Tariq Ali claims that the Bahrain Film Institute suspended him from the multicultural TV season | television

The editor of a leading Channel 4 program claims the BFI has frozen it out of the next season on multicultural television, and offers a distorted view of the programme.

Tariq Ali was part of the creative team that produced Channel 4’s Bandung global current affairs profile in the 1980s. The current affairs program has highlighted everything from the reality of apartheid in South Africa to the fallout from the publication of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses.

Ali said he was shocked not to be invited to take part in the BFI’s new season of Built, Told and Spoken: A Counter-History of Britain on TV, which includes a dedicated evening where episodes of the Bandung File will be screened in March.

“They never contacted me,” he told The Guardian. “The first thing I saw was in a BFI program, where they spent an evening covering the topics of the Bandung file, but the choices indicate that there does not seem to be any knowledge of the content of the program.”

Ali, who wrote about his experiences on the program in his memoirs released last year, said he wanted to present the program correctly and put it in the right context.

“The whole thing about the Bandung file is that we did it in a way that united the West Indian and South Asian communities, while also looking outward; 50% of the viewers were white and 50% were non-white, and our philosophy was that white people also need to be educated,” he said.

The show, which takes its name from the 1955 meeting in Indonesia between newly independent Asian and African nations, was part of a wave of programs made for primarily black and South Asian audiences.

Ali served as editor of the series alongside Darcus Howe, while the show was commissioned by Farooq Dondi, Channel 4’s editor of multicultural programmes. It continued from 1985 until its cancellation in 1989.

It was seen as a step change from Channel 4’s previous multicultural programming, which were mostly magazine shows such as Eastern Eye and Black on Black, a chat show hosted by Selecter frontwoman Pauline Black.

The Bandung File had a tougher edge and was international in scope, giving rise to a new type of Channel 4 series such as Black Bag, which dealt with serious issues including the Cardiff 3 scandal with investigative rigor.

Ali said: “When I show the Bandung dossier to students today, the first question I get is: ‘Has this actually been shown on British television?’ They don’t believe it because of the output they see today. It shows what television can do if it is properly supported.”

Bandung has had several journalistic successes, including exposing a vote-rigging scheme in Roy Hattersley’s constituency of Sparkbrook, Birmingham, and revealing the Greater London Council’s decision to fund a far-right Hindu political group. They also got an interview with Rushdie amid the Satanic Verses controversy.

The current head of the BBC, Samir Shah, also praised the program for its coverage of the BCCI scandal, which he said “showed what this kind of journalism can achieve”.

Ali said that a program like the Bandung file will not be run or successful now. “At the time South Africa was very big news, and we had an underground network of filmmakers in the country who would send us five- to 10-minute clips, which we would show every week,” he said. “Do you think the government will allow us to show footage from Gaza today? I don’t think so.”

The show itself may have been serious and thoughtful, but the team behind it had a sense of humour. After its cancellation, they held a “funeral” for the show in Kentish Town with invitations reading: “Bandung File, born 1985, died 1989; Cause of death – execution… Dress code: all black.”

A BFI spokesperson said: “We recognize how important Tariq has been in shaping the Bandung portfolio under his management with Darkus Howe. It has always been our intention to include Tariq in the season and we hope to bring him on board. Contacting him has been slightly delayed due to sourcing his details, however it is not unusual for us to confirm guests once our brochure and season messages are published, and we are in the process of confirming additional contextual contributors to events throughout this season.”

Create, Tell and Speak: A Counter-History of Britain on Television examines the multicultural sections of television in the United Kingdom that emerged in the 1980s. It will run throughout February and March and includes shows dedicated to the influence of Stuart Hall and the black gay TV series of the 1980s.