Remember Oluwale

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Archive on 4: Remember Oluwale

BBC Radio 4 - Archive on 4, Remember Oluwale

Reassessing a black man’s death and the trial of two policemen 50 years ago.

Re-examining the death of black man David Oluwale and the ensuing trial of two police officers 50 years ago, assessing the significance then, and the continued relevance today.

Two police officers stood trial in 1971 accused of the manslaughter of Nigerian vagrant David Oluwale. Few questions were asked about the circumstances of his death, until a whistleblowing young police cadet implicated two senior policemen. The trial shook and shamed Leeds.

Not far away, Tony Phillips was growing up in the only black family on his Leeds estate. The name David Oluwale reaches far back into his childhood memory of becoming black, black and Yorkshire, and black and British.   

In Remember Oluwale, Tony reflects on the impact of David’s story, exposing the lasting importance and relevance of the story today.

He uses archive and face to face interviews with people who knew Oluwale - Gabriel Adams who, like David, stowed away, arriving in the UK from Nigeria in the late 1940s, and Tom Booth who knew Oluwale after he was sent to Menston Pauper’s asylum in 1953.

Tony examines a particular altercation with the police that year which appears to have catapulted David on the road to decline, and his ultimate death in the River Aire. 

We meet defence lawyer Ronnie Teeman who argues that race had nothing to do with Oluwale’s death, and use archive of the late Donald Herrod, for the prosecution, who was convinced the two officers killed David – although they were only ever convicted of assault. 

With cross-bench peer Victor Adebowale, Tony highlights the inequalities in mental health and policing that continue to adversely affect black people in this country, while Joe Williams, who runs the Black History Tours in Leeds and remembers Oluwale as a frightening figure on Leeds streets, puts the whole story in the context of colonialism. 

With contributions from Linton Kwesi Johnson and music by Ellen Smith, David Oluwale’s story becomes social history and political statement - examining how a constellation of public issues impacted on one man’s body, how we so easily forget our inglorious past, and how misunderstood the deep, underlying problems of racism are.


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