Death of England: What does it mean to be British?

After a summer when riots on our streets have provoked condemnation and consternation, what is the state of our nation?

It’s a question tackled by the writers of ‘Death of England’, a trilogy of interconnected plays, following two Black and white working class families, grappling with what it means to be British amid conversations about race, class and immigration.

We spoke to lead actor Paapa Essiedu, and writer/director Clint Dyer about the intersections between class and race in the UK.

Essiedu plays Delroy, a Black, working-class Conservative voter who supported Brexit.

Paapa Essiedu: He’s a proud Brit. He believes that he has all the rights that should be assigned to someone who is British and he should be treated just the same as anybody else in this country. But in terms of what actually happens to him over the course of the play, that very quickly gets challenged.

Symeon Brown: Delroy is a grandchild of the Windrush, but two generations on his assimilation is incomplete and the play looks at why. The script, that references contemporary events in race relations, from the Black Lives Matter Protests, to the rise of Kamala Harris.

What is the dialogue that the play is having between the working classes of different races, especially in light of the riots that we’ve seen take place?

Clint Dyer: I think it’s trying to have an honest dialogue. That’s the thing, it’s not trying to preach one perspective. It’s trying to talk into how difficult it is to manage ourselves and how it takes work. The contradictions within how we behave as a nation, I think, are very funny. We wanted to try and put it over in a way that was so honest that it made people laugh. I think the working class, it’s British working class, the rhythm in which we speak has a divine comedy inside it.

Symeon Brown: One of the things that really stands out for me about delivery is that this is a man who expresses a great deal of anger about Britain, about the politics of race, about white people. Yet his friends are white. His partner is white. His desires are white, and there seems to be an anger on his part about assimilating. Is that a fair judgement and does that reflect a wider tension, particularly amongst British Caribbean people?

Clint Dyer: I think you’ve hit on the head. I don’t think that the relationship that West Indians have forged with Britain is an easy one. It’s fraught with complications and contradictions and hurt.

Paapa Essiedu: I remember being taught at school about the British empire, and being talked about how it was the greatest empire that ever was and had the biggest land mass, and it was a great thing and the railways and all of that. I remember it was down to me to figure out, how do I fit into that? I mean, how does that speak to the fact that I’m here?

Clint Dyer: Can I pick up on that point, actually, just I’ll come back to you. It’s just that my son, and he’s now 22, so this was when he was 15, 16, came home from school one day and he said that he was asked to write down the positive aspects of slavery. Now, what? I’m on television so I can’t say how vexed I was. I kind of get hot, because of course we’re still living in it. Of course we’re still having to work out how to stay sane in an environment that doesn’t actually understand that tolerating us isn’t good enough.

Symeon Brown: That’s a good question that you think about needing to stay sane.

Paapa Essiedu: Staying is maybe the word that would be in inverted commas there. Because sanity, I think, is something that for Delroy at least, that can kind of come and go. And I thought, I feel like his fight, he lives on the precipice, and his fight is trying to maintain or protect or reclaim any sense of security, stability, sanity if you want to call it. And it’s outside that provides the obstacle, the challenge towards him achieving that.

Symeon Brown: That’s the metaphor for being Black and working class in the Death of England, a trilogy of plays where the political is personal.