- yesterday
Documentary, BBC Two Mixed Britannia Part 3 of 3- 1965-2011
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Let's take ourselves back to 1920, its first light on a cold, misty morning in London's
00:18Dockland. A ship slips into its berth and 20-year-old Lam Fouque steps onto British soil, a new
00:28knife ahead of him. And it was here in Limehouse that he met and fell in love with an English
00:37girl. They had a child, Connie, and she was born into a time and place where being mixed
00:42was to be thought of as mysterious, exotic, but also morally corrupt. But if that prejudice
00:53defined the lives of those early families, the whole history of mixed-race Britain has
00:59seen a sea change in attitudes.
01:02Britain today has one of the most ethnically diverse populations in Europe, and this is
01:09the story of a nation transformed.
01:18Connie, a gracious 87 years old now, presides over a family that is as British as they come.
01:26How are you? Good to see you again. So we've got four generations here. Yes, yes. That's incredible. One, two, three, four.
01:38You're the mixed-race family, really, aren't you? What happened to you?
01:45We've come a long way. In the 1970s, mixed-race people were themselves still struggling to define who they were, and the country too was confused about how to deal with a rising mixed-race population.
01:58His mother is an English girl, and his father is African, and he really has got the nicest disposition as so many of these little Negro boys' hairs.
02:11We got some very unpleasant letters that I should be horse-whipped down the street.
02:16And it wasn't just white society that was struggling to cope.
02:20Look, so what if she's pregnant, so what if the father's black?
02:25Black?
02:26If my sister had come home with a black guy, then I would have been against it.
02:32What were you looking for?
02:34Connie's lifetime has seen mixed-race people move into the mainstream.
02:38Her grandchildren and great-grandchildren are testament to that.
02:42But for earlier generations, the search for an identity they could call their own was often a painful process.
02:49Especially as it took place against a backdrop in which what colour you were was a political issue.
03:14White Chapel in London.
03:16In 1961, in the school holidays, a 14-year-old girl headed for the Wimpy Bar.
03:22Where else?
03:24She went up to the counter and waited to be served.
03:31I ordered food.
03:33He came up from behind and he served me.
03:37And just, I caught his eye.
03:40Just, his mop of black hair.
03:46And from that time, I thought, yes.
03:50Well, even on the first time you met him though, did you think, oh, he's alright?
03:54Yeah.
03:55Did you?
03:56I did.
03:57Yeah.
03:58Yeah.
03:59The first date was when we went out, we went to see an Indian movie called Sangam.
04:13It was quite unusual.
04:14There you are.
04:15A white girl.
04:16I mean, presumably had no idea what you were listening to or watching.
04:18Did you mind that?
04:19No, I didn't mind at all.
04:20Because you were sitting next to him.
04:21Yeah.
04:22Mm-hmm.
04:23Yeah.
04:24Mm-hmm.
04:25Mm-hmm.
04:26Mm-hmm.
04:27Shafiq Udin had arrived in the UK from Bangladesh in 1960, aged just 18.
04:30Like immigrants everywhere, this young, single man was looking for work.
04:35Shafiq was part of one of the last big waves of immigration, before Britain began to close
04:47its doors to people from its former colonies.
04:50Between 1962 and 1962, it was one of the last big waves of immigration, before Britain
04:56began to close its doors to people from its former colonies.
05:01Between 1962 and 1971, there had been a succession of immigration acts.
05:08By that time, the number of South Asians stood at almost half a million.
05:16In the 1960s, more and more Bangladeshi families were settling here, around Brick Lane.
05:23Like generations of immigrants before them, they found the housing cheap and the jobs plentiful.
05:28They moved in alongside old East End families like Pamela's, people who were rooted in the area.
05:35The arrival of these new settlers led to growing racial tension.
05:40Brick Lane would eventually become a favoured hunting ground for the far right.
05:45They opened the floodgates of our country to an invasion even more foreign than that might have threatened us in 1914 or 1914.
05:56The far right's ugly politics embodied by the National Fright was a growing feature of the 1970s.
06:11Support was particularly strong in East London and Shafiq's Wimpy Bar was on the front line.
06:19I was facing places problem with the Wimpy, because I used to have the people coming in.
06:31A couple of times we had a window broken as well.
06:34I used to serve National Front young boy. Skinhead worked in a shop. I used to say,
06:48yes, you can sit down, have a meal or do what you want as long as you don't cause problems inside.
06:53But there is always something there to remind me.
06:57When Pamela and Shafiq began courting, racial prejudice was already bubbling beneath the surface.
07:03No wonder they met in secret.
07:05Naturally, we had a lot of problems, you know, like racist remarks and things like that,
07:12with my girlfriends and boyfriends in my estate where I lived and everything.
07:16When you go out those days, even you get problems with the Asian as well.
07:22Ah, look at this woman. And especially with white.
07:26You could hear it when you're walking. Ah, F, B, look at them.
07:31Especially down where she was living.
07:35But eventually they had to come out of the shadows.
07:40When you decided this is a man you loved,
07:43what was it like telling your parents about it?
