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Louis Mahoney (1938-2020) Louis Mahoney’s list of screen credits is impressive. He made, according to the Internet Movie Database, almost one hundred film and television appearances from 1964 until his final role in the second season of BBC television’s The Split (transmitted 11th February 2020). In one year alone – 1975, he was seen on BBC television in The Fight Against Slavery (as Olaudah Equiano, the former slave who became an abolitionist), Fawlty Towers (in the controversial episode The Germans) and Doctor Who. In fact, Mahoney’s career was so long he appeared in Doctor Who (1973-1975) in three different stories as three different characters! It is hard to imagine how Mahoney found the time and energy to work tirelessly as a campaigner for better treatment of Black actors in Britain. For many years he was also active in the anti-apartheid movement. And yet, in spite of achieving so much, Mahoney never became a ‘star’. He was a hard-working, dedicated character actor who made an impression in each role he played, however small. Mahoney, born in The Gambia in 1938, began publicly campaigning for a wider range of roles for Black actors in the 1970s. He did this for over 25 years
through the actor’s trade union Equity and their Afro-Asian Artists’ Committee (previously the Coloured Actors Committee before he renamed it). In 1983, two years after the Brixton and Toxteth uprisings, Mahoney addressed an Equity conference on integrated casting at the Barbican Centre. In his speech, he drew attention to the failure of British television to include Black characters in mainstream drama, which he believed would help enormously to positively influence the general public’s view of Britain’s Black community. Louis Mahoney died June 28th 2020 at the age of 81. Stephen Bourne n
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