Original subtitles

1945.

The Empire has united behind Britain to fight and win a Second World War.

But when the heady haze of victory has cleared, the British people are left

exhausted.

The nation shattered by austerity and debt.

the prestige and ideals of empire are fading.

As the empire crumbles, imperial attitudes live on.

Britain and her empire must confront the legacy of intolerance, paternalism

and prejudice.

Most of us are white in the head, but feel black inside.

We are black or white.

We are a lonely, lost, sad, and displaced group of people.

Come and integrate, you say.

But how can I?

What is there in my culture you value?

We were told England was the greatest country in the world.

We came here.

And to our surprise, found you wouldn't accept us.

The old idea of

empire is repugnant to us today.

But the colonies are a legacy which we inherited

and which cannot just be thrown off.

1953, the coronation of Elizabeth II.

Her Majesty coming now under the Admiralty Arch, coming into the square,

crowd receives them as only a British crowd in London could.

Although imperial in its symbols and splendour, the event heralds a new

multiracial Commonwealth of Nations.

In 1949,

India had become the first non -white republic within the Commonwealth.

Amidst the coronation procession, India's Prime Minister, Jawaharlal

I think the development of the Commonwealth is of great significance.

This kind of free association of countries with different interests,

outlooks, trying to understand each other is a very great thing.

But life in post -war Britain is hard.

People are struggling to rebuild their lives.

Housing and jobs are scarce.

Wartime rationing continues.

In a letter to the Daily Worker, Mary Mullinder.

I am fed right up to the teeth when I do my shopping.

I've got just enough money to get my bare rations. We should cut down on

coronation spending.

and on the armed forces why should working people suffer

will

you solemnly promise and swear to govern the people of the United Kingdom of

Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand,

Pakistan, and Ceylon, according to their respective laws and customs.

I solemnly promise so to do.

No longer Empress, the Queen is crowned Head of the Commonwealth of Nations.

From around the Commonwealth, people send radio messages to the new queen.

I am Haji Jamil from Singapore.

From Nigeria, I do congratulate you on the session of your coronation.

In the West Indies. On behalf of the youth of India, I beg to bestow my

heartiest congratulations. On behalf of the entire seven million Africans of

Tanganyika. Felicitations and good wishes of the people of Pakistan. This

country from which Spain you sing.

But the coronation celebrations are short -lived.

The British people have had enough of post -war hardship.

They want a better life.

And Britain's white Commonwealth can offer it.

He says that's the best place for me to get on in life.

You too can go to Australia for only ten pounds.

Australian advertisement tempt Britain's workers to emigrate.

I want to talk to you about immigration.

An underpopulated Australia fears encroachment from its Asian neighbours.

British workers are offered passage for just ten pounds.

Australian Minister for Immigration, Arthur Caldwell.

It is my hope that for every foreign migrant there will be ten from the

Kingdom. These millions of new citizens will push back our frontiers, expand our

industries and build us into a powerful nation.

Thousands of disillusioned Britons apply for the £10 scheme.

A foundry worker in Wales.

I've decided to make a move.

I'm only working a 44 -hour week just now, with no overtime or bonus.

Really, it's a hand -to -mouth existence.

I'm a young man yet, and good for another 20 years' work out there.

A young mother from Newcastle.

The children will have a better chance.

There's no class distinction.

Accent had nothing to do with it.

What their mother and father were will not stop them getting on out there.

If they've got a brain.

In just ten years following the war, over 500 ,000 Britons emigrate to

and New Zealand.

More than 400 ,000 to Canada.

On board the liner, Astorius, a ship's steward.

It's always distressing watching the final farewell.

They often play old songs over the tannoy, and everyone weeps.

A lot of them feel they won't ever see their loved ones again.

Australia really is a long way away.

From Chesterfield, Albert Walker, bound for Melbourne.

I took my last view of England and tears were very near.

I thought of all its beauty and all those lovely times I'd had.

I suddenly realised that I may never see it again.

And then I thought of all the advantages I was going to.

A new country.

A new job.

New people.

A new life.

How did we, a young family from Northumberland, come to be on board this

liner, en route to a distant continent to start a new life?

The decision to emigrate from England to Australia is not an easy one to make.

It means leaving friends and family.

and leaving the country in which you were born?

Do I think I've done a wise thing?

Ask me in ten years' time, when the Bairns are leaving school, and I'll tell

you.

Matt Dickinson, en route for Melbourne.

Many of the migrant ships are luxury liners.

