I don’t quite know what to make of All White in Barking the last of the BBC’s White season. It was made last year as part of the Storyville strand so did not necessarily fit whatever agenda, and they do have an agenda, that the BBC have with this White season.
It was less about white people in Barking (and Dagenham where I used to live and which makes up the other half of the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham) and any perceived racism against non English newcomers, although there was an element of that, and more about the difficulties of dealing with too rapid change as one gets older.
Initially my defences rose at the opening credits “How far are we prepared to go to overcome our fear of foreigners” but there were intelligent twists.
There were four stories to follow.
Sue and her husband trying to get to know new African and Albanian neighbours.
Dave a BNP activist who loves his mixed race grandson, “because he’s my blood” but who has moved to Canvey Island because he perceives it as safer. Canvey Island is full of oil refineries with only one road off the island, and that liable to flooding; I wouldn’t want to live there.
Monty a Polish Jew and survivor of Auschwitz who has formed a relationship with Betty a Ugandan lady.
The proprietors of the traditional East Street butchers which closed last year after 60 years trading, when African butchers opened opposite.
Monty’s story deserved a programme in its own right. From the photo of him and other boys on the roof of a cattle truck the day Auschwitz was liberated to the annual reunion dinner of the Boys of ’45. The elderly friend at the dinner who, asked about Betty, black and not Jewish, said who should know better than they about persecution for their origins.
When the programme maker asked everybody in turn at Sue’s barbeque whether they would be happy for their sons to marry a white girl, or an African girl. And the Albanian man said that everybody he met in Barking who was a fellow immigrant had, like him come to the free world for a better life, but no, if his son wanted to marry a Serb then the boy was on his own.
Dave set up his BNP petition just by Dagenham Heathway station, outside the boarded up shop that I knew when it was Gateway Supermarket where I used to pick up cat food and tea bags on my way home from work. Later at his home he pointed out houses where Poles, Chinese, Lithuanian and Africans had moved in during the past year, and pondered how the old Italian lady who was unable to move out like him would fare. Which in some part confirms my feeling that it is the pace of change at fault and that foreigners he had known for years were not foreigners but neighbours.
When the shutters came down on the East Street butchers and the camera panned round the crowd I thought it was laid on a little too thick that all the faces shown were not just old, but tired, dazed and bewildered. As if the problem is not the pace of change but that old people can’t cope, and as a problem they will soon die off.
Sue crying at the grave of her son and explaining that she could never move far away now.
Finally the Boys of 45 drank a toast to the Queen and sang the national anthem and to the sound of their singing the scene turned to Dave on the beach at Canvey tossing bread from his burger to the sea gulls.
What will you do if Africans come here Dave?”
“Over there” he replied pointing to the sea. “Into the drink”
He was a sad and lonely old man.
