Small Axe and the big tree of 2020

This article reflects on Steve McQueen's Small Axe series, exploring its importance in placing black narratives at the centre of history and on prime time television. It locates the series within the context of a longer history of struggles over black representation and misrepresentation in mainstream British media, and discusses the very slow progress towards diversity in the cultural life of Britain. The prime time screening of Small Axe was all the more important given Britain's consistent failure to come to terms with its history - from the legacies of Powellism, to the longer histories of slavery, colonialism, migration and Empire (cf Brexit). Politicians talk reverentially of patriotism, family, tradition and Britishness - as if these can exist outside of languages of race, nation and belonging. For black communities the films were a reminder of past battles, but also of the need to talk about trauma, rather than burying it behind a familiar stoicism. Recuperating people's subjectivity and agency means confronting the full horror of a past that stripped this away. More than anything, however, what made these films so important was the space given to pleasure, presence and collective joy.