(An extract from the book “Access All Areas - the diversity manifesto for TV and beyond” by Lenny Henry and Marcus Ryder)
Now, before we get too carried away about the BAFTAs, I just want to clear up one common misconception. This is not a story about how I want more disabled, Black and working-class luvvies receiving awards and handing them out to each other. This was not an #OscarsSoWhite moment – the hashtag launched in 2015 to try to get more people of colour receiving awards. I’m not saying it is a bad campaign, but it is not what has driven me to fight for more diversity – I can’t stand the word ‘diversity’, by the way. More on that later.
This wasn’t about the glamorous winners. After all, every few years you do see a few more non-white winners, such as in the BAFTA 2020 Television Awards which saw a few more Black and Asian people pick up gongs. This looked great but industry insiders know that just two weeks earlier not a single Black or Asian person won a BAFTA Craft Award – the awards given to the directors, writers and people who make the programmes.
Awards ceremonies cast a light on the industry they celebrate. Whether they’re for the television or film industries or an evening recognising the double-glazing or plumbing industry. Here is the secret that no one tells you: if you want to know who really controls the industry, take your eyes off the stage.
The stage where the awards are given out to the handful of winning nominees is merely the tip of the iceberg. The other 90 per cent of that iceberg is sat on the tables around the stage. The power-brokers who control the industry, in this case the film industry, are literally and metaphorically in the shadows. Not in some sinister cat-stroking, secret lair in the Bermuda Triangle, James Bond villain kind of way. More in the boring civil servant type of way. The studio heads, executives and media regulators are all there at the awards ceremonies. Unlike the nominees, they are there year after year – they are people that control the industry.
Viewers might focus on the glittering celebrities who receive and then go home with the ugly-ass gongs, but if you want to change the industry, you can’t do it by concentrating on the 10 per cent above the water in the spotlight. You do it by looking at the 90 per cent below the surface who never even leave their seats.
My pun-tastic effort did not start me on a journey to change the glossy people we see on our television screens. It set me on a quest to change the people who control the industry. That is a journey I think we can all relate to, whatever our line of work.
It is not just BAFTA and the film and television industry that has a problem. In the UK less than 7 per cent of police officers are non-white. Less than 10 per cent of British teachers are people of colour, and that drops to less than 5 per cent for head teachers. There are just six female chief executives of companies in the FTSE 100. When it comes to the country’s top judges, almost two-thirds – 65 per cent – went to private school, despite the fact that only 7 per cent of the population receive a private education.
We live in a society that excludes far too many people, from far too many walks of life. It is time we focus on just one aspect of Joaquin Phoenix’s speech when he said we must ‘dismantle’ the system, and ensure everyone can access all areas of power throughout society.
The question is: how?
It is a question I have been trying to answer for the last seven years. I want to share some of that journey with you and some of the lessons I have learnt along the way. It might have all started with a terrible pun but this is no joking matter.
(For the record, there are some very good puns on the circuit. Masai Graham, a pun fu master, won the National Pun Championships with this: ‘I’m a 35-year-old mixed race guy from West Bromwich, so I’ve got a reputation to uphold. So it’s difficult for me to write jokes about flowers, without the stigma attached . . .’ Thank you, good night! Please tip your waitresses on your way out.)
