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“The Show Is Not about Race’”: Custom, Screen Culture, and the Black and White Minstrel Show

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 October 2020

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Abstract

In 1967, when the BBC was faced with a petition by the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination requesting an end to the televised variety program the Black and White Minstrel Show (1958–1978), producers at the BBC, the press, and audience members collectively argued that the historic presence of minstrelsy in Britain rendered the practice of blacking up harmless. This article uses critical race theory as a useful framework for unpacking defenses that hinged on both the color blindness of white British audiences and the simultaneous existence of wider customs of blacking up within British television and film. I examine a range of “screen culture” from the 1920s to the 1970s, including feature films, home movies, newsreels, and television, that provide evidence of the existence of blackface as a type of racialized custom in British entertainment throughout this period. Efforts by organizations such as the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination, black press publications like Flamingo, and audiences of color to name blacking up and minstrelsy as racist in the late 1960s were met by fierce resistance from majority white audiences and producers, who denied their authority to do so. Concepts of color blindness or “racial innocence” thus become a useful means of examining, first, the wide-ranging existence of blacking-up practices within British screen culture; second, a broad reluctance by producers and the majority of audiences to identify this as racist; and third, the exceptional role that race played in characterizations of white audiences that were otherwise seen as historically fragile and impressionable in the face of screen content.

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Journal of British Studies , Volume 59 , Issue 4 , October 2020 , pp. 857 - 884
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Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies, 2020

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References

1 Kenneth Lamb to David Pitt, 19 May 1967, File 3995803, Independent Television Authority / Independent Broadcasting Authority/(ITA/IBA) / Cable Authority Archive, 1954–1990, Archives and Special Collections, University of Bournemouth Library.

2 Curran, James and Seaton, Jean, Power without Responsibility: Press, Broadcasting, and the Internet in Britain, 7th ed. (London, 2010), 103–20Google Scholar.

3 Pitt was indeed a black man, born in Grenada, who undertook a degree in medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1933 before moving to Trinidad and then returning to England after World War II to establish a medical practice. See Kennetta Hammond Perry, London Is the Place for Me: Black Britons, Citizenship and the Politics of Race (Oxford, 2015), 216–17.

4 Stephen Murphy to E. J. B. Rose, Esq., 19 May 1967, R78/1, 921/1, “Black and White Minstrel Show,” BBC Written Archives Centre (hereafter WAC), Reading.

5 Kenneth Adam, foreword to The Black and White Minstrels (London, 1962), quoted in Gavin Schaffer, Vision of a Nation: The Making of Multiculturalism on British Television, 1960–1980 (London, 2014), 206.

6 “Bad Taste B.B.C.,” Flamingo, September 1961, 22–24; “Those Minstrels,” Dear Flamingo, Flamingo, October 1961, 2.

7 “Those Minstrels,” 2.

8 “Those Minstrels,” 2.

9 On film, see Bidnall, Amanda, The West Indian Generation: Remaking British Culture in London, 1945–1965 (Liverpool, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Webster, Wendy, Englishness and Empire, 1939–1965 (Oxford, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Alan Burton, Tim O'Sullivan, and Paul Wells, eds., Liberal Directions: Basil Dearden and Postwar British Film Culture (Wiltshire, 1997); Lola Young, Fear of the Dark: “Race,”, Gender, and Sexuality in the Cinema (London, 1995); Tarr, Carrie, “‘Sapphire,’ ‘Darling’ and the Boundaries of Permitted Pleasure,” Screen 26, no. 1 (1986): 50–65Google Scholar. On television, see Sarita Malik, Representing Black Britain: Black and Asian Images on Television (London, 2002); Stephen Bourne, Black in the British Frame: The Black Experience in British Film and Television, 2nd ed. (New York, 2001); Newton, Darrell M., Paving the Empire Road: BBC Television and Black Britons (Manchester, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 The British Broadcasting Corporation: First Conference on Immigrants, Broadcasting House, London, Tuesday 6 July 1965, Report of Proceedings/Programmes for Racial Minorities Policy, R78/1816/1, WAC; Newton, Paving the Empire Road, 120–30: Schaffer, Vision of a Nation, 28–34.

