It was the soot belching from the foundries that was the cause of the area in the Midlands of England becoming known as ‘The Black Country’ and not, as some people assume, because of the influx of peoples from the Caribbean and Indian sub-continent. I was born in an industrial town (now a city) called Wolverhampton a few years after my parents had sailed from Jamaica. My upbringing in a multi-cultural environment came about as a result of the post-war British Government’s campaign to bring able-bodied people from throughout its empire to assist with rebuilding the ‘Motherland’. Coming into daily contact with people of varied ethnic and religious backgrounds was something I took for granted until my work as an engineer took me to ‘mono-cultural’ countries around the world. In so many ways, I had an enriching and life-enhancing upbringing in Wolverhampton – if it had not been punctuated by a savage racism that periodically crashed its way into my childhood and then my teenage years.

‘If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Labour.’ It may be hard to believe, but in 1964, when I was three years old, that was the election slogan of Peter Griffiths the Conservative MP in nearby Smethwick. My father can still recall when there was a ‘colour bar’ that discouraged or prevented black and brown people from using certain pubs, clubs and even barbers in the Midlands area. The following year the American civil rights activist Malcolm X visited Smethwick just nine days before he was assassinated but his presence was not welcomed by all the inhabitants, some of whom jeered as he walked along Marshall Street and asked him: ‘What was your business here?’

https://www.macearchive.org/films/left-right-and-centre-06021978-wolverhampton-racism