling
53:03he found cause
53:05for celebration
53:06in Liverpool
53:09he came across
53:10a local primary school
53:12he said
53:12all the races of mankind
53:14were there
53:15wonderfully mixed
53:16in fact
53:17he described it
53:18as being like
53:18a miniature
53:19League of Nations
53:20assembly
53:20gone mad
53:21the children
53:29he said
53:30were all shades
53:30with Africa
53:32and Asia
53:32peeping out
53:33of their eyes
53:34in his book
53:39English Journey
53:40Priestley
53:40is clearly moved
53:41by what he found
53:42in the mixed race
53:43community
53:44in Liverpool
53:44his writing
53:46helped to create
53:46a new vision
53:47of Englishness
53:48the tolerance
53:53he so admired
53:54in Liverpool
53:54was in stark
53:56contrast
53:56to Nazi Germany
53:57who are these
53:59men in flannels
54:00West Indians
54:01of African descent
54:03they are keener
54:04and better cricketers
54:05than any
54:06except a few teams
54:07of European knowledge
54:08certainly better
54:10than any team
54:10of Scotsmen
54:11or Dutchmen
54:11for example
54:12who are much closer
54:13to the English
54:14than they are
54:14so you see
54:17all this Aryan nonsense
54:18and race superiority
54:20business of Hitler's
54:21just isn't true
54:22when the full extent
54:35of the horrors
54:36of Hitler's
54:37final solution
54:38were discovered
54:38the British followers
54:40of eugenics
54:41were horrified
54:41our dalliance
54:45with race science
54:46was suddenly over
54:47all I know is
55:07the Tiger Bay experience
55:10taught me
55:10what it was
55:11to be a true
55:12human being
55:13these pseudo-scientific
55:15studies
55:16measuring the size
55:18of our head
55:18to see if we had
55:19the right intelligence
55:20or the brain size
55:22or what have you
55:22these were fascist
55:24concepts
55:25concepts
55:25and it has no bearing
55:27on how people
55:28come together
55:29and live together
55:30when I started
55:37looking at all
55:38of this
55:38I thought
55:39like most people
55:40that Britain's
55:40mixed race communities
55:42only really began
55:43in the late 1940s
55:44or so
55:45with the arrival
55:46of immigrants
55:47from the Caribbean
55:48but in fact
55:49as we've seen
55:50you've got to go
55:50back much further
55:51to those years
55:52before and after
55:54the great war
55:54when some white women
55:56perhaps only a handful
55:58at first
55:58allowed their hearts
56:00to rule their heads
56:01and in so doing
56:03felt the full wrath
56:05of so-called
56:05respectable society
56:07I've been thinking
56:10quite a lot
56:11about those women
56:12just imagine
56:13how brave
56:14they had to be
56:15and not just brave
56:16but free-spirited
56:17and open-minded
56:18I don't think
56:19it's any exaggeration
56:20to say
56:21that women
56:21like Olive Salaman
56:23here
56:23in what was
56:24Tiger Bay
56:25were heroic
56:26pioneers
56:28of mixed race Britain
56:29and because of those women
56:33many mixed race people
56:34grew up
56:35with a unique
56:36British identity
56:37which prospers today
56:38I've always felt
56:40very strongly
56:41about my colour
56:42and I've always
56:43defended it
56:44and I've never
56:44ever pretended
56:45I was anything
56:46other than
56:46half-caste Arab
56:47and I am quite
56:49proud of the fact
56:50I'm an Arab
56:51I can't get away
56:53from that
56:53and I'm proud
56:54of the fact
56:54so I class myself
56:55as an Arab
56:56Geordie really
56:57Geordie with an Arab
56:58heart
56:58a Geordie with an Arab
57:00heart
57:00how lovely
57:01if I had my life
57:04to get
57:04you know
57:05honestly
57:06I was so happy
57:07you know
57:08being in a mixed
57:09family
57:10that
57:11you know
57:12I'd like
57:12to do it again
57:14and what
57:20of James Wilson
57:21the chief constable
57:22of Cardiff
57:23who'd wanted to ban
57:24interracial sex
57:25and had once
57:27described mixed race
57:28children
57:29as half-castes
57:30with the vicious
57:31hereditary taint
57:32of their parents
57:33well in 1946
57:36he was knighted
57:37but after the
57:38horrors of Nazi
57:39Germany were made
57:40public
57:40he was soon
57:41saying something
57:42very different
57:43about Tiger Bay
57:44he now held it up
57:46as a symbol
57:47a good example
57:48of racial tolerance
57:49which is just as well
57:54because what
57:55Sir James Wilson
57:56could not have known
57:57was that in 2011
57:58his great-granddaughter
58:00would marry a man
58:01whose mother
58:03was half to make him
58:04in the next program
58:11the right to fight
58:12American G.I.s
58:16the first kiss
58:18and workplace romance
58:48from Sunday
58:49the first kiss
58:51ofーい
58:52fromところ
58:53who's 사 rápida
58:53rah
58:54challenges
58:55who gracias
58:56by when
58:57gay
58:57a fool
58:58and
58:59who would
58:59because
59:00you
59:00harm
59:01and
59:02who
59:03can
59:05get
59:05the
59:06right
59:06or
59:07Chile
59:08and
59:09who
59:09are
59:11but
59:13who
59:14is
59:15paw
59:16and
59:16send
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55:29
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