11 Schaffer, Vision of a Nation; Bebber, Brett, “Till Death Us Do Part: Political Satire and Social Realism in the 1960s and 1970s,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 34, no. 2 (2014): 253–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shaw, Sally, “‘Light Entertainment’ as Contested Socio-political Space: Audience and Institutional Responses to Love Thy Neighbour (1972–76),” Critical Studies in Television 7, no. 1 (2012): 64–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gavin Schaffer, “Race on the Television: The Writing of Johnny Speight in the 1970s,” in British Culture and Society in the 1970s: The Lost Decade, ed. Laurel Foster and Sue Harper (Cambridge, 2010), 107–18.

12 Waters, Rob, “Black Power on the Telly: America, Television, and Race in 1960s and 1970s Britain,” Journal of British Studies 54, no. 4 (2015): 947–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Perry, Kennetta Hammond “‘Little Rock’ in Britain: Jim Crow's Transatlantic Topographies,” Journal of British Studies 51, no. 1 (2012): 155–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 “To-day: BBC Programmes for the Weekend,” Times, 16 August 1958, 3. (Unless otherwise specified, all newspapers referenced are London publications.)

15 L. Marsland Gander, “16 m Saw BBC ‘Black and White Minstrels,’” Daily Telegraph, 25 January 1963, 13; Joint Industry Committee for Television Audience Research rankings for Till Death Us Do Part from 1965 to 1968, Broadcasting Audience Research Collection/University of Bournemouth, cited in Brett Bebber, “Till Death Us Do Part,” 255.

16 “Ronnie Corbett in His Own Words,” Radio Times, 31 May 2016, original interview 2011, http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2016-03-31/ronnie-corbett-in-his-own-words; The Two Ronnies, series 1, episode 7, aired 22 May 1971, on BBC.

17 Stuart Jeffries, “Danny and the Human Zoo: An Evening with Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse Review—Let's Face It, Blacking Up Is Never Funny,” Guardian Online, 1 September 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/sep/01/danny-human-zoo-lenny-henry-enfield-whitehouse.

18 James Codd, note, 27 June 2007, R78/1, 921/1, “Black and White Minstrel Show,” WAC.

19 While the Hanslope disclosure has highlighted the activities of government officials actively shaping archives of empire due to decolonization, new understandings of racism in postwar Britain have also likely had an impact on archival holdings and created related absences in the twentieth century.

20 I am very much indebted to Bernstein's conceptualization of this term, which she uses as a framework for examining material culture in antebellum America; Bernstein, Robin, Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights (New York, 2011)Google Scholar.

21 Critical race theory has primarily been tied to sociology and legal studies in the contemporary United States, although recent works in Europe and Britain have also engaged with this theory. See Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States, 3rd ed. (Lanham, 2010); Gloria Wekker, White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race (Durham, 2016); Charles W. Mills, “White Ignorance,” in Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, ed. Shannon Sullivan and Nancy Tuana (Albany, 2007); DiAngelo, Robin, “White Fragility,” International Journal of Critical Pedagogy 3, no. 3 (2011): 54–70Google Scholar; Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People about Race (London, 2017); Nikesh Shukla, ed., The Good Immigrant (London, 2017); Carol Anderson, White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide (New York, 2016).

22 Schwarz, Bill, “‘The Only White Man in There’: The Re-racialisation of England, 1956–1968,” Race and Class 38, no. 1 (1996): 65–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Perry, London Is the Place for Me, 92, 100–109; Chris Waters, “‘Dark Strangers’ in Our Midst: Discourses of Race and Nation in Britain, 1947–1963,” Journal of British Studies 36, no. 2 (1997): 207–38; Camilla Schofield, Enoch Powell and the Making of Postcolonial Britain (Cambridge, 2013); Jodi Burkett, Constructing Post-imperial Britain: Britishness, “Race” and the Radical Left in the 1960s (London, 2013); Kathleen Paul, Whitewashing Britain: Race and Citizenship in the Postwar Era (Ithaca, 1997).

