Photographer Misan Harriman is gently cajoling actor Shaun Parkes as the sun burns through the morning cloud above St Michael’s church in Ladbroke Grove, west London. “Look at me as if you’re searching for redemption,” he says, as Parkes looks down the lens. “But it’s redemption for something you haven’t even done.” Parkes, who rose to prominence as a raver in Human Traffic but now has flecks of grey in his beard, doesn’t ask for more clarity; he simply flashes a look at the camera and then slowly changes pose.
Today Parkes and Harriman, who recently shot Vogue’s “Activism Now” September issue, along with portraits of Black Lives Matter protesters, are revisiting the west London area that is the setting of Steve McQueen’s new film, Mangrove. It’s a glorious September morning and, despite the Covid-19 restrictions, the cafes are busy and the flower shops open. It’s hard to imagine that 50 years earlier, a few streets away, there was a pitched battle between the police and protesters that would help change the way Britain thought about race. Parkes plays Frank Crichlow, the real-life figure at the heart of McQueen’s film, which centres on Notting Hill’s Mangrove restaurant and nine West Indians who fought police harassment and then a court case. The look of redemption that Harriman is searching for is something Crichlow and the Mangrove Nine earned the hard way.
In the first four films of his career, McQueen has taken on slavery (12 Years A Slave), sex addiction (Shame), the story of Bobby Sands (Hunger) and a remake of a Lynda La Plante heist TV series (Widows). When I catch up with him on the phone, I ask why it has taken him so long to work on a project about the London he grew up in? “Things sometimes need distance and time, and maturity and understanding,” he says. “You grapple with your past. You grapple with things that are so close to you, perhaps more so than things that are seemingly distant. It’s almost under your chin. You need to work it out yourself.”
Mangrove has been worth the wait: this is McQueen at the peak of his powers, dedicating his undivided attention to a forgotten moment in British history. That adjective, “British”, is crucial, McQueen says. “It’s essential. You know what’s interesting is that this is important British history, not just black history or West Indian history – this is important English-British history.” Rochenda Sandall, who plays Barbara Beese, a former member of the British Black Panthers and one of the Mangrove Nine, goes further: “It should be part of the curriculum. The only way forward is getting a 360-degree view of everyone’s history in this country. It has been whitewashed for too long.”
McQueen wasn’t very familiar with the Mangrove case until recently, despite a family connection to one of the Nine. His father, Philbert, and activist Rhodan Gordon grew up together in Grenada and were close friends. McQueen’s father was a regular at the Mangrove restaurant, and at Gordon’s own Notting Hill restaurant, Back-a-Yard. But even so, McQueen says, the story of the Mangrove case didn’t linger. “It was one of those things that, once it passed, it passed,” he says. “People had so much shit to deal with, it was coming at you every day. It wasn’t something that you harked back to.” This was the era of the “sus” laws, which were disproportionately used against black people, and meant police officers could detain anyone they believed had “intent to commit an arrestable offence”. Meanwhile, the 1971 Immigration Act ended the automatic right of Commonwealth workers to settle in Britain, following the interventions of Enoch Powell, who had been lobbying for a large-scale repatriation scheme for immigrants.
The Mangrove restaurant opened in 1968. Crichlow, a Trinidadian entrepreneur, had already opened one other place in London, the El Rio Cafe, which became notorious as one of Christine Keeler and Stephen Ward’s regular hangouts in the aftermath of the Profumo affair. The Mangrove, as Parkes’ Crichlow repeatedly argues in the film, would be different: a restaurant, not a nightspot synonymous with vice. Drugs were banned; waiters wore white uniforms.
It became a key meeting place for London’s black community, hosting everyone from intellectuals and activists such as Darcus Howe, Altheia Jones-LeCointe and CLR James, to musicians including Nina Simone, Sammy Davis Jr, Bob Marley, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross and Jimi Hendrix. But its popularity made it a target for west London’s police, who constantly raided the Mangrove, ostensibly to seize drugs that were never found.
