This Question of Colour
This programme, filmed in London and Bradford, takes a look at Britain’s Asian and West Indian immigrants and their reasons for coming here.
1965
BILLING
THIS QUESTION OF COLOUR
written and produced for intertel by
michael sklar
directed by william brayne
IN BRIEF
This programme, filmed in London and Bradford, takes a look at Britain’s Asian and West Indian immigrants and their reasons for coming here.
AN INTERTEL PRODUCTION ◦ TIME SLOT 52 MINUTES
Available through
Global Television Services Ltd.,
3 Vere Street, London, W.1.
Phone: MAYfair 1167
Cables: Helpful, London
THE BACKGROUND
“This Question of Colour”, an Intertel documentary, looks at Britain and its coloured immigrants. The immigrants fall into two categories; the West Indians and the Asians.
The documentary shows their different reasons for coming to Britain, their way of life when they arrive, and the British attitude to them.
Filmed in London and Bradford, the documentary was written and produced by Michael Sklar. Intertel — the International Television Federation — is a project for international understanding through television. The members of it, besides Rediffusion and the National Educational Television and Radio Centre and the Westinghouse Broadcasting Company of America, are the Australian Broadcasting Commission and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Intertel, whose programmes are seen by viewers in all the members’ countries, recently won a Peabody Award — America’s premier television trophy — for its concept of international communications.
PRODUCER'S VIEW
In an interview with Richard Pollock of the “TV Times” Michael Sklar, American producer of the programme, said:—
“I have an open mind about colour relations and I’m no dreamer, but I honestly believe that Britain may well be the first advanced nation in the world to solve the colour problem.
“By this I mean a situation where coloureds and whites are living side by side together, in a state of gracious living — and before long.
“Why do I think this? Well, for example… I shall never forget what I saw that day, on a London Underground train.
“There was a young English mother with her young son. The boy, clearly, had a Pakistani father. The husband was not with her, but the two white men with her, I discovered, were her brothers.
“Believe me, I’ve never seen such love given out by two white men for a coloured child as I saw in that train. To me, it was a most touching experience.
“You’d never see such a thing in the United States — or indeed any country I’ve ever been in. There’d be a sense of shame, so that no one could do it”,
Of the other side of the picture, Mr. Sklar said:—
“Prejudice? Sure. Lots of it. But not a hard, blind thing about coloured people, as such. It’s all part of your natural insular feeling — against any stranger.”
Mr. Sklar ended: “Your colour problem is to me completely tied up with your housing problem — and to a lesser extent, with the schools. If no equal status is arrived at here — and, of course, in employment — then the rising coloured generation of West Indians, who regard themselves as British, will become embittered.
“But solve these problems, and I feel sure that the main problem will disappear. . .
“. . .Bradford was an eye-opener to me. It was very clear that coloureds and whites were, already, living there side by side in social harmony.”
(Quoted by courtesy of the “TV Times”)
RESOURCES
This title can be rented to watch on the BFI Player
Download this leaflet
This title has an American Archive of Public Broadcasting record