24 I acknowledge the important work of Laura Tabili and David Holland in highlighting pre–World War II immigration in the United Kingdom while nevertheless noting that the immigrant population expanded considerably in the postwar period. Laura Tabili, Global Migrants, Local Culture: Natives and Newcomers in Provincial England, 1841–1939 (Basingstoke, 2011); David Holland, “The Social Networks of South Asian Migrants in the Sheffield Area during the Early Twentieth Century,” Past and Present, no. 236 (2017): 243–79.

25 Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists; Mills, “White Ignorance.”

26 Works addressing epistemological gaps within popular knowledge of empire have touched on color-blind racism within both government and the press. See Priya Satia, “Inter-war Agnotology: Empire, Democracy and the Production of Ignorance,” in Brave New World: Imperial and Democratic Nation-Building in Britain between the Wars, ed. Laura Beers and Geraint Thomas (London, 2012); Owen, Nicholas, “‘Facts Are Sacred’: The Manchester Guardian and Colonial Violence, 1930–1932,” Journal of Modern History 84, no. 3 (2012): 643–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bill Schwarz, The White Man's World (Oxford, 2011).

27 Stephen Johnson, ed., Burnt Cork: Traditions and Legacies of Blackface Minstrelsy (Massachusetts, 2012); Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (Oxford, 1993); William J. Mahar, Behind the Burnt Cork Mask: Early Blackface Minstrelsy and Antebellum American Popular Culture (Urbana, 1998); David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (New York, 2007).

28 Hazel Waters, Racism on the Victorian Stage: Representation of Slavery and the Black Character (Cambridge, 2007); Michael Pickering, Blackface Minstrelsy in Britain (Aldershot, 2008); Scriven, Tom, “The Jim Crow Craze in London's Press and Streets, 1836–39,” Journal of Victorian Culture 19, no. 1 (2014): 93–109CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Conquest (London, 1995).

29 Pickering, Blackface Minstrelsy in Britain, xi.

30 Pickering, xi.

31 Hanson, Stuart, From Silent Screen to Multi-screen: A History of Cinema Exhibition in Britain since 1896 (Manchester, 2007)Google Scholar.

32 The Jazz Singer, directed by Alan Crosland, Warner Bros. (Los Angeles, 1927; theatrical release in United Kingdom, 1928). Rose of Washington Square, directed by Gregory Ratoff, Twentieth Century Fox (Los Angeles, 1939). Released in Britain in 1947, according to Sue Harper, The Jolson Story had a respectable 15,118 filmgoers for its first showing in February at the Regent Cinema in Portsmouth and had increased this total to 18,413 in July 1948. Sue Harper, “Fragmentation and Crisis: 1940s Admissions Figures at the Regent Cinema, Portsmouth, UK,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 26, no. 3 (2006): 361–94, at 392–94.

33 Elliott's debut with the BBC, advertised by his stage name, “the Chocolate Coloured Coon,” was with the Aldershot Tattoo. “Aldershot Tattoo Broadcast,” Daily Mail, 11 June 1932, 4.

34 Advertisements, Daily Mail, 15 April 1930, 16.

35 The Screen Archive South East also holds a collection of films featuring “Uncle Mack's Minstrel Seaside Show,” dating from 1911; Collection Enid Briggs, Pt. 2, Screen Archive South East, University of Brighton.

36 The National Archives (hereafter TNA), MEPO 5/136, Metropolitan Police Minstrels, Minutes, 13 July 1926.

37 “Times Change: People and Their Doings, Onlooker,” Daily Mail, 21 November 1929, 10.

38 The Drum, directed by Zoltan Korda (London: London Films, 1938).

39 Christine Grandy, “The Empire and ‘Human Interest’: Popular Empire Films, the Colonial Villain, and the British Documentary Movement, 1926–39,” Twentieth Century British History 25, no. 4 (2014): 509–32.