In the first half of McQueen’s film, the tension builds as “the heavy mob”, a group of officers who patrolled the community like a colonial army, harass and assault black people with impunity. The police raided the Mangrove 12 times between January 1969 and July 1970, and Crichlow became locked in licensing disputes with the local council. In the film, we see Parkes’ Crichlow repeatedly pick up the pieces of his life, and witness his transition from restaurateur to reluctant activist. “It’s about community and the environment Frank Crichlow created for locals, activists, intellectuals and artists,” McQueen says of the film. “He was a hero, even though he didn’t set out to be one.”
With encouragement from Howe, Jones-LeCointe and the British Black Panthers, Crichlow eventually staged a protest on Sunday 9 August 1970. In a 1970s documentary, Jones-LeCointe tells an interviewer that the demonstration actively exploded the myth created by the state that black people are “criminals, ponces and prostitutes”. And things did explode. More than 700 officers were on hand for the march, including 588 constables, 84 sergeants, 29 inspectors and four chief inspectors, according to documents unearthed by historian Paul Field. There were also plainclothes policemen and special branch detectives present, for a protest that drew just 150 West Indians from all over London.
The plan was to protest outside west London police stations, but things descended into chaos on the residential Portnall Road, which the police claimed was entirely the fault of the protesters. In total, 24 police officers were injured and 19 arrests made. It became front page news, with headlines in the Daily Mirror (“17 Police Injured in a Mob Attack”) and the Daily Mail (“Police Hurt by Black Power Mob”) typical of a media that parroted the official version of events and played into fears about black militants and immigration. Crichlow, Jones-LeCointe and Howe were eventually charged, along with Rupert Boyce, Rhodan Gordon, Anthony Innis, Barbara Beese, Rothwell Kentish and Godfrey Millett.
In 1971, the Mangrove Nine began a 55-day trial at the Old Bailey, accused of incitement to riot, affray and – in some instances – attacking police officers. Jones-LeCointe and Howe decided to represent themselves, a tactic that allowed them to interrogate the state’s witnesses, in effect putting the entire process on trial. Assisted by defence barrister Ian MacDonald, who represented the rest of the Nine, they pulled at each loose thread to expose racial bias.
The strategy worked: all nine defendants were acquitted of the main charges of incitement to riot. But what really moved the needle was Judge Edward Clarke’s closing comments. “What this trial has shown is that there is clearly evidence of racial hatred on both sides,” he told the courtroom. It was the first judicial acknowledgment of racism in the Met, three decades before the Macpherson inquiry.
In McQueen’s hands, this is an electrifying story. Malachi Kirby (Darcus Howe) plays to the gallery at the Old Bailey, quoting Shakespeare and ridiculing the inconsistent police statements. We see Crichlow being manhandled by court officers and, in one of Mangrove’s most memorable scenes, beating the walls of his cell and shouting about the “savages” who hold him in it. The director and artist’s attention to detail is evident throughout, from a lingering shot of a colander spinning on the floor of the Mangrove kitchen after a raid, to a police officer’s fingernail burrowing into the witness box as his lies unravel. Mica Levi’s scratchy, bass-heavy score adds another layer of tension and paranoia. And in between the harassment and the court case, McQueen shows the West Indian community simply enjoying London life, from street parties to celebrations at the Mangrove.
For McQueen, this project is personal. It’s the first of a five-film anthology series created for the BBC called Small Axe, which tells stories from London’s West Indian communities, from the late 60s to the mid-80s. As well as Mangrove, there’s Lovers Rock, which debuted to five-star reviews at the New York film festival, and is based on his auntie’s experiences at West Indian house parties in the 70s. Red, White And Blue stars John Boyega as pioneering black Met officer Leroy Logan, who joined the force in 1983 and became a superintendent at a time when London’s police were condemned as “institutionally racist”. Education focuses on the notorious so-called “schools for the educationally subnormal”, seen as a dumping ground for black children in the 70s, while Alex Wheatle tells the story of a man who grew up in the care system and went on to win the Guardian children’s fiction prize in 2016; Wheatle also worked on Small Axe.
