It was a front page that, 21 years ago, set back race relations. The question now is if a very public change of heart will help to heal stark inequalities

The sky is the colour of slate and rain is hammering Bristol’s streets but the mood inside the studios of the Afro-Caribbean community station Ujima Radio in the city centre is undimmed.

Roger Griffith, the station’s guiding force, smiles warmly and clutches the hand of DJ Docta Flex as he records his regular mix of house, dancehall and hip-hop.

It’s from these studios that Griffith has masterminded a campaign to get Bristol to face up to its past and overcome stark racial inequalities, which led to it being labelled last year one of the most divided cities in the country.

In a move brokered by Griffith, the city’s newspaper, the Bristol Post, apologised last week for a notorious front-page splash in 1996 that featured the mugshots of 16 black men, convicted of drugs offences, under the headline “Faces of Evil”.

“It doesn’t feel like 21 years ago. I remember it as clear as day. My heart sank – it fed into a negative media portrayal of black men,” says Griffith, in the studio from which he broadcasts a topical show about the city.

Griffith says there was a widespread sense in the city’s black areas that the Post wrote only about black people when they were committing crimes and ignored the community’s struggles against racism and its many positive achievements.

“We are not denying those men committed crimes. But there was nothing else. There was nothing positive about the black community,” he says. “All we wanted was balance, not special treatment.”

Griffith likens the impact to the Sun’s reporting of the Hillsborough disaster, which led to a boycott of the tabloid on Merseyside. “Ever since that front page people stopped buying it. I don’t know anyone who buys it on a regular basis,” he says.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Bristol Post front page from 1996 that offended the city’s black community who felt positive stories were ignored. Photograph: Bristol Post / SWNS.com

The Post’s current editor, Mike Norton, is determined to reach out to a city where one in five people identify as an ethnicity other than white British. His 1,437-word editorial pledges to make amends for a front page that “essentially destroyed what little credibility and trust the Post had within Bristol’s African and Afro-Caribbean community.”

The episode has opened up what Griffith and Norton feel is a much-needed debate about Bristol’s troubled relationship with race, which can be traced back to its pivotal role in the transatlantic slave trade in the 18th century.

Although the city has the UK’s first directly elected black mayor, Marvin Rees, and an Afro-Caribbean carnival that attracts tens of thousands of people, the Runneymede Trust last year found Bristol was more divided than other cities. Ethnic minorities in Bristol faced greater disadvantages in education and employment than the average for England and Wales.

Only last year Avon and Somerset police officers were caught on camera tasering one of their own race advisers and an independent review into the murder of an Iranian refugee by vigilantes found the city council and police force were institutionally racist.

Norton wants to help make Bristol’s institutions more representative, starting with the Post’s newsroom: “We are probably between 5% to 10% non-white. But bear in mind the city is one in five, so not doing well enough. Part of my challenge is to get black voices in the paper.”

Reaction to his apology has been positive, with messages of support arriving from all over the world – but the city has been more resistant. Online comments below his editorial bear this out, with users suggesting the apology was unnecessary because all the men pictured were guilty.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bristol Post editor Mike Norton who has apologised for the ‘Faces of Evil’ front page and wants more black voices in the paper. Photograph: Bristol Post / SWNS.com

“It has gone down badly with Bristol’s very traditional community. But frankly I wasn’t apologising to them. Many of them misunderstood the message. They thought I was apologising to the criminals,” he says. “And of course I’m not.”

There is also work to do to persuade Bristol’s black community that the Post has really changed its ways. For Marti Burgess, the owner of one of Bristol’s best loved clubs, Lakota, on the edge of St Pauls, the memory of that page is still raw.

“The men on that front page weren’t the only drug dealers in Bristol at the time. It was just a way of stereotyping black men,” she says.

Burgess – who grew up in Filton in the north of city, where her windows were smashed by racists and she was racially abused on the street – is pleased a debate about racism in the city is finally happening. “I’ve lived in all different parts of the city and Bristol does have an issue with its history and the way it deals with the black community,” she says. “But it seems we are at a moment in time [when] things are moving.”

The impact of the Post’s front page was also felt in white areas. Jerry Hicks, a union activist at the Rolls-Royce plant, remembers how far-right groups sought to use the front page to recruit members. “Within hours of it being published, the British National Party had photocopied it and were flyposting in Bristol,” he says.

There is no one reading the Post in Glen’s Kitchen in the St Pauls Learning Centre. All but one of the diners, tucking into dishes including salt mackerel and goat curry, remember the front page and now do not read the paper.

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Over a steady rumble of reggae classics, Carol Sherman says the apology by itself is not enough. “Although there has been an apology now, the perceived ideas of what the front page represents are still there,” she says.

At the next table, Judith Davies is equally disparaging about the Post and wider efforts to end the city’s divisions. “It is not inclusive,” she says. ”They talk a good talk but Bristol hasn’t moved on – look at the statistics: St Pauls is one of most deprived places in the country.”

Back at Ujima – which has about 30,000 listeners and gave the mayor his first taste of broadcasting – Griffith is adamant that the newspaper’s apology can only be the start. “That’s just one organisation,” he says. “What is the rest of the city doing?”