To Sir With Love, by E.R. Brathwaite

Few in history have disobeyed the racist warning of To Kill a Mockingbird, or more Black writers would follow Brathwaite’s path of criticizing low-class Whites. Before I mention anything about the White working class to a Hillbilly Elegy debate, let me remind that Brathwaite is an Englishman and his memoir takes place in London. Ignoring the silly 1967 film version, I thoroughly enjoyed the book, which takes place in 1948, when London was struggling after WWII and there was no G.I. Bill. This book is a contrast to most stories of adventure, because it’s usually the upper-class Englishman exploring Africa, not a Black Guyana-born former RAF officer surviving in London. Furthermore, this man behaves like a judgmental English explorer when he ventures among the White youth of darkest London; they are dirty, unwashed, uncouth, uncultured, and with little appreciation for their country’s gifts to history.

    To Sir With Love is a book that is unfortunately ignored today, a loss to all of us. However, most books on the proletarian experience of post-WWII Britain are ignored as well (Been in the Snooker Club, A Kid for Two Farthings, An East End Story) as opposed to more “classical” works by writers like Mary Wesley. Even if you’re not especially interested in the race or education aspects of the book, you still get an eye into what Britain was like after the war ended. The author comes out of his service in the Royal Air Force (where he experienced no hostility) and finds that everyone – employers and the public alike – regards him as a nuisance. There are dirty looks on the train and bus, signs advertising rooms for rent are suddenly a mistake, and the fact that he risked his life for Britain means nothing. Though he doesn’t mention it in the book, the Polish RAF pilots got the same treatment. The British were happy to have them while there was a war going on, but once the war ended, they were asked if they wouldn’t mind leaving the country. Bloody decent of the Brits!

    In terms of plot, the memoir is relatively simple; born and educated in Guyana, graduate work at CUNY, RAF crewman in WWII, demobbed in 1945, and unemployed (like most war veterans regardless of color) in post-war UK. Unable to find work as an engineer, he takes a job teaching 14-year-olds in a crappy school on Cable Street, and here his adventures begin. This educated West Indian, espousing upper-class airs, looks down on their foul mouths and foul hygiene. The famous scene in the movie with the burning bra? Yes, it happens in the book. The scene where he boxes with the class moron? Yes, that happens too, but at the very beginning. These two events serve as a kind of icebreaker.

The story of the new teacher who flies in to rescue the bad kids can be a genre unto itself. We have The Water is Wide by Pat Conroy, and Blackboard Jungle by Evan Hunter, though in the latter, the hero teacher fails. Then there’s Coach Carter, Dangerous Minds, Freedom Writers, Death at an Early Age, they’re all cultural icons. Unfortunately, the main character is always the nice White guy or the nice White lady rescuing minority kids, never a Black man rescuing White kids. At the same time, how often do you see (in USA, Canada, Britain, or anywhere else) a Black man or woman teaching White kids? It’s rare. Coach Carter and Lean on Me had one or two White kids, but they’re portrayed as misunderstood and suspicious. Both movies are also part of the “Black disciplinarian” genre to which An Officer and a Gentleman belongs. To Sir With Love is set apart from that genre because Braithwaite isn’t tough, but snobby, with a clear disdain for Cockney ways. It’s a reverse of Heart of Darkness, with the horrors of Africa  replaced with gloomy East End London.

    The kids who the author tries to cultivate are misunderstood in every sense of the word. In the 1967 film, they were nasty and stupid for no reason, but the book explains that in 1948 they were all angry. They’d lost their fathers during the war, and their neighborhood had few male role models. The next problem was that they weren’t expected to graduate high school in those days, so why would they make any effort? Kids in the UK usually left school at 14 to work, unlike in the USA, and there was no GI Bill or cult of upward mobility. When you grew up poor in London, there was no expectation to move up the social ladder, and even Booker T. Washington made note of this in his book Up From Slavery. When Washington visited the UK in 1900, he noted how the American wants to be his own master, but the Englishman wants to do the best he can in the position he has.

