To Keep Our Way of Life

To Keep Our Way of Life (Television Playhouse)

1959-03-27
Sound
53m

A West Indian man working in Britain faces prejudice, suspicion and jealousy in this shocking early TV play.

Racism, jealousy and Machiavellianism run riot in this searing television play, with a commanding central performance from Errol John as a black man struggling to cope in a white-dominated British business. The petty discriminations of the employees are shockingly delineated; in one of the best scenes, an initially sympathetic worker reveals his prejudices when discussing his sick father. The bullying bosses are frighteningly realistic, and the bigotry of the business is further exposed when a Jewish employee threatens not to tow the party line. The last few lines of dialogue are chilling indeed.

The play was written by Robert Morrow and broadcast live in Granada's Television Playhouse strand. Many TV plays from this period do not survive.

Black Lives

Portraits of public and private lives against the shifting social climate of 20th century Britain.

Black communities, like many Global majority groups, have long been ill-served by a mainstream British media accustomed to reflecting predominantly white, middle-class lives - a problem entrenched in the second half of the 20th century with the rise of television. Yet a rich tapestry of work from across the boundaries of fiction and non-fiction, film and TV, made for (though not always by) black people, does exist. This selection contains many surprises – some joyous, some sobering, some heartbreaking – and highlights the often painfully slow progress in addressing negative representations and stereotypes on screen. Impassioned and sometimes violent dispatches from the front line in the fight for racial equality can be found here, but so too can records of progress: in the pioneers breaking new ground in culture, politics and sport, and in the more mundane glimpses of everyday life. And this story is not just London’s story: the selection takes a journey around Britain, to a Nigerian wedding in 1960s Cornwall, an ‘African village’ in Essex and a Caribbean restaurant opening in West Bromwich; Newcastle