07:47My mum did accept it straight away.
07:51So I speak to Dad myself and he just didn't want to hear about it.
07:56He was angry, was he?
07:57Very, very angry.
07:59While I'm going out with an Asian person.
08:06Despite that reaction, Pamela and Shafiq went ahead with their marriage in 1965.
08:12Her father refused to attend the wedding.
08:14They became one of the first mixed-race couples to get married in Brick Lane Mosque.
08:19Did you, Shafiq, when you realised that Pamela's father was not going to bless your marriage,
08:28did you think, well, maybe this is the wrong thing to do?
08:31No, I did nothing wrong because I thought the whole family accepted and I think it was bad for him
08:37because he did not realise what sort of person I am.
08:39My mind was, I prove you what sort of guy I am and you be the sorry, not me.
08:43What good is love that no one shares?
08:55The impending arrival of a baby, a grandchild for Pamela's disapproving father,
09:01brought matters to a head.
09:03Difficult as it was, she decided to confront him.
09:10I said, I'm going to start a family and I want everything to be fine between me and you.
09:16We've got to get all this put behind us.
09:19He just got up, walked out, slammed the sitting room door, went in his own bedroom.
09:26I give him all to Matan.
09:28Like, it's either not having me as your daughter anymore
09:32or you're going to come around, you're going to speak to Shafiq.
09:35You went that far?
09:36Yeah.
09:37Then after that, he come around slowly.
09:40It must have been a huge relief for you.
09:43It was.
09:44It really was.
09:45Can you stop?
09:50What do you get upset for?
09:59Don't worry, Pamela.
10:00No, you don't have to get emotional.
10:01It's okay.
10:02It is emotional.
10:03No, no, it happened in life.
10:04You're an incredibly brave woman.
10:06The baby was born in 1968, the first of six children.
10:17From those inauspicious beginnings, Pamela and Shafiq have raised a family
10:22and prove their critics wrong.
10:25I am proud, very proud of what I've achieved today in the 45 years I've been married to Shafiq.
10:38So Pamela and Shafiq had to overcome the disapproval of family.
10:42And as if that weren't bad enough, they were falling in love at a time of growing racial tension.
10:47Identity, how you saw yourself, how others looked at you, that was becoming a major issue.
10:53And if you were mixed race, finding and describing your own unique identity was more complex and more difficult.
11:00And nowhere was that played out more starkly than in the field of adoption.
11:05It's October 1959 and Paddington Station is busy.
11:28I'm all around, but I don't hear a sound, just the lonely beating of my heart.
11:41Scanning the departures board for her train, a nervous-looking woman hurries towards the platform.
11:47In one hand she carries a suitcase, and holding her other hand tightly is a pretty two-year-old, a mixed-race child.
11:56The girl's name was Rosemary Walter, and the journey she was about to embark on would change her life forever.
12:03She couldn't have known it, of course, but she was being rejected, hidden.
12:07You see, Rosie's mother, a white woman married to a white man, had had a black lover.
12:13And Rosie was living proof of a relationship that was not just illicit, but in those days deemed utterly shameful.
12:21The year before, in 1958, a survey had showed that 71% of British people disapproved of mixed relationships.
12:33In other words, they disapproved of women like Gladys, Rosie's mother.
12:38She then had to leave the marital home. She never told her husband why, but she left the marital home.
12:43And she lived in a small flat in Clapham. And she got pneumonia, and I think that maybe she needed a break.
12:51I think she was quite a sad person, and had quite a sad life as a result of what had happened in regards to me being born.
12:57Gladys, no longer in a relationship with her black lover, was living alone.
13:03She was depressed and finding it hard to cope with a baby.
13:07She'd often sort of refer to the fact that her life changed drastically for the worst once I was born.
13:15But she also maintained that she loved me dearly, and it was very sad for her having to let me go.
13:20And what about the wider family, your white family, if you like, your mother's family?
13:24She'd asked her sister if she could stay, if we could both go and stay.
13:30And her sister had said that she could go, but I couldn't go because she didn't want the neighbours to see a black child.
13:35They didn't want it to be known that her sister had had a child with a black man.
13:42Spurned by her family and friends, desperate for help, Gladys made a decision which would mark Rosie's life forever.
13:54Rosie's mother went to the National Children's Home for Help, but they told her there were no places available in London.
14:00Rosie would have to go to Swansea.
14:03So, on Saturday, the 5th of October, 1959, Rosie and her mother found themselves here, on Platform One.
14:11The two-year-old child was handed over by her mother to a social worker.
14:26The train pulled away, and Rosie Waters would spend the next 16 years living in care homes.
14:32She'd spend those years battling to fit in with black or white children, but found herself rejected by both.
14:48Rosemary's mother was by no means on her own.
14:50There were many other women with their own secrets to hide, and like Rosie, they too ended up in care.
14:56Exactly how many? Well, that's difficult to know. Nobody was actually collating that kind of information.
15:03What is clear, from social workers and other subsequent studies, is that there were many more mixed-race children in care than you'd expect.