With everything free except drinks at the bar, the five -week voyage to

Australia is like a holiday cruise.

At the equator, Matt Dickinson and his family enjoy the traditional crossing

-the -line ceremony.

The children were amazed by the sight of Neptune's Court and the antics of the

crew and the normally staid passengers.

The sight of big -built Scotchmen in brassiers and small -built lasses in

oversized men's pants is really quite funny.

All the band got a real ducking by Neptune's helpers.

And I got my share.

After

five long

weeks, they arrive in their new home.

Entering Sydney Harbour, Marjorie Black.

Everyone held their breath.

My first view of Australia.

The sun was brilliant and warm. Blue sky and sparkling water.

Most people were impatient to get ashore.

But I was a little frightened.

A ship's welfare officer calms the growing fear.

We had to tell them that kangaroos wouldn't be jumping down the streets.

A couple of elderly ladies were scared to death that there would be nothing but

hordes of aborigines to greet them.

I felt a pang of despair that I could never cope in this strange place and

the whole trip was a mistake.

On arrival, families are sent to government hostels.

From London, 17 -year -old Susan Jenkin.

When we got out of the bus at the hostel and saw all these huts, we felt like

we'd arrived at some sort of concentration camp.

Our first reception in Australia.

Then there were these people talking in really strong Australian accents.

I didn't like it at all.

It was a dreadful place.

I began to think I'd spend the rest of my days in this tin hut thing.

But most migrant families soon find homes in the suburbs and begin the

for work.

Manual jobs are plentiful.

Matt Dickinson was a grocer in Northumberland.

In Australia, he finds work with a railway gang.

You have no idea what a relief this new start is.

I drew my first pay on the 24th of January.

It was £19 .06 for the week.

My last pay in England was £7 .06.

19 -year -old Duncan Fisher works in a foundry.

in Western Australia.

There's a certain amount of hostility at work towards poms.

They say things like, the only good pom is a bloody dead pom, that sort of

thing.

It's taken me a long time to work out how the Australian mind works.

The word bastard is a term of endearment.

For instance, bloody pom or bloody pommy is an insult.

But pommy bastard is okay.

Australia welcomes 100 ,000 European immigrants a year, but refuses entry to

almost all non -white applicants.

The government imposes a policy known as White Australia, which even

discriminates against those of Commonwealth origin.

Australian Secretary of Immigration Peter Hayden.

Only those applicants who can be regarded as being of European origin may

permitted to settle in Australia.

Australians are nervous about minorities who form ethnic colonies in our cities.

The white Australia policy provokes strong opposition from Britain and the

Commonwealth.

In a letter to the Times,

It's all wrong for Australia to bar immigrants from coloured Commonwealth

countries.

India is overpopulated and starving, and yet when Australia needs immigrants, it

goes to Germany and Greece.

A few years ago, the Germans were hated all over the world.

Now they're welcomed in Australia.

But it isn't just would -be immigrants who are affected by the concept of a

white Australia.

For decades, Australia's indigenous population, the Aborigines, have

racial discrimination, the removal of their homeland, and the destruction of

their traditional way of life.

Auburn Neville, Commissioner for Native Affairs, 1937.

The problem is one that will eventually solve itself.

There are a great many full -blooded Aborigines.

They are not getting enough food and they're being decimated by their own

practices.

In my opinion, no matter what we do, they will die out.

The population of so -called full -blood Aborigines is rapidly being outnumbered

by those of mixed descent.

It is planned that eventually all will be absorbed into white society.

For 40 years, the government follows a policy of assimilation.

Many children identified as of mixed descent are removed from their families.

and placed with white foster parents or in church missions and orphanages run by

whites.

We have the power to take any child from its mother at any stage of its life.

I have no wish to break up families, but other aspects must be considered

besides sentiment.

We must weed out the light -coloured children.

In 1949, Millicent is taken from her family.

I was so afraid and unhappy.

I didn't understand what was happening.

I was four years old.

That night we would cry ourselves to sleep.

It was the last time I was to see my parents.

Tens of thousands of children, both those identified as full -blood and

mixed descent, have been sent to institutions for assimilation.

Many are subjected to brutal treatment.

Philip Prosser.

Every little thing you did was a sin and you were punished.

They hit you with anything they could get hold of.

I was accused of something I hadn't done and was given sex across my arms and

flogged from my shoulders down to my legs.

All they contributed to our future was an unrepairable scar of loneliness,

mistrust and hatred.

