The choice of a black actor (or actress) or basically anyone for the new Bond movies does not contradict any historical or practical facts or conventions, as the cinematic James Bond is a fictional legacy character, i.e. a character that bears the traits of the original, but those are altered to fit in the new milieu, usually because the new installments are set in different times and places. In the case of Agent 007, while it is true that he was created in early 50's and his adventures were initially set in that era, cinematic incarnation of this character is contemporary to the movies, what is reflected in the plot. Thus, the ideological enmity between MI6 and KGB/GRU is no longer present in the movies set after the Cold War, and the technology, politics and attitudes mimic those familiar to the viewer. So although it would have been prudent to make 1960s Bond a character compliant with the realities of 1960s, then by the same token, Bond in the movies set in 2020s should reflect the realities of 2020s. In other worlds, expectations that British intelligence agencies in 2020s should look like those in 1950s make as much sense as expectations that in the world of the 2020s Bond movies Soviet Union still exists. This, in itself is an interesting topic for the discussion concerning (alternative) historical fiction, but this is only tangential to the topic at hand, so let's leave it here.

Now, the answer to the original question whether the 'original' James Bond could have been black is clear 'no'. British government agencies started to hire black people only in early 1960s, but these jobs were limited to junior clerical or auxiliary positions, meaning that a person that was not white had virtually zero chances to be recruited into any government position related to national security, especially if the work entailed the contact with classified material. Even though the Race Relations Act of 1968 explicitly forbade anyone to deny employment on the grounds of the applicant's ethnicity, an exemption was made for the government agencies citing state security as a main reason. Declassified documents show that this reluctance was caused by various factors, not necessarily limited to causal racism. First and foremost, the number of black people in Great Britain following the Second World War was very small in comparison to, say, United States. In 1950s there were roughly 20.000 people of African descent living in Britain, what amounted to 0.04% of the total population of 50 millions. And even though it rose ten-fold in the following decade, chiefly due to the influx of Afro-Caribbeans (so-called 'Windrush generation') it was still very small. This, compounded with the fact that to work for intelligence agencies one needed to be an English subject, preferably born in Great Britain, the chances of such positions being filled by black people, largely born overseas, were very small even without any other obstacles on the way.

One of declassified documents notes that Edward Furnival Jones, director General of MI5 in the years 1965-1974 brought forth an argument that due to various difficulties caused by racial inequalities in Great Britain, non-white people might be disillusioned with the state, what might be used by the foreign infiltrators (chiefly understood as Soviet spies) to recruit them. It was somewhat inverted in 1980s, as the people at MI5 realized that their potential targets know about lack of diversity among the British agents and thus started to recruit people from different ethnic backgrounds on an assumptions that their potential targets will never think of them as of possible British agents. Other consideration was that the serious influx of the ethnic minorities was noted only in 1950s and thus many representatives of the ethnic minorities were newcomers to Great Britain so the could not have been properly vetted by the appropriate services. Since 1964, the minimum of 10 years of constant residency was required from ethnic minorities to be considered for any government job.

And there is, of course, the whole matter of Bond's position within the service. In theory, James Bond is a field operative, i.e. a relatively low-ranking employee of intelligence service. On the other hand he is a high-ranking Royal Navy Officer (Commander, equivalent to a Lt Colonel in the Army) and is basically given carte blanche during the operations, works without any handler to speak of and is keen to contravene every international relations protocol imaginable. Such a degree of freedom, if it wasn't blatantly fictional, could have been explained only by very good connections and possibly a senior rank within the service, what is heavily suggested by the dynamics between 'M' (a stand-in of Director General) and Bond. In such case, it would have been impossible for Bond to be non-white, as the first members of British intelligence services (Security Service/MI5, Secret Intelligence Service/MI6 and GCHQ/GS&CS) attained senior ranks only very recently, in mid-to-late 2010s.

So to sum it up, black people were exceedingly rare in 1950s Britain and there is no record of any member of the British intelligence services that would have been of African descent. The policies in 1950s and early 1960s were generally preventing any such person from getting anywhere close to secret service and classified material, what in fact only changed in the last stages of Cold War. And the first people of Black, Asian or Middle Eastern descent that would have attained any senior ranks are a very recent occurrence, much younger that the first movies with Daniel Craig as Bond.

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Coleman, D.A., Salt, J., The British Population: patterns, trends and policies. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1992.

Lomas, D., ‘Crocodiles in the Corridors’: Security Vetting, Race and Whitehall, 1945–1968, in: The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. 49 (1), 2021.