15:12Hello, sunshine!
15:14That was because it was difficult to find adoptive homes for these children in the 1960s.
15:23There's so many of these little Negro boys waiting for families.
15:27At the moment, we just haven't any homes for them.
15:31Come on!
15:35There simply weren't many couples prepared to foster or adopt mixed-race children.
15:40And a care network, run largely by the well-meaning, was ill-equipped to change attitudes.
15:51His mother is an English girl, and his father is African.
15:57He's not a big baby. He's quite a compact little boy.
16:00He's sort of coffee-coloured, big brown eyes, nicely shaped mouth.
16:07And he really has got the nicest disposition as so many of these little Negro boys have.
16:17No wonder middle-class Britain, with its privet hedges and milk carts, remained resistant to the idea of mixed-race relationships,
16:25let alone adopting the children that followed.
16:30But in the early 1960s, there was a challenge to this jaundiced view,
16:35and it came from the most unlikely quarter, the heart of the British aristocracy.
16:40What's that? Walk on that.
16:42Lady March gives her youngest daughter, Louisa, a running commentary on the elements of horsemanship.
16:46The Goodwood Estate in Sussex, home to the Duke and Duchess of Richmond.
16:55Susan Grenville Grey had married the future Duke in 1951.
16:59The couple had three birth children of their own, but they wanted more and decided to adopt.
17:05Adoption is a big thing, and on top of that you decide to go and adopt mixed-race children.
17:11It must have been quite a tough decision, wasn't it?
17:15It was a tough decision to decide whether to adopt,
17:18but it wasn't so tough to decide what child we thought we would adopt,
17:24because we particularly wanted to have children that weren't going to get much of a chance otherwise.
17:30By 1960, they had adopted one mixed-race baby, Maria.
17:35But the Duke and Dutters didn't stop there.
17:38When mum came and picked me up, I sat on her hip, held her thumb, and that was the end of that.
17:45There was no way that she was going to put me down or that I was not going to be going with her.
17:50Naomi March is a promising rider, and whenever she's free from her comprehensive school of Chichester...
17:56Born to a white English mother and a black South African father in 1962,
18:01Naomi March was adopted when she was six months old.
18:03The Duchess's father had been firmly against the idea, but her arrival softened even the hardest of hearts.
18:13He changed his mind as soon as he saw the kids.
18:17Well, yes, and my mother's a very fair person, and she decided whether they were there,
18:22she would treat them as her grandchildren, mostly, anyway, so it was all right.
18:28And then he was very wonderful, wasn't he, with both my children.
18:31Absolutely.
18:32We were passionate about what we were doing, and I think we didn't properly realise what Russians would be.
18:46We got some very unpleasant letters.
18:48Did you? Yes.
18:49What kind of letters, what were they saying?
18:51Oh, that I should be horse whipped down the street, and that we should be, you know, drummed out of everywhere.
18:57Everywhere.
18:59But the Duke and Duchess had rather more pressing problems closer to home.
19:04We had a few hair issues, didn't we?
19:07Do you remember?
19:08Yeah, what was the hair issue?
19:09You're going to have to tell us now.
19:10Well, because...
19:11Detangle it.
19:13Using, using, excuse me, conventional kind of Caucasian hairbrushes on my hair just wasn't going to work.
19:20Oh, okay.
19:21And so, you know, it was a while before we discovered the Afro comb and ways of not making my eyes water quite so much as mum tried to drag an ordinary comb through this curly mess.
19:31And as the swinging 60s gave way to the 1970s, Britain gained a reputation for the avant-garde.
19:48There must be some kind of way out of here.
19:57By the 60s, Britain was cool and it was fashionable.
20:01And whether homegrown or from abroad, this was the hip place to be if you were a musician, an actor, or an artist.
20:08And these people had one thing in common.
20:11They bucked the social conventions, including those narrow attitudes about what race your partner should be.
20:21Many of these starlet couples got married or at least had long-term relationships.
20:26And you've got to remember, these were iconic people, so how they lived their lives as mixed-race couples, well, that sent out a powerful signal.
20:34They were confident, they were carefree. Above all, they seemed happy.
20:47But the relaxed, carefree attitudes of film stars and rock legends, protected in their own gilded world, still had little resonance in ordinary homes.
20:57I think there will be tensions in your children. They would neither be white nor black.
21:05I think that this is going to be a big hazard in your life.
21:09Well, I hope to prove you wrong.
21:11I hope, yes. I honestly hope so, yes.
21:14But I wonder what Martin will think when he sees his first son, if it should be dark in colour.
21:19Yes, but I mean, I hope Martin has got more intelligence to accept whatever colour this child is.
21:30After the aristocracy and showbiz, it was television's turn to chip away at prejudice.
21:36A 1970s TV series featured a black and white couple who just secretly got married.
21:41Congratulations, Mrs. Simpson. I am very glad you're my wife.
21:46Thomas and Susan are married.
21:49Oh, my God.
21:51Whatever you do, Edward, don't embarrass her.
