Mirroring multicultural Britain

“The BBC’s first black producer said her time there had been ‘an exciting dream’ that ‘ended in a nightmare’”

In the spring of 1941, the 36-year-old Jamaican writer Una Marson was offered a job as staff producer at the BBC. It seemed a watershed moment for Britain’s national broadcaster. A full seven years before the Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury, bringing nearly 500 British citizens from the Caribbean to their “Mother Country”, the corporation was opening up one of its much-sought-after editorial posts to a woman of colour. Yet by the time Marson left her job – in deeply troubling circumstances – less than six years later, she had every reason to conclude that the BBC’s commitment to racial equality had much further to go.

The BBC had called his “Coloured Orchestra”. The singer Elisabeth Welch had her own series, while many other music programmes featured what were billed as “Negro spirituals”. As for television, the African-American double-act “Buck and Bubbles” were among the stars of Alexandra Palace’s opening night in November 1936.