McQueen has had a hectic 12 months. As well as Small Axe, there has been a Tate Modern retrospective, plus his Year 3 project, in which he photographed 76,000 London primary school pupils for a show at Tate Britain. He has also made a series of public interventions on race and the creative industries. The last time I spoke to McQueen was in January, after the Baftas once again produced a list of nominations with no people of colour in any of the major acting categories. McQueen was the only one of several major British directors and actors approached by the Guardian who responded, and he didn’t hold back.
“After a while you get a bit fed up with it,” he said. “Because if the Baftas are not supporting British talent, if you’re not supporting the people who are making headway in the industry, then I don’t understand what you are there for. If the Baftas wants to be like the Grammys, which is of no interest to anyone, and has no credibility at all, then they should continue on this path,” he added. “If not, then they have to change. Fact.”
When McQueen talks about race, his delivery takes on a staccato quality. Sentences are often reduced to one or two words. He is abrupt, and jarringly honest.
In June, McQueen wrote an opinion piece for the Observer about his efforts to make Small Axe in the UK with a diverse production team, saying he “could not believe the whiteness of the set” and, “If you want to examine race and class in this country, start by going on a film set.”
He wanted the team behind the camera to be reflective of the stories he was telling. “We put a minority person in every single department, and we had four black heads of departments – I needed to have that,” he says now. Why was it so important to him? “How can I put my hands on the camera to start shooting if what’s behind the camera is not reflecting that?” he says matter-of-factly. “I did what I could do, but I didn’t think that was enough.”
Small Axe isn’t completely unprecedented in the British film industry. Horace Ové became the first black British film-maker to direct a feature film in 1975, with Pressure, a story about a Trinidadian man in Ladbroke Grove who follows his older brother into the Black Power movement. Franco Rosso’s Babylon (1980) centred on a group of black Londoners in Brixton and Deptford penned in by the police and a racist society. David Koff’s documentary Blacks Britannica and John Akomfrah’s ode to Birmingham’s West Indian community, Handsworth Songs, both tackled similar subject matter. More recently, John Ridley’s Sky drama Guerrilla focused on London’s black 70s radicals – although it was heavily criticised for largely ignoring the black women of the movement. But there is a long gap between the black films of the late 70s and early 80s and today, an absence that looms large for McQueen.
“We’ve had two generations of black British film-makers who have been erased,” he says. “Where are the editors? Where are the cinematographers? Where are the costume designers? Where are the designers? Where are the grips? Where are the gaffers?” What is his theory? “Why is the question,” he says, before answering: “People didn’t see the film industry or TV as attractive to them, because it hasn’t been made attractive for them.
“But it’s not just behind the scenes; it’s in front of the camera, too. Our Marlon Brandos, our Montgomery Clifts are on building sites or driving buses,” he says. “Our Katharine Hepburns are in IT. They were not welcomed in the British film industry. It might be a bit crazy, but that’s my ambition: to fill that gap.”
Despite his own impressive career, McQueen looks around him and sees potential that was never realised. He mentions his cousin Marcus, the subject of his artwork Nov 7th, in which Marcus tells the true story of how he fatally injured his brother while attempting to put the safety catch on a gun. He was not a trained actor, but McQueen says his cousin clearly had talent. “He could have been one of the greatest actors ever,” McQueen says. “I know that. That door wasn’t open to him. People say, ‘Well, he had a choice.’ You think people choose to do shit?” McQueen’s tone has shifted now; the staccato rhythm is coming back. “They don’t choose to go through doors where there’s trouble. If you had a choice, would you want to go for a door that has some kind of future, some kind of stability?” This sense of injustice is what drives McQueen’s work and his interventions. “Sorry,” he says. “I’m rambling on.”