40 Thomas, Zoë, “Duncan Tanner Essay Prize 2016: Historical Pageants, Citizenship, and the Performance of Women's History before Second-Wave Feminism,” Twentieth Century British History 28, no. 3 (2017): 319–43CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Hulme, Tom, “‘A Nation of Town Criers’: Civic Publicity and Historical Pageantry in Inter-war Britain,” Urban History 44, no. 2 (2017): 270–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Thomas, “Historical Pageants,” 326–27.

42 This material, while evident within the archives, has not been consistently catalogued to reference blackface or blacking up. “Minstrel” remains a useful term for accessing this practice, but viewings of pageants and parades also offer evidence. For examples, see Miscellaneous: Morecambe, Heysham, and North Manchester, 1936–1937, North West Film Archive, Library Services Special Collections, Manchester Metropolitan University; and the Screen Archive South East, University of Brighton, whose catalogue features “blackface” in the catalogue metadata.

43 Heather Norris Nicholson, Amateur Film: Meaning and Practice, 1927–1977 (Manchester, 2012).

44 Melton Mowbray Carnival Scenes, uncredited (1938), 35 mm, Media Archive for Central England (hereafter MACE), University of Lincoln.

45 TNA, MEPO 2/3757, 10281444, Metropolitan Police Minstrels: Official refusal to allow a film to be made, minutes, 3 June 1930.

46 This film, which is held by the Bexley Local Studies and Archives can be viewed online through Film London: London's Screen Archive, https://www.londonsscreenarchives.org.uk/public/details.php?id=16.

47 TNA, MEPO 2/3757, 10281444, Metropolitan Police Minstrels: Official refusal to allow a film to be made, 24 May 1930.

48 TNA, MEPO 2/3757, 10281444, Metropolitan Police Minstrels: Official refusal to allow a film to be made, minutes, 3 June 1930.

49 Grandy, Christine, Heroes and Happy Endings: Class, Gender, and Nation in Popular Film and Fiction in Interwar Britain (Manchester, 2014)Google Scholar.

50 Webster, Englishness and Empire, 52–54.

51 Antonia Lant, Blackout: Reinventing Women for Wartime British Cinema (Princeton, 1991); Fox, Jo, “Millions Like Us? Accented Language and the ‘Ordinary’ in British Films of the Second World War,” Journal of British Studies 45, no. 4 (2006): 819–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Anthony Aldgate and Jeffrey Richards, Britain Can Take It: The British Cinema in the Second World War (Edinburgh, 1994); Sonya O. Rose, Which People's War? National Identity and Citizenship in Wartime Britain, 1939–1945 (Oxford, 2003).

52 See The Negro Soldier, directed by Stuart Heisler, produced by Frank Capra (US War Department, 1944); Thomas Doherty, Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture, and World War II (New York, 1999).

53 George Herbert Simmons Collection, catalogue no. 2008-10-11, Imperial War Museums, London.

54 Clive of India was adapted for performance on BBC Television. “B.B.C. Television,” Times, 31 December 1956, 3.

55 On the numerous broadcasters holding regional licenses, some with weekday but not weekend privileges, see Catherine Johnson and Rob Turnock, eds., ITV Cultures: Independent Television over Fifty Years (Maidenhead, 2005). From the audience perspective and more, see Joe Moran, Armchair Nation: An Intimate History of Britain in Front of the TV (London, 2013); Helen Wheatley, ed., Re-viewing Television History: Critical Issues in Television Historiography (London, 2007).

56 “B.B.C. Programmes for the Weekend To-day: I.T.A. Associated Television 10.5: The Great Pictures of Alexander Korda—‘The Drum,’” Times, 28 September 1957, 4; “B.B.C. Programmes for the Weekend: I.T.A. Associated Television 10.5, The Great Pictures of Alexander Korda Presents Sabu in ‘Jungle Book,’” Times, 2 November 1957, 4; “B.B.C. Programmes for the Weekend: ITA, Associated Television, 10.5, The Great Pictures of Alexander Korda Presents ‘Sanders of the River,’” Times, 16 November 1957, 4; “B.B.C. Programmes for the Weekend: ITA, ABC Midland, To-day, The Great Pictures of Alexander Korda Presents ‘Sanders of the River,’” Times, 7 December 1957, 3; “B.B.C. Programmes for the Weekend: I.T.A. A.B.C. Midland, 10.05pm, The Great Pictures of Alexander Korda Presents Sabu—‘The Elephant Boy,’” Times, 28 December 1957, 4.