While Booker T. Washington refused to give his opinion on the English work ethic, Brathwaite makes his disdain very clear. He would clearly like to see the kids do better in life, so I can forgive him for being such a snob. I would also point out a British film from the 1960’s, called Spare The Rod, which is also about a bleak London school. The kids are rude and dirty with no prospects, and the teachers are too upper-class to relate to the kids. The difference between the two stories is that in Spare The Rod the teachers whip the kids. I had to wonder why the kids in Spare The Rod didn’t just hit the teacher back? They’re not going to stay after 14 anyway, so what do they have to lose? What is the school going to do, expel them a month before they age out?

   Omitted from the film is the eyebrow-raising romance between him and a sexy blonde White teacher at the school. They get nasty remarks from two old biddies on a train during the field trip, and they get attitude from a waiter in a restaurant. When he meets her parents, they’re not averse to him, but apprehensive. It seems that a lot of the xenophobia in the story has to do more with apprehension than outright fear or jealousy. An employer tells him “I’m sorry, but we have Englishmen who’ve been working here for years and we wouldn’t be able to make you their boss.” There’s a funny scene where he gets a hostile response while checking a room for rent, but just as she’s about to slam the door at him, a girl peeks out and goes “oh no, Mum, that’s Sir!” For some reason, I found the woman’s rudeness comical.

    Brathwaite’s version of the events is disputed in the book An East End Story by Alf Gardner. The former student states that Brathwaite was mean, abusive, gladly used the rod, and the girls were uncomfortable around him. He also states that while the headmaster had officially banned caning, Brathwaite used it anyway. However, I wonder if Brathwaite was just too much of a Victorian moralist for Gardner’s tolerance? None of the other pupils have come forward (if any of them are still alive) and the school’s radical headmaster Alex Bloom died in the 1950’s. Was Mr. Bloom a Jew? There are several Jewish characters in the book, though their goals and aspirations are different from those you’ll know in the USA (there are few Jewish doctors in the UK.) From my experience, the Jewish Briton doesn’t make a spectacle of himself, probably thanks to centuries of Anti-Semitism. You won’t see lots of noticeably Jewish comedians in the UK either. No Adam Sandlers or Rodney Dangerfields there.

    I’m not sympathetic to all the kids in the book, by the way. When the biracial student named Seale loses his mother, they all buy a wreath, but won’t take it to his house. They don’t want to be seen going to a colored person’s house, because “people will start to talk.” They all go to the funeral, pressed and clean, but won’t visit the house, and this is the part where I got upset. The class asshole, a boy named Denham, likes to be the tough guy, but he’s too afraid of housewife gossip to show solidarity. I wonder sometimes if the ultimate test of toughness is standing up to your own friends and family? When A. Philip Randolph supported Albert Shanker and the Teacher’s Union, he lost a lot of support from his own people. Fidel Castro, another famous leftist, supported everything the Soviets did, and was seen as a desperate puppet. Unlike Castro, Romania’s communist dictator denounced the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and won worldwide respect.

    Perhaps Brathwaite, a teacher in 1949 Britain, had the same problem as US teachers 70 years later? When your dealing with lower-class kids from troubled backgrounds, it’s like trying to de-brainwash a cult member. These kids have been taught that it’s cute to be stupid, and that insults have to be avenged, and that you get respect by being bad. Think of all the White (or educated Black) teachers who keep saying “no, it’s not okay to shoot someone” and the kid is never convinced. It took Brathwaite a while to convince the girls that skankiness is not a turn-on.

    I found the book much better than the movie, in part because Sidney Poitier’s acting style is annoying. The fact that Brathwaite is not an American is a big help, because the social class dynamic plays a big part. During my time in the UK, I found that class differences were a taboo subject that were only mentioned in the occasional comedy. It’s a sore point in the UK, whether Cockney accents are acceptable or not, and whether proper speech means polished vowels. If you go into the courts, you’ll hear the judges and barristers all speaking with refined posh accents, no low-class drawls in the court. Go into a US court, and you’ll hear judges with Staten Island accents. You’ll hear low-class accents among police chiefs, judges, army officers, doctors, and politicians. They’ll wear it like a badge of honor.