21:54Thomas, what have you done?
21:56Dad, you've got yourself a daughter-in-law.
21:58I suppose my wife, Frances, and I are the kind of couple the show was trying to portray.
22:04We met at university in the 1970s, and I'm happy to say both our immediate families were completely on side.
22:11In fact, more than that, they went out and battered for us.
22:14Well, they could be white. Well, they could be black one side and white the other.
22:18It wasn't quite so easy for the TV couple.
22:22There was a thorny issue of children.
22:23They are a bit black, and that puts them at a disadvantage in this society, as I'm sure Susan well knows.
22:30Yes. Yes, I do. But we're sort of hoping it won't be such a problem one day.
22:35It all looks so dated now, doesn't it? Let's face it, the characters are clichéd.
22:40Perfect examples of the stereotype. But I don't really think that's the point.
22:45The fact that a show like Mixed Blessings was on primetime TV at all, well, that was quite an achievement in itself.
22:50It showed that mixed-race relationships were becoming a reality in 1970s Britain.
23:05But just as mixed-race relationships were carving out a space in the public consciousness, there was a parallel rise in black militant politics.
23:13It was influenced by America's Black Power Movement. From the 60s onwards, it produced icons like Angela Davis and the black American athletes who took their silent but potent protest against racial discrimination into the 1968 Mexico Olympics.
23:31Be black, be proud. That was the new mantra.
23:39And the black stars of the day symbolized that pride.
23:42But what if you were neither black nor white? People of mixed race found themselves in a sort of racial no-man's land.
23:55Caught in limbo between the new black consciousness and a white status quo, John Conte, champion boxer and 70s celeb, was born to a father from Sierra Leone and an Anglo-Irish mother.
24:07Do you think of yourself as a black family rather than a white family or a mixed or a coloured family?
24:18Well, speaking of myself, I disregard myself as myself and as a person of the world and as a human being.
24:26I'm not black, white, blue, pink, or anything, you know, just me.
24:31There was a sort of invisibility of mixed race people in the 70s.
24:35On the one hand, they were there and they were recognized because the use of the term half-caste was very prevalent in the 70s.
24:43People who were from mixed white and black backgrounds tended more to be seen as black.
24:49There wasn't that sort of sophistication of understanding racial identities in the 70s that we have now.
24:57And so I think there was very much a sense of you're either white or you're not white.
25:02Or you're black.
25:04But if mixed race children had to be classified as black or white, where did that leave their prospects for adoption?
25:15It was a whole new battleground.
25:17In the 60s, there'd been little debate about what became known as transracial adoption.
25:23Was it good or bad for mixed race children to have white parents?
25:28There was no official guideline, each family muddling its way through the fog of prejudice and ignorance.
25:34Were there any particular problems in fostering coloured children?
25:37Not really, but once I was out shopping with Carol and there was two little boys playing.
25:44They said, I say, Mrs, is that your kid there?
25:47And I said, yes.
25:48I said, that's my daughter and I'm proud of her.
25:51And Carol just got out of my head and squeezed it and she said, you're not really my mother, are you?
25:56But I said, I am your mother within the heart, because I do love you.
26:05It was only in 1970 that the Home Office gave a formal view on the subject,
26:10saying that children of mixed race should be considered for adoption by both black couples and white couples.
26:21But it very quickly sparked off a lively and sometimes angry debate about culture and heritage.
26:28Mixed race children brought up by white families were accused of being like coconuts.
26:34Brown on the outside, but white inside.
26:37Racial identity was about to take centre stage.
26:40In 1975, Judith Logan was born to a mixed Caribbean father and a white mother.
26:52She was adopted as a baby.
26:53Yes, I would describe myself as a happy child growing up because I had a loving family.
26:59They probably, you know, kept me safe and maybe sheltered me from a lot that I was not aware of.
27:06Her new parents were white and lived in Inverness, the Scottish Highlands.
27:13It was a very small town. You know, it wasn't big.
27:16I mean, we had like one set of traffic lights.
27:19That's how small it was.
27:20So there wasn't a great diversity of colour. It was quite white.
27:25Where you lived has always had an impact on the experience of people of mixed race.
27:33And for Judith, her isolation soon caused problems.
27:37I mean, my secondary school, it was a living hell.
27:41I hated every single moment of it.
27:44From basically day one until I left.
27:47I was visibly on my own.
27:49You know, there was the usual name calling.
27:51I got called nigger. I got called monkey.
27:53I got told I should go back to where I belong.
27:55I got told I smelled bad.
27:57Judith says she got little help from her teachers and try as they might,
28:02she feels her white parents simply couldn't understand what it was like to be black.
28:07My mother would try and support me, but it wasn't the same as going to somebody who's black and going,
28:13look, you've probably been in the same situation as me. You're black, you know.
28:17Because white people, they don't tend to get called niggers, you know, that I'm aware of.
28:22And so it was, you know, it was difficult.
28:25Judith's case, along with some others, set alarm bells ringing for black social workers.