Fears that have been with me all my life.

Many Aborigines suffer from unemployment, depression, addiction.

Welfare authorities will take many of their children away from them.

1926.

Stony Indians parade in the streets of Banff in the Rocky Mountains.

Canada's indigenous peoples are also victims of discrimination.

Stony Indian, Isaac Rolling in the Mud.

When we gave up the land, we gave up our right.

That is why we feel as if we're in confinement.

With all the white people's laws and regulations,

we were brought up. free.

Now we feel the imprisonment.

Canada has become independent from Britain.

But, like Australia, it inherits the prejudices of empire.

By the 1940s, large numbers of white Canadians are moving further north.

The Canadian government encourages the nomadic Eskimos, the Inuit, to live in

small, fixed settlements.

In a report on settlement life, Henry Larson.

Conditions are appalling.

Destitution, filth and squalor are gradually undermining the health of

people and, if not checked, will result in their extermination.

Inuit Abe Ukpik There are only very few of us Eskimos,

but millions of whites, just like mosquitoes.

It is something very special and very wonderful to be an Eskimo.

We are like snow geese.

If an Eskimo forgets his Eskimo ways, he will be nothing but just another

mosquito.

A white resident in Frobisher Bay.

This may be a doomed culture, but we're not replacing it with anything

worthwhile.

We've made every mistake in the British colonies.

And then some.

Many native people throughout Canada struggle to survive.

One third are dependent on welfare.

The infant mortality rate is double the national average.

Life expectancy is one of the lowest in the world.

Over the next 30 years, the indigenous peoples of the empire will struggle

to overturn the legacy of racism.

Chief Dan George of the Coast Salish People.

Do you know what it's like to have your race belittled?

What it's like to be without pride in your race?

It's like not caring about tomorrow.

For what does tomorrow matter?

It's like having a reserve that looks like a junkyard.

Because the beauty in the soul is dead.

Come and integrate your faith.

But how can I?

What is there in my culture you value?

By the end of the 1950s, black nationalism is weakening Britain's hold

African colonies.

In southern Rhodesia, power lies with the white settlers.

They are determined to maintain the heritage of their founding father, Cecil

Rhodes.

The white farmer, Hamish Usher.

Cecil Rhodes was a man with a vision. An inner voice beckoned him to build a

great country here, in a land once abandoned to savagery.

My great -grandfather helped carve a living out of the virgin forest.

The silence of centuries was broken at last by the sound of civilization, by

ring of axe and hammer, and the beat of steam engines.

220 ,000 white Rhodesians rule over 4 million Africans.

White farmers control 70 % of the best land, leaving most Africans with small,

infertile holdings.

In Guelo, George Endente.

The way in which the blacks are being treated by the whites is the cause of

the unrest today.

The Europeans have cheap native labor, which they exploit at the expense of

African advancement.

The white man has deprived us of all our rights in the land of our birth.

Our state is pitiable.

Throughout the 1960s, a wave of nationalism sweeps across Africa.

But fearful of South Africa's racist influence, Britain refuses to grant

southern Rhodesia her independence.

Until Ian Smith's white government yields to black majority rule.

Smith's supporters are incensed.

I most certainly think the British government is...

Let us down, and personally, I think they stink.

I think it's a disgrace, and I'm terribly ashamed of the fact that I was

born in England. They could have really built up the empire, instead of which

they seem to have gone out of their way to destroy their empire.

The basic African definitely is not in a position to take over government.

The African, in no other sphere, have proved themselves capable of anything.

Why is it that in Britain they seem to think the one thing the African is

capable of doing is governing?

In a letter to the Rhodesian Herald, Harry Hart, July 1964.

I don't know what Mr Smith is waiting for.

England has continually shown itself to be treacherous to deal with.

If Mr Smith decides to take independence...

then we are all behind him.

This is the Rhodesia Broadcasting Corporation.

Here is the Prime Minister of Rhodesia. November 1965.

Ian Smith seizes power.

A unilateral declaration of independence.

We are the first Western nation in the last two decades to have the

determination to say so far and no further.

God bless you all.

Rhodesia embarks on a path to South African -style apartheid.

Britain has lost control to white nationalists in her last remaining

colony.

Over the next 15 years, Rhodesia is engulfed by violent civil war.

Ian Smith's Rhodesian army fights against two African guerrilla factions.

1972.

Protesters riot against the government's racist policy.

Leader of the communist -backed ZANU guerrillas, Robert Mugabe.

