In 1973, Mike Phillips was working as a teacher in Paddington when he was contacted out of the blue by the Community Programme Unit of the BBC. Soon afterwards, he found himself presenting a programme about the ways in which black children were discriminated against in the British education system. Entitled Black Teachers, it was broadcast late on the evening of 16 April 1973 on BBC Two, with Phillips chairing a studio discussion and introducing some hard-hitting filmed reports on the issue.
“Looking back, it all seems quite strange,” says Phillips, who went on to become a journalist and celebrated crime novelist, “not least because at that time you could walk through the BBC building and not encounter another black person. What’s more, there were not that many black teachers in British schools, but we managed to find six who all felt like I did. We had a point to make and we made it as aggressively as possible. It was a big deal when it came out, because it just wasn’t the done thing at that time.”