28:33You see, even more than the bullying, what worried them was that these children,
28:37brought up within white families, were losing out on their racial heritage.
28:42Across the Atlantic in America, black social workers there were already involved in a campaign against transracial adoption.
28:50They called it cultural genocide.
28:54The American experience was soon mirrored here in Britain.
28:58By the early 1980s, there was a hot debate about transracial adoption.
29:03In 1983, a report by the British Association for Adoption and Fostering argued that most transracial adoptions had been successful.
29:12White families provided stable homes and children were happy.
29:17But one of the findings in the report proved hugely contentious.
29:20It said that mixed race children adopted by white families, and I'm quoting here,
29:25saw themselves as white in all but skin colour and had little knowledge or experience of their counterparts growing up in the black community.
29:38That comment caused outrage among some black social workers.
29:42They fired off a document to the House of Commons denouncing the evils of transracial adoption,
29:48describing it as internal colonialism and a new form of slave trade.
29:52But this time, they said, only black children are used.
29:57The difference between a white and black family in terms of parenting is essentially one revolving around the black parent in a black family,
30:07having the crucial function of teaching its children to cope with a fundamentally racist society.
30:14You're talking about educating children for racism. Isn't that a self-fulfilling prophecy?
30:20It's an absolute prerequisite of any conscious black family life.
30:26We are trying to teach our children to survive.
30:32I wanted to fit in.
30:34You know, and I think it's, you know, I think it's hard to fit in when your entire family is one colour.
30:39And you're not.
30:43All the time I used to always want to be brought up in a black family.
30:46I wanted to be, at least have one black parent.
30:49It doesn't have to be all black.
30:51But I wanted to be brought up in a multi-mixed race family so there was a black parent.
30:57Imagine the anguish not only in the classroom but even at home.
31:01For Judith, the racism she experienced during her childhood led to low self-esteem.
31:07She spent many years questioning who she really was.
31:11It is important for me to have that mixed race identity.
31:14It's who I am. I wouldn't be me without it.
31:17But the unique and acute challenges of being mixed race were not restricted only to those children who'd been adopted.
31:30On our side of the street we had a black family.
31:33And then the rest of the street was predominantly white.
31:36There were no Asians.
31:38And when there was ever confrontations between the black family and the white kids, I was always like, which side should I take?
31:50Clement Cooper grew up in Mossside, Manchester.
32:03Clement's father was black Jamaican, his mother white.
32:07But he'd begun to consider himself black.
32:11In the early 80s, Clement started a career as a professional photographer.
32:18By 1988, he had enough work for an exhibition at the Corner House Gallery in Manchester.
32:28He called it Presence.
32:31It was a series of intimate and telling portraits of people from his neighbourhood, most of whom were black.
32:39But within a week of the exhibition opening, there was trouble.
32:46I got a telephone call to say a group of black youths had marched into the gallery with screwdrivers, bypassed the security system and had removed from the walls a set of the photographs of the black young men from the youth club.
33:02Clement wanted his pictures back, and so he approached the youths at the club. Their reply shocked him.
33:09The line of attack was one of my race, and they started to abuse me along racial lines.
33:20They were attacking me for me being mixed race, and they started to use expressions of, you're half-caste and you're half-breed.
33:26And I eventually got assaulted. The pictures never got returned. I got death threats. My family had to, you know, be very mindful where they went to my father in particular.
33:41How can you defend against that kind of torrent of anger and aggression when it's directed at the very thing, what your being is about, your identity?
33:54The attack pushed Clement into a period of soul-searching. He set off to the land of his father.
34:01Only to be told he wasn't really one of them either.
34:09I went to Jamaica thinking, well, if I'm rejected here, I could be accepted in a Jamaican environment.
34:16Only to be told by my aunt that, at a time of giving a blood transfusion to a boy from the community who was dying,
34:24that Clement, in front of the whole crowd of people from the community, can't give blood because he's got white blood in him.
34:31And white blood cannot be transfused or taken and put into a black person, especially a black child.
34:39So, Clement Cooper returned to Britain. He'd gone halfway around the world and still didn't know where he fitted in.
34:46As it happened, the answer was just a few miles down the M62 from Manchester to Liverpool.
34:53A port city that had always been home to one of the largest mixed-race communities.
35:00I went to this club called the Yibo Club, the bottom Parliament Street.
35:05And I went in there for the very first time one evening and opened this door.
35:08And for the first time in my whole life, at the age of 29, there was this room full of people who looked very similar to me.
35:18It was a revelation. Finally, he felt he knew who he was.
35:23He didn't have to try to be white or black.
35:26Not just in terms of the complexion, but the whole structure and the way, just the way they looked and acted.
35:33And it was a complete shock to see so many people like myself in one space.
35:46Clement's journey marks one little victory for all mixed-race people.
35:54One more step in their fight to carve out an identity for themselves.
35:59But there was still one major battle.
36:05It pitted black activists against those in charge of social policy.
36:10Should mixed-race children be defined by their colour or by their need?
36:15In 1989, those black activists and social workers got what they'd campaigned for.