57 “ABC Television Network,” Times, 21 June 1957, 13.

58 “Sunday Television: Tyne Tees, 3 pm Film Festival, Sanders of the River,” Times, 22 July 1961, 5; “Sunday Television,: South Wales and West of England, 4pm Sunday Matinee, Sanders of the River,” Times, 9 September 1961, 5; “Sunday Television: ITV, South Wales and West of England, 2:45pm, Thief of Baghdad,” Times, 16 December 1961, 5.

59 “Weekend Television and Radio,” Times, 24 September 1966, 3.

60 “Saturday Broadcasting,” Times, 25 April 1970, 2. Indeed, Gunga Din (1939) was broadcast on BBC iPlayer, BBC2, as recently as March 2018, after two broadcasts in 2015, one in 2012, and one in 2011.

61 “Broadcasting,” Times, 14 July 1973, 8.

62 The most reliable program listings for both ITV and BBC are featured in the Times, although the Daily Mail also includes program listings. “Broadcasting Sunday: Anglia, 7.55pm, The Four Feathers,” Times, 22 March 1975, 10; “Pick of the Weekend TV Films: Granada, Border, Midlands, Thief of Baghdad, Grampian, Khartoum,” Daily Mail, 29 March 1975, 16; “Broadcasting: Southern, 6:45, Film: Khartoum,” Daily Mail, 12 April 1975, 16; “Broadcasting: Thames, 4:35, Thief of Baghdad,” Times, 26 May 1975, 8; “Broadcasting Saturday: Westward, 10:55pm, Sanders of the River,” Times, 31 May 1975, 8; “Broadcasting Sunday: London Weekend, 3.05pm, Film, The Four Feathers,” Times, 28 June 1975, 8; “Broadcasting: BBC2 9.00pm, Film, Go into Your Dance (1935) with Al Jolson, Ruby Keeler, Glenda Farrell, Helen Morgan,” Times, 29 July 1975, 23; “Broadcasting Saturday: Tyne Tees, 10:30am, Elephant Boy with Sabu,” Times, 9 August 1975, 6; “Broadcasting: Thames, 4pm, Thief of Baghdad, BBC1, 10.55 am, ITV 1.55pm,” Times, 25 August 1975, 8; “Broadcasting Sunday: BBC1, 1:55pm, Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935),” Times, 11 October 1975: 8; “Broadcasting Saturday: BBC2, 2:45pm, Arabian Nights, with Sabu,” Times, 20 December 1975: 8.

63 Anamik Saha, “Scheduling Race,” in Adjusting the Contrast: British Television and Constructs of Race, ed. Sarita Malik and Darrell M. Newton (Manchester, 2017), 50–70; Ellis, John, “Scheduling: The Last Creative Act in Television?,” Media, Culture, and Society 22, no. 1 (2000): 25–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64 “Film ‘Damaging to Nigeria,’” Times, 22 November 1957, 6.

65 “Film ‘Damaging to Nigeria,’” 6.

66 “BBC1, 8:45pm, December 25th Broadcast, Bridge over the River Kwai,” Daily Mail, 24 December 1974, 16–17; Webster, Englishness and Empire, 207–18.

67 Letter to Harold Buck, production supervisor, Julian Blaustein Productions Ltd., 4 June 1964, “Khartoum,” British Board of Film Classification Archives, London.

68 “An Intelligent Film about Gordon of Khartoum: From Our Film Critic,” Times, 9 June 1966, 8.

