Offering the same pointed critique of his Caribbean homeland as he made of Britain in the series White Tribe, Darcus Howe asks what the former colonies have done with the independence for which they fought. “I left the Caribbean as a colony, and I’ve come back to look at it in a serious political way for the first time, and I’ve met it as a colony.” When his sister tells him that a close family friend has been shot, it proves a prelude to the tales of violence and racial division that he encounters.

Darcus’s next stop is Antigua, which he claims is independent by name only. “Imagine a place of 70,000 people, an island the size of Slough with a flag, a Prime Minister and a vote at the UN.” He discovers a nation that cannot feed or clothe itself, nor pay its debts—a country dependent on wealthy white outsiders as ever it was in colonial times. In Martinique, Darcus is shocked—the place is supposed to be the Caribbean, but it looks more like Nice. There, the French government welcomes him to a transplanted Europe. It would be “une catastrophe”, the Martiniquais tell Darcus, to sink to the level of desperation and disorder of the other islands. Darcus is relieved to return to England, yet disturbed that the dreams of independence he nurtured as a young man have not been realised.