36:31The New Children's Act effectively reversed the previous guidance of 1970,
36:36saying race should be given due consideration.
36:39Councils should try, whenever appropriate, to match black children to black couples
36:45and mixed-race children to black or mixed-race couples.
36:49However well-meaning that instruction to consider race was,
36:53it effectively meant that many mixed-race children ended up in care rather than with a family.
36:59You see, there simply weren't enough mixed-race couples who wanted to take them in.
37:03One mixed-race couple bucked that trend.
37:10On the 10th of February 1998, Mike and Julie D'Souza were sitting outside a room,
37:17awaiting a decision on adoption.
37:18They came back and just sat down with us, I think, and just said,
37:25I'm just really sorry, we need to talk to you.
37:29And, yeah, just delivered the news that we had actually been, we hadn't been approved.
37:35It was a personal rejection of my own, of who I was.
37:37And I just felt like that I wasn't good enough to be the father of a mixed-race child.
37:48That's what they were saying.
37:54Mike and Julie had got married in 1989.
37:58Born in London, Mike was himself the child of a mother from the Caribbean,
38:06and a Chinese-Portuguese father.
38:11After getting married, they'd had two children of their own,
38:15but wanted to have a larger family.
38:17So, in 1996, they'd approached Barnardo's,
38:22believing they would be the perfect candidates to adopt a mixed-race child.
38:25How wrong they'd been.
38:29As the meeting unfolded, it became apparent that the social workers didn't think they were ready.
38:35The family needed some extra training.
38:38I thought it was a bit of a joke, to be honest.
38:44I thought this is, you know...
38:46Joke? I think I'd have been pretty angry.
38:48I mean, I don't want to put words into your mouth.
38:50The anger came later, it was after the second panel,
38:52because we figured, OK, it's just one more hoop to jump through.
38:56Once we get through this, it'll be fine, we'll have our son,
38:59it'll be... everything will be OK.
39:03The extra training for Mike and Julie was a year-long racial awareness course.
39:08By now, they'd begun to select a child to take home.
39:12So, in February 1998, they attended a final adoption panel.
39:16There were 13 people in the room, 12 of them were white English, there was an Asian woman,
39:25and I was the only black male in the room.
39:28And they were saying that their concern was I wouldn't be able to equip a black boy to deal with racism as he grew up.
39:36They would rather revoke our approval and allow a child to grow up in the care system than to be placed in a home with parents who love and care and would want to nurture that child.
39:48I just felt like that was just so wrong.
39:51Sue was told she couldn't adopt because she was too tall.
39:56Mike was told he wasn't black enough to adopt.
39:59This is The Vanessa Show.
40:03The story of the D'Souza adoption process soon broke nationally, causing outrage in the media.
40:12Bernardo's at that time said they had involved a black social worker at an earlier stage in the process.
40:22A new dawn is broken, has it not?
40:24The row had coincided with a change at national level with the election in 1997 of a new Labour government.
40:33And with it came Britain's first mixed race MPs.
40:41I was a child of mixed heritage. My mother was white, my father was black, and I was brought up as a young black African male.
40:52That's how I saw myself. Because frankly, when the National Front or the British movement are kicking your head in, George Elagaya, they don't ask whether you are of Indian origin or whether you are mixed race or whether you are black or whatever.
41:05You're a nigger. You're black. You're a wog. And they kick your head in.
41:08Now, if you're bringing up a child into such a world, then that's a very heavy responsibility.
41:15And you have to be equipped to give them that sense of self-worth and strength of identity that sees them through that.
41:23But, you know, there are white parents who can do that. There are black parents who can do that.
41:28There are white parents who fail in that. And there are black parents and mixed race parents who fail in that.
41:32Because parenting in such a situation is a very difficult job.
41:39By 1998, Paul Boateng was a junior minister.
41:43He drew on his own experience when he decided to change, once again, the guidance on adoptions.
41:48He said it was unacceptable for a child to be denied loving adoptive parents solely on the grounds that the child and adopters did not share the same racial or cultural background.
42:04It's a decision he continues to stand by.
42:07Is it preferable in any event to have two loving white parents who are making an effort to bring the child up with a good sense of self-worth and identity?
42:22Is it better that they should be brought up by such a couple than languish in a children's home?
42:27Yes, or languish in a situation in which they are fostered from one foster home to another?
42:34Yes, because all the evidence is that the state is a pretty bad parent.
42:38That's the reality.
42:40The D'Souza's didn't give up.
42:43A year later they applied to be adoptive parents again, this time with Hackney Council.
42:48After a year we were unconditionally approved and then four months later we got our son.
42:57Whose name is?
42:58Caleb.
42:59How old is he now?
43:00He's ten, so we got him at eight months.
43:03His birth mother was half Nigerian, half Welsh I believe, and his biological father was white English.
43:09So he's caught in Nigeria in fact, but he's fantastic, he's such a great little kid.
43:19So you're kind of a regular United Nations.
43:21You really are.
43:22That's right.
43:24A happy ending for the D'Souza's.