Our objective is the liquidation of imperialism.

and colonialism through armed struggle we will

set up a democratic state as

the battle rages in the countryside

african civilians are caught in the middle

An African village.

If we report the terrorists, they come and kill us.

If we do not report them, the soldiers come to torture us.

We just don't know what to do.

A soldier in the Rhodesian army patrols a village suspected of harboring

guerrillas.

You go into a village.

after one of your mates has been killed and you feel bad.

And they say they've never seen or heard of a terrorist.

And you beat the hell out of them.

We're going to take this man with us for questioning, but he won't be harmed,

you're right.

Atrocities are committed by both sides.

30 ,000 African civilians are killed.

White Rhodesians are also victims.

48 ,000 decide to leave.

Many move to South Africa.

April 1980.

The war in Rhodesia is over.

Robert Mugabe's ZANU -PF party has won the country's first free election.

Britain's empire in Africa has gone.

As leader of independent Zimbabwe, Mugabe extends a hand of friendship to

100 ,000 whites who choose to stay.

Oppression and racism must never again find scope in our political and social

system.

It could never be a correct justification.

But because the whites oppressed us yesterday, when they had power, the

must oppress them today.

Long live our independence.

As thousands leave Britain for the white Commonwealth, the British government

calls for workers from the Caribbean to help build the post -war economy.

By 1962, over 250 ,000 West Indians have arrived in Britain, tempted by

the promise of work and a better life.

Jamaican poet, Louise Bennett.

What a joyful news, Miss Matty. I feel like my heart going burst.

Jamaica people colonizing England in reverse.

They're my poor old Jamaica.

Everybody's future plan is to get a big -time job and settle in the motherland.

To live in London, you are rarely comfortable.

Because the English people are very much closer.

But the government's open -door policy awakens prejudice within many Britons.

Reporting for the Kingston Star, Richard West.

At Waterloo Station on Saturday afternoon, a policeman watched the

West Indians who had just come off the boat train.

Well, that's the last of them, he said with a pleased smile.

But his taxi driver friend replied, Too bloody late, mate. The country's been

overrun already.

Arriving in London from Barbados, Colin Jemmott.

The English are clever. They ran their empire by a confidence trick.

We were given an English education.

We were told England was the greatest country in the world.

We came here, and to our surprise, found you wouldn't accept us.

Many British people have struggled to rebuild their lives since the war.

They resent the growing influx of black immigrants.

The British working class fought for 70 years and more to drag itself up to a

decent standard of living.

Now they come in and reap all the benefit.

A landlady in Salford.

I don't take blacks.

I'm sorry for the darkies, but I am.

But I know what the neighbours would say.

Look at Mrs So -and -so.

He really has come down in the world.

Most immigrants are offered menial jobs, regardless of their training and skill.

They want us to work.

But not anywhere.

Look at all the West Indians in London transport.

When I look around the city of London, I do not find educated, coloured men

working in banks or as policemen.

You can't get a good job, the sort of job you are capable of doing. You have

take what you can get, what other people don't want.

West Indian activist.

campaign against the growing racism.

From Trinidad, Claudia Jones.

If all the coloured people were thrown into the sea, it wouldn't solve the

housing problems or provide enough jobs.

One reason behind the race prejudice is that Britain is an imperial country.

But coloured people are now demanding their freedom and expect to be treated

equals.

But in 1962, the Conservative government passes the Commonwealth Immigrants Act,

restricting entry to Britain from within the empire.

West Indians dub it the Colour Bar Bill.

Many white Britons are appalled.

Is this really the best way to integrate people?

How do immigrants already here feel to be told, Yes, you can stay, but we don't

want any more of your thought.

These policies will lead to exactly the social disaster they want to avoid.

But racial hostility towards black Britons continues to grow.

By 1968, the entry of thousands of Asians into Britain, many expelled from

former colony of Kenya, prompted the Labour government to pass a second

Commonwealth Immigrants Act.

For some, however, the controls are not enough.

In a speech in Birmingham, Conservative MP Enoch Powell.

In 15 or 20 years, There will be, in this country, three and a half million

Commonwealth immigrants.

Whole areas will be occupied by the immigrant population.

It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral

I am filled with foreboding.

Like the Roman, I seem to see the river Tiber foaming with much blood.

Powell is thrown out of the shadow cabinet the day after his rivers of

speech.

But a national poll shows that 74 % of the population agree with him.

I think it is monstrous that the man has been sacked from the shadow cabinet for

telling the truth.

