Editor’s Thoughts
the over-representation of black students in the
low ability ‘C’ and ‘D’ band classes. Of the
approximately 160 black first year students at our
school (40%), there were only three in ‘A’ band
classes (0.75%). At the start of term there had
been just two.
My primary school teacher had developed a
notion that I was ‘educationally subnormal’ and
in need of remedial classes (Special Ed.) The term
‘ESN’ was then a popular label given to black
children, particularly boys and those who were
new to British schools. As low expectations lead
to low achievements, this ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’
may well have become fact had it not been for my
mother’s tenacity, regular elocution lessons, and
private one-to-one tuition from a band of strict
catholic nuns. Three weeks into school, and I
am moved from the ‘C’ to the ‘B’ to the ‘A’ band.
One year later and a black girl joins our ranks.
We are now four black pupils out of 90 ‘A’ band
students in our age group (4.4%).
We saw Hyacinth only in classes, but Marsid,
Steven, and I, hung out both during and after
school. Since Steven’s mum would not let him
roam too far from ‘Snobs Ville’ where they lived,
more often than not, we traded him for Andrew –
the school’s champion sportsman and a ‘B’ band
student. Times had changed. It was 1979 and
Margaret Thatcher had just become Britain’s first
woman prime minister. We were now
turning sixteen, gaining in confidence,
and approaching manhood. Like the new
prime minister, we too wanted to
explore new territory, to experience
things our parents had never dared
consider. We were black but we were
born here. There was nothing we felt
we could not do in our own country.
Then as the pulse of black ‘disco’ and
‘dance’ music began to permeate the
club scene of Britain’s major cities, we
found in its rhythm our raison d’être.
Zoom-Zooms nightclub was nowhere near where
we lived. We had each travelled our various miles
to get there, but since they played the best jazzfunk in a ten-mile radius of Lewisham town centre
on a Monday night, all the ‘dance freaks’ came
out this way to party. We three knew that if we
were lucky, we would get the last night-bus
outside the club straight to the safety of multiracial Lewisham where we could bus, taxi or walk
it home. We kissed our white girls goodnight, but
‘lady-luck’ it seemed was not on our side. We had
to wait for a bus on a dark street in Eltham.
If you were black, sixteen, and travelling across
London in 1979, you quickly learnt to sense
where your face was not wanted. Eltham was
such a place. It is today one of the few parts »
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