Sapphire

Hot on the heels of the Notting Hill race riots came Sapphire. Children playing ball on Hamp-stead Heath stumble across a murdered girl. A nice, respectable white girl in prim tweeds. But, horror of horrors, she's three months pregnant and wearing scarlet taffeta undies! Poor Sapphire only looks white and, as the film sagely informs us, 'No matter what the colour of the skin, you can always tell when the bongo-drums start beating'. Actually, in spite of Horace Big Cigar and a host of no-good blacks, the real murderer is a fanatical white racist. Dearden's analysis of English prejudice is comprehensive and uncompromising, but the film's 'impartiality' leads it perilously close to condoning what it sets out to condemn.