43:27But even today mixed race children still account for more than 8% of those in care,
43:33when they only make up 3% of our population.
43:39But there are signs of change.
43:44The new coalition government issued more guidance,
43:47making race just one of many factors that need to be considered,
43:51and it's no longer the most important one.
43:53Here's what it says.
43:55As long as a family can meet all the emotional needs of a child seeking a permanent home,
44:00their ethnic origin should not be a factor.
44:10That reinforcement of the labour guidelines is not a hard and fast rule.
44:16It's still down to adoption agencies and local councils.
44:19In the 90s, despite previous attempts to limit non-European immigration,
44:32Britain continued to attract new arrivals.
44:36Wars and conflicts produced a stream of refugees from every corner of the world.
44:40And they made their new homes here.
44:50Vietnamese boat people built a community in Nottingham.
44:54Bosnians congregated in London.
44:56And the Congolese headed for Sheffield.
44:58So refugee by refugee, migrant by migrant, Britain was becoming one of the most ethnically diverse places on earth.
45:16It meant that an Arab from Morocco could fall in love with a Cambodian,
45:19or that an Iranian could marry a Burmese girl.
45:24And their children, well, they'd be mixed race and British.
45:32And attitudes towards mixed race couples were changing too.
45:39While in the 50s the majority of British people had disapproved of mixed marriages,
45:43one survey showed that by the mid-90s only 10% would admit to being against them.
45:50From the 50s to the 90s, obviously a lot changed.
45:54One, people living side by side with each other.
45:58But on top of that, on an official level, we have race legislation being brought in.
46:03And so this changing idea that it's normal to have different races living side by side.
46:09But also that racism isn't normal, that racism is wrong.
46:20But Britain itself was changing.
46:23By the early 1990s, the mixed race population in Britain was estimated to be over 300,000.
46:29It was by no means huge, but a considerable part of the population nonetheless.
46:33Proof of that can be found on most estates, in virtually every suburb and in the homes of the rich, the famous and the titled.
46:49In 1992, rock legend David Bowie married the Somalian model Iman.
46:54And in 1995, cricketing royalty Imran Khan married English gentry Jemima Goldsmith.
47:09Jemima Goldsmith.
47:14Then, two years later, Diana, Princess of Wales, then considered the most famous woman in the world, was photographed with her new Egyptian boyfriend, Dodi Al-Fayed.
47:24What happens when you began to see famous mixed race relationships?
47:36I'm thinking of people like Jemima Goldsmith and Imran Khan, the cricketer, Princess Diana and Dodi.
47:43What was the effect of that?
47:44I think it brought the idea of mixed race relationships into a different public realm.
47:55And it questioned slightly some of the assumptions and stereotypes that were out there about mixed race relationships.
48:05You know, the idea that these are primarily working class.
48:09And so to see these high profile celebrities in these mixed relationships, particular people like Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed, made people think,
48:21oh, that's interesting. I didn't think it was those sort of people that mixed race.
48:28The irony was that while white Britain, whether it was the mother to a future king or someone down the road, seemed to be more relaxed about mixed race relationships,
48:37some immigrants were still locked into the old ways.
48:41The Asian community still remains one of those with the lowest rates of marrying out.
48:46Look, so what if she's pregnant, so what if the father's black?
48:50Black?
48:52This is the 20th century, you know.
48:54Now chaos has come.
48:56That will kill your family, you know. Let's just calm down, sisters, alright?
48:59The film, Barging on the Beach, was greeted with outrage by many Asians, especially the sight of an Indian girl kissing a black man.
49:09It showed how hard it was for them to break with the past.
49:14If my sister had come home with a black guy, then I would have been against it, if I'm telling you the truth, because culturally I would have not been able to accept that.
49:26And I can't say why, but that's just the way I think I'm programmed as an Indian.
49:33But love, they say, conquers all.
49:37As we've seen in this story, it can break down even the firmest of cultural barriers.
49:41I assumed my whole life that I was going to actually just marry an Indian girl, as that was what was expected from me, from my family and relatives.
49:53That's the way I was brought up, so I had to marry someone that was going to be the perfect daughter-in-law for my family and me as a husband.
50:02I never really thought she was going to turn into a serious relationship, because he mentioned that, you know, when he would get married, he would be to an Indian girl and that sort of thing.
50:12But Jaspreet Pangaea didn't get married to an Indian girl.
50:17He married Primrose Jackson in Hounslow in 2009.
50:22The bride wore a white wedding dress during the day and in the evening, Asian dress.
50:30To them, the day was a blending of their different cultures, Zimbabwean and Sieg.
50:38It all went smoothly on the day, but the road to the wedding was anything but.
50:44I was thinking, she's a nice girl, but I thought to myself, there's no way I could ever get serious with this girl, because this is not going to go anywhere, and I could lose everyone in my life if I do this.
50:56Like, I went with a girl, like a black girl, basically.
51:06Jaspreet's parents are from India and he's been brought up in a very traditional Punjabi Sikh household.
51:16I told my parents, that was hard, very hard, hardest thing I ever did in my life.