We want a complete ban on immigration, or we want all post -war immigrants sent

back to their homelands.

Oscar Hahn of the West Midlands Race Relations Board.

If Mr Powell wants to tell more than one million citizens of this country that

because they're coloured, they're unwanted here... This is an act of

from which this country could never morally recover.

Throughout the 1970s, many Commonwealth immigrants become increasingly isolated

within British society.

Indian -born factory worker, Rampal.

I often wonder in my heart, why English people do not think well of colored

people.

My children will think of themselves as Indian and will live as Indian

because so long as their color is not white, English people will not regard

as British.

1997.

After 155 years, Britain hands over the rule of Hong Kong to China.

Now, Hong Kong people are to run Hong Kong.

That is the promise, and that is the unshakable destiny.

At the stroke of midnight, the Union Jack is lowered for the last time.

In the Daily Mail, Alan Mattis.

Now it really is the end.

A few islands too small and poor to manage on their own may still be

pink on the world's map.

But with the return of Hong Kong to China, the lights of the Empire have

extinguished.

What then is the legacy?

The 20th century saw the British Empire reach its greatest extent and might.

But two world wars weakened Britain's power.

In just 20 years, most of the Empire was handed back to its people.

Many of those who served the Empire are proud of the legacy they left behind.

Diplomat's wife, Joan Alexander, was in Africa for ten years.

I know the popular image of old colonials is gin -swilling so -and -sos,

wasn't like that at all.

I honestly feel that we were doing something.

We felt we were making a contribution to the country.

The growing generation should seek out those colonial men and women who have a

tale to tell, because whether they liked it or not, they followed the flag and

did their duty.

Education, technology, sport, law and democracy, all are positive

legacies of empire.

Commonwealth countries which once oppressed their indigenous peoples are

striving to redress the wrongs of the past.

In 1992, Australia's Prime Minister, Paul Keating, acknowledged the suffering

of the aborigines.

We took the traditional land and smashed the traditional way of life.

We brought the diseases.

and the alcohol.

We committed the murders.

We took the children from their mothers.

We practiced discrimination and exclusion.

It was our ignorance and our prejudice.

But the negative legacy of the British Empire still blights the lives of many

the former colonies.

In 1947, Britain lost its greatest possession, India.

Amitabh Pav.

As their final act before relinquishing colonial control, the British decided to

divide India.

The result was a human catastrophe

Independent India and Pakistan have

to deal with this legacy of partition

In January 2002 people

flee across the border once again as India and Pakistan fight over the

possession of Kashmir

British journalist Peter Preston. New Delhi and Islamabad are locked in the

warp of half a century ago.

Only the nuclear warheads in their arsenals are new.

Kashmir is the world's most punishingly futile crisis.

Fifty years on, the mess that we Brits left behind returns to haunt us all.

Twenty years after Rhodesia's independence, Robert Mugabe had the

regime in Zimbabwe.

His war veterans, some former guerrillas from the 70s War of Independence, are

seething land from white farmers.

The land is ours. We are not part of the British Empire.

We are not an extension of Britain.

So, Mr Blair,

Farmer Cathy Buckle, March 2000.

Dozens of farms have been invaded by huge crowds wielding accidents, shouting

and singing and demanding land.

My initial reaction was to get out, evacuate the farm.

But how do you make the decision to walk out on your life, your home, everything

you've worked for, all the people that depend on you?

By 2002, 95 % of white farms had been seized by Mugabe's forces.

But the legacy of empire is most evident in Britain itself.

In 50 years, the face of Britain has been transformed.

Britain's multicultural society embraces people, cultures and religions from all

over the former empire.

But sometimes this diversity ignites racial tension.

In the summer of 2001, violent race riots between whites and Asians flared

Britain's northern towns and cities.

In Bradford, Manohar Jan Khan.

The empire has faded from the subcontinent.

But within our streets, the white sahibs still make the decision.

We are the new generation of Asian young people, British citizens born and bred,

free from the shackles of empire, yearning to be given fair and equal

Today, white, black and Asian Britain search for a new national identity

within Europe.

The prejudices of empire are finally fading.

Oxford Professor Papan Rai Chowdhury.

Of course there are problems when people from very different cultures come to

live together.

The picture 50 years ago was very different.

But the problem today owes more to deprivation than to intolerance and

bigotry.

In my experience,

This is the most tolerant society in the world.

I am deeply optimistic about the future of multicultural Britain.