Love knows no colour bar: Windrush, racism and Flame in the Streets

Abstract

ABSTRACT Released in the aftermath of the 1958 Notting Hill riots, Flame in the Streets [Baker, Roy. 1961. UK: The Rank Organisation.] remains a distinctive British film of the 1960s in its examination of the racial prejudices that defined African-Caribbean's antagonous relations with the wider British Society. In Baker's attempt to expose the passive racisms of Jacko Palmer by paralleling his family conflict between his wife and daughter with his industrial conflicts as a trade union representative defending the rights of a black co-worker despite the disquiet that his ethnicity has generated from the white workers, the film presents ethnic minority characters in a form that links the personal with the political, interweaving themes of both class and race. Through a historicization and contextualization, this article sets out to examine the ways in which twentieth century post-war immigration and subsequent race struggles influenced the socio-political character of Flame in The Streets.