Page 12 - aruba-today-20220430

A12 PEOPLE & ARTS
Saturday 30 april 2022

PBS' 'Ridley Road' holds lessons to

America from '60s London

many people had known.
But it's true today. We see it
happening in the U.S. and
we see it happening world-
wide. And what question I
think Sarah was asking with
the show was, 'What are
we going to do about it?'"
While set during what is
considered the fun, liber-
ating Swinging Sixties, the
series explores how fas-
This image released by PBS shows Jack Morris, left, and Vivien cism can take hold. In the
Epstein in a scene from "Ridley Road," a four-part series that case of England, the rise
makes it's U.S. debut May 1 on PBS' “Masterpiece." of large corporations dis-
Associated Press turbing main street's mom-
and-pop stores, an influx
By MARK KENNEDY cialist Movement held of foreign workers to re-
AP Entertainment Writer rallies in London, waving build post-war Britain and
NEW YORK (AP) — It took swastikas and demanding the bulldozing of homes
eight long years for Sarah leaders "free Britain from to make skyscrapers all
Solemani to get a murky Jewish control." played a part. Some vul-
part of Britain's post-World "We like to think we're on nerable people became
War II history from the the right side of history," susceptible to the slogan
pages of a book to our TV said Solemani, who grew "Take Our Country Back."
screens. up in London with an Irani- "No one sets out to be a vil-
She had been impressed by an father and Northern Irish lain of history. Everyone is
Jo Bloom's 2014 novel "Rid- mother. "We like to think of setting out thinking they're
ley Road" about a Jewish- history as good guys and doing the best thing they
led underground anti-fas- bad guys. And we were the can in the moment they're
cist resistance movement good guys and Hitler was a in. So it tries to humanize
in London in the 1960s. But bad guy and he died in the why white working class
making it into a series was bunker and that was the people are susceptible
hard-going at first. end of it. And it's not true." and vulnerable to far-right
"It got rejected every- "Ridley Road" — in the views," Solemani said.
where. No one wanted to '60s, a multicultural thor- Anti-fascists — working
make it. It felt very niche," oughfare in northeast Lon- without the support of the
she explained. Then two don — centers on an un- government — used their
things happened: Brexit conventional heroine, a muscle and espionage
in England and Donald young Jewish hairdresser techniques such as wire-
Trump in the United States. who goes undercover into tapping and infiltration to
Suddenly, nativist lurches the neo-Nazi movement. disrupt the National So-
in democracies weren't so While her story may be fic- cialist Movement, which
niche. tional, the history of fascists was behind synagogue ar-
"I just had to be relentless fighting anti-fascists on the sons. Often the anti-fascists
in pushing it. And I'm glad streets of London is not. were Jewish ex-servicemen
I did, because, actually, "I think what this series does who had fought the Nazis
it reveals a lot about the is just remind us that we are abroad.
country when it came out," constantly battling against "They'd been at war and
said the English actor, writer fascism, Nazism and neo- they'd come home only
and activist. Nazism. I think the show is to find Nazis on their door-
"Ridley Road," a four-part very relevant because it step. So in their eyes, it was
series that makes its U.S. reminds us that this is ongo- muscle against muscle, an
debut May 1 on PBS' "Mas- ing," said Susanne Simpson, eye for an eye. There was
terpiece," takes viewers to "Masterpiece" executive no other option," said Sole-
a part of British history that producer."This is a slice of mani. "It's a remarkable sto-
they may not have known. history that certainly I didn't ry of hope and sacrifice."
In the early '60s, members know had taken place in The chapter in British his-
of the fascist National So- Britain, and I don't think tory might have seemed
very dusty and foreign to
Americans until 2017 when
hundreds of white national-
ists descended on Charlot-
tesville, Virginia, screaming
"Jews will not replace us!"
All of a sudden, "Take Our
Country Back" wasn't too
far away from other nativist
slogans like "Make America
Great Again."q