Malachi Kirby describes McQueen’s on-set presence as “intense… in a good way”; as a director, he made it clear to the cast that there wasn’t much point in showing up if they weren’t prepared to empty themselves. “Leave it on the pitch” was the footballing maxim McQueen used as shorthand for the fully committed performances he wanted. “There wasn’t any small talk,” Kirby adds. Scenes without dialogue that looked easy in the script would balloon into hours-long improvisations. One such scene, in which Howe delivers a sermon in a Trinidadian church, went from one line of narration to a full day of shooting (“We went from zero to 100, and got very sweaty in a very short space of time,” Kirby says). The scene didn’t even make the final cut.
For McQueen, the Mangrove case is symbolic of what the West Indian community put up with, and fought against to cement their place in Britain. “You know the only reason I’m talking to you today is because of them,” he says, referring to the rarity of a black journalist interviewing a black director. “West Indians and what they did, by coming and paving the way for so many things to happen, for so many people, should be championed and celebrated.”
The Mangrove Nine would go on to have varied lives. Howe became a broadcaster and columnist for the New Statesman, gaining more notoriety towards the end of his life when a BBC anchor suggested in a live interview that he was “not a stranger to riots”. Howe’s response went viral. “I have never taken part in a single riot, I have been on demonstrations that ended up in a conflict,” he said. “Have some respect for an old West Indian negro, and stop accusing me of being a rioter.” He died in 2017, after decades fighting for the rights of black Britons.
Crichlow closed the Mangrove in 1992 after years of disputes with the authorities. The same year, he sued the Met for false imprisonment, battery and malicious prosecution. The police eventually paid him a record £50,000; he died in 2010, aged 78. Rothwell Kentish faced a separate prosecution after the Mangrove case, and was sentenced to 36 months for assault and possession of an offensive weapon. He died last year, aged 87. Rhodan Gordon turned Back-a-Yard into a Black People’s Information Centre, helping to defend housing tenants facing discrimination. He died in Grenada in 2018. Beese became a writer, while Jones-LeCointe, who came to London to complete a PhD in biochemistry, influenced a new generation of black activists, including Linton Kwesi Johnson who joined the cause after seeing her in a debate. Beese and Jones-LeCointe are the only surviving members of the Mangrove Nine; both have been invited to the film’s premiere at the London film festival on 7 October.
The rest of the Small Axe films will go out at prime time on BBC One later this year. This is the first time a black historical drama with the heft of an Oscar-winner behind it has gone out in that slot, and McQueen knows it. “From day one, that was my priority. I wanted BBC One. I want my mum to see these pictures,” he says. “I want people to have access to it, and the BBC is the only way to do that. It is important because these are national stories. These are stories that helped to make the fabric of this country.”
Is he worried about them becoming politicised, used as another stick with which to beat the BBC? After all, if the mere suggestion that a conductor supports Black Lives Matter can cause one of the biggest culture war moments of the year, what will a drama about black radicals who call the police “pigs” going out at prime time do? McQueen pauses and slowly repeats the phrase “culture war” before answering.
“For me, it’s a moral situation. The thing about the Mangrove Nine is they were on the right side of history; so people have to decide what side of history they want to be on,” he says. “They were persecuted for the colour of their skin, they were persecuted because of their race. This is a celebration of justice. It is a celebration of self-determination, and it is a celebration of Britishness.”
These five films are, in McQueen’s words, a “first port of call”. He wants to continue the series and go beyond the capital, to tell black British stories from Bristol, Manchester and Liverpool. “There are amazing stories that haven’t been told: national stories of the black community in those areas that I want to explore,” he says. “I’m interested in Liverpool because that was a place where the first, the largest black community was in the beginning. It’s about these amazing narratives of how black British people succeeded in other parts of the country.”
The title of Small Axe comes from the Caribbean proverb, “If you are the big tree, we are the small axe”, made popular after Bob Marley used it as a lyric on the Wailers’ 1973 album Burnin’, followed by the line “ready to cut you down”. It’s a defiant statement in the face of terrible odds, and in Mangrove, McQueen has created his own redemption song.
• Mangrove and Lovers Rock will screen at the BFI London film festival, in partnership with American Express, from next week; all five Small Axe films will be shown on BBC One later this year.