51:21My dad was very supportive, and he was ready to get us married straight away.
51:28But there were people, obviously, that said, we're not happy and we're not going to come to the wedding if he's going to do this.
51:34So, those people didn't come.
51:37I got over it, and I wake up every morning the happiest man on the planet.
51:41So, for me, that's all that matters.
51:43The couple both accept that it will take time for some people to accept their relationship fully, but they're rather hoping their latest news will make it easier.
51:57Will we have children? Yes, we're actually expecting a kid now.
52:03Yeah.
52:05There's a little baby in there.
52:07Yeah, we're static.
52:09Can't wait to be a dad.
52:11Yeah.
52:12So, I'm really looking forward to that.
52:14So, it'll be an infusion of both of us.
52:16I wish there were nine months to go quicker.
52:18Yeah.
52:20Quite proud of myself, actually.
52:21Remember that little girl on the platform at Paddington Station?
52:37Rosie Walters was put into care when she was just two years old, because her white mother couldn't cope with having a mixed-race child.
52:46Ten years later, she was moved from the mainly white area of Swansea to the mixed area of Stockwell in London, where she grew up and still lives.
52:56The changes in her life mirror and reflect the changes in our country.
53:02I was about 31 years old when I was able to stand up and say, I am a black woman of mixed parentage.
53:09I started to feel more comfortable with who I was.
53:13I started to recognise my own worth in society.
53:18I think when I started to branch out to meet different people from different backgrounds, I started to realise, it's actually alright to be yourself, you know, Rose.
53:25You can be yourself.
53:29She's found herself, and her country has found her.
53:32Twenty years ago, when she first started filling out the national census form, she only had the box marked Other. Now it is different.
53:45This is 2011, of course, it's census year. In a way, Britain's going to give you the opportunity to kind of tick something and say, you're mixed race. How does that feel?
53:54I think it's a big step forward, isn't it, really? And it does show that there's some recognition.
54:01So what are you going to put? White Afro-Caribbean?
54:04White Afro-Caribbean, yeah. That's what I am. That's who I am.
54:10Done.
54:12You're official.
54:14At last. At last. It's been a long time coming, isn't it? But, you know, yeah.
54:18This is the world that we live in
54:22I feel myself get tired
54:27This is the world that we live in
54:33The census may not reveal the mixed race population in all its complexity, but it has shattered one stereotype, that it's largely a working class phenomenon.
54:46This is the world that we live in
54:50There is a very middle class dimension to mixed race families in Britain. They tend to have higher levels of home ownership, higher levels of the educational profiles, which again challenges this idea that it's a working class or even an underclass phenomenon, something that you only find in council estates, in inner cities. In fact, the picture of mixing in Britain is something that you only find in council estates, in inner cities.
55:15In fact, the picture of mixing in Britain is something that is more middle class and spread throughout the country, not just in pockets of cities.
55:27There are places in Britain where colour, mixed race or otherwise is still a rarity, perhaps exotic. But here in Newham, in East London, 75%, three quarters of all newborn babies will have mothers who were themselves born outside the UK.
55:45So, imagine you're a teenager and you're out looking for a boyfriend or girlfriend, and you want to stick to your own kind. You may find the choice is rather limited.
55:57I've come back to where our story began. Limehouse docks.
56:07Waves of new arrivals since then have swelled our ethnic population and resulted in Britain's mixed race people becoming one of the fastest growing and youngest ethnic groups in the country.
56:19In the 2001 census, there were well over half a million mixed race people in the UK. That figure is now thought to have grown to one million.
56:33It did clash that time.
56:35I asked some of those I'd met on my journey to join me to come together and celebrate their differences, but also what they shared in common.
56:45There was Connie, who'd endured the humiliation of having her head measured by race scientists to see if mixed race children were as intelligent as others.
56:55Mary and Jake, who once faced intolerance and abuse for simply dancing together.
57:08And Dawoud, the son of Olive and Ali Salaman from Tiger Bay, home of one of our first and proudest mixed race communities.
57:19Just take a look at them. They're British, every one of them.
57:25They're British, every one of them.
57:34When I set out, I wanted to explore the lives of mixed race people.
57:38But week by week, interview by interview, I've realised that their story is also the story of modern Britain.
57:46We've seen how this country has been exposed to the same poisonous mix of racist theory and prejudice as the rest of Europe and America.
57:54Through it all, we've cut a rather unique path. Trade and empire had a part to play.
57:59Personal courage was matched by a sort of communal pragmatism.
58:03And then, of course, there was love and lust.
58:06Whatever the reasons, Britain has emerged as one of the most mixed nations on earth.
58:11And I, for one, am proud of that.
58:14And I, for one, am proud of that.
58:18I'm proud of that.
58:20I love you.
58:23So, I love you.
58:26Thanks.
58:27Thanks, I love you.
58:28Yeah.
58:29Thanks.
Recommended
0:30
|
Up next
57:57
58:58
1:32:06
1:30:55
41:40
1:21:47
53:32
52:46
43:17
56:51