Asquith’s Fight For Equality (Radio 4) | iPlayer
The Enemy Within | Love + Radio
Lemn Sissay’s Origin Stories (Radio 4) | iPlayer
The Pursuit of Power (Radio 4) | iPlayer
Politics, power and race. The big stuff. The real deal. And yet, through audio, through hearing people speak their stories, the big becomes close and personal.
In Asquith’s Fight for Equality on Radio 4, I heard a story I felt I should have heard before: the tale of Asquith Xavier, a man who wanted to work as a train guard at Euston station. This was in 1966. Xavier’s job application was refused, because he was “coloured”. The Race Relations Act, which had been passed in 1965, outlawed racial discrimination in social situations. But – unbelievably – it did not extend to the workplace, and both Euston and St Pancras operated a colour bar for workers. After he protested, and his cause was taken up by the great and the good, Xavier got his job.
Oona King presented very well, but the most striking part was when Xavier’s daughter, Maria, read out the newspaper pieces around his case. He was patronised and showcased, given “red-carpet treatment” as well as a job, according to the press. Maria’s upset was clear-eyed and unequivocal. Her opinions, likewise. A moving and revealing programme.
Love + Radio is back with series five, and is as engaging as ever. The Enemy Within, a co-production with the podcast Reckonings, is the most recent programme. It’s just a man’s story, told by the man himself, Glenn Loury. I knew nothing about him, but in the 1980s Loury was a prominent black conservative intellectual, a US economist intent on moving the debate around race on from civil rights to black responsibility. He was featured in Time magazine, courted by the Reagan administration, and was all set to become the second-in-command in the government’s education department when… well, you should go to Love + Radio to hear what happened next. Suffice to say, this was another black person’s story I felt I should have known (perhaps an American audience would have been more familiar with it). Beautifully produced, with a clever audio breather just before the big change in Loury’s story, it was another L+R tale that will sit with me for a while.
And while we’re talking about black narrative, I should mention Lemn Sissay’s excellent series Origin Stories, in which Sissay draws upon his writing talent, his way with an audience and his own history as a foster child to make new tales that slide between fiction and reality. Sissay’s charm and intelligence contrast with the sometimes self-serving, sometimes just plain awful subjects in Bronwen Maddox’s week-long series The Pursuit of Power. Michael Gove is clearly clever, but his self-justification sounded maladroit at best. Political influence turns everyone into an ass, it seems.
