Racial conflict bared on TV

Press, 14 January 1986, Page 7

Racial conflict bared on TV

NZPA-AAP London A plan by 8.8. C. Television to show that racists and their victims could live happily together has failed dismally.

All eight participants in an experiment for a programme emerged from week-long cohabitation more polarised in their views than before.

Four self-confessed racists and four black people

were locked up in a remote Victorian house in Devon, with both sides encouraged to vent their prejudices, no matter who got hurt. The arguments became so bitter, however, that participants were close to tears on several occasions, the “Daily Mail” reported. The whites included a manager who had lost a good job in Rhodesia when it became independent Zimbabwe; a pensioner who had twice been mugged by black youths; and a legal secretary who worried that the value of her house would fall becaue of ethnic groups moving into the district. The blacks were a nurse, a marriage and social counsellor, and a university researcher. The programme producer, Mr Edward Goldwyn, said he was surprised that the exercise had ended so bitterly. “I expected that after a week together, the racists’ position would collapse,” he said. The black counsellor, Ms Rani Atma, a Kenyan-Asian who came to Britain 15 years ago, said the film had done nothing but harm. “It shocked me deeply. I started to re-examine people who seemed friendly to me and wondered what they really thought,” she said. The white factory manager, Mr Tom Ashton, who supports apartheid, is seen telling the group that he speaks for a silent majority of 20 million in Britain. He is shown expressing fear of waking up in hospital to find himself being treated by a black medical team.