Two stories, one personal and one public showing the endemic racism in the UK in Thatcher’s ’80s and wondering how much things have changed. Originally posted as a storify, rescued and back dated to the original date.
The personal story related to watching an episode of Minder, “Poetic Justice, Innit!” and the endemic, unnecessary casual racism within it. This was cross referenced with yet another shock story of racists in the Tory cabinet.
The Minder episode was published a year after the Brixton riots, and the video copy on youtube, pointed to in the story is no longer available there. The story was made in 2017, posted here in 2020 and backdated to the date of its first publication.
Racism in culture & politics
Rereading this in June 2020, I look around and see since the killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests various content publishers are reviewing and removing content from their catalogues, including Little Britain and Fawlty Towers. I was never really a fan of Little Britain, but this from the NME asks why we ever permitted it to be published; the Fawlty Towers pull down is more complicated but only because it’s one scene from six episodes which is the cause. The end result is that it can no longer be seen.