69 The film was shown in the prime slot of Christmas Eve in 1972 on multiple broadcasters (ITV London, Anglia, Southern, Westward, and Yorkshire, all at 7:25 p.m.) and on New Year's Day in 1976; “Christmas Eve,” Daily Mail, 23 December 1972, 16–17; “Television: Two Page Guide,” Daily Mail, 29 December 1976, 16–17; “New Year's Day TV,” Daily Mail, 31 December 1976, 18–27. See also Jones, Max, “‘National Hero and Very Queer Fish’: Empire, Sexuality and the British Remembrance of General Gordon, 1918–72,” Twentieth Century British History 26, no. 2 (2015): 175–202CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

70 “Grampian 7.25, Weekend Broadcasting Programmes,” Times, 9 March 1968, 14; “Rediffusion 10.30pm Television and Radio,” Times, 21 June 1968, 18; “Southern Television, 8.10 Weekend Broadcasting,” Times, 26 October 1968, 19; “7:55pm Westward, Sunday,” Daily Mail, 8 April 1972, 21; “11pm, Yorkshire, Entertainment/1 TV,” Daily Mail, 25 May 1973, 22; “10.35pm Westward Entertainment/1 TV,” Daily Mail, 3 August 1973, 18.

71 Raymond Durgnat, “Two ‘Social Problem’ Films: Sapphire and Victim,” in Liberal Directions: Basil Dearden and Postwar British Film Culture, ed. Alan Burton, Tim O'Sullivan, and Paul Wells (Wiltshire, 1997); Amanda Bidnall, “The Race Relations Narrative in British Film,” in The West Indian Generation, 162–203. See also Young, Fear of the Dark. On regionality, see Smith, Helen, “Working-Class Ideas and Experiences of Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Britain: Regionalism as a Category of Analysis,” Twentieth Century British History 29, no. 1 (2018): 58–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rachel Yemm, “Immigration, Race and Local Media in the Midlands, 1960–1985” (PhD diss., University of Lincoln, 2018); Shirin Hirsch, In the Shadow of Enoch Powell: Race, Locality, and Resistance (Manchester, 2018).

72 For example, see “Negro Heroine to Be Played by Leslie Caron,” West Indian Gazette, September 1960, 1; Bourne, Black in the British Frame, 32–46.

73 Michael Pickering, “The BBC's Kentucky Minstrels, 1933–1950: Blackface Entertainment on British Radio,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 16, no. 2 (1996): 161–95.

74 Ronald Camp, “Just Fancy-Dancing Girls in a Minstrel Show,” Daily Mail, 3 September 1957, n.p.

75 “The Magic of the Minstrels,” Times, 8 November 1969, 3.

76 “Minstrels Run Out of Make-Up,” Daily Telegraph, 12 January 1962, 13.

77 “BBC Asked to Ban the TV Minstrels,” Times, 19 May 1967, 3; Paula James, “Race Rumpus over the Black and White Minstrels,” Daily Mirror, 19 May 1967, 3.

78 James, “Race Rumpus.”

79 “BBC asked to Stop ‘Offensive’ Minstrel Show,” Birmingham Post, 19 May 1967, 9.

80 David Pitt, “The Wrong Target,” letter to the editor, Times, 23 May 1967, 9.

81 “BBC asked to Ban the TV Minstrels”; James, “Race Rumpus.”

82 James, “Race Rumpus.”

83 [Edward Scobie], editorial, Flamingo, September 1961, 1.

84 “Bad Taste B.B.C!,” Flamingo, September 1961, 22–25.

85 “Bad Taste B.B.C!,” 22.

86 “Bad Taste B.B.C!,” 22.

87 “Those Minstrels!,” letter to the editor, Flamingo, October 1961, 2.

88 K.S.T., “Minstrels: A Defence,” Flamingo, November 1961, 3.

89 Schaffer, Vision of a Nation, 67–95; Malik, Representing Black Britain, 35–55.

90 Kenneth Adam to Barrie Thorne, 11 September 1962, T16/175/2, TV Policy-Race Relations, file 2 (1955–1968), WAC.

91 Extract from Minutes, Board of Management, 21 August 1967, R78/1,921/1, “Black and White Minstrel Show,” WAC.

92 Brian Dean, “Ban Them!,” Daily Mail, 19 May 1967, 6.

93 James, “Race Rumpus.”

94 The British Broadcasting Corporation: Second Conference on Immigrants (West Indies) held at Broadcasting House, London, W1, Tuesday 13 July 1965, Report of Proceedings, 25, WAC.

95 “BBC Asked to Ban the TV Minstrels,” Times, 19 May 1967, 3.

96 D. A. Lockhart et al., “The Red Pink and Blue Minstrel Show!,” Daily Mail, 22 May 1967, 6.

97 Board of Management, minutes of 22 May 1967, R78/1,921/1, “Black and White Minstrel Show,” WAC.

98 Board of Management, minutes of 21 August 1967, R78/1,921/1, “Black and White Minstrel Show,” WAC.

99 O. J. Whitley, 26 May 1967, R78/1,921/1, “Black and White Minstrel Show,” WAC.

100 Pitt, “Wrong Target,” 9.

101 Jeffrey Richards, The Age of the Dream Palace: Cinema and Society in 1930s Britain (London, 2009); James C. Robertson, The Hidden Cinema: British Film Censorship in Action, 1913–1972 (London, 1993); Sian Barber, Censoring the 1970s: The BBFC and the Decade That Taste Forgot (Newcastle, 2011) Hendy, David, “Bad Language and BBC Radio Four in the 1960s and 1970s,” Twentieth Century British History 17, no. 1 (2006): 74–102Google Scholar; Curran and Seaton, Power without Responsibility; Lawrence Black, “Whose Finger on the Button? British Television and the Politics of Cultural Control,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 25, no. 4 (2005): 547–75.

102 Nixon, Sean, Hard Sell: Advertising, Affluence and Transatlantic Relations, c. 1951–69 (Manchester, 2013)Google Scholar.

103 Bad Taste B.B.C.!, Flamingo, September 1961, 22.

104 “The Wrong Target,” Times, 19 May 1967, 11.

105 Waters, “Black Power on the Telly.”

106 Barrie Thorne to C. A. to Director General, 19 May 1967, R78/1,921/1, “Black and White Minstrel Show,” WAC.

107 Extract from minutes of meeting held on 14 August 1967, Board of Management, Confidential, R78/1,921/1, “Black and White Minstrel Show,” WAC.

108 Brian Dean “The White-and-White Minstrel Show” Daily Mail, 19 September 1968, 3.

109 Brian Dean, “A New Funny Man for the Minstrels,” Daily Mail, 14 March 1970, 4.

110 Cecil Wilson, “Film,” Daily Mail, 6 March 1969, 14.

111 Wilson, “Film”; John Russell Taylor, “A Director's Reputation and Achievement,” Times, 6 March 1969, 13.

112 Brian Dean, “Curry and Chips Starts TV Colour Row,” Daily Mail, 22 November 1969, 1.

113 Brett Bebber, “The Short Life of Curry and Chips: Racial Comedy on British Television in the 1960s,” Journal of British Cinema and Television 11, nos. 2–3 (2014): 213–35.

114 Derek Nuttall, Bacup Carnival, 1961, film no. 6892, North West Film Archive, Library Services Special Collections, Manchester Metropolitan University.

115 Carnival; Last Train to Brighton; West Street, 1963; October 1964; February 1965, no. 6083, Cecil Cramp Collection, Screen Archive South East, University of Brighton.

116 Humphries: Rocester Festival, 1979, MACE, https://www.macearchive.org/films/humphries-rocester-festival-1979.

117 Sharpe: Kegworth Easter Market and Carnival Parades, 1977–1980s,” MACE.

118 Carleton Gala, 1972, DB 319, Yorkshire Film Archive, is one such example.

119 Bo'Ness Fair, directed by Michael Alexander (1974) Pelicula Film, 16mm, reference no. 7793, The Moving Image Archive/The National Library of Scotland, footage commencing at 26:08.

120 R78/2,538/1, “Programmes for Racial Minority: General,” An Audience Research Report (Confidential), 16 February 1972, VR/72/56, “Non-whites in British Television,” WAC.

121 Schaffer, Vision of a Nation, 96–142, 216–17.